As a new year begins, we take a moment to look at the future.

This episode features two fascinating conversations. First we talk with Futurist JT Mudge about how understanding changes helps us imagine, design, and prepare for the cities of tomorrow. Then Seattle based historian, Feliks Banel, highlights how the lense through which we imagine a future can shape the world of tomorrow.

JT Mudge is an award-winning futurist passionate about sustainability, ethics, and ancestral futures. He holds a masters of science in foresight from the University of Houston, where he is an adjunct professor teaching foresight and change theory. He currently serves as a Senior Strategic Foresight Advisor for The United Nations Development Programme.

The ideas and opinions JT expresses in this conversation are his own, and do not necessarily reflect The University of Houston, the UNDP, or any other organization JT is affiliated with.

Feliks Banel is a Seattle-based historian, radio producer, and longtime contributor to public radio, where he specializes in Pacific Northwest history and civic memory. His work often explores how major moments—like the 1962 Century 21 Exposition—continue to shape the identity, culture, and physical landscape of Seattle today.

(Extended conversation with Feliks available here)

JT Mudge

United Nations Development Programme

Metropolis

The Toynbee Convector

Feliks Banel - Cascade of History

Seattle Worlds Fair

Downtown Seattle Association

In this New Year’s episode of The Sidewalk Ballet, Chip sits down with Josh Yeager — a deeply thoughtful placemaker and one of the most generous champions of this work — to talk about what he’s seeing on the ground right now. Not in theory, but in real places, with real people.

Josh brings a wide lens shaped by years of practice and support for others doing this work, helping surface the patterns, tensions, and quiet shifts that don’t always make headlines — but that say a lot about where cities are headed.

That conversation sits within a broader reflection on the Sidewalk Ballet season so far. Drawing from conversations with guests including Karen Christensen, Jay Pitter, Nate Storring, Kady Yellow, Majora Carter, and others, this episode translates big hopes for our cities into everyday practices — the small, local actions that actually shape community.

Josh Yeager

Starkey Strategies

Streets Department

FIFA Cities

Cities are often shaped by experts, policy, and process. But what happens when young people are trusted to help lead the work?

In this episode of The Sidewalk Ballet, we explore what cities can become when youth are treated not as voices to consult, but as collaborators to trust.

We begin in Boulder, Colorado with Mara Mintzer, co-founder and Executive Director of Growing Up Boulder, a nationally recognized leader in youth civic engagement and child-friendly city practices.

Mara challenges a core assumption of city-building: that children are future citizens, rather than current ones. Through partnerships with city departments, schools, and community organizations, Growing Up Boulder has helped young people shape master plans, parks, transportation systems, and public spaces across the city.

Mara is also co-author of Placemaking with Children and Youth: Participatory Practices for Planning Sustainable Communities, a practical guide for youth-centered civic engagement.

The second half of the episode shifts to New York City and a team of fellows from the Urban Design Forum’s Forefront Fellowship Program.

Through a six-month, youth-centered research project, the team explored a simple but powerful question: What could a library be if young people helped design it?

Working with teens across Manhattan and Brooklyn—including at the High Line and the Free Black Women’s Library in Bed-Stuy—the team built a process grounded in trust, collaboration, and care.

Across Boulder and New York, a common lesson emerges: youth don’t just offer opinions — they offer clarity.

They help us see cities not as systems to manage, but as places to belong.

This episode is an invitation to rethink who we listen to, how we design, and what becomes possible when we trust young people to help shape our shared spaces.

Mara Mintzer

Mara Ted Talk - How kids can help design cities

Placemaking with Children and Youth

Child Friendly Map

Child Friendly Cities

Youth-led Libraries of the Future

Zine Archive

High Line Fellows: Emerging Leaders Program

The Free Black Woman’s Library

Claudia Dishon

Nichole Aquino