Claire Salter, better known as Curious Claire, is a London-based travel writer and blogger with a particular affection for the quirky, unexpected, and easily overlooked things that give places their character.

Portland Downtown is the nonprofit downtown organization working to strengthen the economic vitality, character, and experience of Portland, Maine’s city center. Serving the downtown district through programs including clean and safe services, business support, marketing, events, advocacy, and public-space initiatives, the organization works with businesses, residents, property owners, cultural institutions, and community partners to keep downtown Portland vibrant, welcoming, and distinctly its own.

Portland Downtown’s Public Restroom Master Plan makes the case that toilets are essential urban infrastructure. Connecting restroom access to walkability, public health, tourism, aging, accessibility, dignity, and inclusion, it lays out a strategy for creating and maintaining a more welcoming downtown.

This book is Number One in addressing the politics of where we’re allowed to go in public. Adults don’t talk about the business of doing our business. We work on one assumption: the world of public bathrooms is problem- and politics-free. No Place To Go: How Public Toilets Fail our Private Needs reveals the opposite is true.

Lezlie Lowe is an author, strategist, consultant, and journalist; a professional communicator with decades of experience. Her work, voice, and the issues she amplifies often centre on urbanism, gender dynamics, and the intersection of the personal and the political.

Christine Brooks PHD is an educator, coach, and practitioner whose work explores creativity, self-awareness, social intelligence, and community building. At the California Institute of Integral Studies, she helps prepare expressive arts coaches and facilitators to use creative practice as a tool for connection and transformation.

Effortless City creates inclusive neighborhood and sidewalk guides designed around a simple idea: knowing where you want to go isn’t enough—you also need to know what it will take to get there. Designed for walkers, rollers, and strollers, its guides document the details conventional maps often leave out, including steps, ramps, sidewalk conditions, terrain, restrooms, and potential obstacles.

Expressive Arts Coaching & Community Building is a pioneering program that integrates collaborative, liberatory creative practices with coaching and facilitation to inspire individual and collective transformation. Graduates acquire a unique foundation that encourages their practice and professionalism as credentialed coaches, expressive arts facilitators, and leaders in the field.

ARTogether’s mission is to provide art programs that foster compassionate communities where refugees and immigrants can flourish

We envision a world where there are no barriers—or borders—to art and creative expression, where everyone is welcomed and their stories have impact.

Leva Zand is an Iranian-American conceptual artist, organizational development advisor, and human rights advocate. She is most notably recognized as the founder and former Executive Director of ARTogether, a prominent Oakland-based nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering community, healing, and belonging for refugees and immigrants through the creative arts.

JT Mudge is an award-winning futurist passionate about sustainability, ethics, and ancestral futures. I have a masters of science in foresight from the University of Houston, where I am also an adjunct professor teaching foresight and change theory. 

Feliks Banel has been meddling in local history in the Pacific Northwest since he was a teenager. Over the years, he’s held a variety of volunteer and paid positions with museums, heritage organizations, government agencies and media outlets.

One Famous visitor to the 1964 Worlds Fair shares her memories of the experience in Episode 8.

The 1962 World's Fair was the brainchild of City Councilmember Al Rochester and planning began far in advance. In 1957, Seattle voters passed a $7.5 million Civic Center bond for possible fairground development, which was matched by the state legislature. The Century 21 Commission secured certification as an official World's Fair from the International Bureau of Expositions.

UNDP works in about 170 countries and territories, helping to eradicate poverty, reduce inequalities and exclusion, and build resilience so countries can sustain progress. As the UN’s development agency, UNDP plays a critical role in helping countries achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Cascade of History is the only live radio program devoted to Pacific Northwest history, featuring interviews with interesting people doing cool things with and for history, historic preservation, museums, parks, shipwrecks, lost treasures, old highways, and other special places and things around the “Old Oregon Country” – Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia.

Metropolis, the World Association of Major Metropolises, provides innovative solutions to the critical challenges facing large metropolitan areas. It serves as a global hub where large cities can connect, share solutions and mobilize on issues related to sustainability, social cohesion, metropolitan governance, future planning and gender equality.

Sidewalk Ballet’s New Year’s Resolutions are a collection of ideas, provocations, and aspirations for making cities better in the year ahead. Drawn from conversations across the Sidewalk Ballet community, they offer a playful but purposeful look at the things city-makers might resolve to do differently—from how we design and manage places to how we listen, collaborate, experiment, and make room for joy.

Conrad Benner is the Founder/Editor of StreetsDept.com. A Fishtown, Philadelphia born-and-raised documentarian, curator (Streets Dept Walls and Mural Arts Philadelphia), and podcaster (Streets Dept Podcast), Conrad’s work explores the art of our public spaces and the artists who create it. 

Starkey Strategies is a boutique strategic consulting firm that provides consulting services for business improvement districts and urban and rural destinations, nonprofits, governmental entities, corporations and startups around the United States.