Sidewalk Ballet

Democracy of Public Space - Part One - Do We Mean It?

Part One of a Two Part Documentary
The Constitution begins with "We the People." The rest of the American story is, in many ways, the unfolding of who becomes "We."
The Democracy of Public Space – Part One: Do We Mean It? traces the evolution of the National Mall from an unfinished vision into one of the world's great civic stages, culminating in Marian Anderson's historic 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial.
This is the story of an unfinished vision, a civic stage, and the generations of people who continue the work of becoming "We."

The Evolution of Business Improvement Districts - Michael Edwards in Conversation with Kathleen Rawson

For most people, the work of managing a downtown is invisible. We notice the festivals, the flower baskets, the clean sidewalks, the thriving restaurants, and the public spaces—but rarely the people whose job is to help all of those things work together.
In this episode features a conversation with two pioneers of the downtown management profession: Michael Edwards and Kathleen Rawson. They've each spent decades helping shape Business Improvement Districts and the broader field of place management, watching it evolve from an emerging experiment into a profession that now influences communities across North America and the world.
Their conversation explores that evolution—from the early days of downtown revitalization to the increasingly complex role these organizations play today. They discuss how the work has changed, what effective leadership looks like in places where authority is often limited but expectations are endless, and why success depends less on controlling outcomes than on building relationships.
If you work in downtown management, this conversation will probably feel familiar. If you don't, it's a rare behind-the-scenes look at one of those professions that quietly shapes the places where we live, work, gather, and celebrate.
Whether you're interested in cities, leadership, collaboration, or simply how great places come to life, I think you'll come away with a deeper appreciation for the people who spend their careers caring for the spaces we all share.
 
Episode Links
Chicago Loop Alliance
Hollywood Partnership
Mainstreet America
International Downtown Association (IDA)
James Rouse
The Magnificent Mile
World Business Chicago
Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership
Pittsburgh Lights up for the Draft
Global Business District Innovation Club
Jamestown Renaissance Corporation
 
 

Cara Courage - Placemaking, Trauma, Healing and Soup

What does a place feel like when your nervous system trusts it?
In this episode of The Sidewalk Ballet, Chip talks with placemaking researcher, author, and practitioner Cara Courage for a conversation about the evolving field of placemaking, how it is understood, misunderstood, and why it matters.
Together they explore the relationship between people and place, the stories our environments carry, and the growing understanding of trauma-informed placemaking. From questions of belonging and care to memory, healing, arts, language and creative participation
What happens when places help us feel safe? What happens when they don't? And what responsibility do placemakers have in shaping those experiences?
Also in this episode, Chip reflects on the enduring fable of Stone Soup and the surprising role that soup has played throughout history as a tool for gathering, nourishment, connection, and care. The exploration of Soup leads to conversations with Amy Kaherl former Founder Director of Detroit Soup and Cristin Cooper from Coop’s Soup.
 
Episode Links
Dr. Cara Courage
The Routledge Handbook of Placemaking
Trauma Informed Placemaking
Long Live Placemaking, Placemaking is DeadMax Musicant and Shina ShayestehCreative PlacemakingAnn Markusen and Anne Gadwa
Coop’s Soup
Warm Cookies of the Revolution

Chamber of Connection

For more than four hundred years, Chambers of Commerce have helped businesses thrive by bringing people together around shared interests and common goals.
But what if we applied that same idea to human connection?
In this Small Block episode, Chip talks with Charlotte Massey of the U.S. Chamber of Connection, a growing movement that treats connection as something more than a personal responsibility—it treats it as civic infrastructure.
Together they explore the science of friendship, the role of third places, why connection takes more effort than we often realize, and the Chamber's "Six Points of Connection" framework.
Most importantly, they discuss a simple but powerful idea: that one of the best ways to find community may be helping to build it.
Because sometimes the shortest path to belonging is helping someone else belong first.
Episode Links
US Chamber of Connection

The Emotion of Place - Molly Alexander

Plus - Local Sports as Community Infrastructure
What makes a place memorable?
Why do certain moments stay with us long after the details fade? And what role do emotion, ritual, joy, and belonging play in shaping the communities we care about most?
In this episode of Sidewalk Ballet, Chip explores the idea of “Return on Emotion” — the belief that some of the most important value created in cities and communities cannot be measured transactionally because it lives instead in memory, attachment, trust, and shared experience.
The episode begins with a conversation with Molly Alexander, founder of Imagine The Possibilities Consulting and a longtime leader in downtown revitalization and economic development. Drawing from work in Business Improvement Districts and in retail, Molly reflects on the emotional life of places and why belonging, joy, and trust matter more than many traditional civic metrics acknowledge.
From there, the conversation shifts from theory into lived experience through a discussion with Chris Murphy, President of the Santa Cruz Warriors, exploring the unique role local sports can play in creating ritual, identity, and collective emotional connection within a community.
The episode concludes with a reflection on one of the most iconic moments in Bay Area history through the lens of David Talbot and his book Season of the Witch. David Talbot’s book about San Francisco becomes a story about a fractured region briefly experiencing hope, belonging, and collective identity together.
Because in the end, cities are not experienced statistically.
They are experienced emotionally.
Episode Links
Molly Alexander - Imaging the Possibilities
Power of Moments - Heath Brothers -
Santa Cruz Warriors
Season of the Witch
The Catch

Pico - The District Dog

In this Small Block, Chip sits down with Nolan Marshall of the Social District in downtown Los Angeles to talk about Pico — the district’s “Canine Experience Officer” and an important member of the Ambassador team.
What begins as a conversation about a dog quickly becomes something deeper: a conversation about place identity, emotional connection, and the surprisingly powerful role symbols can play in shaping how people relate to neighborhoods — and to each other.
Some places become instantly recognizable through culture, history, food, music, or iconic public figures. But what happens when a district intentionally tries to create a face people can connect with? Through Pico, the Social District may have stumbled onto something more meaningful than branding: a vehicle for fun, recognition, and human-scale connection in the middle of a large and complicated city.
It’s a short conversation about mascots… that turns out to be about community joy.
Episode Links
The Social District
PICO’s Corner
Peacoat Project

Community Safety - with Shane Zahn

Downtowns exist in tension.
Public and private. Civic and commercial. Open and managed. They are places where strangers negotiate coexistence in real time — and where questions around trust, authority, belonging, and safety become deeply visible.
In this episode, Chip sits down with Shane Zahn, Director of Community Safety for the Minneapolis Downtown Council and Downtown Improvement District, for a thoughtful conversation about public safety, civic stewardship, and the evolving role of downtown organizations in one of the most scrutinized public environments in the country.
Together, they explore the complicated space between public and private responsibility, how trust in institutions has shifted in recent years, and what it means to steward public space in communities where safety is experienced differently by different people.
This conversation touches on:
the evolving role of Business Improvement Districts
legitimacy and accountability in public space
safety as both operational and emotional infrastructure
Minneapolis in the wake of George Floyd and Operation Metro Surge
the challenge of rebuilding trust in complex civic systems
More than a conversation about policing or enforcement, this episode asks a broader question:
How do we steward public spaces people can trust?
Episode Links
Mpls Downtown Improvement District
Minnesota Justice Research Center
Block by Block
Downtown Community Storage
Drone First Responder
Axon Body Cam
IKE Smart City
Civicity
Stay ConnectedOccasional notes and ideas from Big Creative:sidewalkballet.com
 

SMALL BLOCKS - Jane Jacobs for the Young Reader - Susan Hughes

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
Support The Sidewalk BalletIf this work resonates, you can support the show:buymeacoffee.com/sidewalkballet
Stay ConnectedOccasional notes and ideas from Big Creative:sidewalkballet.com

A Global Network of Local Ideas — with Anastasia Sukhoroslova

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 BalletIf this work resonates, you can support the show:buymeacoffee.com/sidewalkballet
Stay ConnectedOccasional notes and ideas from Big Creative:sidewalkballet.com

tamika l. butler, Transportation, Access and Equity

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 BalletIf this work resonates, you can support the show:buymeacoffee.com/sidewalkballet
Stay ConnectedOccasional notes and ideas from Big Creative:sidewalkballet.com