Talking Headways: A Streetsblog Podcast

This week I'm joined by Meea Kang, Rail~volution Board Member and Founding Partner of Domus Development. Meea joins me live from the Rail~volution conference to talk about what it's like to be an affordable housing developer building sustainable projects. We talk about the 16 variances it took to do TOD in Sacramento, workforce housing in Tahoe on a bus line with 60 minute headways, and what it takes to pass a state law that reduces parking requirements near transit.

This week I'm joined by Tiffany Chu, the Co-Founder of the transit planning software firm Remix. Tiffany discusses the positive responses that the company has gotten from the industry and what made got it started. We also discuss the possible policy implications as well as the movement towards open data.

This week we're chatting with transit advocate Sunday Parker about transportation access for people with disabilities. We talk about the design of transit stations, the layout of the new BART train cars and what that means for different types of users, the idea of universal design and access in the built environment overall, and our best transit days.

This week we're joined by Shane Phillips who writes at the blog Better Institutions. We chat about Los Angeles' and everyone else's housing issues including The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, development exactions, vacancy rates, and more. Shane also talks a bit about how he keeps motivated to write the blog and what allows him to think a little bit outside the box before thinking about the importance of urbanist happy hours.

This week we're joined by Rob Puentes of the Eno Center for Transportation, a 95 year old organization focused on better transportation outcomes. We discuss a number of different topics including some we usually don't hear much about. Aviation, freight, coordinating automated vehicle policy, and the presidential election are some of the big topics in our discussion.

This week we're joined by former Vancouver BC chief planner Brent Toderian. We discuss the best way to do density, when towers are appropriate for cities, what type of cities should take on the Olympics, and what happens to a planner after they have kids. Brent also talks about the negatives of not only NIMBYs but YIMBYs and whether we should believe all those articles that rank cities by any measure.

This week we're joined by Patrick Kennedy to talk about what's going on in Dallas. We discuss A New Dallas and the recent TXDOT CityMap Plan which will re-imagine the freeways and roads in downtown Dallas. We also discuss the importance of existing dense neighborhoods to promote new neighborhoods, downtown subways, urban politics, and what's going on with plans for the Trinity River.

This week we're joined by Josh Lapp, a board member at Transit Columbus to talk about Ohio's capital city. We talk about the changes that have been happening to make Columbus more urban, how its stadiums have been situated to support downtown growth and walkability, and transportation issues such as bike share, light rail, and of course the recent win by Columbus of USDOT's smart cities challenge.

This week we're going back to the Live.Ride.Share conference from Denver for the closing plenary. Speakers discuss the Smart City Challenge put on by the DOT, the future of shared use mobility carpooling services, autonomous vehicles, and their impact on cities and greenhouse gases. Speakers include: Mark Dowd, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at USDOT, Amanda Eaken - Deputy Director of the Urban Solutions Program, NRDC Emily Castor - Director of Transportation Policy, Lyft Jonathan Hall - Head of Economic Research for Public Policy and Litigation, Uber Technologies

This week on the podcast I'm bringing back a conversation I had in Cambridge England with Daniele Quercia and Luca Aiello of Bell Labs. This focus recently has been on data mining and aggregation which has led to sensory mapping<> in cities. With this information they have been able to map smell, sound, and how people feel on their favorite walking routes.