Next City

We talk about community land trusts, or CLTs, a lot at Next City. It's about ownership: The community owns the lands and stewards the land. That means that the buildings on the land – including housing and other spaces like storefronts – can made affordable to own or to rent, in perpetuity. CLTs are also talked about a lot in New York City. That's how the city went from having just a small handful...

Banks can be a force for good. It's an idea that's greeted with skepticism in some circles, given the endless list of inequities and disasters perpetuated by our country's leading financial institutions. But if you're a Next City reader, the idea that financial institutions can be part of the solution isn't foreign, given our senior economic justice correspondent Oscar Perry Abello's in-depth cove...

The housing crisis isn’t just about supply. This episode explores innovative solutions like community land trusts, tenant protections, and expanded assistance programs that are making homes affordable — and keeping them that way.

Preserving the stories and spaces that define LGBTQ communities is an act of resilience and resistance. Hear from designers, historians, and activists about the vital work of safeguarding these cultural landmarks and ensuring their legacy endures.

Stories shape how we see the world. In this episode, we bring together philanthropic leaders to explore how funders are relying on journalism to dismantle harmful narratives, amplify underrepresented voices and create equitable communities. If you know Next City, it'll come as no surprise that we believe journalism can be a powerful vehicle for racial justice. Here in the nonprofit media world, we...

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, reside...

IDs aren’t just about identification — they’re about connection. This episode dives into the power of municipal ID programs to foster trust and open doors. We learn from successful programs in two very different cities — New York City and Greensboro, N.C. — that strive to be inclusive. For undocumented and underdocumented residents, not having an ID can mean being excluded from all kinds of basic...

In the United States, medical debt isn’t just a financial burden; it’s a reflection of deeper systemic inequities that force individuals to take on “survival debt” — debt incurred just to meet basic needs like health care. Today, Mayor Carter joins us alongside Allison Sesso, the Executive Director of Undue Medical Debt, to explore how cities can lead the charge in addressing medical debt — and wh...

Today, we nod to the past while paving a new way forward for the future of anti-racist community development. This episode explores the layered history of American community development and the policies that have shaped — if not torn — the fabric of our communities. If we're going to achieve community development that is actually anti-racist, a baseline understanding of its history is not only a p...

Participating in elections is just one part of civic engagement. The many other ways of influencing your community and public policy are arguably the greatest difference to rebuilding trust. Healing democracy was never going to happen with an election. In this episode, we discuss real ways to go beyond the ballot box and engaging people as we restore trust in government and in city leadership, bas...

In this special episode, Next City’s editorial leaders share what they’re hearing from readers and listeners about resisting setbacks at the federal level and driving changes locally. The days following the U.S. presidential have been defined by an overwhelming sense of uncertainty, despair and even fear from urban changemakers working in local government, non-profit organizations, philanthrophy,...

“There's that R-word that wants to come up that I despise – resilience,” says Tiffany Sturdivant, executive director of Appalshop, a media, arts and community economic development organization that's been operating in the Kentucky mountains for more than five decades.“People are so strong….I think that's probably a testament to mountain people, right, or people anywhere who are disenfranchised and...

In today's episode, we're bringing you highlights from our conversations at this year's Vanguard conference in Lexington, Kentucky, where our theme was exploring the dynamics of urban-rural interconnection – not urban-rural divisions. We will explore how communities are stronger when we stand in solidarity, and when we learn from each other's experiences. We'll hear from Mandy Higgins, Executive D...

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 of...

In Newark and across Essex County, New Jersey, urban farms do more than grow food — they're strengthening a community. But advocates say that convincing the state and local governments that these farms are worth investing in has not been easy.“At a local level, most urban farms, they don't own their land. It's borrowed from the city's adopt-a-lot program,” says Kimberly Izar, Next City's Equitable...

The pandemic hollowed out our cities, leaving empty downtowns and office buildings in its wake. With galleries and art venues closed and disposable income at a low, the arts sector took a major hit. What if we killed two birds with one stone by using our cities' vacant commercial space as affordable artist studios and galleries? That's the idea behind Zero Empty Spaces. Since its launch in June 20...

American roads are dangerous. The Department of Transportation reports that in 2021, nearly 43,000 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes. Of those, 7,388 were pedestrians. On Philadelphia's Roosevelt Boulevard, reckless driving and speeding in pedestrian zones have led the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to try a pilot program that allows speed cameras. On this episode of the podcast, we speak...

When Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida in 2022, it was the third-costliest weather disaster on record worldwide. Damages totaled over $100 billion dollars. So you can imagine what that looks like, because we've all seen the images of communities across Florida and the Carolinas left grappling with the aftermath of climate disasters like this one—damaged homes, displaced families, and an uncle...

Whether a person has access to banking directly changes their life. That's why advocates for racial justice have for a long time talked about the importance of an anti-redlining statute called the Community Reinvestment Act. If you want to ensure that everyone everywhere, including in middle- and low-income neighborhoods, is on a level playing field when it comes to starting a business or owning a...

Once upon a time, 14% of farmers in the United States were Black. That was in 1910. But that number has dwindled. Today, Black farmers comprise less than 2% of all growers across the country. On this week’s episode, our host Lucas Grindley notes: “That's more than 14 million acres of lost land.”This loss, along with the discrimination and violence perpetrated against African-American farmers and t...

Property taxes are how most people pay for their local government. These taxes fund a range of local services, from our public schools to our fire departments. But those property tax systems overburden some – and undercharge others. And when mapped out, these disparities looks suspiciously like another pattern of disparities that you should be familiar with by now: redlining. It seems counterintui...

Cognitive dissonance. That's what David Abel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who's spent a decade reporting on climate change for The Boston Globe, saw in his city. At the same time that he was covering the increasingly dire projections about sea level rise in Boston Harbor, Abel tells Next City, “we were watching this entirely new urban district being built at sea level, on landfill, hard on t...

Climate change can be scary, but the documentary “How to Power City” focuses on solutions. One solution often touted for addressing climate change is switching to renewable energy. And people want to make that switch but many don’t know how to get started. The feature-length film follows people in six different U.S. cities who are leading various types of renewable energy projects, from as small a...

Just over a year ago, we delved into a groundbreaking initiative by a foundation in Vancouver. Their question was: What if we gave people experiencing homelessness a lump sum of cash, no strings attached? The results were nothing short of remarkable — though they probably shouldn’t be surprising. Now, two years after that experiment ended, the idea is spreading to cities across the United States....

In this episode, we dive deep into success stories emerging from Lexington, Kentucky, a “big town” taking on big challenges – breaking down partisanship, reinventing the ways the community engages with its leaders, creating new ways to close the racial wealth gap – by actively cultivating collaboration and experimentation.“Our politics set the tone for the city,” says Christian Motley, the Vice Pr...