Next City

This is Lucas Grindley from Next City, a show about changemakers and their stories. We’re off this week for Labor Day but we’ll be back next Wednesday with more inspiring and workable ideas that move our society toward justice and equity. 

If you can’t wait for the next story, head to NextCity.org for the latest coverage. 

As always, we’d love to hear any feedback from our listeners. Please feel free to email us at info@nextcity.org. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods or anywhere...

Communities need spaces for art; you can't support art without supporting artists. We're talking with three leaders working on alternative models for sustainability.

Charles T. Brown, author of "Arrested Mobility," discusses why mobility is not afforded in the same way to everyone – and the dire cost of this inequity.

New York was once the world’s oyster capital. The director of a new feature-length impressionist hybrid documentary, "Holding Back the Tide," traces the city’s many life cycles with the oyster as her main character. Emily Packer follows environmentalists restoring oysters to the harbor, while examining the oyster not only as entangled with nature, but also as a queer icon, with much to teach about our society’s continued survival. Packer is interviewed by fellow New Yorker, Eliana Perozo, Next City's Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Anti-Displacement Strategies.

The documentary "Razing Liberty Square” shows what happens in Miami as sea levels rise and the rich move inland, encroaching on residents of the Liberty Square public housing project. The film tells the story of a historically Black community faced with a $300-million-dollar “revitalization” of their neighborhood. In this episode, hear from a resident and climate activist, Valencia Gunder, who says she’s fighting a new form of racial injustice: climate gentrification.

Black power is more than symbolic. It’s a measurable reality tied to things like ownership, investment in neighborhoods, and—ultimately—life expectancy. 

In this episode with the authors of two new books—“The Black Power Scorecard” and “The Banks We Deserve”—Andre Perry and Oscar Perry Abello talk about systems that have historically failed communities of color and what it will take to build lasting institutions that truly serve them. The episode is based on a Next City webinar produced earlier this year, "Achieving Economic Justice and Power."

Perry argues that Black communities already hold real power, except it’s...

This week, we’re revisiting an episode we released earlier this year, all about Lexington, Kentucky — a city where collaboration and creativity are transforming challenges into opportunities. In this episode, we highlighted how Lexington’s leaders are finding ways to foster nonpartisanship, boost civic engagement, and narrow the racial wealth gap.

We’re bringing this episode back now because it offers a window into the themes we explored in even greater depth during our Vanguard conference, held in Lexington just last month. Over the next couple of weeks on this podcast, we’ll be sharing special episodes that bring you...

The Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore® Index each year ranks the 100 largest U.S. cities on factors such as park access, investment, and equity. In this sponsored episode, we explore how cities have turned their ParkScore data into action—investing in green spaces to spark civic engagement and foster a genuine sense of belonging.

Community development in America is at a pivotal moment. Long-standing federal programs that fuel homeownership, support small businesses, and promote neighborhood revitalization—especially in communities of color—are now under threat.

But on today's sponsored episode, we’ll hear how the people working on the front lines of equitable development are adapting, organizing, and doubling down on their missions. 

Guests on this episode include Nikitra Bailey, Executive Vice President at the National Fair Housing Alliance, which supports more than 170 member organizations nationwide; Dafina Williams, Executive Vice President and Chief Public Policy Officer at Opportunity Finance Network, represe...

This is Lucas Grindley from Next City, a show about changemakers and their stories. We’re off this week for Fourth of July, but we’ll be back next Wednesday with more inspiring and workable ideas that move our society toward justice and equity.

If you can’t wait for the next story, head to NextCity.org for the latest coverage. 

As always, we’d love to hear any feedback from our listeners. Please feel free to email us at info@nextcity.org. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods or...

This week, we’re trying something new: instead of our usual Next City episode, we’re sharing the pilot for “Not My Narrative,” an experimental mini-series that not only debunks harmful myths holding back progress but also elevates the counter-narratives driving positive momentum.

In this debut episode of Not My Narrative, Host Lucas Grindley, Executive Director of Next City, takes listeners on an examination of one of America’s most pernicious myths: the “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” mantra that claims anyone who works hard enough can escape poverty. We trace its origins from 19th-century satire to Reagan, Gingrich, and Clinton, and we’ll hear fro...

This is Lucas Grindley from Next City, a show about changemakers and their stories. We’re off this week in observance of Juneteenth, but we’ll be back next Wednesday with more inspiring and workable ideas that move our society toward justice and equity. 

If you can’t wait for the next story, head to NextCity.org for the latest coverage. 

As always, we’d love to hear any feedback from our listeners. Please feel free to email us at info@nextcity.org. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods or...

In the U.S., approximately 3.6 million households are threatened by eviction each year, and for many, the consequences last long after the eviction itself. Even if individuals avoid losing their homes, eviction records can prevent them from securing future housing. This happens because landlords use tools that screen the rental, credit, employment, income and criminal histories of tenants—often without context or accuracy.

In this sponsored episode produced in partnership with Results for America, we discuss a proven solution: tenant screening protections. We explore how these safeguards can protect renters by ensuring fair access to housing, and we le...

Back in the 1980s, there were more than 200 lesbian bars across the United States. By 2022, that number had shrunk to 21. This year, a group of friends in Brooklyn joined a recent resurgence of such queer spaces—and set it up as a worker-owned coop, to boot.

Boyfriend Co-op is part cocktail bar, part coffee shop, part workspace. Designed to feel like “a queer living room,” it’s all about ethical, sustainable practices—from its cooperative ownership structure to local ingredients to thrifted furniture. And it’s an example of how coops can be used to solve the problem of disappear...

This is Lucas Grindley from Next City, a show about changemakers and their stories. We’re off this week for Memorial Day but we’ll be back next Wednesday with more inspiring and workable ideas that move our society toward justice and equity. 


If you can’t wait for the next story, head to NextCity.org for the latest coverage. 


As always, we’d love to hear any feedback from our listeners. Please feel free to email us at info@nextcity.org. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, Goo...

When fires swept through the wealthy L.A. enclave known as the Pacific Palisades, the images were chaotic: cars abandoned on Sunset Boulevard, people fleeing on foot. A bulldozer had to plow through the traffic just so firefighters could reach the flames.

Planners and researchers recognize the dangers of evacuating thousands at a moment’s notice and argue that our streets urgently need to be redesigned.

“In the event of a climate disaster, we can't always count on our cars to protect us,” notes Maylin Tu, Next City's L.A.-based Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Social...

When the Eaton Fire tore through the Altadena neighborhood in January, many homes were lost. But also at risk was history, culture and community in a neighborhood known for its uniquely high Black homeownership rate. In the aftermath, as displaced residents were overwhelmed, private investors have swooped in, offering to buy up scorched lots for eye-popping amounts of cash.

It's Altadena versus disaster capitalists, and residents have just taken a big step forward by creating a land bank where vulnerable homeowners who need to sell their properties can keep ownership in the community's hands.

“I'm seeing lo...

In our fifth-ever episode of the Next City podcast, we spoke to Jason Foster of Destination Crenshaw, a monument to Black Los Angeles that had just broken ground. Four years later, that 1.3-mile monument to Black culture—set to be the largest Black public art project in America—has started transforming the city's Crenshaw corridor.

Construction is nearly complete on Sankofa Park, the project's “crown jewel,” which will feature 40,000 square feet of green space and sculptural installations. The project launched last year with a mural by Los Angeles artist Anthony “Toons One” Martin, and, like every piece of the effort, i...

The CDFI Fund is a proven driver of affordable housing in every state—red and blue alike. But now, this vital source of financing is at risk of federal cuts. In this episode, we highlight a project in Nashville, Tennessee, made possible by BlueHub Capital, a community development financial institution based in Massachusetts.

In today's episode, we speak to Oscar Perry Abello, the author of "The Banks We Deserve," and with Karen Kelleher, president of the BlueHub Loan Fund, which recently helped finance a project in Nashville that converted two abandoned motels into affordable studio apartments. It's just on...

When wildfires hit Los Angeles in January, people did what they always do in a crisis: They stepped in to help. And many of them donated clothes. Lots and lots of clothes. Volunteers were quickly overwhelmed as bags of clothes began piling up at relief centers.

“What happens is the help that's being offered actually clogs the ability for those cities and the community to help, because it's a mismatch of what the community and the city needs versus what's being offered,” says chief strategy officer Annie Gullingsrud at Trashie, an organization that worked to recirculate those donations and...

We’re off this week for our Spring Break, but we’ll be back next Wednesday with more inspiring and workable ideas that move our society toward justice and equity. 

If you can’t wait for the next story, head to NextCity.org for the latest coverage. 

As always, we’d love to hear any feedback from our listeners. Please feel free to email us at info@nextcity.org. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods or anywhere you listen to your podcasts. We’ll see you next week.

Five years after the start of the COVID pandemic, we revisit journals from the nurses who lived through it. The stories are part of a first draft of history being remembered by the official Manhattan Borough Historian in his new book on New York’s essential workers, “When the City Stopped: Stories from New York's Essential Workers.”

Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson is the former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, having resigned when President Trump took office. She talks about how the arts are shaping urban policy, including by “healing, bridging and thriving” in communities.

In this sponsored podcast episode with Results for America, learn how Santa Clara County helped thousands of Californians stay housed. 


In 2024, homelessness surged by 18% nationwide, with 23 out of every 10,000 people living on the streets or in shelters. The costs of homelessness are enormous – not just to the health and well-being of those experiencing it, but also to taxpayers, as governments spend billions on housing and services.

But there’s a smarter solution: prevention.

Santa Clara County, California, has proven it works. By helping at-risk residents stay housed — 93% remained in their homes two years later —...

We talk about community land trusts, or CLTs, a lot at Next City. It's about ownership: The community owns the lands and stewards the land. That means that the buildings on the land – including housing and other spaces like storefronts – can made affordable to own or to rent, in perpetuity.

CLTs are also talked about a lot in New York City. That's how the city went from having just a small handful of CLTs in the early '90s to having 19. Now, the New Economy Project has launched an interactive map to track all of these land trusts.

Banks can be a force for good. It's an idea that's greeted with skepticism in some circles, given the endless list of inequities and disasters perpetuated by our country's leading financial institutions. But if you're a Next City reader, the idea that financial institutions can be part of the solution isn't foreign, given our senior economic justice correspondent Oscar Perry Abello's in-depth coverage of community development financial institutions, credit unions, alternative lending practice and mission-driven banking.

In his debut book, “The Banks We Deserve: Reclaiming Community Banking for a Just Economy,” Abello makes the case that it's time to sh...

The housing crisis isn’t just about supply. This episode explores innovative solutions like community land trusts, tenant protections, and expanded assistance programs that are making homes affordable — and keeping them that way.

This is Lucas Grindley from Next City, a show about changemakers and their stories. We’re off this week but we’ll be back next Wednesday with more inspiring and workable ideas that move our society toward justice and equity. 

If you can’t wait for the next story, head to NextCity.org for the latest coverage. 

As always, we’d love to hear any feedback from our listeners. Please feel free to email us at info@nextcity.org. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods or anywhere you listen to yo...

Preserving the stories and spaces that define LGBTQ communities is an act of resilience and resistance. Hear from designers, historians, and activists about the vital work of safeguarding these cultural landmarks and ensuring their legacy endures.

Stories shape how we see the world. In this episode, we bring together philanthropic leaders to explore how funders are relying on journalism to dismantle harmful narratives, amplify underrepresented voices and create equitable communities.

If you know Next City, it'll come as no surprise that we believe journalism can be a powerful vehicle for racial justice. Here in the nonprofit media world, we've seen countless examples of how philanthropy can help fund that change by funding impactful, community-driven journalism. And it's not just media funders – increasingly funders who might not traditionally focus on media are leveraging storytelling to adv...

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 w...

IDs aren’t just about identification — they’re about connection. This episode dives into the power of municipal ID programs to foster trust and open doors. We learn from successful programs in two very different cities — New York City and Greensboro, N.C. — that strive to be inclusive.

For undocumented and underdocumented residents, not having an ID can mean being excluded from all kinds of basic services. You can't drive or open a bank account without an ID. You may be afraid to report crimes to law enforcement. The list goes on.

But a few cities across the...

In the United States, medical debt isn’t just a financial burden; it’s a reflection of deeper systemic inequities that force individuals to take on “survival debt” — debt incurred just to meet basic needs like health care. Today, Mayor Carter joins us alongside Allison Sesso, the Executive Director of Undue Medical Debt, to explore how cities can lead the charge in addressing medical debt — and what it means to rethink our systems of care, equity, and economic justice.

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter joins us alongside Allison Sesso of Undue Medical Debt to explore how cities can lead the char...

Today, we nod to the past while paving a new way forward for the future of anti-racist community development. This episode explores the layered history of American community development and the policies that have shaped — if not torn — the fabric of our communities.

If we're going to achieve community development that is actually anti-racist, a baseline understanding of its history is not only a prerequisite.

To build that fundamental understanding, Third Space Action Lab's Anti-Racist Community Development research project documents some of the early exclusionary government policies that shaped U.S. communities and responses of community develop...

Participating in elections is just one part of civic engagement. The many other ways of influencing your community and public policy are arguably the greatest difference to rebuilding trust.

Healing democracy was never going to happen with an election. In this episode, we discuss real ways to go beyond the ballot box and engaging people as we restore trust in government and in city leadership, based on our recent webinar on the same subject.

“A colleague at a conference I was at earlier this year said, 'In city government, we hear so much about creating an enviro...

In this special episode, Next City’s editorial leaders share what they’re hearing from readers and listeners about resisting setbacks at the federal level and driving changes locally.

The days following the U.S. presidential have been defined by an overwhelming sense of uncertainty, despair and even fear from urban changemakers working in local government, non-profit organizations, philanthrophy, grassroots advocacy and organizing, and beyond. While their work will be more important than ever, many are saying, it seems like it will also be more difficult than ever.

In this week's episode, we're joined by Next City's...

“There's that R-word that wants to come up that I despise – resilience,” says Tiffany Sturdivant, executive director of Appalshop, a media, arts and community economic development organization that's been operating in the Kentucky mountains for more than five decades.

“People are so strong….I think that's probably a testament to mountain people, right, or people anywhere who are disenfranchised and are just working with what they have. Use what you have until you can get more.”

When you think about climate issues, your mind might go first to the coasts and rising sea levels. But climate issues in the...

In today's episode, we're bringing you highlights from our conversations at this year's Vanguard conference in Lexington, Kentucky, where our theme was exploring the dynamics of urban-rural interconnection – not urban-rural divisions.

We will explore how communities are stronger when we stand in solidarity, and when we learn from each other's experiences.We'll hear from Mandy Higgins, Executive Director at the Lexington History Museum; Mark Lenn Johnson, president of Art Inc. Kentucky; as well as Jim Gray, the former two-term Mayor of Lexington and Kentucky's current Secretary of Transportation, who went from living in a small town to leading the g...

This week, we’re revisiting an episode we released earlier this year, all about Lexington, Kentucky — a city where collaboration and creativity are transforming challenges into opportunities. In this episode, we highlighted how Lexington’s leaders are finding ways to foster nonpartisanship, boost civic engagement, and narrow the racial wealth gap.

We’re bringing this episode back now because it offers a window into the themes we explored in even greater depth during our Vanguard conference, held in Lexington just last month. Over the next couple of weeks on this podcast, we’ll be sharing special episodes that bring you...

In Newark and across Essex County, New Jersey, urban farms do more than grow food — they're strengthening a community. But advocates say that convincing the state and local governments that these farms are worth investing in has not been easy.

“At a local level, most urban farms, they don't own their land. It's borrowed from the city's adopt-a-lot program,” says Kimberly Izar, Next City's Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Segregation, who has reported for us on urban farming in the region. “At any point, that means that the city can take away the land in favor of, let's say, like a...