austin

Austin

chicago

Chicago

denver

Denver

lasvegas

Las Vegas

madison

Madison

nashville

Nashville

philly

Philly

pittsburgh

Pittsburgh

portland

Portland

saltlake

Salt Lake

seattle

Seattle

twincities

Twin Cities

We make podcasts and newsletters that connect people with the cities they love.

City Cast YCCBB

Imagine opening your mailbox and finding $100 in vouchers you can hand to any local candidate you like. 

Could public financing get more cities involved in local elections? For the last decade, the City of Seattle has issued $100 in vouchers to every voter to donate to the candidate of their choice in municipal elections. City Cast CEO David Plotz talks with <a href="https://seattle.citycast.fm/">City Cast Seattle</a> podcast host Jane C. Hu about how these Democracy Vouchers work, how many people are participating, and what the impact on local elections has been. Plus, is the “Seattle Freeze” a real thing?
Is there something your city is doing that we should be talking about? <a href="mailto:yourcitycouldbebetter@citycast.fm">Email David now! </a>
We’re also on Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/yourcitycouldbebetter">@yourcitycouldbebetter</a>
Looking to advertise on Your City Could Be Better? <a href="https://citycast.fm/advertise">Check out our options</a>.

Why Seattle Gives Every Voter $100, Plus, Making Friends in a New City

That’s been the deal in Seattle for almost a decade. Since 2017, every Seattle voter has been mailed four $25 “democracy vouchers” to assign to the municipal candidate of their choice, funded by a small property tax — and the program’s effects have been striking.

Total campaign contributions jumped 53% after launch, the number of unique donors surged 350%, and small donations under $100 now make up an outsized share of campaign dollars.

Whether all of that adds up to “better” elections is exactly the kind of question YCCBB was built to chew on. David Plotz talks with City Cast Seattle host Jane C. Hu about how the vouchers actually work in practice, who’s using them and who isn’t, what the program has done to the kinds of candidates who can run, and whether public financing might be the missing piece in cities where local races starve for attention. Seattle's program appears so successful that it left David wondering: why 

 more cities adopted this yet? Maybe it's time yours did; Your City Could Be Better was created to inspire conversations like this across the country.

Hit play and decide whether your city should be cutting its own checks

What is the ‘Your City Could Be Better’ Podcast?

Cities are great. But they could be better! That’s why every Friday, City Cast CEO David Plotz sits down with local insiders from across the City Cast podcast network, to talk through what their cities are doing right and sometimes wrong, the weird things they’re trying, and the surprising successes — so that we can all learn how to make our cities a little bit better.

Listen to “Your City Could Be Better” on 

Seattle began sending democracy vouchers to voters in 2017. 

Since 2017, every Seattle voter has been mailed four $25 “democracy vouchers” to assign to the municipal candidate of their choice, funded by a small property tax — and the program’s effects have been striking.

Seattle's Giving Voters $100 to Spend on Democracy

These select episodes of Your City Could Be Better are the place to start if you're new to the show. They showcase why this podcast exists, and why it's necessary: to highlight the solutions that people are introducing, fine-tuning, and ultimately perfecting to make their cities better. Listen today so that yours can too.

Deep Dives

Every driver has experienced that stomach-clenching concern — did a speed camera just flash at me? In Washington, D.C.. it’s a little more common than elsewhere. That’s because D.C. is the most camera-saturated city in America. 

It’s a real-time experiment meant to make the city safer 

 bring in an astonishing amount of revenue, and the numbers are staggering. In 2025, the District pulled in nearly $270 million from more than 500 automated traffic enforcement cameras — including a single camera that issued $9 million in tickets, and one residential intersection locals call “the million-dollar stop sign.” The cameras catch more than just speeding: rolling stops, red-light runs, bus-lane violations, even trucks taking the wrong route.

But has all that enforcement made D.C. safer? More than ten years into DC’s Vision Zero initiative, pedestrian fatalities haven’t fallen. The cameras slow drivers down where they’re posted, but some streets and intersections remain notoriously dangerous, in need of redesign — and the city has no teeth against the Maryland and Virginia commuters who rack up some of the largest unpaid balances.

David Plotz talks with City Cast DC co-host Bridget Todd about how the system really works, whether $270 million is making the city safer or just filling its coffers, and what the deeper fix actually looks like: narrower streets, slower road geometry, and real consequences for serial offenders. It’s a conversation that gets at the nuances of traffic safety, and leaves the listener with a better understanding of how traffic cameras can help, and what additional solutions they should advocate for in 

Only somebody who covers DC every day could elevate a discussion like this — which is why "Your City Could Be Better" hands the mic to City Cast's local hosts in the cities where we have the deepest expertise.

Listen now to decide whether your city should be aiming a few hundred more lenses at the street

Every driver has experienced that stomach-clenching concern — did a speed camera just flash at me? In Washington, D.C.. it’s a little more common than elsewhere. That’s because D.C. is the most camera-saturated city in America, as part of the city's experiment to tamp down on traffic violations. 

People Hate DC's Traffic Cameras, But Do They Make the City Safer? 

Priyanka Tilve

If you’ve ever stood at a bus stop with no place to sit, you know the frustration that sparked one of the most charming acts of civic rebellion in America. 

A grassroots group called To Nashville, With Love has built and quietly installed more than 50 handmade wooden benches at bus stops across Nashville. They didn't secure permits, ask for permission, or go through a bureaucratic process. They just built the benches! With lumber, screws, and the conviction that a place to sit is one of the basic things that makes a city welcoming.

The Nashville Department of Transportation wasn't pleased. Citing right-of-way concerns, NDOT confiscated more than a dozen of the benches, prompting volunteers to retrieve some of them and announce a bench-building party with the rallying cry: “For every seat removed, two shall take its place.” Now the city is trying to fold the effort into its formal Tactical Urbanism Program, which lets residents pilot their own street-level fixes.

David Plotz talks with City Cast Nashville host Marie Cecile Anderson about the whole strange standoff: what guerrilla urbanism gets right, why a tourist-magnet city has been so slow on the basics of public infrastructure, and whether DIY can ever scale to fix what governments won’t. 

Nashville’s guerilla bench project isn’t perfect, but it is serving the public — in a way that other cities should be watching.

Tune in to this episode of “Your City Could Be Better” to 

assess whether your city needs a guerrilla movement of its own

If you’ve ever stood at a bus stop with no place to sit, you know the frustration that sparked one of the most charming acts of civic rebellion in America. A grassroots group called To Nashville, With Love has built and quietly installed more than 50 handmade wooden benches at bus stops across Nashville — no permits, no public meetings, no permission. Just lumber, screws, and the conviction that a place to sit is one of the basic things that makes a city welcoming.

Nashville's Rogue Bench Movement

Nearly every U.S. city is wrestling with the same uncomfortable problem: how do you revive downtown foot traffic and resuscitate local businesses when everyone's working from home? 

With the pressure of the NFL Draft upon them, Pittsburgh tried a bold solution. The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership rolled out a rent abatement program that pays up to half a small business’s monthly rent — capped at $2,000 a month for the first year — for tenants willing to set up in a vacant storefront and sign a multi-year lease. 

So far the program has helped fill space with names like Origin Story Coffee and Confleurrti flower shop, part of a broader push that saw 28 new street-level retailers open downtown over the past year, alongside an $85 million investment in public spaces like Market Square and Point State Park.

The harder question is whether subsidizing rent produces a downtown that thrives on its own now that the NFL cameras have packed up. David Plotz sits down with City Cast Pittsburgh host Megan Harris to dig into why downtown hollowed out, what kinds of businesses the program is actually attracting, and what other revitalization plans are quietly in the works. It’s exactly the kind of local solution that other cities could learn from — the type of project that “Your City Could Be Better” was created to spotlight.

 to find out whether Pittsburgh’s bet is one your city should be making, too.

Nearly every U.S. city is wrestling with the same uncomfortable problem: how do you revive downtown foot traffic and resuscitate local businesses when everyone's working from home? With the pressure of the NFL Draft upon them, Pittsburgh tried a bold solution. The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership rolled out a rent abatement program that pays up to half a small business’s monthly rent — capped at $2,000 a month for the first year — for tenants willing to set up in a vacant storefront and sign a multi-year lease.

Deep Dives

Seattle's Giving Voters $100 to Spend on Democracy

City Cast

Why Seattle Gives Every Voter $100, Plus, Making Friends in a New City

What is the ‘Your City Could Be Better’ Podcast?

Share article

Deep Dives

People Hate DC's Traffic Cameras, But Do They Make the City Safer?

Nashville's Rogue Bench Movement

Pittsburgh's Big Bet: Can a Rent Discount Save Downtown?