Chip Chip 6/15/26 Chip Chip 6/15/26

Detroit Soup

Detroit SOUP brought neighbors together over a shared meal to hear local ideas, pool small contributions, and collectively fund projects making Detroit better.

Chip Chip 6/15/26 Chip Chip 6/15/26

Amy Kaherl

Amy Kaherl is a Detroit-based community organizer who helped build and lead Detroit SOUP, the celebrated microgranting dinner that brought people together over a shared meal to hear ideas for improving their city and collectively decide which ones to fund. Building on a participatory dinner model that originated in Chicago, Amy and her collaborators helped turn Detroit SOUP into a powerful local institution—and an approach that would itself inspire similar gatherings around the world—demonstrating how food, small amounts of money, and a simple act of gathering can create meaningful opportunities for civic participation and connection.

Chip Chip 3/10/26 Chip Chip 3/10/26

Vote Every Day

A Board book - not for babies

Chip Chip 3/10/26 Chip Chip 3/10/26

Tax Day Carnival

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Warm Cookies of the Revolution

The worlds first Civic Health Gym

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Evan Weissman

Evan Weissman was a Denver-based artist, organizer, and civic provocateur who founded Warm Cookies of the Revolution, a “civic health club” that used art, culture, conversation, and a healthy dose of playfulness to get people engaged in civic life. His work explored how democracy could become something people actively practice together—not simply something they participate in at election time.

Chip Chip 12/16/25 Chip Chip 12/16/25

Mara Mintzner

Mara Mintzer helped found Growing Up Boulder (GUB) in 2009. A passionate advocate for child-friendly cities, Mara presents and writes internationally on the topic of engaging young people in inclusive community planning and development. Her expertise in engaging children and youth in meaningful ways to shape their own cities is requested by government and community organizations around the world.

Chip Chip 12/16/25 Chip Chip 12/16/25

Growing up Boulder

Growing Up Boulder (GUB) is a nonprofit that works to make Boulder and communities around the world better places for children and young people—by giving them a meaningful role in shaping the places where they live. Founded in 2009 as a partnership between the City of Boulder, Boulder Valley School District, and the University of Colorado Boulder, GUB brings young people into planning and design processes that have traditionally been led almost entirely by adults.

Through partnerships with schools, government agencies, designers, community organizations, and families, GUB creates opportunities for children and youth to investigate their communities, articulate what they need, and contribute directly to decisions about public spaces, transportation, housing, civic facilities, and other aspects of city life. Its work is grounded in the idea that young people are not simply future citizens or eventual users of cities: they are residents with valuable knowledge and perspectives about the places they inhabit right now.

Chip Chip 12/16/25 Chip Chip 12/16/25

Urban Design Forum

The Urban Design Forum (UDF) is a New York–based organization that brings together more than 1,100 people working across design, planning, development, government, advocacy, and civic life to think collectively about the future of the city. For more than four decades, UDF has created a space for people who shape cities—often from very different perspectives—to exchange ideas, develop new approaches, and put those ideas to work in New York neighborhoods.

Its work ranges from public programs and policy initiatives to fellowships, international exchanges, and neighborhood partnerships, with a focus on issues including housing, public space, mobility, economic development, public health, and climate. Rather than approaching urban design simply as the design of buildings and spaces, UDF treats citymaking as a collaborative civic practice: connecting the people who design, build, govern, use, and care for the city.

Chip Chip 11/18/25 Chip Chip 11/18/25

Placemaking Jax

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Iffat Baki Bushra

Chip Chip 11/4/25 Chip Chip 11/4/25

SPUR

SPUR — the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association — is a nonprofit public policy organization. We bring people together from across the political spectrum to develop solutions to the big problems cities face. Based in San Francisco, San José, and Oakland, we are recognized as a leading civic planning organization and respected for our independent and holistic approach to urban issues.

A project of SPUR was featured in Episode 3