How can a one-day event spark lasting change? How can community design be open sourced? What should we be measuring if we want to gauge positive change?

I talk with transportation and placemaking expert, Andrew Howard about his experiences doing just this with Team Better Block. Andrew is the director of placemaking at WGI, a national design and professional services firm leading in technology-based solutions for the construction of public infrastructure and real estate development. Andrew co-founded Better Block in 2010 as a transportation and placemaking focused public outreach firm that temporarily re-engineers auto-dominated, blighted, and underused urban areas into vibrant centers.

In Episode 11 of Shared Space, Kati Peditto, an award winning, environmental psychologist and professor. We discuss how social needs change throughout the life span, how to design for impromptu connections, what young adults really want and how to engage them, and what spatial justice has to do with the way we design and how to better listen and advocate for the people using the space

In Episode 10 of Shared Space, I talk with Julianne Holt-Lundstad, who studies social relationships, stress and our health. She is a renowned professor of psychology and neuroscience. Her seminal research identified social isolation and loneliness as risk factors for early death. We discuss how she came to see how the built environment can impact social connection in our everyday lives, and so much more.