
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


Tirana, Albania has gained international recognition for putting kids first on the road — especially their award-winning "School Streets," where cars are either banned or significantly limited from driving near learning centers and play spaces for kids are built instead. As the Balkan city grows its bike network, though, its mayor says it's still reckoning with a post-communist culture that sees cars as an aspirational symbol of success. And he has some fascinating thoughts about what it takes to shift that paradigm before it takes root any further. Today on The Brake, we finish up our dispatches from Bloomberg Citylab with Mayor Erion Veliaj. And along the way, we dig into some fasciating questions about America's "soft power" over European countries, why kids deserve a bigger say in how our cities are built, and why building places where grandmas want to sit and knit is better for public safety than any smart-city gadget.
By StreetsblogUSA4.9
3131 ratings
Tirana, Albania has gained international recognition for putting kids first on the road — especially their award-winning "School Streets," where cars are either banned or significantly limited from driving near learning centers and play spaces for kids are built instead. As the Balkan city grows its bike network, though, its mayor says it's still reckoning with a post-communist culture that sees cars as an aspirational symbol of success. And he has some fascinating thoughts about what it takes to shift that paradigm before it takes root any further. Today on The Brake, we finish up our dispatches from Bloomberg Citylab with Mayor Erion Veliaj. And along the way, we dig into some fasciating questions about America's "soft power" over European countries, why kids deserve a bigger say in how our cities are built, and why building places where grandmas want to sit and knit is better for public safety than any smart-city gadget.

26,166 Listeners

7,850 Listeners

1,254 Listeners

570 Listeners

166 Listeners

422 Listeners

38 Listeners

155 Listeners

920 Listeners

34 Listeners

5,466 Listeners

15,942 Listeners

612 Listeners

2,415 Listeners

292 Listeners