Josh Yeager

Season 1
Written By Chip Chip

A Sidewalk Ballet New Years Party

In this New Year’s episode of The Sidewalk Ballet, Chip sits down with Josh Yeager — a deeply thoughtful placemaker and one of the most generous champions of this work — to talk about what he’s seeing on the ground right now. Not in theory, but in real places, with real people.

Josh brings a wide lens shaped by years of practice and support for others doing this work, helping surface the patterns, tensions, and quiet shifts that don’t always make headlines — but that say a lot about where cities are headed.

That conversation sits within a broader reflection on the Sidewalk Ballet season so far. Drawing from conversations with guests including Karen Christensen, Jay Pitter, Nate Storring, Kady Yellow, Majora Carter, and others, this episode translates big hopes for our cities into everyday practices — the small, local actions that actually shape community.

Josh Yeager

Starkey Strategies

Streets Department

FIFA Cities

Featured in this Episode

Field Guide
Dr. Christine Brooks
Dr. Christine Brooks

Christine Brooks PHD is an educator, coach, and practitioner whose work explores creativity, self-awareness, social intelligence, and community building. At the California Institute of Integral Studies, she helps prepare expressive arts coaches and facilitators to use creative practice as a tool for connection and transformation.

Read more →
JT Mudge
JT Mudge

JT Mudge is an award-winning futurist passionate about sustainability, ethics, and ancestral futures. I have a masters of science in foresight from the University of Houston, where I am also an adjunct professor teaching foresight and change theory. 

Read more →
New Years 2026
New Years 2026

Sidewalk Ballet’s New Year’s Resolutions are a collection of ideas, provocations, and aspirations for making cities better in the year ahead. Drawn from conversations across the Sidewalk Ballet community, they offer a playful but purposeful look at the things city-makers might resolve to do differently—from how we design and manage places to how we listen, collaborate, experiment, and make room for joy.

Read more →
Conrad Benner - Streets Dept
Conrad Benner - Streets Dept

Conrad Benner is the Founder/Editor of StreetsDept.com. A Fishtown, Philadelphia born-and-raised documentarian, curator (Streets Dept Walls and Mural Arts Philadelphia), and podcaster (Streets Dept Podcast), Conrad’s work explores the art of our public spaces and the artists who create it. 

Read more →
Starkey Strategies
Starkey Strategies

Starkey Strategies is a boutique strategic consulting firm that provides consulting services for business improvement districts and urban and rural destinations, nonprofits, governmental entities, corporations and startups around the United States.

Read more →
Bright Brothers Strategy Group
Bright Brothers Strategy Group

Bright Brothers Strategy Group is a people-first, data-driven consultancy that works with cities, districts and DMOs on strategic planning, marketing, and placemaking.
From connecting with your constituents and target audiences, to mapping out customer journeys and strategic touchpoints that drive tangible results, to human-centered placemaking initiatives, Bright Brothers Strategy Group is on the cutting edge of the intersectionality between urban planning, vibrant places and economic impact. We've worked with dozens of downtowns and districts around the country, and understand that every community starts with one thing: people.

Read more →
Josh Yeager
Josh Yeager

Josh Yeager is a founder and principal at Bright Brothers Strategy Group and has been an active champion of the Urban District Place Management world and a vocal advocate for great places and great people.

Josh has been a guest and a guest host on Sidewalk Ballet and brings a depth and breadth of experience in making great places.

Read more →
International Downtown Association
International Downtown Association

The International Downtown Association (IDA) is the leading global membership organization for people and organizations working to manage, strengthen, and shape downtowns and urban districts. Founded in 1954, IDA connects the growing field of urban place management, including downtown associations, business improvement districts, public agencies, and other place-based organizations.

Through conferences, research, professional development, and peer networks, IDA helps practitioners share strategies for economic development, public-space management, planning, events, organizational leadership, and advocacy—work that happens where policy, culture, commerce, and everyday urban life meet.

Read more →
Jay Pitter
Jay Pitter

Jay Pitter is an award-winning placemaker and author whose work explores belonging, cultural memory, equity, and public joy. Through planning, policy, teaching, and storytelling, she advances the idea that joyful public space is not a luxury, but essential urban infrastructure and a human right.

Read more →
Kady Yellow
Kady Yellow

Kady Yellow is a creative placemaking practitioner and Vice President of Placemaking and Activations at Downtown Vision in Jacksonville. Through PlacemakingJax and a career spanning public art, Pop-Up Civics, and community-led activation, she works to give people a meaningful role in shaping the places they call home. Also, someone wrote a song about her.

Read more →
Project for Public Spaces
Project for Public Spaces

Project for Public Spaces is a global nonprofit that has spent more than 50 years helping communities create and sustain public spaces. Through placemaking, training, convening, research, and advocacy, PPS champions gathering places shaped with—and cared for by—the people who use them.

Read more →
Nate Storring
Nate Storring

Nate Storring is Co-Executive Director of Project for Public Spaces, where his work focuses on placemaking, public-space stewardship, and engaging people in urban planning and design through storytelling. He has helped shape PPS research and resources on inclusive placemaking, innovation districts, and place governance, and is co-editor of Hyperlocal: Place Governance in a Fragmented World and Vital Little Plans: The Short Works of Jane Jacobs. Before joining PPS in 2015, Nate produced exhibitions and public programs exploring cities, architecture, and transportation in Toronto, Chicago, Boston, and Rhode Island.

Read more →
Gwen Brown
Gwen Brown

Gwen Brown is a San Francisco community leader and co-founder and co-director of SF Black Wall Street, an organization advancing Black economic empowerment, cultural preservation, and community-building in San Francisco. Her work has included youth and workforce development, neighborhood investment, public-space activation, and creating opportunities for Black-owned businesses and entrepreneurs; she has also served on San Francisco’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee.

Read more →
Majora Carter
Majora Carter

Majora Carter is an urban revitalization strategist, real estate developer, MacArthur Fellow, broadcaster, and author whose work focuses on creating opportunity within historically undervalued communities. Her approach connects economic development and talent retention to the belief that people should not have to leave their neighborhoods to find opportunity.

Read more →
Karen Christensen
Karen Christensen

Karen Christensen is an author, publisher, and community leader whose work spans culture, sustainability, and the power of networks. As the founder of Berkshire Publishing Group, she has long championed ideas and institutions that strengthen communities. Her forthcoming book, written in collaboration with Ray Oldenburg, revisits and reimagines the concept of the “third place” for today’s world.

Read more →
Chip Chip
Previous

JT Mudge
Next

Mara Mintzer