Épisodes

  • When Community Benefits Agreements Work (And When They Don’t)

    When Community Benefits Agreements Work (And When They Don’t)
    Dec 11 2025
    Residents teamed up with university students to slow the demolition of an affordable housing community and reshape redevelopment in West Philadelphia.
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    30 min
  • Learning Community Power By Example: The Chinatown Arena Fight

    Learning Community Power By Example: The Chinatown Arena Fight
    Dec 4 2025
    Philadelphians have a history of banding together and organizing when faced by powerful and monied development that has threatened their displacement. From professional sports venues to ever-expanding “eds and meds,” all across Philadelphia, working-class communities of color have pushed back, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, sometimes ending up somewhere in between. In this panel discussion, we’ll hear from neighborhood leaders who share their stories and lessons learned for others when these projects arise.
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    33 min
  • What Collective Ownership Looks Like in Philly

    What Collective Ownership Looks Like in Philly
    Nov 18 2025
    As rapid development reshapes neighborhoods like Kensington, residents and business owners face displacement and loss of local control. The Kensington Corridor Trust and Women’s Community Revitalization Project offer models of community ownership—using neighborhood and land trusts to preserve affordability, reinvest profits locally, and align development with community priorities. This episode explores how these approaches center equity and empower residents to shape their own futures.
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    29 min
  • Revisiting: Emergent City - A Decade-Long Fight Against Displacement

    Revisiting: Emergent City - A Decade-Long Fight Against Displacement
    Nov 5 2025
    We're revisiting a favorite episode from the archive to celebrate Next City's Winter Film Festival, this year's series: "Power and Place."

    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, residents won. Filmmakers were there from the very beginning, when developers proposed transforming Industry City, a sprawling industrial site on the Brooklyn waterfront, into a high-end retail and office complex – or, as some residents put it, a “mall.” They were there when Sunset Park residents protested that the Industry City complex, if it won rezoning, would accelerate gentrification and displacement in a neighborhood where about 70% of households are renters. They were there for some 200 days of public meetings.
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    36 min
  • Philadelphia’s Pyramid Club Reborn Through Art and Afrofuturism

    Philadelphia’s Pyramid Club Reborn Through Art and Afrofuturism
    Oct 29 2025
    Join Matthew Jordan-Miller Kenyatta and artist Shawn Theodore for PYRAMID CLUB: 1937—2035, a reimagining of the legendary North Philadelphia social club as a blueprint for today’s North Broad renaissance. Together, they’ll explore how Afrofuturist and arts-driven approaches can turn scarcity into abundance while centering Black joy and cultural heritage.
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    33 min
  • Designing for Childhood: How Cities Are Ending Playspace Inequity

    Designing for Childhood: How Cities Are Ending Playspace Inequity
    Oct 22 2025
    So much depends on your ZIP code, even children’s access to play. But an effort is growing to ensure the playground is where all kids can have fun, learn and heal.

    “It's where they learn, it's where they build connection, it's where they really establish their identity as a human being in this world,” says Lysa Ratliff, CEO for KABOOM! “And yet, there's extreme disparities in our parks and our schools and our cities and who has access to what.”

    In this sponsored episode, Ratliff explains how KABOOM! is working in cities such as Baltimore, Oakland and Uvalde in Texas to safeguard a generation’s childhood and sense of belonging.KABOOM! is a national nonprofit organization known for building thousands of playgrounds over the past 30 years. Today, the organization is scaling up through its “25 in 5 Initiative” — a plan to partner with 25 cities over five years to end playspace inequity and close the “nature gap” that leaves millions of kids, especially in communities of color, without access to safe, quality green spaces.

    Ratliff highlights how data, partnerships and community-led design can end inequity.“We're trying to answer a very big question,” says Ratliff. “How can we make sure that every single kid in this country has a chance to grow up in a world that sees them, that values them, that gives them a sense of freedom and belonging and ultimately protects their childhood by any means?”

    Municipal partners interested in joining the 25 in 5 Initiative can complete an interest survey.
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    30 min
  • City-Building with Culture at the Core

    City-Building with Culture at the Core
    Oct 1 2025
    Culture is often treated as a niche area but is actually integral to the successful design and adoption of other areas of urban planning and policy. Hear how cities like Atlanta, Boston, Seattle and Baltimore are embedding cultural approaches into planning, policy, and recovery efforts.
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    29 min
  • How Your Nonprofit Can Use Research to Strengthen Impact

    How Your Nonprofit Can Use Research to Strengthen Impact
    Sep 24 2025
    Nonprofits often struggle to prove their impact, but the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO) is showing how a rigorous research partnership can help grassroots programs scale and win support.

    This sponsored episode explores examples of nonprofits and city governments collaborating with LEO researchers at the University of Notre Dame to identify what works, why it works, and how they used new evidence to make the case for growth.

    Like many nonprofit executive directors, Shana Berkeley already had a menu of anecdotes showing that her organization, Nashville's Corner to Corner, made a difference. By teaming up with LEO at Notre Dame, Corner to Corner is measuring the ripple effects of its program, as well as identifying what works and how to make it even more effective.“Research helps us to really understand what about those makes them not a unicorn, right?” says Berkeley. “But it's something that we can make more predictable and understand what's necessary for the foundations of entrepreneurship.

    ”From LEO, the episode features researcher Patrick Turner, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, and Fran Gallagher, who leads project development. They share insights from working with the Goodwill Excel Center and Destination: Home, both of which expanded their fight against poverty — in workforce education and homelessness prevention, respectively — as a result of research partnerships.

    To learn more about how to partner, visit PartnerWithLEO.org.
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    35 min