Molly and Jim are back with a special collaboration episode with "pod-friend" Shayle Kann from The Interchange podcast. They chat about the challenges of making our cities more climate resilient and the role of tech, government, insurance companies, and the public in securing our communities against the inevitable.  

For the final episode of our COVID miniseries, Molly and Jim consider the disparities in how people are getting around cities during the pandemic, and who is benefitting from closed streets and new forms of mobility. They talk to urban mobility expert Tamika Butler, who shares why she thinks bicycles are tools for social justice, and what she thinks tech companies should consider if they actually want to solve the mobility problems they say they do.

The people who go to work in other people's homes perform essential jobs - like house cleaners, nannies, elder care workers - but lack the same rights and protections as other workers. In the second installment of our coronavirus miniseries, Jim and Molly talk with Palak Shah of the National Domestic Workers Alliance about how the pandemic has affected these workers, and how the Alliance is building a new kind of safety net for them - online.

In this first installment of our COVID miniseries, Jim and Molly explore how the pandemic might transform our cities and focus on something we're all missing right now: going out to restaurants. They talk to Yi Chen from the restaurant tech startup Toast about how the pandemic will change the way we dine in, order out, and why he believes neighborhood restaurants will not become a thing of the beforetimes.

Are we at risk of creating a permanent digital underclass? Internet access has become essential for modern American life, but current policies don't treat it that way. In this special bonus episode, Jim and Molly talk to Maya Wiley about a core piece of the infrastructure for our tech future: broadband. Wiley, a digital equity expert and MSNBC contributor, breaks down the history of broadband access, the severity of the inequity, and what it costs us all when some people just can't get online. We also talk about local efforts to improve broadband access, including Wiley's own work in New York City to turn old phone booths into free Wifi kiosks.

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Can Wakanda's capital city teach us to build better cities in the real world? For as long as there have been movies, there have been fictional visions of tech-forward futures. But few cities on film have inspired the awe of urbanists like Black Panther's Golden City, devised by production designer Hannah Beachler. In this special bonus episode, Jim and Molly talk with Beachler about the role tech played in her meticulously crafted urban vision. Beachler, who won the Academy Award for her work in the film, helps us understand why the Wakandan city feels so right—and what she thinks some real-life tech-led urban designs are getting wrong.

Is tech making it easier for us to talk to our cities? Changed bus routes. A shuttered park. How many times has your city made a decision affecting you that you didn't know about until after it happened? This persistent communication gap is one of the great conundrums for many city leaders. And it hasn't necessarily gotten any better just because we're on apps and social media. What are cities doing to find us where we are? And is using tech a more effective way to get our feedback about proposed changes? Molly and Jim talk to Eyal Feder-Levy, whose startup ZenCity tracks opinions about city government through our online comments, including public social media posts; and Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton, Ohio, who is on the front lines of this communications struggle.

For more information on this episode, visit citylab.com/podcasts/technopolis. And email us your feedback to [email protected]. 

Will food delivery apps kill your favorite neighborhood restaurant? The tech-fueled delivery economy is already having a dramatic impact on how some restaurants do business. Will it also transform our neighborhoods? And should we feel guilty about ordering that coffee and donut directly to our door with a few taps on our phone? Molly and Jim talk with Leslie Silverglide, the CEO of the tech-savvy salad chain Mixt; and Amy Liu, vice president and director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.

For more information on this episode, visit citylab.com/podcasts/technopolis. And email us your feedback to [email protected]. 

Can tech help cities nudge us to live better lives, without things getting weird? In this episode, we look at how technology is making the popular behavioral science tool known as a "nudge" more prevalent in cities, from tackling sign-ups for food stamps to reducing congestion downtown. Molly and Jim talk with Emily Bailard, the CEO of InClass Today, a startup that uses nudges to help school districts reduce student absenteeism; and Anthony Barrows, managing director of Ideas42, a nonprofit that helps cities use these behavioral science tools to improve social outcomes.

For more information on this episode, visit citylab.com/podcasts/technopolis.

And email us your feedback to [email protected]. 

When a new tech innovation comes to town, we can't always know what its impacts will be before it floods the market. And yet, increasingly, some city governments and residents are having a particularly strong reaction to certain kinds of tech startups: Shut. It. Down. Is that the right reaction? Why exactly is that our impulse? And does it even matter what kind of tech we're talking about? On this episode, we look at what happens when a new tech idea creeps into one of the most fundamental parts of society: Housing. We examine the case of tech start-up Rentberry, a rental bidding platform, in Seattle.  Molly talks with Desiree Fields, an expert on the relationship between digital platforms and housing at the University of Sheffield; and Molly and Jim both chat with Nick Carr, acclaimed author of many books on the unexpected ways tech is messing with our lives.