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.