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.
Sheila Foster
Sheila Foster is a leading scholar of cities, democracy, and the urban commons. Her work explores how communities share responsibility for the public spaces, institutions, and resources that shape everyday life—and how collective stewardship can make cities more equitable, democratic, and inclusive.
The Vertical Sidewalk
The Vertical Sidewalk is a Substack exploring the art and science of creating better storefronts and stronger commercial streets. Drawing on retail strategy, design, placemaking, and real-world examples, it looks at the details that make ground-floor businesses inviting, memorable, and successful—and at how individual storefronts contribute to the vitality and character of the neighborhoods and downtowns around them.
Bicycle Diaries
Bicycle Diaries follows David Byrne through cities around the world from the seat of his folding bicycle. Part travelogue, part urban observation, the book uses cycling as a way to experience cities at human speed—exploring architecture, culture, politics, public space, and the peculiar ways places reveal themselves when you move through them under your own power.
Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs was a writer, activist, and urban thinker whose close observation of everyday street life transformed how generations understand cities. Her work challenged top-down planning and championed mixed uses, short blocks, density, and the complex social choreography of sidewalks and neighborhoods. Her description of that choreography gave Sidewalk Ballet its name.