The Help-Yourself City

For centuries, the world's greatest minds were stumped by the deadly mystery of longitude, until an obsessive underdog entered the fray and changed navigation forever. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a whole week early. Start ...  Show more

This is the seventh episode of our ongoing series breaking down the U.S. Constitution. This month, Roman and Elizabeth discuss Article IV, which outlines the relationship between states and between states and the federal government. They add the 10th Amendment to the conversation ...  Show more

What should urban planners design, and what should they leave to citizens and markets? To answer that question we summon none other than Alain Bertaud, an urban planner who has worked in major cities across multiple continents. He is a senior fellow at NYU's Marron Institute of U ...  Show more

Arterial roads lead to the heart of a city, parks are a city's lungs; as for it's bowels… let's not go there. But why do we continue to speak of the city in bodily terms? Marco Amati, author of The City and the Super-Organism: A History of Naturalism in Urban Planning, joins Blue ...  Show more

Computational models of urbanism—smart cities that use data-driven planning and algorithmic administration—promise to deliver new urban efficiencies and conveniences. Yet these models limit our understanding of what we can know about a city. A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban ...  Show more

The Boston Mayor’s Office was having a problem: Not enough residents were reporting their own problems into the city. Sure, the 311 phone line had its old school devotees. But Boston decided they could reach a whole new population by creating a brand new 311 mobile app. The only ...  Show more