To Celebrate Jane Jacob's Birthday, Sidewalk Ballet is launching a new series of bonus episodes that we are calling Small Blocks. Short stories about people and places that you can listen to when you just have a few minutes.

Our first Small Block comes from Susan Hughes, a Children's book writer from Toronto and her story about, well, Jane.

Susan Hughes

Kids Can Press

Valerie Boivin Illustration

Janes Walk

Jane’s Walk SF

Anastasia Sukhoroslova is an urbanist focused on connecting a global community of people shaping cities. Through her platform, All Things Urban, she has built a network that brings together practitioners, thinkers, and emerging voices from around the world—creating space to share ideas, tools, and perspectives across geographies and disciplines. Her work sits at the intersection of curiosity and connection, helping to expand what urbanism looks like and who gets to participate in it.

On this episode we explore a deceptively simple question: what do we mean when we say “urbanism” today? The conversation moves between scales—from the street-level observations of Jane Jacobs to the global circulation of ideas shaping cities today. They discuss how urban ideas travel, the opportunities and risks that come with that speed, and the tension between sharing what works and understanding the context that makes it work. Along the way, they reflect on participation, authorship, and what it means to shape a place in an increasingly connected world.

Released ahead of Jane's Walk, this episode also serves as a companion to a global moment rooted in local experience. Jane’s Walks take place in cities around the world—guided by the same spirit of curiosity and observation that defined Jacobs’ work—yet no two walks are the same. Each is shaped by the people who show up and the place they move through, offering a living example of how shared ideas are expressed locally.

At its core, this episode reflects on the relationship between global thinking and local practice. Ideas about cities may travel further and faster than ever before, but they never arrive unchanged. The work of urbanism—like the sidewalk ballet Jacobs described—depends on paying attention, understanding context, and responding to the place in front of you. The frameworks may be shared, but the choreography always belongs to the place.

Episode Links

All Things Urban

Geospatial-hub

All Things Urban Free Newsletter Subscription

All Things Urban LinkedIn

Anastasia's LinkedIn

Local All Things Urban Chapters Application Form

Janes Walk

Jane's Walk Portland Maine

Lezlie Lowe on Sidewalk Ballet

Jane’s Walk SF

Support The Sidewalk Ballet If this work resonates, you can support the show: buymeacoffee.com/sidewalkballet

Stay Connected Occasional notes and ideas from Big Creative: sidewalkballet.com

In a thoughtful and deeply human conversation, tamika l. butler reflects on what it means to build systems that serve people over time. From transportation justice and community trust to the role of joy in public life, Tamika offers a powerful reminder that better systems don’t emerge overnight. They require patience, courage, and a belief that the work of making cities more equitable is always worth doing—even in difficult times.

The conversation touches on experimentation in transportation, good community engagement that isn’t project specific, and preparing for, and leveraging, the 2028 Olympic and Para-Olympic games

The episode also travels to the Philippines where Abra, rides Jeepneys and local for-hire vehicles, with the help of a young local named Jovan. Through conversations with drivers and riders, the episode explores a transportation system built from the ground up: improvised, adaptive, deeply personal, and woven into daily life. What begins as a story about jeepneys becomes something larger—a reflection on how movement, culture, economics, and global forces all intersect in the systems that carry us. From linking postwar necessity with opportunity, to today’s modernization pressures and fuel costs shaped by events far beyond Dumaguete, The episode explores how transportation systems come to be, and who is involved with shaping them.

Episode Links

tamika l butler

Brian Taylor UCLA

Tracing the mobility experiences of youth in Westlake, Los Angeles

Ciclavia

Comparing the L.A. Mobility Wallet and Low-Income Fare is Easy (LIFE) Programs

http://www.jsadikkhan.com/

https://shade-la.com/seleta-reynolds/

https://www.metro.net/riding/ambassadors/

https://www.metro.net/2028games/

Jay Pitter - Black Public Joy

Jay Pitter on Sidewalk Ballet

https://filipeanut.art/the-jeepney-a-history-and-hopefully-a-future/

https://changing-transport.org/change-has-come-for-the-philippine-jeepneys/

Support The Sidewalk Ballet If this work resonates, you can support the show: buymeacoffee.com/sidewalkballet

Stay Connected Occasional notes and ideas from Big Creative: sidewalkballet.com

Retail is often treated as a category—something to optimize, disrupt, or replace. But long before it was an industry, exchange was one of the original reasons cities existed at all.

In this episode, we explore how retail is evolving on the ground—and why it still matters for the health of our streets and downtown districts.

Guest host Josh Yeager is joined by retail strategist Michael Berne and storefront expert Jaime Izurieta for a wide-ranging conversation that blends big-picture thinking with real-world insight. From dwell time and the growing importance of hospitality, to the realities of what makes a storefront succeed, this episode stays rooted in how retail actually works today.

And throughout the conversation, a deeper idea keeps surfacing:

Even as retail changes, its role in shaping how we experience cities hasn’t gone away.

Episode Links

Michael J Berne

Consulting Website: www.consultmjb.com

Speaking / Writing Website: www.michaeljberne.com

Retail Contrarian Blog: https://michaeljberne.com/articles-essays/

Jaime Izurieta

https://storefrontmastery.com/

https://storefrontmastery.substack.com/

Josh Yeager

https://www.bright-brothers.com/

Additional Links

Conrad Kickert

https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/health-and-families/coffee-shops-starbucks-dunkin-hipster-b2936556.html

strategic horizons

Union Square sf

International Downtown Association

Glossary

BID- Business Improvement District

CVB - Conference (or Convention) and Visitors Bureau

Support The Sidewalk Ballet If this work resonates, you can support the show: buymeacoffee.com/sidewalkballet

Stay Connected Occasional notes and ideas from Big Creative: sidewalkballet.com

To close out Season One of The Sidewalk Ballet, we turn to a conversation about showing up.

Across cities everywhere, civic engagement has become increasingly distant — shaped by professionalized systems, complex processes, and a sense that participation is reserved for those who already know how to navigate it. For many people, the question isn’t whether they care about their city, but whether there is a meaningful way to be involved.

In this season finale, Chip sits down with Evan Weissman, founder of Warm Cookies of the Revolution, to explore what civic life can look like when the invitation is wider, more human, and rooted in joy. For more than a decade, Warm Cookies has created spaces where people can engage with public issues not as experts or insiders, but as neighbors — lowering barriers, building confidence, and reminding people that participation is something you practice, not something you earn.

The conversation touches on civic engagement as a skill that strengthens with use, the importance of local spaces as places to try, learn, and belong, and the role of humor and play in making participation feel possible again. The episode closes with a reflection on the season as a whole, weaving together voices and ideas from across twelve episodes to arrive at a shared understanding: cities are shaped not just by plans and policies, but by the people who show up for them. Civic life works best when more people see themselves as part of it.

Episode Links

Warm Cookies of the Revolution

Big Creative Consulting

Erika Chong Shuch

San Francisco’s Tenderloin has always been more than its headlines.

Long treated as a containment zone, it has also been a refuge — a place where marginalized communities found belonging, built culture, and made public life possible in spite of neglect, oppression and disinvestment.

In 1966, that history erupted inside a cafeteria at Turk and Taylor. The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot is often told as a single night of resistance. But like most movements, it began long before that moment — and it didn’t end there.

Today, the site of that uprising is owned by one of the largest private prison contractors working with ICE. Which raises a complicated question: what does it mean to honor a place if you don’t control it?

In this episode, Chip speaks with Breonna McCree, Co-Director of San Francisco’s Transgender District, about what it means to move from being tolerated in a neighborhood… to claiming it. The conversation weaves together history, policy, art, and activism to explore how cities remember — and who gets to decide what stays.

The Transgender District is a formally recognized cultural district in the Tenderloin, created to honor, protect, and sustain a neighborhood that has long been a center of transgender life, community, and resistance. Breonna and Chip explore what a district actually is and does, how this particular place came to be named, and why formal recognition matters, how neighborhoods carry history long before they’re officially acknowledged, and what it takes to turn lived experience into lasting civic infrastructure.

Transgender District

Susan Stryker

Compton’s Cafeteria Riot

Tenderloin Museum

Screaming Queens

Tenderloin Community Benefit District

Glide Memorial

Crossroads of Turk and Taylor

Comptons x Coalition

TurkxTaylor Initiative

Miss Major

SF Black Wall Street

In this episode of The Sidewalk Ballet, Chip is joined by Lezlie Lowe, journalist and author of No Place to Go, for a wide-ranging conversation about one of the most essential—and most ignored—elements of city life: public bathrooms. What begins as a seemingly simple question about access quickly unfolds into a deeper exploration of gender equity, disability access, public health, privatization, and dignity in public space.

Drawing on research and reporting from cities around the world, Lezlie traces how historical decisions, cultural norms, and policy gaps have shaped who gets to move freely through a city—and who has to plan their day around the nearest restroom. Along the way, the conversation touches on gender parity and the “urinary leash,” access for unhoused neighbors, the absence of legal requirements for cities to provide public toilets, and the growing role of private businesses and BIDs in filling a public gap. From Tokyo’s carefully designed public restrooms to Vienna’s human-centered approach and San Francisco’s Pit Stop program, this episode reframes bathrooms not as an afterthought, but as a powerful lens for understanding how cities care for the people who use them.

We also Visit Portland Maine and talk with Cary Tyson about Portland Downtown’s Public Bathroom Master Plan.

Plus we grab a burger in a converted Bathroom with Curious Claire.

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And just in case you want more content about Public Bathrooms in cities, check out this great pod from our friends at We are City People.

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Episode Links

Lezlie Lowe

Portland Maine - Restroom Master Plan

Curious Claire - Would you eat from a Converted Toilet?

London Loo Tours

Bowl Plaza - Lucas Kansas

Hundertwasser Toilets - New Zealand

Tokyo Toilet Project

Dr. Christine Brooks is the founding chair of the Masters in Expressive Arts Coaching and Community Building, a new program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, that blends creativity, leadership, and social impact. With a background spanning coaching, the arts, and community practice, she and her colleagues designed the program to prepare students to meet the challenges of our time — cultivating leaders who can navigate complexity with imagination, empathy, and resilience.

Through this innovative curriculum, Dr. Brooks helps students explore how artful approaches to leadership can strengthen communities, deepen collaboration, and foster personal and collective transformation. Her work is rooted in the belief that coaching and community building are not separate disciplines but intertwined practices essential for justice, wellness, and belonging.

Dr. Brooks talks with Chip about coaching in the expressive arts, community leadership and the science of friendship.

Also in this episode: We talk with Leva Zand from ARTogether, a small but powerful organization based in downtown Oakland that works with immigrant and refugee communities through art-making. Founded in response to moments of fear and exclusion, ARTogether creates spaces where people can gather, make things together, and build connection without pressure or performance. From open community sessions to youth programs and public art projects, their work treats art not as an end product, but as a shared practice—one that helps people feel seen, supported, and connected in a world where belonging is often contested.

Episode Links

Expressive Arts Coaching and Community Building

Arts and Health

Role of Arts in Health and well being - WHO report

Neuroarts Blueprint

Science of Friendship

Effortless City

ARTogether

Eventbrite Trends