This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined by professor Daniel Wortel-London to discuss his new book The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1875–1981. We talk about urban growth and missed opportunities by reformers to allow cities to capture more of their value. We discuss Henry George| The Overhead Wire
As Waymo vehicles saturate San Francisco, I’ve had an unnerving frustration with them that I can’t quite pinpoint. Backers of autonomous technology give endless benefits that we should be expecting from a transition to vehicles without human drivers. Safer streets, safer travel experiences in a vehicle, and greater efficiency. Though as Peter Norton notes, we’re Copyright © 2025 The Overhead Wire The post Privatizing Profits from Use of Public Land: A Robotaxi Story appeared first on ...| The Overhead Wire
This week we’re joined by Ryan Russo, Executive Director of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). Ryan shares with us more wisdom from the revised Urban Bikeway Design Guide and discusses the transformation of street systems and managing space for people and deliveries. NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide Online | Physical Book Urban Copyright © 2025 The Overhead Wire The post (Unedited) Podcast Transcript 546: Designing and Delivering Bike Networks appeared firs...| The Overhead Wire
I’m currently reading Daniel Wortel-London’s book The Menace of Prosperity which goes deep into many of the possible alternative ways New York could have adopted more egalitarian economic development structures. Rather than allow public property to generate value, the land owning voters and machine politicians sold the city’s land and bonded to within inches of Copyright © 2025 The Overhead Wire The post The Smart City of Your Imagination appeared first on The Overhead Wire.| The Overhead Wire
This week we’re Han Solo on Mondays but we’ve got a lot of news and information for you! We cover the bipartisan housing bill, the impact of new housing stock on older rentals, disgust for density, the car colors that make cities hotter and much more! Check out the show notes below!| The Overhead Wire
This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined once again by Colin Parent of Circulate San Diego to discuss a new report entitled The Powerless Brokers: Why California Can’t Build Transit. We talk about permitting delays and reforms, public sector capacity, and giving transit authorities more authority. Listen to this episode at Streetsblog USA| The Overhead Wire
I’ve always felt Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) underrepresented major cities and population centers around the country, leaving us with boards that were more likely to care about how to go through a city than how to get to it or move around in it. I feel like that’s how we’ve gotten a lot of these Copyright © 2025 The Overhead Wire The post The Underrepresentative MPO appeared first on The Overhead Wire.| The Overhead Wire
This week we’re joined by Emily LaFlamme of the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago. Emily chats about the Elevated Works technical assistance program that helps developers bring equitable TOD to life. To listen to this episode, visit Streetsblog USA or find it in our hosting archive. Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript Copyright © 2025 The Overhead Wire The post (Unedited) Podcast Transcript 544: Technical Assistance for Equitable TOD appeared first on The Overhead...| The Overhead Wire
Yesterday we posted an item from NextCity that compared smart phone dependence to car dependence. The author believes we are moving down a parallel road where we are going to make people dependent on phones the way we are dependent on cars. At this moment in time, we require people to have them in order Copyright © 2025 The Overhead Wire The post Society as Designed Requires Us Tethered to a Thing appeared first on The Overhead Wire.| The Overhead Wire
This week on Mondays at The Overhead Wire we’re joined by James Llamas, now at Nelson Nygaard, to chat about a number of different items including Vietnam’s move to ban gas powered motorbikes in central Hanoi, the importance of walking to your health, racing the 8 bus in Seattle, Brightline’s death toll, and the 8D| The Overhead Wire
This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined by Mark Kabbash, founder of The Dandy Horse. He chats with us about a new system for measuring and verifying bike commuting to obtain carbon avoidance credits. We chat about how the system works and the funding it could generate. Find out more about Mark’s work| The Overhead Wire
I’ve been working through an idea as I work on a podcast episode about Kingwood, the neighborhood outside of Houston (since annexed by the city) where I grew up. The idea is that during the 1970s we could have chosen another direction on transportation as the Netherlands did. We had a prototype but didn’t act| The Overhead Wire
This week we’re joined once again by professor Karel Martens of Technion University. We learn about how transportation engineering is good at finding problems but not solving them, and a new tool to determine the success of transportation systems. Fair Transport Lab Website A scale for describing people’s mobility status – Findings Press Listen to| The Overhead Wire
This week we’re joined by Oxford Ohio City Councilor and Miami of Ohio geography professor, David Prytherch. We chat about his new book Reclaiming the Road: Mobility Justice beyond Complete Streets. We chat about how pandemic open street experiments were rediscovering original uses, the cognitive benefits of experiencing car free streets, the opening of a democratic| The Overhead Wire
This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined by Adie Tomer of Brookings to discuss a paper he and his team wrote about the idea of regional block grants. He discusses the local subsidies going to state DOTs and how more local funding could mean more regional collaboration on infrastructure. To listen to this| The Overhead Wire
This week we’re joined by Madeline Brozen of the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. We talk about universal basic mobility and research her team has done on the LA Mobility Wallet Pilot Program. Listen to this episode at Streetsblog USA or find it in our hosting archive. Below is a full unedited transcript| The Overhead Wire
This week we’re joined by Chris Berdik to talk about his book Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take it Back. We discuss the impacts of road noise on health and wellbeing, how our brains process sound, and creating positive urban soundscapes. We also talk about the problems with open| The Overhead Wire
This week we’re back at the Mpact conference in Philadelphia and joined by Ruth Miller of Jawnt. Ruth shares her superhero origin story and how employer transit pass programs like SEPTA’s Key Advantage Program work to support employees, agencies, and the region overall. You can listen to this episode at Streetsblog USA or find it| The Overhead Wire
