The Cities We Need: A Talk with Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani
Release Date: 03/09/2025
Are We Here Yet Podcast
Are We Here Yet? Host Scott Graves chosen profession was as a performing artist. In this episode he pays tribute to two of his idols who recently passed away, Sly Stone of Sly and the Family Stone fame and Brian Wilson, songwriter and member of the California iconic Beach Boys.
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When you connect with a born to be entrepreneur you know it. In our experience we place all creatives; the artists, the dreamers, the community builders in this category of human experience. Our guest for this two part episode exemplifies what we’re talking about. In a little more than an hour, and co-hosts Scott Graves and Ryan Munn explored Ron’s development of digital solutions for aiding mission-driven organizations, really community building in Web3 that is meaningful to the human world, focusing on Ron’s work with AI for social impact ( and ), philanthropy...
info_outlineAre We Here Yet Podcast
When you connect with a born to be entrepreneur you know it. In our experience we place all creatives; the artists, the dreamers, the community builders in this category of human experience. Our guest for this two part episode exemplifies what we’re talking about. In a little more than an hour, and co-hosts Scott Graves and Ryan Munn explored Ron’s development of digital solutions for aiding mission-driven organizations, really community building in Web3 that is meaningful to the human world, focusing on Ron’s work with AI for social impact ( and ), philanthropy...
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It was a high point for co-hosts Ryan Munn and Scott M. Graves when they were joined last week by founder Peter Voss. Peter’s a long-time innovator, founder, advocate and thinker concerning Artificial Intelligence(he coined the term artificial general intelligence) whose insights shared with us are making us think further, dig deeper into our own advocacy for the best use of AI in order to realize a benefit to a maximum spectrum of the worlds’ population. This is your opportunity to invest with one of the world’s most thoughtful innovation leaders in...
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Host Scott Graves is once again joined by Stephen Box, Scott’s partner in Partners in Housing, small scale housing developments in Vermont and columnist under the column header, the accidental activist. Stephen is also our co-host for The Housers Podcast. Stephen and Scott explain for listeners how a more aggressive approach to building market rate housing in the US could benefit the affordable housing market. Our ideas are backed by We also touch upon why providing economic development programming to empower local residents, coupled with increasing home values in a given...
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Vermont isn't just shrinking in population, its aging. The state has 30,000 fewer working age citizens between 25-40 then it did 25 years ago. This, while modest population gains during the Covid-19 pandemic has reversed. For those of us at the Innova802 Crew, we see the effects every day. Many citizens on fixed incomes, who represent a larger share of the population, cannot afford increases to taxes for education, infrastructure and public healthcare subsidies. For many, the gut reaction is to say, no new Vermont citizens, no new Vermont students, no new Vermont...
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Open Innovation has become essential to good science being completed by our institutions. Our guest this week, Steve Rader speaks with experience on how open innovation, rather crowdsourcing has and will shape good science work moving forward. Steven recently retired from NASA and is an expert in open innovation after 36 years with NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. We discussed his experiences leveraging crowdsourcing and open innovation to achieve significant cost savings and accelerate technological advancements at NASA, including nearly 900 successful...
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Sharing the mic with Interchain.Live and fellow Innova802 crew member Ryan Munn brought Richard Lowe to our virtual studios for a discussion regarding Rich’s experience as a The discussion quickly deepened to include his perspective on building the bionic worker: getting business to leverage tech to support workers as opposed to leveraging tech to replace them. The importance of leveraging older workers who are living longer and what experienced professionals bring to the table for companies and society. Rich is a deep well of experience on a number of important...
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Host and founder Scott Graves is asking some tough questions for all of us to ask in our own communities. How do we get beyond a place of manufactured scarcity and support all forms of private and public housing development to meet our middle market needs? Find Scott’s Latest Essays from An Artist Audio recording on and the . Find his housing advocacy work, along with Housers Stephen Box and Mike Waugh at
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Athens, GA is home to Building, Inc and founder Matthew Schneider. Matthew is no stranger to a multi-disciplinary approach to solving some of the toughest challenges for real estate developers and tech leaders alike. Our discussion hit upon some real-world solutions-oriented work he and his team has done and sage perspective on software use in real estate, on raising and using capital, on building your business to be truly market-responsive.
info_outlineGabrielle Bendiner-Viani has spent 20+ years working to understand what’s in a neighborhood by asking the question, ‘Where would you take someone on a guided tour of your neighborhood?’ In her 2024 book, The Cities We Need: Essential Stories of Everyday Places Viani walks us through the tours she participated in from dozens of her neighbors in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn and Mosswood in Oakland, CA, two cities she and her family spent time getting to know intimately. As a photographer, urbanist and keen storyteller Gabrielle brings to our attention important considerations that truly make you think hard about what makes a neighborhood. What it means to be a part of a place or really what makes our everyday lives worth living.
Our conversation made me think hard here at the Are We Here Yet? podcast about what kind of a society we want to build and who we want to be in the decades ahead. How can we learn from our mistakes? How can we appreciate the micro-moments that make our lives in a neighborhood worth living and how do we steward a place to provide that for all citizens?
You know a book and a conversation is good when it leaves you asking more questions than providing answers. And our conversation with Gabrielle was just such an experience.