5.18.15: Designing Affordable Housing & Comedian Tig Notaro Turns Tragedy Into Comedy

Despite the fact that New Hampshire has one of the nation’s lowest poverty rates and is often rated as a top spot to raise children, indicators show that the gap between poor and wealthy families is growing.  On today’s show we join NHPR’s series, The First Decade, with a broader view of the impact of housing and neighborhoods on a child’s well-being. Then, an inside look at what really goes into designing effective affordable housing and how even the most seemingly trivial details can make or break a project.

Listen to the full show

Kathy Dorgan is the principle architect at Dorgan Architecture and Planning. Jamie Blosser is co-founder of Sustainable Native Communities and  associate at Atkin Olshin Schade Architects. We spoke to them about the need to include residents when planning and designing housing and the importance of well designed housing and environments to help minimize health issues.

Nadia Anderson is an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Iowa State University where she co-directs the university’s Community Design Lab. We spoke to her about the public housing fails of the post war era and how planners and architects play a critical role.

Read more at this link: The Architecture & Design Of Affordable Housing

You may see check-cashing stores and pay-day lenders as predatory business models– and that may be true.  But as Roman Mars of the podcast 99% Invisible points out, the people who run these businesses are very smart about how they design their spaces – and conventional banks might benefit doing the same.

You can listen to this story again at PRX.org.

Tig Notaro is a stand-up comedian and soon-to-be memoirist. You can see her perform at the HOP at Dartmouth this Wednesday. She’ll also be performing at the Wilbur theatre in Boston on May 31^st. 

Read more at this link: Tig Notaro - Comedy Meets Tragedy

The specter of cancer looms large in our minds – and yet tumors themselves remain largely invisible to the people who have them. Producer Eric Molinsky has the story of an artist who sought to better understand her disease by turning an intangible diagnosis into physical art.  

You can listen to this story again at PRX.org.