Cara Courage is a researcher, author, educator, and internationally recognized placemaking practitioner whose work explores the intersection of people, place, culture, and community. In this conversation, she joins Chip to discuss the evolution of placemaking, the growing field of trauma-informed placemaking, and how places can foster, healing, and connection.

Connection takes effort.

It takes showing up. Returning. Participating. Making room for other people in our lives.

A short conversation about friendship, third places, belonging, and why service may be one of the shortest paths to community.

What makes people feel connected to a place?

In this episode of Sidewalk Ballet, Chip explores the idea of “Return on Emotion” with downtown strategist Molly Alexander — examining how joy, belonging, trust, shape the emotional life of communities.

Featuring a conversation with Santa Cruz Warriors President Chris Murphy and a reflection on an iconic Bay Area moment this episode explores the power of emotional connections to place and community.

In downtown Los Angeles, the Social District may have found the perfect face for a neighborhood: Pico, their beloved canine mascot and “Chief Experience Officer.”

In this Small Block, Chip talks with Nolan Marshall about mascots, place identity, community connection, and how a little joy can help make a big city feel human-scale.

Downtowns sit at the intersection of public life and private interest — places where questions around trust, safety, belonging, and authority become deeply visible.

In this episode, Chip talks with Shane Zahn of the Minneapolis Downtown Council about the evolving role of Business Improvement Districts, public safety, and civic stewardship in downtown Minneapolis.

Together, they explore what it means to build trust in public space at a moment when communities increasingly experience safety, authority, and accountability in very different ways.

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.  

What does “urbanism” mean today?

In this episode, Chip talks with Anastasia Sukhoroslova about how ideas about cities move—across neighborhoods, across countries, and across a growing global network of urbanists.

Timed with Jane's Walk, the conversation connects the hyper-local observations of Jane Jacobs to the way urbanism is practiced today—exploring the tension between shared ideas and the unique context of every place.

tamika l. butler reflects on what it takes to build transportation systems that serve people—not just efficiently, but equitably. Paired with immersive field report from the Philippines about Jeepneys and for-hire vehicles, the episode explores how movement systems evolve: through need, policy, technology, and the people who shape them every day.

Retail is constantly being redefined—but it still plays a central role in how cities function.

In this episode, guest host Josh Yeager joins Michael Berne and Jaime Izurieta to explore how retail is evolving on the ground—from dwell time and hospitality to what actually makes a storefront succeed—and why it still matters for the health of our streets and downtown districts.

Democracy doesn’t disappear all at once — it weakens when people stop getting the chance to practice it. In this season finale, The Sidewalk Ballet closes with a conversation with Evan Weissman of Warm Cookies of the Revolution about joy, participation, and what it means to show up locally. It’s a reflection on why civic life needs more than expertise — it needs invitations, practice, and people willing to step in together.

San Francisco’s Tenderloin has long been a place of containment — and of community. From the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot to today’s fight over who controls the building where it happened, this episode explores how belonging moves from survival to assertion. In conversation with Breonna McCree, Co-Director of the Transgender District, we examine what it means to name a neighborhood, reclaim a site, and build cities that remember.

Public bathrooms are small spaces with big consequences. In this episode of The Sidewalk Ballet, journalist and author Lezlie Lowe joins Chip to unpack how access to restrooms reveals deeper truths about gender equity, public health, dignity, and who cities are really designed for—offering a fresh way to see the everyday infrastructure we rarely stop to think about.

What happens when people sit down and make things together? From a decades-long Valentine-making party in a Santa Cruz living room to art programs supporting immigrant and refugee communities in Oakland, this episode explores how creativity, friendship, and shared practice build belonging over time. Psychologist Christine Brooks helps name what’s happening beneath the surface — and why it matters now more than ever.

As a new year begins, we take a moment to look toward the future.

This episode features two conversations that explore how imagining what comes next shapes the places we live. Futurist JT Mudge joins us to talk about how foresight helps us think beyond binaries and prepare for change, while Seattle-based historian Feliks Banel reflects on the 1962 Century 21 Exposition and how visions of the future helped shape the Seattle we know today.

Together, these conversations consider how the futures we imagine grow out of the moments we’re living in—and how those imagined futures can leave lasting marks on our cities.

In this New Year’s episode of The Sidewalk Ballet, Chip is joined by Josh Yeager of Bright Brothers Strategy Group, a thoughtful practitioner and generous champion of community work, to talk about what he’s seeing on the ground across cities right now. That conversation anchors a broader reflection on the season, translating guests’ hopes for their cities into practical, local practices — simple ways of showing up, working together, and strengthening community where it actually happens.

Mara Mintzer is co-founder and Executive Director of Growing Up Boulder, a child- and youth-friendly city initiative rooted in the University of Colorado Boulder’s Community Engagement, Design, and Research Center. She leads efforts to embed young people’s voices into city planning, writes and speaks internationally about participatory planning with youth, and helped launch projects in Boulder that put children’s perspectives at the heart of policies, parks, housing, and public safety.

Jay Pitter, MES, is an award-winning placemaker and author creating joyful public spaces that foster belonging, prosperity, and cultural memory. She advances this work through cultural planning, policy frameworks, and storytelling—bridging rigor and collective imagination to advance public joy as essential urban infrastructure and a human right

In this episode of The Sidewalk Ballet, we sit down with Kady to talk about placemaking as practice and possibility. From Placemaking class to her on-the-ground experience building community through culture, she shares how storytelling, celebration, and showing up shape the way we live together. It’s a conversation about creativity, access, and the small, artful moves that change the feel of a city.

In this episode of The Sidewalk Ballet, we talk with Nate Storring, Co-Executive Director of Project for Public Spaces, about the organization’s 50th anniversary and the future of placemaking.

Majora Carter is a real estate developer, strategist, and Peabody Award–winning broadcaster whose work has redefined urban revitalization. She is the author of Reclaiming Your Community, a book that challenges the idea that low-status neighborhoods are destined to remain so.