Listen to my Interview with KFAI's Tom O'Connell on Jane Jacobs, Saint Paul Street Safety, and Twin Cities' Housing

I've been a long-time on-and-off volunteer with Twin Cities' priceless gem of a community radio station, KFAI, for well over ten years. We are so lucky to have KFAI as part of the Twin Cities, offering conversations, music, and culture that's simply not available anywhere else.

Their local talk programming is a great example. As MPR has -- for better and worse -- adopted more of a state and national focus over the years, there is a huge radio vacuum around local news and issues. KFAI's often excellent, volunteer-run news programming is a wonderful and under-appreciated resource. (Partly that's because there is so little capacity at KFAI to disseminate and repackage their content over the internet.)

This last Monday I spent an hour discussing Twin Cities' urban geography issues on Truth To Tell-KFAI with Tom O'Connell, Rico Morales, and Josh Lamere (sp?).

(Full disclosure: I used to be the volunteer engineer for the program ten years ago when Andy Driscoll was the host, and then I served on the board of CivicMediaMinnesota, the non-profit that runs the program, for many years.)

Tom and I chatted about a lot of topics I've been writing and thinking about lately, including the 4-3 "test diet" on Maryland, Jane Jacobs' legacy, an update on the Lowry Grove issue, the tension between aging and urbanism, anything else we could think of.

Here's the link to the TruthtoTell page. Listen at your leisure.

[Kids sitting on things outside the KFAI entrance in Minneapolis/Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.]

PS. Apologies for the heavy breathing! Also, the phones weren't working so nobody was really able to call in...