June 10, 202643 min
On Being Planners WIth Purpose
We are creating a podcast episode about these three episodes related to the Planners With A Purpose conference that Next City sponsored.
Episodes
161
Latest episode
Jun 2026
Language
EN
About the show
Join Lucas Grindley, executive director at Next City, where we believe journalists have the power to amplify solutions and spread workable ideas. Each week Lucas will sit down with trailblazers to discuss urban issues that get overlooked. At the end of the day, it's all about focusing the world's attention on the good ideas that we hope will grow. Grab a seat from the bus, subway, light-rail, or whatever your transit-love may be and listen on the go as we spread solutions from one city to the Next City .
Listen to episodes
June 3, 202637 min
After 150 Episodes, Revisiting Our Favorite Solutions
The Next City podcast debuted in November 2021 and has now recorded 150 episodes, with hundreds of interviews about solutions with changemakers. Host Lucas Grindley and Editorial Director Deonna Anderson look back on some of the biggest takeaways after more than 75 hours worth of journalism.
May 20, 202643 min
For Immigrant Communities, These Organizations Build Belonging
Sponsored podcast: From Chelsea to the Berkshires, these organizations do the frontline work of caring for their community when federal policy turns hostile. When ICE raids and hostile federal policies destabilize entire communities, frontline organizations in cities and rural counties alike are answering with door-knocking, theater, wellness programs, and the slow work of building power from within. In this sponsored episode with The Culture & Community Power Fund, two Massachusetts organizations respond to the mounting pressures facing immigrant and refugee communities. The organizations they support are responding to the moment, said Erik Takeshita, Director of The Culture & Community Power Fund. "It was already really hard work, and now it's like you have to add another layer of creativity and ingenuity to really be able to reach out to people,” said Takeshita. La Colaborativa in Chelsea turns organizing and door-knocking into power in so many ways, including policy wins, arts and wellness programming, and a full continuum of youth services. Norieliz DeJesus is the Director of Youth Programs for La Colaborativa, but she first came to the organization as a teen participant. Today, she knows many neighbors who also went through the program and work as nurses, police officers, and community leaders. She considers them part of“ the safety net that this community has created over the years.” “It makes it easier for the community to trust when they can see that the person in those seats of power are people who lived and experienced this community,” said DeJesus, who is a member of the city council. Meanwhile on the other end of the state in Berkshire County, the team at Multicultural BRIDGE—including Gwendolyn VanSant, CEO and founding director, and Dr. Lina Polo, the physician who leads its public health programs—host culturally specific wellness days, support groups, food distribution, and coordinate the county's Community Health Improvement Plan all as ways of addressing isolation, healthcare gaps, and belonging in a predominantly white rural region. "If you treat the least healthy and the person with the least access, it's going to improve things unseen," said VanSant on the need for solidarity. This sponsored series is created in partnership with The Culture & Community Power Fund (C&CPF), a national funders’ collaborative advancing the role of culture in building identity, agency, and collective power. This series explores the cultural ecosystem—the traditions, stories, rituals, and spaces that sustain frontline communities—and what it takes to support and strengthen it. Read the complete series.
May 13, 202638 min
How Boston’s Chinatown Turns Culture Into Power
This sponsored series is created in partnership with The Culture & Community Power Fund (C&CPF), a national funders’ collaborative advancing the role of culture in building identity, agency, and collective power. This series explores the cultural ecosystem—the traditions, stories, rituals, and spaces that sustain frontline communities—and what it takes to support and strengthen it. Read the complete series. Boston’s Chinatown has for many years faced incredible pressures of displacement, but a network of nonprofits has turned art, storytelling, and organizing into a strategy to empower the community to fight back. In this sponsored episode with The Culture & Community Power Fund, leaders of three community organizations explain how the Chinatown Cultural Plan gives their coalition a shared roadmap for collaboration. "Embarking on this cultural plan allowed us an opportunity to step back, talk to many organizations, community members, see what people are doing, and see how our work complements each other and strengthens each other," said Cynthia Woo, director of the Pao Arts Center at the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center. The center is among a network of community organizations working on the plan that received unrestricted funding from C&CPF, a national funders’ collaborative that supports organizations working on the front lines in communities impacted by systemic oppression. Erik Takeshita, director of C&CPF, says the philanthropic sector will too often “focus on the organization as a unit, not necessarily as the community, as the unit of change and intervention. As a result, you end up with these fractured communities.” In Boston’s Chinatown, the network they’re supporting also includes the Asian Community Development Corporation and the Chinatown Community Land Trust. Angie Liou, executive director of ACDC, explains their “anchor strategy,” which uses arts and culture as an anti-displacement tool “and a tool to strengthen Chinatown's boundaries and sense of identity and belonging.” Lydia Lowe, executive director of the Chinatown CLT, explains how art and storytelling drive their organizing and even helped the land trust acquire its first permanently affordable homes. "Sharing stories is a really important part of strengthening our power,” said Lowe. “Because we want every generation to be grounded in that history and to know that there are struggles that happened before us and we can win and we can make a difference."
May 6, 202635 min
How To Transform Closed Schools for Community
Today, we're learning about the effort to ensure public school buildings continue serving neighborhoods even after they close.
April 29, 202637 min
Real Solutions Are Everywhere
A partner episode with the podcast, Real Solutions, produced with The Othering & Belonging Institute.
April 22, 202638 min
Lessons on Serving Immigrant Communities Under Attack
As immigrant communities face daily threats from ICE and the Trump administration, they need allies they can trust. And that's why today we're looking at nonprofit newsrooms that speak directly with immigrant communities.
April 15, 202634 min
Community Power Is Finally Going Big in Economic Development
Community-owned commercial real estate models are starting to make bigger splashes, thanks in part to building relationships with investors and officials who see their value.
April 8, 202634 min
Tenants Rising: Organizing for Housing Justice, Part 2
Examine tenant-led movements and legal strategies to preserve affordability and resist displacement. It could highlight lawsuits like the one in Missouri where tenants fought to keep their homes within the LIHTC program, connecting to broader tenant unionization efforts nationwide.
April 1, 202632 min
Tenants Rising: Organizing for Housing Justice, Part 1
Examine tenant-led movements and legal strategies to preserve affordability and resist displacement. It could highlight lawsuits like the one in Missouri where tenants fought to keep their homes within the LIHTC program, connecting to broader tenant unionization efforts nationwide.
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