More than street photography. Chuck’s latest book is Seeing the Better City: How to Explore, Observe, and Improve Urban Space [pre-order on Amazon]. He loves street photography, but Chuck’s not interested in persuading us to amass a digital photo album just because it’s fun. He’s trying to motivate us to get beyond observation for observation’s sake. […]

Bike Detroit? If we’re playing word association, you say Detroit, I’m gonna say cars. David Sands joins the podcast to talk about transportation advocacy – basically how to get people motivated to improve their communities. He’s a journalist who’s been working with Mode Shift, an online hub for people ready to make Michigan communities more walkable, bikeable, […]

The relationship between cities and hinterlands Katrina likes to figure out what makes people tick. More specifically, she’s intrigued by how people interact with the built and natural environment. How do we translate the old hunter/gatherer habits into modern contexts? Americans are congregating in metropolitan areas more than ever. There’s a growing debate in professional […]

Street design didn’t give me the flu, but it does contribute to my health. It impacts all of us, whether or not we realize it.   Active Living – it’s not just for health nuts I enjoy walking and riding bikes, but I wouldn’t consider myself a health nut. I never count calories and I […]

Warning: Don shares my bias for streets that are safe and comfortable for people of all ages. In other words, he’s not part of the modern infrastructure cult that is so good at destroying communities across America. Like so many other guests of Urbanism Speakeasy, we met online. (Twitter, not Tinder.) Don has excellent taste […]

The Twitterverse. A vast expanse where I have connected with all sorts of great people. Dena Driscoll and Marni Duffy are two such people. I’m pretty sure it was Dena who first caught my attention with a photo of her young kids packed in a bucket in front of a huge bicycle. Kids on bikes? That’s […]

If you keep quiet, they’ll assume you agree. Kevin Posey is an advocate for sustainable transportation policy. He lives in Alexandria, VA (just outside Washington, DC). It’s a city that has a lot of great streets and architecture, but like most places in America, still deals with the political arguments about what type of […]

Adam Millard-Ball is an assistant professor at the University of California in Santa Cruz. Before that, Adam worked as a transportation planner. So naturally, one of his focus areas of academic research is derived from his experiences. We’re going to focus on an issue that has huge impacts on the built environment: trip generation.   Gypsy Fortune Tellers […]

“So do you sell your work on Etsy?” Howard Blackson is probably best described as a placemaker. A what? For you planners or engineers out there, that’s a familiar term. Have you looked around LinkedIn recently? Even place-destroyers are using placemaking as part of their professional experience to get attention. Howard starts off our conversation describing […]

The Invisible Visible Man Robert Wright is the U.S. industry correspondent for the Financial Times. A journalist! He wasn’t trained to be a road designer or a pro-bike lobbyist. So why feature him on Urbanism Speakeasy? I think the best way to answer that question is in Robert’s own words. Here’s a quote from his […]