The Sidewalk Ballet Field Guide
The Sidewalk Ballet Field Guide is a growing collection of people, organizations, projects, books, ideas and ongoing conversations about cities and the people who shape them. It grows out of the podcast, but extends well beyond it—connecting the people doing the work, the places where it’s happening, and the ideas, experiments and resources worth carrying forward. Think of it as part reference library, part trail of breadcrumbs: a way to follow the conversation wherever it leads.
Explore by type, browse alphabetically or by date, or search for something specific. Follow the tags to discover connections—or explore the map to see where the people, projects and ideas in the Field Guide take us.
Ananya Roy
Ananya Roy is a scholar of urban planning, geography, and social welfare at UCLA whose work examines inequality, poverty, displacement, and the politics of urban development. Her influential scholarship on urban informality challenges the idea that “informal” activity simply exists outside formal systems, instead examining how governments and institutions themselves produce and regulate informality.
On the Plaza
In On the Plaza, anthropologist Setha Low explores how culture, politics, history, and everyday social life shape public plazas—and how plazas, in turn, shape the life of cities. Her research centers on Costa Rica while drawing comparisons with public spaces around the world.
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