Sidewalk Ballet

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

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
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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
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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
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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/
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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 
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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
 
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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
 
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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.

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
 
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