Once upon a time, 14% of farmers in the United States were Black. That was in 1910. But that number has dwindled. Today, Black farmers comprise less than 2% of all growers across the country. On this week’s episode, our host Lucas Grindley notes: “That's more than 14 million acres of lost land.”

This loss, along with the discrimination and violence perpetrated against African-American farmers and the current movement of more Black people returning to agriculture and land stewardship, is the subject of the documentary “Farming While Black,” which was released in 2023. Mark Decena, the writer and director of the documentary, describes it as a Venn diagram of social justice, climate justice and food sovereignty.

“It was very dangerous to be a landowner in the deep South post-Civil War, except for the eight years of Reconstruction where land ownership was at its peak. And Leah [Penniman, cofounder of Soul Fire Farm, who was one of the characters in the documentary] definitely points that out,” Decena says. While it might not be as dangerous to own land in this South in 2024, there are still a lot of challenges to reverse decades of land dispossession. 

To explore that and the solutions Black and other marginalized people are implementing as they return to the soil, listen to this episode, and subscribe to follow the show.

Property taxes are how most people pay for their local government. These taxes fund a range of local services, from our public schools to our fire departments.

But those property tax systems overburden some – and undercharge others. And when mapped out, these disparities looks suspiciously like another pattern of disparities that you should be familiar with by now: redlining.

It seems counterintuitive, as our senior economic justice correspondent Oscar Perry Abello explains. You've seen the headlines about Black homeowners swapping out their family photos with their white friends' family photos and receiving a higher home appraisal because the appraiser assumes it's owned by a white person. But in property tax assessments, he says, we see the opposite: Local public officials often don't believe Black homeowners' should be valued at the price that it's valued by the market, so they increase amount they charge in taxes. Meanwhile, on the whiter and wealther side of town, the property tax assessor believes that white family's home is definitely not worth that much – and they shouldn't be charged as much in taxes.

In today's episode, we speak with Joe Minicozzi, an urban designer and founder of Urban3, a firm with a mission to explain, visualize, and improve market dynamics created by tax and land use policies. He's working to prove these disparities in land valuation actually exist – that we are in fact subsidizing wealthier, whiter neighborhoods at the expense of historically redlined neighborhoods. Watch our recent, in-depth webinar with Minicozzi to learn more about his findings.

Minicozzi mentions this article: The New York Times : "How Lower-Income Americans Get Cheated on Property Taxes"

Cities too often respond to a person experiencing a mental health crisis with carceral systems. Toronto’s Gerstein Crisis Centre provides an alternative and proves that when people have access to care, they’ll reach out when they need help. Increased access can lead to more opportunities for problem-solving and less crises and punishment.

Next City Reporter Maylin Tu first reported this story and says that the center is doing things differently by respecting people’s autonomy and acknowledging the power dynamics at play when responding to people’s needs. Tu adds that, in some ways, the programs offered at Gerstein act as an intervention that helps to reduce people experiencing crises.

In this episode, we also hear from Susan Davis, the center’s executive director, and Olivia Ensign, senior advocate and researcher for the U.S. program at Human Rights Watch, which published a case study that outlined the success of the Gerstein Centre’s work. Upon publication, HRW noted that it hopes the document “inspires action among and across mental health service providers, service users, policymakers, and human rights and mental health advocates on providing community-based and rights-respecting support to people experiencing mental health crises.”

What the Gerstein Centre is doing provides a model for what’s possible. Davis says that one of the most essential cores of what they do is listen.

“Unfortunately, right now, when people are reaching out for mental health care, they cannot access the services that they need, either in a timely fashion or the correct services that they need,” Davis says. “One of the things that is important about that is that people need to be trusted about what it is that’s going on for them. And when they reach out for care, they need to be believed.”

To learn more about the Gerstein Crisis Centre’s non-coercive, person-centered approach to addressing mental health, listen to this episode and subscribe to Next City.

In light of the Academy Awards ceremony, we're re-highlighting our episode featuring Arlo Washington, the Black barber-turned-visionary behind People Trust Community Federal Credit Union and the central figure of the Oscar-nominated short documentary, "The Barber of Little Rock." 

When neighbors started coming to his Little Rock barbershop to borrow money, Arlo Washington went a step further and chartered Arkansas’ newest credit union.

In this episode of the podcast, civil engineer and transportation researcher Veronica O. Davis talks about her new book, “Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities,” how choices made in the 1950s and '60s have left neighbors effectively cut off from public transportation, and what it means for cities to give their citizens the right to connection.

Davis, a city planner based in Houston, says American have an unhealthy love affair with cars – but this dependency is destroying American urban life.It begins with advertising, she says, but there's a bigger problem.

“We have set up our cities in a way that you need a car,” she says. “It's one of those self-fulfilling prophecies, as well. So even if someone wants to opt to be car-lite or car-free, we don't make it easy for them.” In part, Davis argues, that's linked to a long history of racism in city planning that is shackling our cities environmentally and economically. For more, read more in our excerpt from “Inclusive Transportation.”

We're also joined by Next City's managing editor Aysha Khan, who's got some experience with car-free living in addition to covering the growing movement for pedestrianized public spaces. The problem, she says, is less with cars and car ownership and more with the “overwhelming” assumption in American urban planning that cars are and will always be the primary mode of transportation.“

Anything other than car travel is less than and isn't a priority to enable, let alone support and promote,” Khan says. “We see cars prioritized in transportation spending, in maintenance, in other sorts of infrastructure investment – rather than public transportation solutions, even walking, biking, rolling by other means.”

While all of these solutions are more efficient and go a long way to help cities achieve public health, economic equity and climate change mitigation goals, they are neglected in favor of entrenching car-centric development and culture, she argues. That's slowly beginning to change with the adoption of open streets, car-free streets and pedestrian-friendly public spaces, a movement accelerated by the pandemic.

To learn more about how cities can develop equitable transportation systems and repair the harm done through decades of racist and car-centric planning, listen to this episode and subscribe to Next City.

When Baltimore built a new sewer system a century ago, it tried to control nature by diverting the city’s waterways, like many other American cities in the 19th and 20th century. In many cases, cities turned these rivers into part of the underground sewer system by turning them into underground pipes and concrete culverts. 

Through a recently launched public art installation, “Ghost Rivers,” many residents of Baltimore Remington neighborhood are visualizing for the first time the waterways buried below their feet.

But with millions of miles of streams, rivers and creeks buried in asphalt across the country, often to build highways, houses, factories, roads and real estate development, it's inevitable that these waterways are increasingly disrupting our urban ecologies.

As University of Michigan professor Jacob Napieralski explains, these “ghost rivers” are disproportionately affecting formerly redlined neighborhoods, a significant but often forgotten contributor to urban flooding. “Flood risk is very intricately linked to history, and by ignoring history we may be missing some clues that help us move forward,” he explains.Now, cities around the U.S. – and, indeed, the world – are working toward “daylighting” these buried bodies of water.

To learn more about the impact of waterway burial on low-income neighborhoods and how cities are now responding through “daylighting” them, listen to this episode and subscribe to Next City. 

Take a guess. Which of these banks is making more small-business loans in Brooklyn: Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America or Brooklyn Cooperative Federal Credit Union, a small financial institution that has only about $50 million in assets?

That's a mere rounding error compared to the major players, or even many other community banks. But, as our economic justice correspondent Oscar Perry Abello explored a two-part series late last year, Brooklyn Coop punches above its weight through lending to Brooklyn's Black and Brown small business owners.

“This one tiny credit union has done more SBA loans in Brooklyn than Citi, Wells Fargo and Bank of America combined over the past 10 years, he says. Their strategy? While other highly-ranked Small Business Administration-guaranteed lenders are making loans that average about $120,000 in size. But Brooklyn Coop's average loans sit at around $24,000.

In this episode, we chat with Brooklyn Coop CEO Samira Rajan about its human approach to lending – and why getting megabanks to fund more Black and Brown communities and small businesses isn't the answer to powering our economy.

“I think banks are designed to say no,” Rajan says. But Brooklyn Coop and other community development financial institutions, or CDFIs, have another approach. “Throw open the gates. It's OK if these people get access to bank accounts. It's OK if they get credits. We'll all be better off in the long run.”

To learn more about Brooklyn Coop and its alternative model for small business lending, listen to this episode and subscribe to Next City. 

Rising temperatures have ripple effects on our health, our economy and more. So to deal with the problem of extreme heat, we need to bust out of our silos and embrace collaboration.

And as high as the stakes are, we know the solutions to address the problems. Nature-based solutions, solar reflective surfaces and shade, among other lessons we can glean from the communities that have long dealt with heat, are all on the table.

“We have most of these tools available to us now,” says Kurt Shickman, the director of Extreme Heat Initiatives at the Adrienne Arsht Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center and former executive director of the Global Cool Cities Alliance. “We're not in a challenge of innovation here. We're in a challenge of access.”

On this episode of the podcast, we explore the evidence-based solutions to curbing extreme heat, the reasons why these haven't been implemented at scale, and what's at stake for our cities' most vulnerable communities.

Six years after Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico, killing almost 3,000 people and causing $139 billion worth of damages, the island is still rebuilding. To support these vital restoration and climate resilience efforts, residents turned to a local mutual aid model known as cooperativas. When Puerto Ricans were completely isolated, with no power, communications or banking system, cooperatives opened within two days and began creating workarounds to support residents.

Today, these co-ops are undergoing an important transformation: Many are gaining recognition from the U.S. government as community development financial institutions, or CDFIs. And with that comes some important perks, namely access major new funding and grant opportunities.

“Arising from the ashes is actually a flourishing CDFI sector, and these CDFIs are actually helping bolster the island's financial system and helping the poor people prepare for other natural disasters,” says reporter Christopher Williams, who covered this movement last year. Before Maria hit, there were eight CDFIs on the island. Now, there are close to 100 institutions, serving about a third of the population.

That growth is in large part thanks to the work of Inclusiv, a New York City-based CDFI that provides access to financial tools to low-income Puerto Ricans. To support those people who had long relied on the island's cooperativas, they're helping cooperativas become certified as CDFIs with the U.S. Treasury Department.

“The way that Puerto Ricans do cooperatives and do the credit union movement is a bit different from how it's done in the U.S.,” says Rene Vargas Martinez, the director of Inclusiv's Puerto Rico Network. “It really replicates us as a people. Our culture is a culture of solidarity. We help each other when there are crises.”

This episode is based on an article that's part of our series, CDFI Futures, which explores the community development finance industry through the lenses of equity, public policy and inclusive community development. The series is generously supported by Partners for the Common Good. Sign up for PCG’s CapNexus newsletter at capnexus.org.

At Next City, we've covered a lot of community land trusts: CLTs developing disaster-resilient housing, CLTs helping recruit Black public school teachers through housing opportunities, CLTs helping house Indigenous foster youth aging out of the system. They're a potent and increasingly popular tool for creating permanently affordable housing amid – but CLTs also have some drawbacks.

Yet some of those pain points can be mitigated when paired with another powerful vehicle for affordable housing development: land banks. When the Next City team visited Richmond, Virginia for our annual Vanguard gathering last year, one of the most striking solutions for urban change that we encountered was the country's first combined community land trust and land bank.

The Maggie Walker Land Trust – named after a local icon who was the first woman of color to establish a bank in America, among other historic titles –  expects to make its 100th home sale soon, less than a decade after its founding.

“One of MWCLT’s goals is expanding equitable access to homeownership, and we have made great strides to increase Black homeownership in our programs,” the organization's executive director, Lark Washington, told Next City earlier this year.

To learn more about community land trusts, land banks, and the impact of combining these tools, listen to this episode and subscribe to Next City.

In Richmond, Virginia access to quality food can be a challenge, particularly in marginalized communities. But mutual aid, community building, and collaboration among people working in the food justice space have made a difference in the city. Intergenerational collaboration has also been key to addressing food insecurity and promoting food sovereignty.

Barry Greene Jr., Next City’s Equitable Cities Fellows for Reparations Narratives who lives in Richmond, describes the city’s food accessibility. “Depending on what side of the river you live on, your access to grocery stores or fresh food differs. And while we have community gardens, they sometimes have issues with general maintenance and upkeep,” he says, noting that the Southside has less access.  

One of the people making sure people are fed in Richmond is Taylor Scott, founder of RVA Community Fridges, one of numerous community fridge efforts that have cropped up across the country (and the world) in recent years. We hear from Scott in this episode when she spoke on a panel during Next City’s Vanguard Richmond conference in September 2023. Scott shared about what it took to get started, getting connected with people already doing similar work, and the intention of doing mutual aid work — not charity work.

“A big difference for us in charity and nonprofit is a lot of people when they do charity work, they never go back,” she says. “For us, a big part of the mutual aid work is the fact that you come back again and you get integrated into the community and actually start to be a part of that community.”To hear more about the importance of collaboration in food justice work and the ongoing mutual aid of community fridges, listen to the full episode and subscribe to Next City.

Next City is turning 20! And our journalists are publishing a special 20th-anniversary edition of our annual Solutions of the Year magazine in which we’re talking about the solutions we want to see expand in cities over the next 20 years.

As part of the celebration, we’re re-airing some of the stories that we’ve covered here on the podcast. Today, two community organizers in Atlanta who won legal protections for themselves and other who were formerly incarcerated.

Cognitive dissonance. That's what David Abel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who's spent a decade reporting on climate change for The Boston Globe, saw in his city.

At the same time that he was covering the increasingly dire projections about sea level rise in Boston Harbor, Abel tells Next City, “we were watching this entirely new urban district being built at sea level, on landfill, hard on the coast, and in the bullseye of rising seas in a city that has more climate scientists per capita than probably any other city on the planet.”

His documentary film “Inundation District” examines the impact of rising sea levels and strengthening storms on Boston's Seaport — and questions the city's decision to spend more than $20 billion building a new coastal Innovation District at sea level.

On this episode of the podcast, we speak to Abel about how to cope with climate anxiety, the growing threat of rising sea levels in urban coasts around the world, and how cities can better prepare for these looming crises. 

Next City is turning 20! And our journalists are publishing a special 20th-anniversary edition of our annual Solutions of the Year magazine in which we’re talking about the solutions we want to see expand in cities over the next 20 years.


As part of the celebration, we’re re-airing some of the stories that we’ve covered here on the podcast. Today, how community-owned real estate in East Boston is keeping rents affordable.

Next City is turning 20! And our journalists are publishing a special 20th-anniversary edition of our annual Solutions of the Year magazine in which we’re talking about the solutions we want to see expand in cities over the next 20 years.

As part of the celebration, we’re re-airing some of the stories that we’ve covered here on the podcast. Today, how a Kentucky non-profit increased participation in Lexington’s local government.

Next City is turning 20! And our journalists are publishing a special 20th-anniversary edition of our annual Solutions of the Year magazine in which we’re talking about the solutions we want to see expand in cities over the next 20 years. As part of the celebration, we’re re-airing some of the stories that we’ve covered here on the podcast. Today, the Black barber whose work inspired him to launch a credit union to help his clients and neighbors in Arkansas.

When Latinx entrepreneurs go to the bank to seek a loan to build or grow their businesses, they often leave empty-handed.

Now, Greenline Access Capital, a community development financial institution (CDFI) in Philadelphia, is trying to change that – and help advance prosperity for the city's quarter-million Latinx residents. To do that, they're offering bilingual services, character-based lending, in-depth technical assistance and business consulting for small businesses. And, importanttly, they're connecting clients with ongoing resources to help these businesses flourish and succeed in the long run.

“Having a conversation with a client is like peeling an onion,” Kersy Azocar, a veteran of the microlending industry who founded Greenline Access Capital in 2021. "Let me start asking you questions to better understand what you need. Sometimes somebody can say, 'Well, I need $20,000,' and by the time we finish our review, you need $150,000. Or you need $20,000, but let's work on A, B, C first...or let me connect you with one of our partners to get your business plan ready."

On this episode of the Next City podcast, we look at what's needed to help Latinx small business owners and how the community finance development industry is stepping in.

This episode is based on an article that's part of our series, CDFI Futures, which explores the community development finance industry through the lenses of equity, public policy and inclusive community development. The series is generously supported by Partners for the Common Good. Sign up for PCG’s CapNexus newsletter at capnexus.org.

More than giving back, the NFL acknowledges it makes money by depending on Black athletes, and its new investments are considering the communities where its athletes come from.

In 2021, 71% of players in the NFL in 2021 were people of color, according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. So when the NFL needed to borrow $78 million last year, they worked with the National Black Bank Foundation to choose 16 Minority Depository Institutions, community development financial institutions (CDFIs) and women-focused banks.

“It's a way of showing that you are putting your money where your mouth is and helping to build community – and particularly the communities that the players and the talent come from,” says Brandon Comer, the co-founder of the National Black Bank Foundation. He helps small banks work together to land these bigger deals and create a seamless lending experience that can compete with traditional big banks.

Comer says previous loans made to the Atlanta Hawks and Major League Soccer offered a crucial proof of concept that helped make the NFL and other large institutions comfortable on the foundation's ability to deliver both the loan as well as the community impact. And the NFL deal has put an even bigger spotlight on these banks' power.

“If there is a pretty good size manufacturing company, for example, that's in the footprint of one of these banks, when they see a headline that a bank has executed a deal with the NFL, it serves as a strong validator,” Comer says. “We've seen several examples where businesses have gone into these banks and said, Hey, we'd like to open an account, or we'd like to do business with you because we saw this headline. We didn't even know you were here, or we certainly didn't think you were of the size that you could handle our business.”

On this episode of the podcast, we speak to Comer and the Community Development Bankers Association's Brian Blake about the impact of the NFL's work with small Black-led banks and the ripple effects of these types of financing deals in minority communities.

This episode is based on an article that's part of our series, CDFI Futures, which explores the community development finance industry through the lenses of equity, public policy and inclusive community development. The series is generously supported by Partners for the Common Good. Sign up for PCG’s CapNexus newsletter at capnexus.org.

Today, we’re partnering with ThirdSpace Action Lab on this sponsored episode about The Anti-Racist Community Development research project, which has documented the range of ways that structural racism still shows up in community development and the many ways that people are trying to make community development anti-racist.

The so-called Death Star law was passed in Texas. Luckily, a lawsuit was filed by the city of Houston, joined by San Antonio and El Paso, and supported by dozens of large and small municipalities in Texas - they formed an Alliance, if you will.

Through organizations like Chicago TREND and with the help of new and federally regulated fintech platforms, community members and people of color who were excluded from ownership now have an opportunity not only to own a piece of a shopping mall or other commercial space, but also to see a return on their investment.

Reporting for this story was made possible with funding from the Mastercard Impact Fund in partnership with the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth.

A new report surveyed nonprofits and what it discovered has activists calling for a new way of funding arts and culture. Can they change the way things have always been done?

In Oakland, a nonprofit is giving entrepreneurs of color the chance to use vacant storefronts to try out their own businesses. The first step? Convert building ground floor into a public park.

Reporting for this story was made possible with funding from the Mastercard Impact Fund in partnership with the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth.

Climate change can be scary, but the documentary “How to Power City” focuses on solutions. One solution often touted for addressing climate change is switching to renewable energy. And people want to make that switch but many don’t know how to get started. The feature-length film follows people in six different U.S. cities who are leading various types of renewable energy projects, from as small as a few streetlights to innovating an entire utility.

In this episode, we hear from writer and director Melanie LaRosa, who outlines what she found while working on the documentary and why she chose to focus on solutions.

LaRosa wanted audiences to feel empowered and curious when watching her film. While she was working on it, LaRosa learned about the Solutions Journalism Network and decided to adopt their approach to storytelling, which includes highlighting solutions to problems and also where they fall short. (Because no solution is perfect.)

“When you make a film, you have this opportunity to bring to light new aspects [of a story],” she says, noting that people are already inundated with news that features the problem of climate change. “If I’m going to spend this much time on a film like this, I want to make it something I can feel good about.”To learn more about  “How to Power City” and what LaRosa learned while working on the film, listen to this episode and subscribe.

Today we talk about a solution to the lack of housing access that is within reach for many local Public Housing Authorities.

Housing vouchers are a federally-funded payment system. They’re used by low-income people to rent a home — any home. Or at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. While the Fair Housing Act of 1968 offered legal protections against discrimination based on race, religion, sex, and disability, there is nothing in it that says you can’t discriminate against someone based on how the source of their income.

Whether it’s medical care, addiction treatment, counseling — or whatever the issue might be that individual case-work would reveal — many people experiencing homelessness need more than stable housing. But there’s evidence that without first offering someone a stable home, all those other issues can’t be properly addressed. That is a concept called “Housing First.”

An East Boston tenant had been fighting her eviction for eight years when the city established a new neighborhood trust and bought her building — plus, 35 others.

Today we’re learning about a solution in Lexington, Kentucky, where a non-profit called CivicLex is changing things up. We’re speaking with the founder of CivicLex about how they’re getting folks informed and involved in local decisions big and small.

The first Black-owned bank to open in the last 20 years is in Columbus, Ohio.

In this episode of Next City, Lucas Grindley explores the history of LGBTQ neighborhoods, or "Gayborhoods," and how they've been affected by skyrocketing housing prices. Developers are trying to spark the birth of a new queer neighborhood in Cleveland. But can a massive real estate development even succeed as LGBTQ-focused? This ambitious 300,000-square-foot complex called Studio West 117 will include sports, dining, entertainment and housing alongside identity-affirming businesses and social services.

A Minneapolis startup is raising awareness about all the building materials that can be salvaged instead of sent to landfills.

This episode is sponsored by:

• Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.

• Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

This episode of Next City delves into the impact of natural disasters such as hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and how they affect people even years later.

In the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, two organizations provide solutions to the displacement crisis. The Florida Keys Community Land Trust was initiated by two altruistic individuals and creates housing that is far more affordable than market rate. The Houston Community Land Trust was created with $52 million of public funds and provides disaster resilient housing.

In this episode of Next City, we learn about the importance of giving back to one's community and promoting environmental sustainability. A nonprofit at the border is collecting food and redistributing it to shelters.

The founder of No Lost Food shares her experience with "food rescue" and the impact it had on the children helped.

Guests include reporter Christian Betancourt, who is Next City and El Paso Matters' joint Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Borderland Narratives. The fellowship is made possible with support from the Mellon Foundation.

Just over a year ago, we delved into a groundbreaking initiative by a foundation in Vancouver. Their question was: What if we gave people experiencing homelessness a lump sum of cash, no strings attached? The results were nothing short of remarkable — though they probably shouldn’t be surprising. Now, two years after that experiment ended, the idea is spreading to cities across the United States. So let’s revisit that initial episode — when we asked, what really happens when you give money to people experiencing homelessness?

In this episode of Next City, we explore the challenges faced by the Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia — a historically disinvested area known for its struggles. The Kensington Corridor Trust is one of several community-owned or community-led commercial real estate entities across the U.S., and developments like these are starting to get more recognition.

When neighbors started coming to his Little Rock barbershop to borrow money, Arlo Washington went a step further and chartered Arkansas’ newest credit union.

In this episode of Next City, host Lucas Grindley discusses the importance of community support during times of financial distress. The story focuses on Arlo Washington, a barber who opened a credit union to service those in need of financial assistance in Arkansas. The episode also explores the drop in the number of credit unions in the last decade and how a ban on payday lending created an even bigger need.

Can we combat the affordable housing crisis by building homes in our backyards? The movement to create “accessory dwelling units” comes in different shapes.

In this episode of Next City, we partner with ShelterForce and take a journey across the country to explore solutions from the Bay Area and Durham, North Carolina. One organization in the South includes them in its brand new housing developments — on land owned by the community.

This episode is part of the Solutions of the Year series. If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/22solutions and make a donation of any size.

An encampment of people experiencing homelessness was reimagined as a tiny home village that still provides housing 20 years later.


This episode is sponsored by:

• Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.


• Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

A Bay area church designed a program that it says isn’t charity; it’s countering systemic racism.

This episode is sponsored by:

• Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.


• Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

Two former cellmates persuaded Atlanta’s leaders to legally protect formerly incarcerated residents from discrimination.

This episode is sponsored by:

• Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.


• Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

U.S. cities are responding to the global #LandBack movement by returning land to the stewardship of Indigenous people — to whom it rightfully belongs.

This episode is part of the Solutions of the Year series. If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/22solutions and make a donation of any size.

Pilots of guaranteed income programs are launching in cities all over the United States. We talked with the researchers tracking the results and what they show.


This episode is part of the Solutions of the Year series. If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/22solutions and make a donation of any size.

Who says change can’t happen quickly? One group says they’ve figured out the playbook for fast-tracking bike lanes.

This episode is sponsored by:

• Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.
This episode is sponsored by:


• Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

Cities everywhere are proving paying a fare to ride the bus isn’t necessary, and getting rid of fares altogether makes them more useful.

This episode is part of the Solutions of the Year series. If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/22solutions and make a donation of any size.

In this episode, we dive deep into success stories emerging from Lexington, Kentucky, a “big town” taking on big challenges – breaking down partisanship, reinventing the ways the community engages with its leaders, creating new ways to close the racial wealth gap – by actively cultivating collaboration and experimentation.

“Our politics set the tone for the city,” says Christian Motley, the Vice President of Partnerships and Community Impact at the nonprofit Results for America. “If you look at our council, our mayor, you might see a different coalition on one day than you do on the next. There's something about not having permanent enemies that I think is really important, and it flows into community. I might be upset with you about housing on Monday, but by Wednesday we might be able to connect on parks.”

That's helped by the city's governance structure as a nonpartisan, unified city-county government that cuts out excess bureacracy and political tribalism. And over the past decade, local leaders explain, the city has seen a generational shift in its local power structures, breaking down “old-boy networks” while maintaining the relational proximity that characterizes many midsized cities.“

We have a second-term Republican mayor in a very blue city, because people didn't vote for an R or a D, they voted for a person,” says Dan Wu, Vice Mayor of Lexington. And while the city council is largely left-leaning at the moment, he adds, “I would challenge people in Lexington to guess the party affiliation of all 15 of us. I guarantee you'll get a few of them wrong, and I love that.”

The conversation is based on Next City's recent panel at Big Towns, a summit celebrating mid-sized American cities, and offers a taste of the urban solutions we'll be exploring at Vanguard, our annual experiential gathering for rising urban leaders, held in Lexington this fall.

This El Paso landscaping company is now owned by its employees. And while that’s not entirely unusual, the way the sale happened could be a model for the future.


This episode is part of the Solutions of the Year series. If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/22solutions and make a donation of any size.

What rideshare did for cars is proving possible for buses in cities everywhere. It’s called microtransit.

This episode is part of the Solutions of the Year series. If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/22solutions and make a donation of any size.

Private equity firms own their homes. When these tenants weren’t getting repairs they needed, they put their rent in escrow.

This episode is sponsored by:

• Solutions of the Year - If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/donate and make a donation of any size.

• Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.

What could leaders do to make ebikes the transportation of the future?


This episode is sponsored by:

• Solutions of the Year - If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/donate and make a donation of any size.

• Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.