This summer a group of high school students brought a whole new meaning to foreign exchange programs.

Wendy Rojas of Koreatown immersed herself in Sioux Falls, S.D. Expecting to see Mt. Rushmore, she instead found herself setting the record straight about her hometown. No, she explained to locals, her neighborhood is not overrun with gangs and rife with gunfire like they’d seen in the movies.

Maggie Quine of Kilgore, Texas, was just as shocked with what she had to clarify to L.A. teens visiting her hometown. No, Texans don’t get around on horseback.

Read more at the Los Angeles Times.

The Power of the Commons: Policy, Practice & Systems Change in America’s Public Spaces

Learn game-changing strategies to achieve key social outcomes by transforming public spaces in your city.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1, 2023

1:00PM EASTERN

Join Next City for our live Solutions of the Year virtual event series. You will once again be introduced directly to the practitioners and writers highlighted in the “21 Best Solutions of 2021” special issue. Together we’ll explore solutions to the year’s many challenges, ranging from climate action to countering systemic racism. Anyone working for greater justice and equity in cities will be able to take inspiration from this event into 2022.

Everyone who buys a ticket will receive a copy of our annual Solutions of the Year special issue print magazine.

At Next City’s Solutions of the Year presentations, speeches and panel discussions, you will hear from dozens of speakers who made change happen around issues such as guaranteed income, scalable climate responses, collective organizing, small business recovery, anti-racism, and affordable housing. In this time of transformation, our editors have amplified programs and movements that showcase how communities organize to achieve liberation from systems and cultures of oppression. Next City’s mission to elevate positive change matters now more than ever.

This multi-day convening, which includes eight sessions, will frame the conversation for 2022. You can purchase a single ticket now to all of the events for just $50, or register for each event individually. The individual event listings will be published in the coming weeks.

Find out more and RSVP here.

In cities across the United States, affordable housing policies are moving beyond simply building homes for low-income residents. Accessible housing can be the starting point in a drive to advance goals related to climate change mitigation, anti-displacement, equitable internet access and more.

Join Next City Housing Correspondent Roshan Abraham as he leads a panel discussion with city officials from Austin, Boston and New York City to discuss programs in those cities that highlight the Right to Return, net-zero emissions housing projects, and mandatory broadband access in all new affordable housing construction.

Solutions of the Year is a multi-day virtual convening, including seven sessions, that will frame the conversation for 2022. You can purchase a single ticket now to all of the events for just $50, or pay what you wish by registering for each event individually. All who donate will receive a copy of our annual Solutions of the Year special issue magazine.

Learn more and RSVP here.

Our cultural infrastructure in cities across America – the spaces where creative people and professionals live, work, make, rehearse, present, and perform – is under threat. Even before the pandemic, museums, artist and recording studios, rehearsal spaces, and independent music venues and theaters have been feeling the squeeze of growing development pressure and restrictive planning policy, rising rents, and changing business and revenue models across the creative industries. And while the pandemic has had a profound impact across the economy, it has been uniquely brutal for cities’ creative economy and cultural sectors. Due to these sectors’ dependence on in-person events, many cultural venues saw revenue losses of up to 90 percent, and some of our cities’ most beloved cultural spaces have closed permanently.

The thought of a post-pandemic without the arts and cultural ecosystems that gives our cities their sense of place and community is a bleak one.

Find out more and RSVP here.

Soul City – ​Film Screening and Session discussion

DAY 1 | August 5th | 12 pm to 1:30 pm ET

Soul City is a planned community in North Carolina that was first proposed in 1969 by Floyd McKissick, a civil rights leader and director of the Congress of Racial Equality. Soul City was one of thirteen model city projects under the Urban Growth and New Community Development Act. The city was intended to be a community built and open to all races, but placed emphasis on providing opportunities for minorities and the poor.

This event includes a 30 min film screening of Soul City followed by a panel discussion.

Learn more and RSVP here.

Please join us to discuss Civic Space in Los Angeles.

With the election, pandemic and social justice still top of mind as we enter the Fall, people are also thinking about what our lives and common spaces may be like as we begin to reconnect.

With prospects of better testing, a vaccine, and a change in leadership, how will our transportation and open spaces evolve? Will streets given over to pedestrians, restaurants, bicycles remain like that? How can parks and other civic gathering places better accommodate the diverse needs of citizens in these new circumstances, especially the elderly and those with less access to traditional open spaces? How can the design of neighborhoods effect our public health, economics, education, civic life? 

This panel will include experts discussing the past, present, future of LA’s civic spaces in relation to neighborhoods, urban design, and environmental justice: how we got here, where we are now, and potential solutions for the healthy and beautiful city in which all can thrive. 

Free Registration Here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_eK7CJrqFStCqjNrydEqXEQ

Learn what cities, developers and restaurants are doing to help the restaurant industry and Main Streets survive amidst, and even thrive despite, the impacts of COVID-19. Hear from experts on both short and long-term effects of social distancing protocols and how present & future urban design and policies can be beneficial to the urban fabric and streetscapes. Insights will be shared and discussed amongst panelists from these different vantage points, as well as what to expect with Al Fresco 2.0 and the evolving urban fabric.

Learn more and register here.

On Wednesday, September 16 at 1 p.m. Eastern time, join Next City for a webinar with guest presenter Lindsey Walker, who will discuss how Philadelphia maintained clean parks in the face of pandemic related budget cuts.

Due to the pandemic, more and more folks have begun to flock to outdoor green spaces for recreation. Unfortunately, the pandemic has also impacted how these parks are being managed. Parks in Philadelphia saw the cancelation of hundreds of volunteer events. Additionally, park maintenance was slashed due to budget cuts. With an increase in park usage came an increase in litter and fewer people to clean it up. 

To address this problem, Love Your Park, a collaboration between Fairmount Park Conservancy, Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, and Philadelphia’s Park Friends Network developed a solo cleanup program to replace the collaboration’s usual group volunteer events. This initiative offers Philadelphians a safe outdoor activity that simultaneously provides the city with critical park maintenance, thus creating clean and positive spaces for all. 

Volunteers are encouraged to clean up their local parks alone or with other members of their household. Love Your Park’s Solo Cleanup Program provides Philly residents with clean-up kits that include gloves, trash bags, cleanup instructions, safety and social distancing tips, and a Fairmount Park Conservancy bandanna. Additionally, the organization encourages volunteers to track the amount of litter they remove from the parks. 

To date, Love Your Park has engaged more than 500 volunteers and distributed more than 400 cleanup kits. They’ve also raised over $2,000 in donations to support the program and recruited new members to their organization. This has resulted in over 500 hours of service. 

“Many of us feel a bit helpless right now, and many of us are seeking a way to find peace and community during a truly difficult time,” says Walker. “This program is giving people something positive and tangible to do, and encouraging people to explore our parks.”

Walker is the volunteer and environmental program manager at Fairmount Park Conservancy. She is developing the Conservancy’s first volunteer leadership and environmental

education programs and also organizes Love Your Park. Lindsey has a Master of Environmental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and her favorite park in Philly is FDR Park.

This webinar is to pay what you wish to register. Pay any amount that you would like or nothing at all. Those who become sustaining members of at least $5 a month, or who make a one-time donation of at least $20, may receive “19 Best Solutions of 2019” — Next City’s solutions of the year magazine. Your contribution toward this seminar will be used to find even more amazing guests, cover hosting fees and organize seminars like this one more frequently. A video of the webinar will be made available to those who register.

RSVP here.

Lauren Elkin and Leslie Kern join in conversation about feminist challenges to urban life.

In Feminist City, through history, personal experience and popular culture Leslie Kern exposes what is hidden in plain sight: the social inequalities built into our cities, homes, and neighborhoods. Kern offers an alternative vision of the feminist city. Taking on fear, motherhood, friendship, activism, and the joys and perils of being alone, Kern maps the city from new vantage points, laying out an intersectional feminist approach to urban histories and proposes that the city is perhaps also our best hope for shaping a new urban future.

Leslie Kern is an associate professor of geography and environment and director of women's and gender studies at Mount Allison University. She is the author of Sex and the Revitalized City: Gender, Condominium Development, and Urban Citizenship.

Part cultural meander, part memoir, Lauren Elkin's Flâneuse takes us on a distinctly cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she's lived. We are shown the paths beaten by such flâneuses as the cross-dressing nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, the Parisian artist Sophie Calle, the wartime correspondent Martha Gellhorn, and the writer Jean Rhys. With tenacity and insight, Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis.

Lauren Elkin's essays have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times Book Review, frieze, and The Times Literary Supplement, and she is a contributing editor at The White Review.

Find out more and RSVP here.