CitySCOPE Podcast

Childcare is essential to the productivity of the economy locally and nationally. Often overlooked in conversations about infrastructure, in episode 10, we explore the idea of childcare as essential infrastructure. With Jessica Sager, Co-Founder and CEO of All Our Kin, we discuss childcare systems - or really non-systems and how recent legislation has sought to develop a functioning system, but how there is still work to be done. Matthew Archuleta and Payal Saini co-host. 

In episode 9, we feature a wide ranging conversation with Elihu Rubin, Associate Professor at the Yale School of Architecture.  We discuss both the market and power dynamics at play in decisions for remaking the city over time. With Faye Phillips as host, topics include: the crisis of the post-industrial city, the Prudential Center in Boston as both architectural form and symbol, the Goffe Street Armory in New Haven and it's potential as public infrastructure, and the role of historic heritage in everything from adaptive reuse to ghost towns.

Show notes:

1. Elihu Rubin’s personal website here and faculty website here 
2. More of Elihu Rubin’s work on ghost towns 
3. Spring 22 IEDL project featuring the Goffe Street Armory in New Haven 
4. Elihu Rubin’s 2012 book, Insuring the City: The Prudential Center and the Postwar Urban Landscape  

In episode 8, we learn about a new economic development tool called a neighborhood trust. Joined by Adriana Abizadeh, Executive Director of the Kensington Corridor Trust in Philadelphia, and Joe Margulies, Professor of Law and Government at Cornell University, we will explore the theory behind neighborhood trusts and the work underway in Philadelphia to set up one of the country's first community-controlled neighborhood trusts. With co-hosts Brandon Jones and Christina Bovey.

Tune in!

Photo credit: Luis Acosta Studio © 2020

In episode 7, we discuss the role that community development corporations (CDCs) play in constructing communities with Jeremy Levine, Associate Professor of Organizational Studies and Sociology (by courtesy) at the University of Michigan and author of Constructing Community: Urban Governance, Development, and Inequality in Boston. Topics include: the role that CDCs have in local development projects and neighborhood representation, earlier more top-down approaches of urban renewal in contrast with today's more bottom-up community development approaches, and the complexities of both mechanisms. 

In episode 6, we explore zoning policy with Sara Bronin, Professor of the Cornell College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, and Associated Faculty Member of the Cornell Law School (on public service leave).  Sara Bronin is a Mexican-American architect and attorney whose interdisciplinary research focuses on how law and policy can foster more equitable, sustainable, well-designed, and connected places. Through the Legal Constructs Lab, Sara created the National Zoning Atlas to translate and standardize tens of thousands of zoning codes across the country. She has advised the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Sustainable Development Code, has served on the board of Latinos in Heritage Conservation, and founded Desegregate Connecticut. Previously, she led the award-winning, unanimously-adopted overhaul of the zoning code and city plan of Hartford, Connecticut. This audio was created in spring 2022, before Sara Bronin was nominated to lead a federal agency in Washington DC. The conversation sheds light on work underway before she left CT for D.C. In her current role, she is no longer affiliated with DesegregateCT.

Co-hosts Joanne Jan and Sherry Li are back with our guests Karen Chapple of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning & Interim Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs to continue our discussion on transit-oriented development (TOD). In episode 5, we dive into one of the hypothesized unintended consequences of TOD - gentrification and displacement. We learn some examples of TOD from outside the US and then Anastasia and Karen share the findings from their research on both residential and commercial gentrification. The episode ends with discussion on warning signs of gentrification and displacement along with strategies to employ once the process has already started in order to preserve affordability. 

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Photo Credit: Fruitvale Station Train, Oakland, CA 
Photo 88645825 | Transit © Sheila Fitzgerald | Dreamstime.com

The next two episodes feature conversations with Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning & Interim Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and Karen Chapple of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. These are two giants in the field of urban planning and innovative scholars in their approach to the study of cities. We will be exploring the pros and cons of transit-oriented development (TOD) as examined in their co-authored book Transit Oriented Displacement or Community Dividends? Understanding the Effects of Smarter Growth on Communities. In episode 4, we learn about the benefits of TOD along with some of the reasons to be cautious about this approach. Our guests share the creative research approaches they developed to study neighborhood change and to engage with communities as part of the research process. Co-hosted by Sherry Li and Joanne Jan, Yale SOM MBAs. 

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In episode 3, we speak with Lisa Berglund, Professor of Urban Planning at Dalhousie University to continue our exploration of community benefit agreements. This time, we take a closer look at CBAs in a specific context - Detroit. Detroit was the first U.S. city to have a CBA ordinance requiring CBAs for all development over a certain size. We learn how Detroit utilizes community benefit agreements along with other policies to support accountable economic growth and development. Professor Berglund shares insight from her close study of the case of Detroit and the urban governance design and processes undergirding this inaugural effort to mandate CBAs. Laura Brennan, MBA and Kate Cooney co-host.

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Photo Credit: Photo 184268858 | Joe Louis Fist © Wirestock | Dreamstime.com

Show notes: 

1. Lisa Berglund’s faculty website here 
2. Dr. Berglund’s 2020 article, “Early Lessons from Detroit’s Community Benefits Ordinance” 

In episode 2 of Season 4, we are joined by Virginia Parks, Professor at University of California Irvine, and Roxana Tynan, Executive Director of the Los Angeles Alliance for New Economy (LAANE) for a conversation about community benefit agreements. Steven Waller and Alice Yuan co-host.  The episode describes the history and mechanics of CBAs, tracing their roots in early 2000s Los Angeles and how they have evolved over time to be a tool leveraged by city actors to promote equity and opportunity. We learn how the organizing work undergirding CBA activity in the early 2000s in Los Angeles showcased both the possibilities and shortcomings of CBAs and where the work has expanded in the decades since the modern CBA movement was born. 

Join us for a great conversation!

Season 4 of the CitySCOPE podcast features conversations with academics, urban planners, developers and community leaders weighing in on different mechanisms to drive more equitable development through infrastructure development.  The season is organized around questions such as: How have communities organized to ensure that the community benefits from new development, who speaks for the community in urban governance networks, how can neighborhoods be revitalized without inducing the harms of gentrification and how does childcare fit into the infrastructure conversation? Topics include: community benefits agreements, transportation-oriented development, neighborhood trusts, urban governance networks, developer-led community benefits, and the role of childcare in our national infrastructure.  

Episode 1 provides a sneak peek at the voices you'll hear over the season. 

Take a listen!

Meeting the Moment with Inclusive Economic Development
Sharing the audio from our first live podcasting event! February 10, 2023 from NXTHVN in Dixwell. To celebrate the bridge from the end of Season 3 to the launch of Season 4, we held a live event bringing together Stanley Tucker, President, CEO and co-founder of Meridian Management Company, Inc (MMG) featured in Season 3 with Adriana Abizadeh, Executive Director, the Kensington Corridor Trust (KCT), featured in upcoming Season 4. 

CitySCOPE favorite James Johnson-Piett, Principal and CEO, Urbane Development co-hosted. 

The event also features musicians David Chevan and Warren Byrd of The Afro-Semitic Experience. 

Hope you enjoy the conversation!

In our final episode for Season 3 of the CitySCOPE podcast, we have a bonus episode produced in collaboration with James Johnson-Piett and Maggie Clark from Urbane, featuring interviews from Urbane's work on the Philadelphia Equitable Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Assessment and Strategy report, completed in May 2021.  Over the course of this season, we spoke with researchers, historians, practitioners, and city builders about efforts to support and scale Black-owned and Black-led businesses.  In this bonus episode, we hear 10 BIPOC entrepreneurs in Philadelphia share about their entrepreneurial journeys and their views on how cities can create more equitable pathways to support thriving, diverse business founders move their businesses to the next level.  Take a listen!

In episode 14 of the CitySCOPE podcast, we speak with Dianna Tremblay and Caron Gugssa-Howard from ICA in Oakland, CA about their work building a more equitable entrepreneurial ecosystem through accelerator and investment fund programing.  Topics include: pathways to growth in the dynamic Bay area economy, using a venture-capital CDFI model to develop an accelerator targeting entrepreneurs from low wealth backgrounds, operating an accelerator with attention to both business scaling and the production of good jobs, integrating direct investment with accelerator programming, and developing capital investment vehicles that fit the mission.  Join us for a great conversation!

Join us for episode 10 of the CitySCOPE podcast where Kate Cooney, faculty at the Yale School of Management, speaks with Brian Argrett, President & CEO of City First Bank and Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Broadway Financial Corporation.  Topics include: the merger of City First and Broadway Financial to form the largest Black-led bank in the United States, the consolidation of the banking industry, the impact of the 2008 recession on Black-owned and Black-led banks, the history of disinvestment in Black communities and households in the United States, and the passion and creativity that go into creating quality financial products for low wealth communities. Take a listen!

In Episode 8 of the CitySCOPE podcast Kate Cooney, faculty at the Yale School of Management, speaks with Kylie Jiwon Hwang, Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford Graduate School of Business.  Kylie’s research lies at the intersection of entrepreneurship, discrimination and labor markets.  Our conversation focuses on her dissertation research examining entrepreneurship and employment for formerly incarcerated people.  Topics include: the current statistics on incarceration and recidivism in the United States, barriers to employment in the labor market for individuals with a criminal record, entrepreneurship as a response to labor market discrimination, employers’ views of candidates with entrepreneurial experience, and the role of employment and entrepreneurship in reducing recidivism.  Join us!

Episode 7 of the CitySCOPE podcast features a conversation with Kate Cooney and Boris Sigal, Co-Executive Director of the Community Purchasing Alliance (CPA).  Boris graduated from the Yale School of Management in 2014.  Post-graduation, Boris worked for a number of years in New Haven, first in a special one-year position created between the New Haven City Economic Development Administration and the Yale University Office of New Haven and State Affairs  and later as Director of Business Development at New Haven Works, where he focused on building closer relationships with the regional business community and aligning local hiring opportunities with large employers like Yale University and Yale-New Haven Health.  Topics include: insights from analysis of Yale University’s procurement spending and the impact of operational decisions on the regional economy, reflections on a year-long initiative to move some of Yale University’s spending on procurement toward regional vendors, the landmark Yale University New Haven Hiring Initiative, and the impact on local business development that can result from banding smaller anchors (churches and schools) into purchasing cooperatives.  Join us!