Épisodes

  • Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

    Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!
    Jan 23 2025
    We’re off this week for Martin Luther King Jr. 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.

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    1 min
  • One Way Cities Are Welcoming Immigrants

    One Way Cities Are Welcoming Immigrants
    Jan 15 2025
    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.


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    32 min
  • Crushing Medical Debt: The Movement to Revolutionize Healthcare Access

    Crushing Medical Debt: The Movement to Revolutionize Healthcare Access
    Jan 8 2025
    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 what it means to rethink our systems of care, equity, and economic justice.

    St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter joins us alongside Allison Sesso of Undue Medical Debt to explore how cities can lead the charge in addressing medical debt — and what it means to rethink our systems of care, equity, and economic justice.

    This week, in the final days of the Biden administration, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule to prevent medical debt from being included in credit scores. It's a reminder that in 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 – and can impact their lives for years to come.

    That's why more and more cities, counties and states have been pairing up with the national nonprofit Undue Medical Debt to purchase their residents' debt portfolios from collectors and healthcare providers – and then forgiving the debts en masse, paying mere pennies on the dollar to provide serious financial relief. Many have been using federal funds from the American Rescue Plan to do so.

    “We have folks who look at us and say, this doesn't solve health care,” says St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, who worked with Undue Medical Debt to erase $100 million in medical debt for thousands of residents. “And I go, no, that's absolutely accurate. This doesn't solve health care for the planet, for the country, for even our city. It does provide a real, clear breath of fresh air for a whole lot of people who need it right now.”
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    33 min
  • Reckoning with the History of Community Development

    Reckoning with the History of Community Development
    Dec 18 2024
    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 prerequisite.

    To build that fundamental understanding, Third Space Action Lab's Anti-Racist Community Development research project documents some of the early exclusionary government policies that shaped U.S. communities and responses of community development, from the Federal Home Loan Bank Act of 1932 to the Housing Act of 1949.

    In today's episode, we hear from Tonika Johnson, a social justice artists visualizing the arc of community development in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood (read more about her Folded Map art project) and historian Claire Dunning, an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and author of “Nonprofit Neighborhoods: An Urban History of Inequality and the American State.”

    “The ways that federal housing policy is being designed and implemented is enabling white families to build equity, and Black families, if they're able to buy housing, are not able to build equity at the same rates or in the same kinds of ways,” says Dunning, whose research focuses on how nonprofits have used and critiqued government funding to develop alternative responses to urban problems. “It's just more expensive to occupy housing as a Black family … as a result of the ways that the government has intervened.”

    Plus, we'll hear from Mordecai Cargill, co-founder and Creative Director of ThirdSpace Action Lab, which is documenting the range of ways structural racism still shows up in community development via its Anti-Racist Community Development research project. "Our work was really about trying to conceptualize a working definition of what anti-racist community development might mean," he says, as a starting place.

    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.
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    51 min
  • Repairing Democracy Beyond the Ballot Box

    Repairing Democracy Beyond the Ballot Box
    Dec 4 2024
    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, based on our recent webinar on the same subject.

    “A colleague at a conference I was at earlier this year said, 'In city government, we hear so much about creating an environment that's good for business. What about creating an environment good for democracy?'” says Tom Borrup, co-editor of the new book “Democracy as Creative Practice: Weaving a Culture of Civic Life.”

    In this episode, we hear from Borrup; Phoebe Bachman, a Philadelphia-based artist, curator, and facilitator from The People's Budget; April De Simone, founder of The Practice of Democracy; Next City collaborator Richard Young, founder and executive director of CivicLex; and Pam Bailey, the editor of the Beyond Elections section at Proximate, a new nonprofit newsroom covering public participation and democratic innovations.
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    28 min
  • What The Election Means for Cities

    What The Election Means for Cities
    Nov 20 2024
    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, grassroots advocacy and organizing, and beyond. While their work will be more important than ever, many are saying, it seems like it will also be more difficult than ever.

    In this week's episode, we're joined by Next City's editorial director, Deonna Anderson; our managing editor, Aysha Khan; and our senior economic justice correspondent, Oscar Perry Abello. They're discussing the results of a few recent ballot initiatives across the country; what concerns and responses they're hearing from readers and sources; and what gives them hope that local change is still possible regardless of the election results.

    “City officials, mayors, local governments, state governments – they have a lot of levers that they can be pushing that will make their residents lives better in tangible ways, where they can enshrine protections of their vulnerable communities,” Khan says. “The systemic issues at a federal level have to be addressed. But there are also systemic issues at a local level that can be addressed and literally transform people's lives.”
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    38 min
  • On Making Appalachia Safer from Climate Change

    On Making Appalachia Safer from Climate Change
    Nov 6 2024
    “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 are just working with what they have. Use what you have until you can get more.”

    When you think about climate issues, your mind might go first to the coasts and rising sea levels. But climate issues in the middle of the country are also urgent – and the solutions being forged offer lessons for all of us, urban and rural alike. Appalachia reminds us that no matter where we’re from, our futures are linked—and we’re better when we work together to solve shared challenges.

    That's a critical lesson we took away at this year’s Vanguard conference in Kentucky, where we brought together 40 emerging leaders in urban Lexington and rural Berea to learn from the region's innovators and gain fresh perspectives. Today's episode features Kelsey Cloonan of Community Farm Alliance; Chris Woolery from the Mountain Association; Sturdivant from Appalshop; Baylen Campbell with Invest Appalachia; and Jeff Fugate, Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky, who works closely with communities on urban planning and development. Together, they unpack the ways communities here are addressing the impacts of climate change, while also honoring Appalachian values and strengths.

    This episode is part of the series we're bringing you from this year's Vanguard conference in Lexington, Kentucky, where our theme was exploring the dynamics of urban-rural interconnection.
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    46 min
  • What Lexington Taught Us About Urban-Rural Interconnection

    What Lexington Taught Us About Urban-Rural Interconnection
    Oct 30 2024
    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 Director at the Lexington History Museum; Mark Lenn Johnson, president of Art Inc. Kentucky; as well as Jim Gray, the former two-term Mayor of Lexington and Kentucky's current Secretary of Transportation, who went from living in a small town to leading the growth of one of the state's largest cities. With a population of over 320,000, Lexington is a model for how urban and rural can coexist, collaborate and thrive.
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    29 min