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.
The jeepney: a history, and hopefully, a future
This essay from Filipeanut traces the evolution of the Philippine jeepney from prewar jitneys and autocalesas through the repurposing of American military jeeps after World War II and their emergence as one of the country’s most recognizable forms of public transportation. It explores the jeepney as both a remarkably accessible, locally created transit system and an expression of Filipino culture, while examining the difficult questions of pollution, safety, affordability, livelihoods, and cultural heritage raised by efforts to modernize the fleet.
tamika l. butler
tamika l. butler (she/her or they/them) is a doctoral student in Urban Planning at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research employs a critical race, historical, legal, and policy-based approach to examine how transportation policy and infrastructure have been used to segregate, isolate, and prevent the mobility of Black and other historically oppressed groups of people.
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