DIALOG!

I’m super excited to be working with DIALOG, arguably the best North American design firm you haven’t heard of (yet). Working across Canada and in San Francisco, the 600+ person firm is dedicated to designing with beauty and purpose, be it buildings, interiors, campuses, or communities. Together we are creating thought leadership for the World Economic Forum and other outlets, including this piece about the critical need for deep retrofitting rather than demolishing buildings. The firm’s latest deep retrofit, set to open in 2026, will transform the Glenbow Museum in Calgary from a 70s-era brutalist building (unflatteringly called “The Vault”) into a …

Thank you, Madame Architect!

It was an honor and a privilege to be featured in Madame Architect. Working in the urbanism world for 20+ years means I’ve accumulated a lot of knowledge that I don’t often get to share in such a personal way. Here’s is an excerpt: What did you learn about yourself in studying journalism and urban planning? What a great combination. I knew I was going to move to New York since the first time I visited when I was 18 years old. It took a little while to figure out how to make it happen, so doing the mid-career master’s …

Trackless Trams — an obsession.

I’ve been reporting on the Trackless Tram innovation for several years now (pre-pandemic!). For this piece — How Trackless Tram could help revitalize city suburbs, published by the World Economic Forum — I worked with Professor Peter Newman, the foremost expert on this topic in the English speaking world. The piece went viral, as did the video that accompanies it. This high-tech, autonomous tram, developed in China, rides like a train but doesn’t run on rails (i.e. it’s flexible and a lot cheaper to install). Everyone always asks me, well, isn’t that a bus? Read the article and tell me if this …

The Surprising Stickiness of the “15-Minute City”

I was initially skeptical of the 15 Minute City concept, which seemed like old wine in a new bottle. But I came to a different conclusion after digging into it. Thanks to Martin Pederson at Common Edge for publishing this piece, and to the World Economic Forum for republishing it—reaching tens of thousands of readers. An excerpt: “Indeed, the decentralization of work is not going to kill the city, it’s going to save it. There will be a lot of creative destruction along the way, but that is how the city renews itself: from within. The cities that don’t decentralize work …

ESG report for RXR Realty

I worked closely with the RXR executive team to put together the 2020 and 2021 Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) reports. The culture of the organization and the positive impacts on the people and communities where RXR operates are clear and unambiguous throughout both documents. “RXR’s 2020 ESG report described how we supported our communities during an unprecedented global pandemic. We found ways to safely co-exist with the virus and move forward. We continued our efforts to lower our carbon footprint even as we moved critical projects forward. In this year’s report, which relates to our performance in 2021 unless stated …

Lessons Learned from PPP

I worked closely with the President of the National Development Council to craft this op-ed highlighting the extraordinary work that NDC did to get PPP loans to truly small businesses and nonprofits — with the vast majority of forgivable loans going to WMBEs and businesses in low- and moderate-income communities. When big banks failed, small lenders saved small businesses August 11, 2020 07:30 AM Daniel Marsh   On Aug. 8, the Paycheck Protection Program—the federal government’s flawed but necessary small-business emergency lending program—came to an end. The program, designed to keep people employed through the initial Covid-19 crisis that brought the economy to a …

An Impact Look Book

Every now and then I get to put my journalism skills to work for my clients. For the National Development Council, I conceived, crafted and project-managed the organization’s first-ever Impact Look Book. Because NDC works behind the scenes on every aspect of economic development, it’s not always clear how this work affects real people’s lives. The Look Book features three uniquely impactful stories. A single father with two teenage sons finds an affordable home in a family-friendly neighborhood in Gallatin TN, where the average housing price has risen from $150,000 to $350,000 in the last decade. An immigrant family in …

Changing the Narrative …

Communicating complex policy issues is hard. And sometimes it’s made all the more challenging when only one side of the story is dominating the narrative. This is what’s happening with Opportunity Zones — a new tax incentive program meant to benefit low-income communities that is yielding very mixed results thus far. But that’s not the whole story. Working with the National Development Council and the Washington State Department of Commerce, together we crafted an important op-ed published in the Seattle Times showing how the State of Washington is developing a model approach to guiding OZ investment where it’s needed most. Read …

Preserving Housing and a Community

This is why I love working with the National Development Council. This fifty-year-old nonprofit does the hard work that other economic development organizations just don’t know how to do. In this case, NDC worked for five years to help Scotland, a community in Potomac, MD — founded in the late 1800s by formerly enslaved people — to upgrade its housing while maintaining affordability in one of the most expensive counties in the US. Three previous attempts to upgrade the outmoded housing ended in frustration until NDC got involved. Providing both technical financial assistance and hands-on community building expertise, NDC’s field director …