Are We Here Yet Podcast

We're telling the stories of entrepreneurs artists and other creative class warriors making a go of it in cities and small towns all over the country. The Are We Here Yet? Podcast blends topics of economic development, urban planning and arts and culture. We are the official podcast for SMGravesassociates.com.

AWHY? Music feature Extra: We Remember Saxophonist Lou Donaldson 11/17/2024

AWHY? Music feature: Celebrating Gershwin in Jazz 11/14/2024

The Case for Incremental Development 11/06/2024

The Case for Incremental Development Our guest is Noah Harper. I met Noah at the conference in Providence, RI. We were tasked by the organization to debate whether the Congress is positioned well as a leading voice in the current housing challenge before us all. Thus sparked some great discussion. Noah has been featured in He is a community planner for the firm J.M. Goldson. Noah is a strong advocate for incremental development and we're sure you will find inspiration in his seamless movement through themes of design excellence, craftsmanship to equity and democracy. In his own words, We are, broadly, in a crisis of housing affordability, of which one notable piece is the lack of supply. The question to me then becomes: how should we solve the supply issue? We’ve been experimenting with a lot of different methods of building in the last century, but a return to a more traditional way of building might yield the best result. I’m really interested in the work and writing of Christopher Alexander, an architecture professor working in the sixties and seventies who wrote a book called “The Timeless Way of Building.” It’s on many planners and architects' shelves, but I think some of the biggest ideas have been overlooked (at least until now). I like to think of it in terms of music. How did we arrive at different genres? How do they evolve over time? By people playing them, innovating, copying off one another. A mutually agreed-upon structure, but also room to innovate, for participation, for call and response. Memes are another great example too—order and variation and innovation. And one of Alexander’s big ideas is that our places grew up in the same way, too. It’s why so many of our towns and villages have a certain quality, and yet they’re not quite the same. This decentralized, memetic, fundamentally creative act is what motivates me as a planner and writer and advocate. It’s the way we achieve beauty and a more democratic order in our built environment, through more people building and taking part in their place. And, beyond the sort of beauty argument, I think you can make a really strong moral and economic case for it too. /episode/index/show/arewehereyetpodcast/id/33822587

Celebrating the Life of Saxophonist Claire Daly 10/30/2024

The North Adams Opportunity Scene 10/23/2024

Innova802: Activate with UVM’s Kendall Fortney 10/17/2024

Our Indigenous Peoples Day Special 10/11/2024

Our Indigenous Peoples Day Special For our latest Are We Here yet? podcast we offer four perspectives sure to keep you contemplating on this upcoming Indigenous People’s Day. Our Season III guest Doug Harris, retired archivist for the Narragansett Tribe spoke to us regarding . We feature two clips here, the first focused on answering the question, ‘what is this place and who are we?’ The second which ends our podcast focuses on his groundbreaking work alongside Smithsonian documentarian , which has dispelled many falsehoods about the peoples of this part of North America. How they lived, traded and thrived for thousands of years. Sandwiched between our clips of Doug Harris we offer contemporary native American poets and their work with poet and essayist Joshua Michael Stewart, a frequent guest of our show. We originally aired his reading of these six poems in 2021. Joshua is the author of three books of poetry, his latest being 2022’s ‘Love Something’. His soon to publish ‘Welcome Home, Russell Edson’ combines the graphic novel with the prose poem. He writes for M the Media Project under the feature, ‘The Way of Wind and Stream’. But first, our host Scott M. Graves reads from his 2020 essay ‘Borders’. Scott was investigating the early colonial New England period of King Philip's War for several years which led him to taking a deeper dive into the competing concepts over land ownership between indigenous and English colonial cultures. ‘It didn’t escape me at the time that I was doing this amateur investigative work while the question of immigration in the US was speeding into a raging crisis,’ he told us. ‘what results here are my thoughts on a very deep, very flawed piece of debris just underneath our skin that continues to leave scars on our culture. We can and should do better’. The issue h only become more polarizing and central to the presidential election in 2024. /episode/index/show/arewehereyetpodcast/id/33420282

Making Pee Pay w/ founder of BrightWater Tools plus Orrin Evans in The Jazz Room 09/28/2024

Innova802 Series: Why tech should START with employee ownership plus Orrin Evans in The Jazz Room 09/25/2024

Solving the Housing Crisis in Rutland, VT w/ the RRA’s Ed Bove plus composer Maria Schneider 09/19/2024

Solving the Housing Crisis in Rutland, VT w/ the RRA’s Ed Bove plus composer Maria Schneider We examine local real estate markets and the unique mix of property and economic development components at the local level here at the ‘Are We Here Yet?’ podcast so our listeners can find inspiration for their own local efforts back home. This episode host Scott Graves sat down with Ed Bove, Executive Director of the in Scott’s adoptive hometown of Rutland, VT. Scott found resonance with Ed in their shared interest in incremental development and generally a ‘Strong Towns’ approach to neighborhood building. The discussion centered on how Rutland and the RRA are working to assist private developers to realize current Given Vermont’s past as an often development-resistant region, this may seem like a tall order. There is little consensus on whether we need more housing at the broadest level, though municipal and state leadership understand there is a housing crisis affecting all of us, particularly working-class people in Vermont. Additional housing needs range from the state’s number of 36,000 units, Vermont Futures Project estimate a bit higher and to those estimates by Knowledge Towns of 75,000 or more. There is even more difference of opinion when it comes to what kind of housing and for whom it might be built for. Far from a complaint session, our discussion centered on the solutions being implemented through Ed and the RRA’s efforts along with other municipal players. Our conversation gave us an opportunity to discuss the efforts of , a national housing initiative working on a pilot in Rutland, VT. Ed’s thoughts immediately went to the innovative parts of BHM in creating new streams of development capital, an essential part of creating more interest in Rutland and the state of Vermont from emerging developers both local and from afar. And in the Jazz Room…We met with Orchestra Leader/Composer Maria Schneider at the Newport Jazz Festival. This show is a bit different as per Maria’s request she asked I play 30 seconds of music and one full composition from her project "Data Lords". As you listen to this interview she talks not only about creating her music, but defending the copyrights of her work in this world of free music streaming and music distributors charging artist exorbitant fees for their use digitally. /episode/index/show/arewehereyetpodcast/id/33131322