Videos

What is a Walkability Study, and Why Should You Do One?

Jeff Speck, one the nation’s leading pedestrian experts, joined the Maryland Department of Planning and the Smart Growth Network to explain his approach in Oklahoma City and other communities, how walkability studies are conducted, and how local planners can work with neighborhoods, business groups and citizens to complete similar studies of their own.

The Monsanto Papers A Conversation about Cancer and Accountability

Lee Johnson was just an average middle-aged husband and father until a terminal cancer diagnosis after a large exposure to the weed killer Roundup thrust him into a global debate over the safety of Monsanto’s popular product. Lee became the first person to take Monsanto to court and prove that Monsanto’s 40-year-old Roundup products cause a type of cancer called non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Replenish: Supporting the Virtuous Cycle of Water and Prosperity

Humans have long disrupted the natural water cycle. Yet we continue to suffer from droughts, floods and other disruptions despite building dams and levees and completing other feats of engineering. What if, instead of further disrupting the water cycle, we sought to repair and replenish it?

Urban Reads: Angie Schmitt

Journalist Angie Schmitt discussed her book, Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America. Right of Way unveiled a crisis rooted in both inequality and the undeterred reign of the automobile in our cities.

Webinar: Strategies for System Change

Solving today’s wicked sustainability challenges requires system change. But as the 2020 US election illustrated, the nation is so divided and dug in that we need new strategies for leadership. We can’t rely on elected officials, political parties, chief executives, or others in positional authority to lead the systems change we need.

Public Health/Planetary Health/One Health

The current pandemic has starkly revealed what the most thoughtful experts from a wide range of fields, from public health to environmental justice to ecology, have been telling us for decades: human health is completely interconnected with the health of ecosystems and with social equity.

How Parks Can Make Communities More Sustainable and Resilient

Parks and recreation systems have evolved in remarkable ways over the past two decades. No longer just playgrounds and ballfields, parks and open spaces have become essential green infrastructure with the potential to contribute to community resiliency and sustainability. To capitalize on this potential, the parks and recreation system planning process must evolve as well. This is a 90-minute educational session about how to work within your community to use parks to move the sustainability needle and generate multiple community co-benefits.

An Inside Look: A Falconer's Journey with Rodney Stotts

Rodney Stotts is one of America’s few Black master falconers, and author of Bird Brother: A Falconer's Journey and the Healing Power of Wildlife. In this webinar with the National Audubon Society, Rodney shares his story as a Black child facing dangerous threats, and how he transformed his life through the healing power of nature.

Gray to Green Communities: A Call to Action on the Housing and Climate Crises

US cities are facing the joint challenge of the climate crisis and the lack of housing that is affordable and healthy. In her new book, Gray to Green Communities, affordable-housing expert Dana Bourland argues that we need to move away from a gray housing model to a green model that considers the health and well-being of residents, their communities, and the planet.

Revolutionary Power: An Activist’s Guide to the Energy Transition

Shalanda Baker explains how this unique moment in history provides an unprecedented opening for a deeper transformation of the energy system, and thus, an opportunity to transform society.