Jeff Wood
Recent Posts
Talking Headways Podcast: Growing Up and Out in Houston
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This week and next I’m joined by Christof Spieler, a vice president of Morris Architects who serves on the board of Houston Metro, to talk about Houston. Everything is bigger in Texas, including the podcasts. Christof tells stories about how planning works in Houston, including how Intercontinental Airport was sited during a backroom deal and how people inside the city think […]
Talking Headways Podcast: They Took Our Jobs… Downtown!
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This week on the Talking Headways Podcast I’m joined by Joe Cortright of City Observatory to nerd out on employment data and discuss their most recent report, Surging City Center Job Growth. We learn how employment cores for many cities are growing and why this looks like a long-term shift. Joe also talks about how they measured […]
Talking Headways Podcast: The Peking Order
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This week on the podcast I’m joined by Dr. Mariela Alfonzo to discuss her recent paper, “Walkability, Obesity and Urban Design in Chinese Neighborhoods,” in the journal Preventive Medicine. The findings on both cycling and obesity might surprise you. We also discuss how policy change works in Chinese cities and how much power mayors have to […]
Talking Headways Podcast: Green Trippin’
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This week Ann Cheng of the California advocacy group Transform joins me to talk about their GreenTRIP program. Ann is a planner and the former mayor of El Cerrito, as well as one of San Francisco Business Times “40 Under Forty” in 2014. On the podcast she discusses how housing developers can build less parking and […]
Talking Headways: Mapping Out Local Transportation Advocacy and Reform
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Mariia Zimmerman of MZ Strategies joins me to chat about her new report on local advocacy for transportation reform called Transportation Transformation. Mariia, former deputy director for the Office of Sustainable Communities at HUD as well as former chief of staff to Congressman Earl Blumenauer, spent a year probing the local transportation advocacy landscape to […]
Talking Headways: Urbanism in the Style of Gangnam
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Guest host Randy Simes, owner of UrbanCincy.com and headlines writer for Streetsblog Ohio, joins me from South Korea to give his thoughts on his current home in the Gangnam district of Seoul and his previous one in Atlanta. We cover Keith Parker’s turnaround of Atlanta’s transit agency MARTA, the Belt Line and the people who won’t […]
Talking Headways: Speeding By Design
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Guest host Tim Halbur, formerly of Planetizen and CNU fame, joins me this week to chat about the process engineers use to designate speed limits, as recently examined by Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight. We’re 85 percent sure it’s not good. We also get into a discussion about Jared Green’s article on whether delivery trucks should be […]
Talking Headways: Tune In and Find Out How You Can Support This Podcast
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In this week’s Talking Headways, Tanya and I discuss Uber’s planned data release, wondering whether it’s a boon to cities or just a clever PR move on the part of a company trying to deal with poor public perception. Also, why do people think it’s cute when a dog rides transit on its own, but […]