Decriminalizing Walking with Josh Cohen

Historically, “jaywalking” wasn’t an issue. Until the dominance of vehicles (and auto companies assisted by police forces) people and vehicles of all kinds mixed on American streets. Today people walking in cities face the risk of prosecution — or worse — when crossing the street where no marking exists. But what does this mean for a human-centered city? Who loses when we criminalize walking? 

Join us as we talk with Josh Cohen, Next City contributor and author of this week’s featured article on jaywalking, and how Seattle’s council may undo the law altogether. This is also the second episode in our partnership with Next City on a series of conversations about interesting stories found on NextCity.org. Check them out for more in-depth analysis of urban issues and stay tuned for our featured content from them every month!

If you like these conversations and advocating for human-scale cities, you can donate to our unsponsored efforts on our Patreon page at www.patreon.com/thirdwaveurbanism. Thank you to our supporters, and thank you all for listening, sharing, and doing what you do!

As always, you can keep up with our thoughts and send us your comments on Twitter or Instagram: 

Katrina can be found at @think_katrina

Kristen can be found at @blackurbanist

And our guest Josh Cohen can be found @jcohenwrites on Twitter

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Articles referenced in this episode:

Main article from Next City — Seattle Council Member Questions Jaywalking Law: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/seattle-jaywalking-tickets-police-bias

The Invention of Jaywalking: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/04/invention-jaywalking/1837/ 

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Intro and closing music is “Urban Life” by Gustavs Strazdin used under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode