Sharing Boulder

As the new city council prepares for its annual retreat in January where they will prioritize their agenda for the coming year, David and I want to promote gentle infill in established neighborhoods as a solution that addresses so many of the values that have been identified by the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan.  We hope that you will listen, learn, get motivated, and share this with your favorite city council person!  David has a long history of heroically planning for and promoting inclusive and affordable housing in his North Boulder neighborhood.  But he is swimming against a tide that is the current housing market which incentivizes scraping smaller homes and replacing them with mansions or building luxury condos where affordable housing once stood and city codes that regulate against building the kind of beautiful, compact, inclusive, and affordable housing that he is trying to develop.  We talk about a specific housing pilot that he is working on and how his neighborhood and all of Boulder could benefit from this kind of innovative and inclusive housing.  We hope you enjoy this conversation about the future of housing in Boulder.

For episode nineteen, I got on Zoom with long time Boulder resident and Just Sustainability Activist Tim Thomas to talk about a set of prioritized issues he would like to see Boulder city council work on.  Tim has put together 12 items that he would like to see given priority and energy in the new year by city council.  Each item is informed by a framework called “Just Sustainability” which has been pioneered by professor and author Julian Agyeman which seeks sustainable reforms that meaningfully address social justice, economic vitality, and environmental protection.  In this interview we work through his list of 12 issues.  To review the list, please see the episode show.

The Boulder Housing Network is a newsletter, blog, and grassroots political advocacy group that promotes “ethical housing beneath the flatirons”.  Their goal is “to get more people involved where and when it matters most: in the early stages of the City’s planning processes.”  I subscribe to their newsletter and it is full of useful information.  Frequently, articles in the newsletter relate to development projects that are in the planning or approval pipeline here in Boulder along with commentary about the fitness of these projects as they relate to affordability and sustainability along with encouragement on how to get involved in supporting specific projects.  There’s a lot of good stuff in these newsletters and I hope you will subscribe today and get involved as you can.  The Boulder Housing Network, or BHN is one year old this month.  I thought I would help them celebrate by reading the latest edition of the newsletter which came out on Saturday, November 20th.  You can subscribe and read more at boulderhousingnet.wordpress.com.  I hope you enjoy hearing the latest from BHN!

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:22:46 | Recorded on November 12, 2021

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The quilt is finished and I get metaphorical.

For episode seventeen, I spoke with Alex Weinheimer in his apartment in central Boulder to discuss all things transportation. Alex is a transportation planner and engineer for a consulting firm based out of Texas and he also volunteers his time on Boulder’s Transportation Advisory Board. We spoke about VisionZero, micromobility, the pavement management program, car-free living, and much more. Alex lives downtown without a car but he has an EcoPass and a pair of shoes.  He gets around by walking, transit, and the bike share. I appreciate his perspective on transportation issues which is informed by his lived experience of growing up in Boulder riding the bus and now organizing his life around car-free living in the heart of Boulder. It is clear that he has a deep working knowledge of Boulder’s transportation system and that his dedicated efforts to help improve our city reflects his love for this community. 

For episode sixteen, I spoke with Claudia Hanson Thiem over zoom to discuss cohousing, cooperative housing, and car lite living.  Claudia is regular opinion writer for the Daily Camera, Boulder’s local daily newspaper but is on temporary hiatus from that work while she manages the campaign for city council candidate Nicole Speer.  I admire Claudia for the way she shows up for housing justice in Boulder and the way she articulates a clear and positive vision for building inclusive communities in our city.

For episode fifteen, I spoke with Steve Rosenblum in my back yard to discuss his candidacy for Boulder City Council. Steve is a formidable conversation partner and we sparred and brainstormed and explained and explored for over three hours as we compared and contrasted our ideas about how to address a wide variety of issues that Boulder faces.  I appreciate Steve’s tenacious approach to problem solving, his depth of knowledge of the issues, his attention to relevant facts and experiences, his independent streak, and his love for Boulder.  My brain was buzzing long after our conversation ended and I appreciate the way he challenged many of my ideas and assumptions.  I have never been quite so tempted on this podcast to play the role of “Monday morning quarterback” by adding commentary on things I might have said differently or open threads that I might have circled back on.  Such is the nature of unrehearsed conversation.  We hope you enjoy this conversation with Steve Rosenblum.

For episode fourteen, I spoke with David Takahashi on a zoom call to discuss his candidacy for Boulder City Council.  David is running as a climate change champion and sees his role in fighting the climate crisis as way to address the needs of an important contingent of underserved people – future unborn generations.  He articulated that every decision we make as individuals or as a city need to be made in the context of the climate crisis and our urgent need to address this pressing issue.  Our conversation ranged from how to make our houses and our city carbon neutral, the housing shortage, bicycle highways, resilient communities, and how church parking lots could be repurposed for affordable housing, among many other subjects.  I was surprised when we realized we had been talking for over an hour because it felt like we were just getting started!  We hope you enjoy this conversation with David Takahashi.

In this Sharing Boulder extra I test out my new microphones with my nine-year-old son Ocean and we talk about the kinds of things fathers and sons talk about in our family – namely land use, housing policy and transportation.  I have frequently seen him imitating frenetic and overly enthusiastic YouTubers so it did not surprise me that he naturally dropped into the role of pensive podcasting interlocutor and was quite eager to talk about gentle infill, alternative transportation, homeless shelters, and urban farming.  We hope you enjoy his fresh take on how to make Boulder a more welcoming and beautiful city.

For episode thirteen, I sat down with Lauren Folkerts in South Boulder to talk about her candidacy for Boulder City Council.  Lauren is passionate about city council and jokes that it is like a spectator sport for her because she enjoys watching the meetings online and follows them on Twitter.  Lauren showed me her garden and I enjoyed a handful of raspberries as we walked through her neighborhood to a nearby park where we sat and talked about a wide variety of issues including housing, building codes, transportation, social services, and bedrooms are for people, among others.  A favorite moment of the evening for me was after the interview when we geeked out over her VanMoof e-bike which is wicked cool.  I appreciate Lauren’s thoughtful and inclusive approach to problem solving and I admire her depth of knowledge on a wide variety of topics that we discussed.