Next City

Live recording in November in partnership with the Small Business Anti-Displacement Network. Lucas interviews in fireside chat with Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sponsored Episode with the Culture & Community Power Fund and Kresge Foundation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Residents teamed up with university students to slow the demolition of an affordable housing community and reshape redevelopment in West Philadelphia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Philadelphians have a history of banding together and organizing when faced by powerful and monied development that has threatened their displacement. From professional sports venues to ever-expanding “eds and meds,” all across Philadelphia, working-class communities of color have pushed back, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, sometimes ending up somewhere in between. In this panel discussion, we’ll hear from neighborhood leaders who share their stories and lessons learned for others when these projects arise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As rapid development reshapes neighborhoods like Kensington, residents and business owners face displacement and loss of local control. The Kensington Corridor Trust and Women’s Community Revitalization Project offer models of community ownership—using neighborhood and land trusts to preserve affordability, reinvest profits locally, and align development with community priorities. This episode explores how these approaches center equity and empower residents to shape their own futures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Lucas Grindley from Next City, a show about changemakers and their stories. We’re off this week for Veterans Day, but we’ll be back next Wednesday with more inspiring and workable ideas that move our society toward justice and equity. If you can’t wait for the next story, head to NextCity.org for the latest coverage. As always, we’d love to hear any feedback from our listeners. Please feel free to email us at info@nextcity.org. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods or anywhere you listen to your podcasts. We’ll see you next week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're revisiting a favorite episode from the archive to celebrate Next City's Winter Film Festival, this year's series: "Power and Place."What happens when a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on deep-pocketed developers? In this episode, we talk to the directors of "Emergent City" and the organizers who fought to preserve Sunset Park’s future.“Emergent City” (emergentcitydoc.com) documents the 10-year saga of how Brooklyn's Sunset Park community came together to fight a rezoning wanted by deep-pocketed developers. Against all odds, residents won. Filmmakers were there from the very beginning, when developers proposed transforming Industry City, a sprawling industrial site on the Brooklyn waterfront, into a high-end retail and office complex – or, as some residents put it, a “mall.” They were there when Sunset Park residents protested that the Industry City complex, if it won rezoning, would accelerate gentrification and displacement in a neighborhood where about 70% of households are renters. They were there for some 200 days of public meetings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join Matthew Jordan-Miller Kenyatta and artist Shawn Theodore for PYRAMID CLUB: 1937—2035, a reimagining of the legendary North Philadelphia social club as a blueprint for today’s North Broad renaissance. Together, they’ll explore how Afrofuturist and arts-driven approaches can turn scarcity into abundance while centering Black joy and cultural heritage.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So much depends on your ZIP code, even children’s access to play. But an effort is growing to ensure the playground is where all kids can have fun, learn and heal.“It's where they learn, it's where they build connection, it's where they really establish their identity as a human being in this world,” says Lysa Ratliff, CEO for KABOOM! “And yet, there's extreme disparities in our parks and our schools and our cities and who has access to what.”In this sponsored episode, Ratliff explains how KABOOM! is working in cities such as Baltimore, Oakland and Uvalde in Texas to safeguard a generation’s childhood and sense of belonging.KABOOM! is a national nonprofit known for nearly 30 years of building thousands of playgrounds where they are needed most. Today, the organization is scaling up public-private partnerships to end playspace inequity and close the “nature gap” that leaves millions of kids, especially in communities of color, without access to safe, quality green spaces.Ratliff highlights how data, partnerships and community-led design can end inequity.“We're trying to answer a very big question,” says Ratliff. “How can we make sure that every single kid in this country has a chance to grow up in a world that sees them, that values them, that gives them a sense of freedom and belonging and ultimately protects their childhood by any means?” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Culture is often treated as a niche area but is actually integral to the successful design and adoption of other areas of urban planning and policy. Hear how cities like Atlanta, Boston, Seattle and Baltimore are embedding cultural approaches into planning, policy, and recovery efforts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nonprofits often struggle to prove their impact, but the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO) is showing how a rigorous research partnership can help grassroots programs scale and win support.This sponsored episode explores examples of nonprofits and city governments collaborating with LEO researchers at the University of Notre Dame to identify what works, why it works, and how they used new evidence to make the case for growth.Like many nonprofit executive directors, Shana Berkeley already had a menu of anecdotes showing that her organization, Nashville's Corner to Corner, made a difference. By teaming up with LEO at Notre Dame, Corner to Corner is measuring the ripple effects of its program, as well as identifying what works and how to make it even more effective.“Research helps us to really understand what about those makes them not a unicorn, right?” says Berkeley. “But it's something that we can make more predictable and understand what's necessary for the foundations of entrepreneurship.”From LEO, the episode features researcher Patrick Turner, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, and Fran Gallagher, who leads project development. They share insights from working with the Goodwill Excel Center and Destination: Home, both of which expanded their fight against poverty — in workforce education and homelessness prevention, respectively — as a result of research partnerships. To learn more about how to partner, visit PartnerWithLEO.org.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Even as billions in federal clean energy funding sit trapped in legal limbo, community lenders are determined to keep the green transition alive.This episode of Next City explores how to press forward with the clean-energy transition despite a federal freeze on the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.Next City’s senior economic justice correspondent Oscar Perry Abello speaks with Neda Arabshahi, executive vice president of the Inclusiv Center for Resiliency and Clean Energy; Amir Kirkwood, CEO of the Justice Climate Fund; and Beth Bafford, CEO of Climate United. Together, they explain how local institutions like credit unions and CDFIs are funding solar projects, energy-efficiency upgrades, and resilience hubs even without federal dollars. According to these leaders, the clean energy movement isn’t waiting on Washington.“The clean energy transition is happening. But who is benefiting from that transition is unequal,” says Bafford. She argues it’s now the responsibility of changemakers to ensure resources still flow to “people, places, and communities across the country that otherwise were going to be kind of in the back of the line in terms of clean energy adoption and really should be at the front.”This episode is based on a Next City webinar, a recording of which can be viewed in our library. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Communities need spaces for art; you can't support art without supporting artists. We're talking with three leaders working on alternative models for sustainability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charles T. Brown, author of "Arrested Mobility," discusses why mobility is not afforded in the same way to everyone – and the dire cost of this inequity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New York was once the world’s oyster capital. The director of a new feature-length impressionist hybrid documentary, "Holding Back the Tide," traces the city’s many life cycles with the oyster as her main character. Emily Packer follows environmentalists restoring oysters to the harbor, while examining the oyster not only as entangled with nature, but also as a queer icon, with much to teach about our society’s continued survival. Packer is interviewed by fellow New Yorker, Eliana Perozo, Next City's Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Anti-Displacement Strategies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The documentary "Razing Liberty Square” shows what happens in Miami as sea levels rise and the rich move inland, encroaching on residents of the Liberty Square public housing project. The film tells the story of a historically Black community faced with a $300-million-dollar “revitalization” of their neighborhood. In this episode, hear from a resident and climate activist, Valencia Gunder, who says she’s fighting a new form of racial injustice: climate gentrification. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Black power is more than symbolic. It’s a measurable reality tied to things like ownership, investment in neighborhoods, and—ultimately—life expectancy. In this episode with the authors of two new books—“The Black Power Scorecard” and “The Banks We Deserve”—Andre Perry and Oscar Perry Abello talk about systems that have historically failed communities of color and what it will take to build lasting institutions that truly serve them. The episode is based on a Next City webinar produced earlier this year, "Achieving Economic Justice and Power."Perry argues that Black communities already hold real power, except it’s often undervalued or ignored. His research reveals a strong link between life expectancy and factors like ownership of homes and businesses—which requires deliberate financial investment. As he puts it, “Nothing grows without investment.”Abello calls out the stark disparities in community banking. Of the roughly 4,000 community banks in the U.S., only about 120 serve communities of color, meaning most character-based lending remains inaccessible to Black and brown entrepreneurs. Listen to the episode to get examples of solutions and learn how to grow what’s working. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, we’re revisiting an episode we released earlier this year, all about Lexington, Kentucky — a city where collaboration and creativity are transforming challenges into opportunities. In this episode, we highlighted how Lexington’s leaders are finding ways to foster nonpartisanship, boost civic engagement, and narrow the racial wealth gap.We’re bringing this episode back now because it offers a window into the themes we explored in even greater depth during our Vanguard conference, held in Lexington just last month. Over the next couple of weeks on this podcast, we’ll be sharing special episodes that bring you along with Next City to the conference. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore® Index each year ranks the 100 largest U.S. cities on factors such as park access, investment, and equity. In this sponsored episode, we explore how cities have turned their ParkScore data into action—investing in green spaces to spark civic engagement and foster a genuine sense of belonging. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Community development in America is at a pivotal moment. Long-standing federal programs that fuel homeownership, support small businesses, and promote neighborhood revitalization—especially in communities of color—are now under threat.But on today's sponsored episode, we’ll hear how the people working on the front lines of equitable development are adapting, organizing, and doubling down on their missions. Guests on this episode include Nikitra Bailey, Executive Vice President at the National Fair Housing Alliance, which supports more than 170 member organizations nationwide; Dafina Williams, Executive Vice President and Chief Public Policy Officer at Opportunity Finance Network, representing over 470 CDFIs across the country; and Selina Pagán, Executive Director of the Young Latino Network, a grassroots group that has grown into a regional force for civic engagement in Northern Ohio.This sponsored episode was produced in partnership with Third Space Action Lab. Its Anti-Racist Community Development research project was developed with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation. To learn more about strategies for advancing practical, concrete change in the sector, visit The People's Practice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices