For this episode and the foreseeable future, we’re experimenting with a new podcast format, less linear, less binary, more conversational, informal, improvisational. We intend to focus on issues both of the moment and bigger picture, longer term, all related somehow to sustainable cities, this podcast’s soul’s purpose. We’ll still do more conventional episodes, with special guests, but will also mix it up with our alternative format.

To help on this new leg of our podcast journey, we have an additional cohost, Devon Bertram, in lieu of a guest. Devon’s an old friend and OG in the sustainable built environment field, about 20 years worth. She’s the VP of Sustainability Consulting at Stok, where she advises clients on how to define, develop, implement, and manage sustainability programs and standards for their building portfolios that align with their corporate brand, values, and purpose.

Appropriately, given our new format, we figured we’d focus this episode on the topic of the “new work,” work from home, hybrid, return to the office and other matters, like essential workers – hospital staff, janitors, sanitation workers, police -- who, no matter what the office plan du jour, have to show up somewhere in physical form. There are no alternatives.

And what about climate change and the huge impact our commuter patterns have on GHG emissions? Transportation is now the largest source of carbon emission in the US, bigger than the energy sector, or buildings. It therefore stands to reason, and climate science, that reducing our vehicle miles traveled to and from work (the overwhelming majority of which are by automobile, not trains or buses, let alone electric ones powered by a clean grid) ought to be a priority climate mitigation strategy. It isn’t.

And will office/commercial real estate owners and brokers sit idly by as they watch their tenants opt-out and their office parks wither?

We’re delighted to welcome Devon and to jump into our new format. We hope you enjoy it.