Building Better Cities

In 2014, the Philadelphia school district auctioned off a shuttered vocational school in South Philly — 340,000 square feet, built like a bomb shelter. Seven developers looked at it. Some bid a dollar. Lindsey Scannapieco bid $1.75 million. That building is now Bok : home to more than 200 businesses, the majority owned by women and people of color, and one of the most celebrated adaptive reuse pro...

What does it actually take to invest in a neighborhood — not just a building — and get it right? In this episode, Brian Murray , CEO and co-founder of SHIFT Capital , takes us inside 15 years of community development projects that started with a few neglected industrial buildings in Kensington, Philadelphia and evolved into a national impact investment platform. Brian shares how SHIFT's "Whole Nei...

The zoning debate is about what we build and for whom . The building code is supposed to be about how we build it. But the "how" has a way of quietly dictating the "what" and "whom" — making the building code just as political and just as consequential to our cities as anything that happens at a planning commission. In this episode, host Kate Gasparro talks with Eduardo Mendoza , Policy Manager at...

For generations, cities were built by the people who lived in them. That's why so many of our most beloved neighborhoods feel like quilted fabrics of architectural styles, mixed uses, interwoven public spaces, and human-scale details. These vibrant neighborhoods weren't delivered all at once through a single master plan — they emerged gradually through incremental urban development, one building,...

For generations, California has approached housing growth through a familiar playbook: long planning processes, neighborhood-by-neighborhood debates, and major reforms that often struggle to deliver homes at scale. But every so often, an incentive structure quietly changes the system. In this episode of Building Better Cities , we explore one of those policies: California’s Density Bonus Law , and...

How do you measure whether a city is actually getting better? Most people know LEED as the gold standard for green buildings. But cities are more than buildings—they’re systems made up of housing, transportation, public space, infrastructure, resilience, health, and opportunity. In this episode of Building Better Cities , Kate Gasparro sits down with Dr. Vatsal Bhatt , Vice President at the U.S. G...

Transit ballot measures are often seen as a long shot — especially when affordability is top of mind and voters are being asked to raise their own taxes. But in November 2024, 66% of Nashville voters said yes to Choose How You Move , a half-penny sales tax funding $3.1 billion in transit expansion, sidewalk construction, and urban infrastructure improvements across Davidson County. So what made it...

You pay rent or a mortgage every month and you know exactly what that costs. But how much are you spending just to get where you need to go? For a lot of Americans, transportation is the hidden cost of where they live — and it's a cost that's baked into the way we've built our cities. In part two of this series, Yonah Freemark of the Urban Institute stays with us and we're joined by Sam Sklar — th...

Upzoning is often pitched as the silver bullet for the housing crisis — change the rules, let developers build, and supply will bring prices down. But the reality is a lot more complicated. In this episode, host Kate Gasparro sit down with Yonah Freemark to unpack what the research actually tells us about the relationship between zoning reform and housing production across U.S. cities. Yonah is a...

Building better cities requires getting the relationship between cities, counties, and the state right. And few people understand that dynamic better than someone who's lived on both sides of it. In this episode of Building Better Cities, host Kate Gasparro sits down with Michael Tubbs — former Mayor of Stockton, Special Advisor to Governor Newsom, and candidate for Lieutenant Governor — to unpack...

For decades, communities across Appalachia have watched jobs disappear, resources drain, and local wealth flow outward. But in Morganton, North Carolina, a nonprofit called The Industrial Commons has been quietly rewriting that story — building cooperative businesses, training workers, and keeping wealth rooted in place through circular textile manufacturing and community-owned enterprise. In this...

California has record levels of federal infrastructure funding and some of the most ambitious climate goals in the country. But why are transportation emissions still rising?  In this episode of Building Better Cities, we explore how infrastructure funding impacts urban development and sustainable infrastructure strategies. Join host Kate Gasparro as she sits down with Adie Tomer and Ben Swedberg...

If we know how to build healthier, more sustainable and regenerative buildings, why do so few of them actually get built? This conversation focuses on the execution gap holding cities, developers, and institutions back from delivering better places for people. Despite decades of innovation in materials, design strategies, and performance data, progress often stalls when good ideas collide with ris...

Downtowns across the country are struggling after COVID — with empty storefronts, declining foot traffic, and major uncertainty about the future of office districts and city centers. In this episode of Building Better Cities , host Kate Gasparro sits down with Mayor Knox White of Greenville, South Carolina to unpack what it really takes to save a downtown — and why Greenville’s approach has become...

One year ago, the Los Angeles wildfires made one thing unmistakably clear: climate risk is no longer peripheral to urban life — it is a defining condition for many cities . The loss of thousands of homes has forced urgent questions about how to rebuild in climate-risk areas. Homeowners are facing rising insurance costs — further exacerbating the affordability crisis. Earlier this year, we explored...

How do you make mission-driven development pencil in a neighborhood shaped by decades of disinvestment? In this episode of Building Better Cities , host Kate Gasparro sits down with J. Byron Brazier , lead developer of Woodlawn Central , a nearly $895 million mixed-use development on Chicago’s South Side anchored by the Apostolic Church of God . Together, they explore how community-led, faith-base...

Why is housing so expensive — and what are states doing about it? Well... California has passed SB 79 to spur transit-oriented development. This upzoning will leverage infrastructure investments to increase supply and build more sustainable cities. To unpack what that means, host Kate Gasparro sits down with Ben Metcalf , Managing Director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley...

When the Building Better Cities podcast launched just over a year ago, we set out to explore how we design and deliver the infrastructure and buildings that shape our lives. So this week, Kate is revisiting the very first episode of the podcast — a conversation with Dr. Andrew Sonta that explores the connection between the urban form and social cohesion. His work at EPFL focuses on human interacti...

More than a century after the Tulsa Race Massacre devastated Black Wall Street , the land where that thriving community once stood is again shaping Tulsa’s future. The 56 acres of Kirkpatrick Heights and Greenwood, long defined by stalled redevelopment and distrust, are now the focus of a community-led effort to restore both land and power. In this episode, Kate speaks with Ashley Philippsen and D...

Penn Station has long been more than just a transit hub — it’s a mirror of New York itself: ambitious, messy, and perpetually under construction. Decades after the original station opened, financial troubles forced its owners to sell the air rights above, paving the way for Madison Square Garden. Now, the station is poised to embark on a new chapter of redevelopment. In this episode, host Kate Gas...

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, a bold experiment in community building is underway. Veridian at County Farm is a 14-acre net-zero neighborhood redefining what sustainable living can look like. In this episode, host Kate Gasparro sits down with Matt Grocoff , the visionary developer behind Veridian . Matt shares the story of how he discovered the site, the ethos driving its design, and how a virtual power...

In 2017, a long-vacant Sears distribution center on Cleveland Street in Memphis was reborn as Crosstown Concourse —a “vertical urban village.” The 1.5 million square foot behemoth is now home to healthcare, a high school, art galleries, a YMCA, restaurants, and 265 apartments.  For decades after Sears shuttered in 1993, the Crosstown corridor slipped off the city’s mental map—boarded storefronts,...

Big visions for our cities often start with ambitious master plans—20-acre sites, sweeping infrastructure, and promises of transformation. But as exciting as they sound, these projects can struggle under the weight of financing challenges, shifting market cycles, and the difficulty of sustaining community engagement over decades. On the other end of the spectrum are smaller, more incremental inter...

What happens when you close off miles of city streets to cars—and open them up to people instead? In Los Angeles, that question gave rise to CicLAvia , a now-iconic open streets event that has redefined how Angelenos experience public space. This week, host Kate Gasparro is joined by Aaron Paley , the co-founder of Community Arts Resources and one of the key visionaries behind CicLAvia. For decade...

When disaster strikes, it reveals not just the vulnerabilities in our built environment—but also the opportunity to rebuild with more intention. In the wake of the devastating LA wildfires earlier this year, conversations about recovery have expanded into questions of long-term resiliency, equitable redevelopment, and what kind of governance structures are needed to get there. To unpack these issu...