Environmental Justice

Human Health & the Environment

ENVN4320

topic

Published

Thu Sep 3, 2026

Modified

Sat Aug 29, 2026

Class Meetings

Dates: 2026-09-03T16:00:00

Introduction to Environmental Justice Printable PDF

Videos or Films Watched

A Brief History of Environmental Justice

ProPublica, 08 04, 2017

Video (3:35)

Description

Landfills, chemical waste facilities and power plants are more often built in poor and minority communities, which don’t have the power or money to advocate for themselves.

For decades, these communities have called for environmental justice: the idea that people shouldn’t be forced to deal with more pollution because they belong to a certain race, national origin or income bracket.

It’s a simple notion, but America has struggled for decades to implement any policies that actually protect poor and minority communities from environmental toxins. Now, President Trump’s budget seeks to end the Office of Environmental Justice and cut overall funding to the EPA by 31%. What will happen to the marginalized communities that most need a government advocate?

Images:

CNN, Fox News, MTV, AP, The EcoLogic Channel, José da Vede, Chicago Sun Times, St. Louis Public Radio, Leroy Woodson via The Atlantic, Frank J Aleksandrowicz via The Atlantic, Harry Shaefer via The Atlantic, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Julie Dermanksy, CBS News

Music:

“Climbing the Mountain” - Podington Bear

“Falcon Hood Tight” - Podington Bear

Transcript

Environmental justice concept

0:06 · Nationally the facilities where we dump our garbage and process dangerous chemicals tend to be located in poor and minority communities.

0:14 · The people who live there have little or no protection from the industries around them.

0:18 · And things could get worse.

0:22 · So, there’s this idea of environmental justice.

0:24 · It’s pretty simple: Communities shouldn’t be forced to deal with more pollution because they belong to a certain race, national origin or income bracket.

0:33 · Yet, America has struggled over the years to implement any serious policy that actually protects these communities.

0:38 · So, let’s lay out the ways the government has failed them.

The fight for justice

0:42 · “We will not allow Warren County to become a dump site.”

0:47 · The fight for environmental justice took off in 1982 when residents of Warren County, North Carolina mounted mass demonstrations against a plan to dump contaminated soil in a landfill in their community.

0:59 · The EPA investigated four similar landfills in southern states and found that they were all located in black or low-income neighborhoods.

1:07 · In 1987, the United Church of Christ Racial Justice Commission found that around the country, hazardous waste facilities were more likely to be located in mostly minority communities.

1:18 · Amid mounting proof, the federal government was forced to act.

Government action and policy

1:23 · So, in 1992 President George H.W. Bush founded the Office of Environmental Justice inside the EPA.

1:30 · Two years later, President Bill Clinton signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to consider environmental justice in all of their policies, as well as extending civil rights protection to environmental discrimination.

1:42 · But Congress never passed a bill to make Clinton’s executive order law.

Political shifts and delays

1:47 · Then came George W. Bush.

1:50 · His administration shifted the focus of the Office of Environmental Justice from protecting low-income and minority communities to “all people,” Leaving vulnerable populations without a federal environmental advocate.

2:02 · “80% of New Orleans, including much of downtown, is under water.”

2:05 · Under Bush, many environmental civil rights claims were rejected or delayed for years.

2:11 · In 2009, after President Barack Obama’s election, his administration recommitted to environmental justice.

Congressional inaction

2:18 · Generally speaking, in this country a lot of environmentally problematic facilities tend to be located in places where poor folks live.

2:30 · Yet, during the two years Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the White House they didn’t file a single bill focused on strengthening environmental justice protections.

2:40 · Passing major environmental legislation faded further when Republicans took control of Congress in the 2010 midterm elections.

Current EPA threats

2:47 · Now, President Donald J. Trump is making good on his vow to weaken the EPA.

2:52 · “Environmental protection, what they do is a disgrace.”

2:55 · “Every week they come out with new regulations.”

2:57 · “Who’s going to protect the environment?”

2:59 · “We’ll be fine with the environment.”

3:00 · “We can leave a little bit.”

3:04 · This budget–a 31% cut to the EPA, $2.6 billion cut away from the EPA, that’s what the president wants.

3:10 · As the EPA loses funding and regulations are rolled back, vulnerable communities may very likely fall through the cracks.

3:18 · I’m Talia Buford. I’ll be covering these communities and digging into systemic environmental injustice.

3:23 · If you have something to tell me, email me at Talia.Buford@ProPublica.org.

Optional Material (Dive Deeper)

Podcasts

10 Years After Flint, The Fight To Replace Lead Pipes Continues

Duration: 00:13:12

Released: 2024

Series: Short Wave

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Ten years ago, Flint, Mich. switched water sources to the Flint River. The lack of corrosion control in the pipes caused lead to leach into the water supply of tens of thousands of residents. Pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha recognized a public health crisis in the making and gathered data proving the negative health impact on Flint’s young children. In doing so, she and community organizers in Flint sparked a national conversation about lead in the U.S. water system that persists today. Today on the show, host Emily Kwong and science correspondent Pien Huang talk about the state of Flint and other cities with lead pipes. Efforts to replace these pipes hinge on proposed changes to the EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule. Have questions or comments for us to consider for a future episode? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we’d love to hear from you!See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

EMILY KWONG, HOST:

You’re listening to SHORT WAVE…

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KWONG: …From NPR.

Hey, SHORT WAVErs. Emily Kwong here. So 10 years ago, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha was a pediatrician at Hurley Medical Center, living in Flint, Mich. The city was near bankruptcy, and to save money, Flint decided to switch water sources from Lake Huron to the Flint River on April 25, 2014.

MONA HANNA-ATTISHA: We had greenish and brownish water, and it smelled weird, and it was giving people rashes, and they were losing hair.

KWONG: And families in Flint kept telling her, something’s not right with the water.

HANNA-ATTISHA: They were asking, was it OK to use this tap water to mix their baby’s formula?

KWONG: State and city officials said there was nothing to worry about. And Mona told her patients the same thing.

HANNA-ATTISHA: For a year and a half, I was telling my patients that, of course, everything’s OK. Like, how can - how could our drinking water not be OK? Like, this is America. It is the 21st century. All the folks in charge, despite all these concerns, were saying everything was OK.

KWONG: But everything was not OK.

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KWONG: Over a glass of wine, one of Mona’s high school friends who used to work at the EPA implored her to look into this issue.

HANNA-ATTISHA: And she literally stared me down. She was like, Mona, it doesn’t have corrosion control.

KWONG: The Flint water system lacked something important called corrosion control. Corrosion control changes the chemistry of the water to make it less likely to leach lead from the pipes. And without that corrosion control, the lead in Flint’s pipes got into the water supply.

HANNA-ATTISHA: And that is the moment that I heard about the possibility of lead being in the water, and that’s the moment my life changed.

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HANNA-ATTISHA: We need water to survive. It’s a medical and public health necessity. And the younger you are, the more our bodies are made up of water.

KWONG: The CDC says that no amount of lead in children is safe. For kids, lead poisoning can have serious consequences. It can damage their brains and nervous systems, causing learning and behavioral problems and issues with hearing and speech down the line. Mona saw a crisis in the making and began looking for any data she could on kids’ blood lead levels. And in September 2015, a year and a half after that water switch, she went public with her results…

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

HANNA-ATTISHA: This research is concerning. These results are concerning.

KWONG: …Showing that the number of children in Flint with elevated levels of lead in their blood had gone up.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

HANNA-ATTISHA: And when our national guiding organizations tell us primary prevention is the most important thing and that lead poisoning is potentially irreversible, then we have to say something.

KWONG: At first, the state dismissed her findings. But Mona Hanna-Attisha was right. It’s been 10 years, and the city’s water quality has improved. Flint switched back to Lake Huron, and thousands of lead pipes have been replaced.

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KWONG: But there is still a lot of work to be done in Flint to replace them all. And the truth of the matter is there are cities and towns all over the country facing their own issues with water quality, aging infrastructure and inadequate laws that don’t protect people from lead poisoning. Flint is an example of how speaking up with science can turn a crisis around. So 10 years on, we’re bringing in science reporter Pien Huang to focus on those trying to stop another crisis in another city - Chicago. You’re listening to SHORT WAVE, the science podcast from NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KWONG: So to help us understand the emerging lead crisis in Chicago, we’ve got science reporter Pien Huang in the studio. Hi, Pien.

PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: Hey, Emily.

KWONG: Hello.

HUANG: It’s great to see you.

KWONG: Good to see you, too.

HUANG: And it’s also so cool that you got to talk to Dr. Mona.

KWONG: It was so cool. And Mona is still on the front lines of trying to make life better for kids in Flint, where more than two-thirds of children live in poverty. She’s the founding director of the Pediatric Public Health Initiative, which connects families to programs and services to alleviate that poverty. One of them, Rx Kids, gives new moms in Flint a no-strings-attached check of $7,500.

HANNA-ATTISHA: In a city that so many folks know as a city that failed kids is a city that’s learning, that’s leading with science, that’s leading with prevention to promote kind of the health and development of kids by boldly kind of eradicating infant poverty.

KWONG: I asked her what she thought of the situation in Chicago, and she didn’t hold back on her thoughts and feelings.

HANNA-ATTISHA: Chicago has a long history of lead advocates, but also a long history of lead misuse. Chicago continued to use lead in their service lines until it was restricted in 1986 and built into the code - if you wanted water from the main, you were mandated to use lead in your plumbing. So Chicago has the most lead lines than any other city in our nation. And, you know, if you respect the science of lead, if you understand that it has no safe level, lead should not be the straw that is delivering our drinking water to so many children and families.

HUANG: And, Emily, that lead is still in the water even now. So there was a recent JAMA Pediatrics study that found that most children under the age of 6 in Chicago are probably drinking leaded water.

KWONG: Most children - wow. OK. And that research was spearheaded by Benjamin Huynh at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, right?

HUANG: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So he is an assistant professor of environmental health and engineering there, and his focus is on data science and environmental justice. In this case in particular, he’s got personal ties to the topic.

BENJAMIN HUYNH: So I’m from Chicago. And, you know, those of us in Chicago, we’ve known for a long time that most of our pipes are made out of lead.

HUANG: Including the house that his parents live in. In Chicago, there are around 400,000 homes that have lead pipes connecting the water main to the house. And Ben wanted to know, what does that actually mean for people drinking water from those taps?

KWONG: So how did Ben figure this out, like, that so many kids were drinking leaded water? What data did he use?

HUANG: Yeah. So it’s rooted in the fact that Chicago has a free water testing program. It’s for people who want to test their tap water for lead. And so far, this program has run about 38,000 tests. People have voluntarily collected water samples from their home, sent them to the city. And while these tests are free, Ben says not everybody uses them.

HUYNH: We found that the people who took those tests - they’re more likely to be in white neighborhoods, like, wealthier neighborhoods, and also neighborhoods that are less likely to have lead in the first place.

KWONG: Oh, so there was a huge sampling bias in this data.

HUANG: Right, exactly. And he had to correct for that. So he took that data, and he combined it with other sources of data, so data on local health, demographics, survey results on how many people use tap versus filtered or bottled water as their main drinking source. And then with the help of machine learning, he and his team figured out an estimate. They figured out that 68% of young children in Chicago are drinking tap water with lead.

HUYNH: On top of that, you know, we’re seeing Black and Hispanic neighborhoods are more likely to have lead exposure, but also less likely to be tested for lead.

KWONG: But the federal government does allow for some lead to be in the water. So at what point does the Environmental Protection Agency say, this is too much lead in the water - this is the cutoff?

HUANG: The EPA does have something called the Lead and Copper Rule. And this rule sets an action level for lead at 15 parts per billion.

KWONG: OK.

HUANG: And when water systems find that amount of lead in the water, they’re supposed to initiate that corrosion control that we mentioned earlier.

KWONG: So is Chicago in compliance with this 15-parts-per-billion limit?

HUANG: Yeah. I mean, the city says that it is, and they’ve done everything that they’re supposed to be doing.

KWONG: Sure.

HUANG: But there are other places that might not be.

KWONG: OK.

HUANG: I talked to Elizabeth Southerland. She’s formally with the EPA. And she says that audits from the agency actually showed that in some 90% of these cases where there are excess levels of lead in the water, those cases never even got reported to the federal government.

ELIZABETH SOUTHERLAND: This was probably the worst reported and enforced regulation in the history of the drinking water program.

HUANG: Yeah. And many researchers and advocates say the rule was weak and inadequate. Now even the EPA itself says that those regulations need to change. So last year, the EPA proposed the Lead and Copper Rule improvements, and those are expected to be finalized by October this fall.

KWONG: OK. I’m pulling up their website now. So let’s see what could happen if these proposed changes to the Lead and Copper Rule were to take effect. One proposed rule change is that every water system in the country produce a map of where their lead pipes are. That could be huge.

HUANG: Yeah, totally.

KWONG: Also on this list are calls for improving water sampling and lowering that lead action level from 15 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion. OK.

HUANG: There are some people who think that it should be even less than that, but that would significantly lower the trigger level for lead.

KWONG: OK. And then the last thing - ah, requiring the vast majority of water systems to replace all their lead pipes within the next 10 years.

HUANG: And many people are saying, because the lead protections for the drinking water haven’t really been working, this is what we really need to fix the problem. But you said the vast majority, and I want to…

KWONG: Yeah.

HUANG: …Point that out, because that’s a really important point, because in that proposed rule, Chicago gets an exemption because it simply has too many pipes. The regulation, as it’s proposed, is really concerned with what’s realistic and feasible. And so what the EPA is saying is that it’s realistic to expect a city to replace around 10,000 lead service lines a year, and this is based on what other cities have already done. So since most cities have under 100,000 pipes, they should be able to make that deadline. But Chicago, with its 400,000 lead pipes, would get around 40 years or more to switch out their pipes.

KWONG: Wow.

HUANG: And that 40-year timeline has community advocates, like Chakena Perry with the Natural Resources Defense Council, pretty upset.

CHAKENA PERRY: That’s decades, that’s generations of children and adults, you know, consuming lead-contaminated water. It’s incomprehensible to tell a resident that they have to wait that long for safe drinking water.

HUANG: Chakena and others are really pushing for the EPA to close up those exemptions when they issue the final rule in the fall.

KWONG: So to be determined, really, how this rule might impact Chicago in the long run.

HUANG: Yeah. Meanwhile, people have to grapple with the reality of their lead pipes. Remember when I said earlier that Ben’s parents have lead pipes? Well, a few weeks ago, Ben’s mom got sick with symptoms that were consistent with lead poisoning.

KWONG: Oh, yikes.

HUANG: Yeah. And it turns out that a water main near their home had burst. And the city went out to fix it, but they didn’t tell his parents right away that they were doing it. And in the meantime, his mom was drinking the tap water. So Ben helped his parents order a test for lead in their water, and he walked them through the process of collecting multiple bottles of water for the samples.

HUYNH: I know this - right? - ’cause I’m an expert on this, but, like, this is probably happening to, like - all over the city, or I know this is happening all over the city.

HUANG: Ben thinks that the city could be doing a much better job of getting more people to test for lead in their water. Right now, less than 10% of households have gotten tested. And he also says that they could do a much better job of providing lead filters to everyone who’s at risk of lead poisoning.

KWONG: Yeah. I mean, all of this just affirms what Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha was saying earlier about public policy needing to keep up with science, right?

HUANG: Totally.

KWONG: I mean, it’s just - I think this is the real legacy of Flint in many respects, this acknowledgment that people everywhere deserve to know what’s in their water and deserve to be informed on what to do if the water is compromised.

HUANG: Yeah. Emily, you know, the Safe Drinking Water Act was passed 50 years ago, but there’s still a ways to go to make sure that all tap water in the U.S. is safe. If listeners are worried, they can take a couple of simple steps to figure out what their pipes are made out of. They can test their water like Ben did, and if there’s lead, they can filter it out.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KWONG: Pien Huang, science reporter, thank you for walking us through where we are at this moment in our country’s history when it comes to lead and water and human health. It’s been really good to talk to you.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KWONG: This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. It was fact-checked by me and Pien. Patrick Murray was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director, and Collin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I’m Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to SHORT WAVE from NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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A Brief History of How PFAS Poisoned the World

Duration: 00:33:46

Released: 2024

Series: Forever Chemicals

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PFAS are a large class of chemicals that have been used since the late 1930s. What makes them particularly hazardous is that they are persistent and difficult to break down. That means all the PFAS that have even been created still exist today. In the first episode of this ten-part series, we learned the history of how PFAS was created. In episode two, we get a better understanding of just how dangerous PFAS chemicals are and how a series of lawsuits brought these health hazards to light. Guests featured in this episode: - Arlene Blum, ⁠⁠Green Science Policy Institute ⁠⁠ - Mike Schade, ⁠⁠Toxic Free Future⁠⁠ - Stefan Posner, ⁠⁠textile and polymer chemist⁠⁠ - Scott Wilson, ⁠⁠Regenesis Environmental Remediation⁠⁠ - James Pollock, ⁠⁠Marten Law LLP⁠ - Philippe Grandjean, ⁠environmental epidemiologist⁠ If you want to learn more about what PFAS are, where they are found, the proven health effects, how you can limit your exposure, up to date news on PFAS, and how to get involved in PFAS regulatory efforts visit ⁠⁠Toxicfreefuture.org⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Foodandwaterwatch.org ⁠⁠ Or ⁠⁠Pfascentral.org ⁠⁠ INSTAGRAM: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/outdoor.minimalist.book/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ WEBSITE: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.theoutdoorminimalist.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ YOUTUBE: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@theoutdoorminimalist⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Fund the Forever Chemicals 10-Part Podcast⁠: ⁠https://gofund.me/77aac225 ⁠— Snaplinc Consulting provided expert fact checking and guidance for the creation of this podcast. Snaplinc Consulting provides corporate sustainability strategies and ESG support across a broad range of industries including apparel, footwear, home furnishings, software, cosmetics, professional services and more. Head to ⁠⁠snaplincconsulting.com⁠⁠ to learn more and contact the experts to guide you through complex topics like CSRD, PFAS, greenhouse gas assessments, SBTi, CDP, EcoVadis, B Corp and many more compliance and certification frameworks. — Sources Belisle, John. 1978. Central Analytical Laboratory Report 6867. Contributed by Sharon Lerner (The Intercept). Retrieved from ⁠⁠https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4575547-1978-PFOS-monkey-study⁠⁠ Environmental Working Group. (n.d.). For Decades, Polluters Knew PFAS Chemicals Were Dangerous But Hid Risks From Public. Retrieved from ⁠⁠https://www.ewg.org/research/decades-polluters-knew-pfas-chemicals-were-dangerous-hid-risks-public⁠⁠ Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. (n.d.). Industrial wastewater treatment technology. Retrieved from ⁠⁠https://www.pca.state.mn.us/sites/default/files/gp3-06.pdf⁠⁠ The Intercept. (2015, August 11). The Teflon Toxin: DuPont and the Chemistry of Deception. Retrieved from ⁠https://theintercept.com/2015/08/11/dupont-chemistry-deception/⁠ Toxic-Free Future. (n.d.). Breast Milk Study. Retrieved from ⁠https://toxicfreefuture.org/research/breast-milk-study/

Antediluvian

Duration: 00:31:34

Released: 2020

Series: Floodlines

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Part I: It all started long before a hurricane named Katrina. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ashley James on protecting children from environmental exposures

Duration: 00:35:37

Released: 2022

Series: Agents of Change in Environmental Justice

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Ashley James joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss reframing how we think about children’s health, and what organizers and regulators can learn from each other.

Can we end chronic homelessness?

Duration: 00:19:07

Released: 2023

Series: Better Off

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It’s estimated that half a million Americans are experiencing homelessness. Even a brief period of housing insecurity can make existing health issues worse, and bring up new physical and mental traumas. Doctors and nurses who help patients navigate these issues have a prescription: More housing, and more services. Is it possible to end chronic homelessness, even as eviction moratoriums end and rents increase? And is a housing-first model the best way to achieve that goal?Guests:Ana Rausch, Vice President of Program Operations at Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris CountyKimberley Richardson, therapistMaggie Sullivan, family nurse practitioner, Boston Health Care for the Homeless and instructor and human rights fellow, FXB Center, Harvard UniversityCredits:Host/producer: Anna Fisher-PinkertThe Better Off team: Kristen Dweck, Elizabeth Gunner, Pamela Reynoso, Stephanie Simon, and Ben WallaceAudio engineering and sound design: Kevin O’ConnellAdditional research: Kate Becker

Climate Change and Extreme Heat End of Summer Episode with Dr. Kelly Turner and Dr. Ladd Keith

Duration: 00:53:01

Released: 2023

Series: America Adapts - The Climate Change Podcast

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In episode 192 of America Adapts, Doug Parsons hosts Dr. Kelly Turner and Dr. Ladd Keith. Kelly is an Associate Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA and Ladd is an assistant professor in the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning at the University of Arizona. We learn how extreme heat disproportionately impacts marginalized communities. We also explore the evolving media coverage of extreme heat. The three of us break down the highs and lows of all the media coverage of extreme heat this past summer. We also learn about Kelly’s research on heat’s impact on California schools, and what that means for both public health and student learning. We take a dive into federal approaches to heat management and learn about the glaring disparity in resources and attention allocated to extreme heat compared to other climate hazards and ponder the potential for FEMA to classify extreme heat as a disaster declaration. We also discuss the value of having a national adaptation plan for extreme heat planning. Finally, and yes, we go there, we get an update on the efforts to name heat waves. We highlight the pros and cons of this approach and discuss other options. It is a gangbuster episode and that’s just a sampling of what we cover. Transcripts for this episode available here. (These are computer generated so pardon the errors.) Topics Covered: Dr. Turner specializes in heat equity research, while Dr. Keith focuses on heat policy planning and governance. Increasing prevalence of extreme heat due to climate change and its disproportionate impact on marginalized groups. Media coverage of extreme heat is becoming more sophisticated, highlighting impacts on workers and public health. Dr. Turner’s research in California focuses on schools and heat’s impact on student learning. Discussion of heating planning strategies including shade in urban design. The Biden administration is updating heat safety labor laws, emphasizing the need for comprehensive regulations at state and federal levels and the potential for FEMA labeling heat events as disaster declarations. Naming heat waves to increase public awareness is debated, highlighting the importance of reaching vulnerable populations. Will heat lead to managed retreat from regions that become uninhabitable? A national adaptation plan is emphasized to address heat impacts, especially for marginalized communities. Thoughts on Jeff Goodell’s “The Heat Will Kill You” book. Donate to America Adapts Subscribe to the America Adapts newsletter here. Listen to America Adapts on your favorite app here! Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter: https://www.facebook.com/americaadapts/ @usaadapts https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-parsons-america-adapts/https://www.linkedin.com/in/laddkeith/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/v-kelly-turner-a321a21b/ Links in this episode: https://luskin.ucla.edu/person/v-kelly-turner https://www.laddkeith.com/ Shade is an essential solution for hotter citieshttps://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02311-3 Opinion: How California can keep kids cool amid extreme heat https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-07-18/california-extreme-heat-schools-kids-equity How cities are battling extreme heat, and why record-breaking temps don’t tell the whole story https://news.arizona.edu/story/how-cities-are-battling-extreme-heat-and-why-record-breaking-temps-dont-tell-whole-story?fbclid=IwAR0YgLHqTVhNXpZnE5T_mpLf-N9ZxA2VaqE-b1BpZuKIVU96pFXRZhM1zjk Southwest Urban Corridor Integrated Field Laboratory https://sw-ifl.asu.edu/?fbclid=IwAR0H703Z4jWEheQDYuv2N2cQzvrJOVkM11LW001tZBJIR6GmfTma9NW77TE https://climas.arizona.edu/?fbclid=IwAR0H703Z4jWEheQDYuv2N2cQzvrJOVkM11LW001tZBJIR6GmfTma9NW77TE Reporting on Extreme Heat and Healthhttps://ghhin.org/press/?fbclid=IwAR04LNV-ZvBvIOV-nMLFROLO0ZWu1MdJmIZ7ofuNQ92VihN0smNmhPt12U4 Donate to America Adapts Follow on Apple Podcasts Follow on Android Doug Parsons and Speaking Opportunities: If you are interested in having Doug speak at corporate and conference events, sharing his unique, expert perspective on adaptation in an entertaining and informative way, more information can be found here! Now on Spotify! List of Previous Guests on America Adapts Follow/listen to podcast on Apple Podcasts. Donate to America Adapts, we are now a tax deductible charitable organization! Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Strategies to Address Climate Change Risk in Low- and Moderate-income Communities - Volume 14, Issue 1 https://www.frbsf.org/community-development/publications/community-development-investment-review/2019/october/strategies-to-address-climate-change-low-moderate-income-communities/ Podcasts in the Classroom – Discussion guides now available for the latest episode of America Adapts. These guides can be used by educators at all levels. Check them out here! The 10 Best Sustainability Podcasts for Environmental Business Leadershttps://us.anteagroup.com/news-events/blog/10-best-sustainability-podcasts-environmental-business-leaders The best climate change podcasts on The Climate Advisorhttp://theclimateadvisor.com/the-best-climate-change-podcasts/ 7 podcasts to learn more about climate change and how to fight ithttps://kinder.world/articles/you/7-podcasts-to-learn-more-about-climate-change-and-how-to-fight-it-19813 Directions on how to listen to America Adapts on Amazon Alexahttps://youtu.be/949R8CRpUYU America Adapts also has its own app for your listening pleasure! Just visit the App store on Apple or Google Play on Android and search “America Adapts.” Join the climate change adaptation movement by supporting America Adapts! Please consider supporting this podcast by donating through America Adapts fiscal sponsor, the Social Good Fund. All donations are now tax deductible! For more information on this podcast, visit the website at http://www.americaadapts.org and don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Podcast Music produce by Richard Haitz Productions Write a review on Apple Podcasts ! America Adapts on Facebook! Join the America Adapts Facebook Community Group. Check us out, we’re also on YouTube! Executive Producer Dr. Jesse Keenan Subscribe to America Adapts on Apple Podcasts Doug can be contacted at americaadapts @ g mail . com

Curbing Urban Sprawl - Why Better City Planning Could Mean Better Health

Duration: 00:15:16

Duration: 00:12:26

Released: 2023

Series: Know Better Do Better

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A helpful introduction to environmental racism and environmental justice. Also, this is the final Thursday episode for the time being. You can still expect new episodes every Tuesday. Thanks for your understanding and support. Plus, if you’re looking for more, you can always check out older episodes you might’ve missed!Mentioned: Dr. Robert BullardAtlantic, Environmental Racism is the New Jim CrowGreenpeace, New Study: Fossil Fuels Disproportionately Impact Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Poor CommunitiesTo support Marie and get exclusive resources, head to patreon.com/mariebeech. To learn more about Marie’s DEI services, head to mariebeecham.com.

Environmental Toxicology (POISONS + TRAIN DERAILMENT) with Kimberly K Garrett

Environmental Toxicology (POISONS + TRAIN DERAILMENT) with Kimberly K. Garrett

Duration: 01:19:15

Released: 2023

Series: Ologies with Alie Ward

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Chemical spills, historical disasters, water quality, airborne toxic events, clear gasses, White Noise, dead fish, dark clouds, chemistry tests, trench coats, PFAS, phthalates, and the Ohio train derailment that plumed vinyl chloride into the skies of a small Ohio town. The lovely and informative Environmental Toxicologist Dr. Kimberly K. Garrett works at the intersection of chemical safety, public health and environmental justice — and she has cool science tattoos. Also: should I burn incense all the time? Visit Dr. Kimberly K. Garrett’s website and follow her on TwitterA donation went to Group Against Smog & Pollution (GASP)Follow GASP on TwitterMore episode sources and linksOther episodes you may enjoy: Conservation Technology (EARTH SAVING), Forensic Ecology (NATURE DETECTIVE), Oceanology (OCEANS), Meteorology (WEATHER & CLIMATE), Melaninology (SKIN/HAIR PIGMENT), Environmental Microbiology (TESTING WASTEWATER), Secrets, Advice + AMA (LANTERNS, ETC.)Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, masks, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam MediaTranscripts by Emily White of The WordaryWebsite by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Exposing the Monsanto Conspiracy

Duration: 00:45:17

Released: 2025

Series: Veritasium

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This is the history of Monsanto’s herbicides…▀▀▀You’ll find our full back catalogue of hundreds of videos on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ . For early access videos, bonus content, and to support the channel, join us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.⁠▀▀▀0:00 An Unusual Enemy5:18 Monsanto’s Secret Poison Problem11:17 Vietnam and Agent Orange14:08 Roundup19:31 How Monsanto controls seeds26:06 The Crop Mafia31:10 The Monsanto Papers41:18 How dangerous is Roundup really?

Fire Ecology (WILDFIRES & INDIGENOUS FIRE MANAGEMENT) Mega Encore with Gavin Jones & Amy Christianson

Duration: 02:22:53

Released: 2023

Series: Ologies with Alie Ward

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Once again: the world is on fire. As wildfires burn across Canada and their smoke pours down the continent, we thought it would be a good time to encore these Fire Ecology episodes. First, Dr. Gavin Jones brings the heat talking about what fire is, how hot it burns, fire trends, tinderboxes, lots and lots of forest fire flim-flam, tolerant wombats, Angelina Jolie movies, cunning pine cones, thick bark, Indigenous fire stewardship and more.Then, join co-host of the podcast Good Fire, Dr. Amy Christianson, to learn about how cultural burns and prescribed blazes can create healthy forests. She also discusses Indigenous history, collaborations between Western science & First Nations elders, Aboriginal thoughts on cultural burns, more flim-flam, evacuations, snowmelt, hunting strategies, land stewardship, happy trees, climate strategies, and the social science behind wildfire education. Also learning from Native wildfire fighters. Huge thanks to her and Matt Kristoff – who also hosts the Your Forest Podcast – for allowing us to use excerpts from their interview to launch Good Fire. Subscribe to both podcasts to get more ecological knowledge in your ears.CDC Advisory on Wildfire SmokeFollow Dr. Gavin Jones on TwitterFollow Dr. Amy Christianson on TwitterDonations were made to The Common Good Community Foundation and Indigenous Residential School SurvivorsListen to the “Good Fire” podcastAlso great: Your Forest podcastOther episodes you may like: Dendrology (TREES), Forest Entomology (CREEPY CRAWLIES), Xylology (LUMBER), Pyrotechnology (CAMPFIRES), Environmental Toxicology (POISONS + TRAIN DERAILMENT)Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, masks, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam MediaTranscripts by Emily White of The WordaryWebsite by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From Hot Take - Yes, We Still Need to Talk About Climate

=# From Hot Take: Yes, We Still Need to Talk About Climate

Duration: 00:28:19

Released: 2020

Series: Drilled: The Propagandist

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Amid nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, some climate activists have been saying “now’s not the time to talk about climate.” On Hot Take, Mary Annaise Hegler and Amy Westervelt discuss the idea that climate and racial justice are connected and influence one another. Find Hot Take here. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From Redlining to Inclusive Planning

Duration: 00:08:29

Released: 2024

Series: Urban Planning Foundations

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The Planning Accreditation Board (PAB) and AICP Code of Ethics highlight the importance of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (DEI) in urban planning. Planners must promote social justice, fair resource distribution, and support historically disadvantaged groups. Practical tools from the PAS Report address housing, transportation, and public health for communities of color. Historical segregation practices, like redlining, contrast with modern equitable development efforts. Effective stakeholder engagement uses conflict resolution, consensus building, mediation, and arbitration. Environmental justice, mandated by Executive Order 12898, ensures equal protection from hazards. Equitable taxation policies and participatory budgeting are essential. Policy and fiscal impact analyses guide informed decisions. By upholding DEI values, planners create more inclusive urban environments.

Hawaiʻi Wildfire Survivors Join Health Study - Wind Turbine Blade Sinks Off Massachusetts Coast

Hawaiʻi Wildfire Survivors Join Health Study | Wind Turbine Blade Sinks Off Massachusetts Coast

Duration: 00:20:35

Duration: 00:54:14

Released: 2021

Series: Stuff You Should Know

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Owning a home in the US is a way to pass wealth down from one generation to the next and lift families into a comfortable life down the road. But there have been barriers to buying homes that Black Americans have faced from the time of slavery to today. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I

Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I’m Josh Clark,

and there’s Charles W Chuck Bryan over there, and this

is stuff you should know. Um the man oh man addition,

(00:25):

do you know what I love about this topic is

that it’s not just a bunch of like ranting about

how we think things are and how people think things are.

It’s like so studied and statistic heavy that you can

talk about how things are and then say, and here’s

(00:45):

the proof exactly, here’s a lot of data to back

it up. It’s really great. I love it when they

dovetail like this. Yeah. I get the impression, though, UM

that you when you’re talking about the studying race and

especially in America like you are, you have to back

it up with data like people are like, oh, yeah,

I don’t I don’t know about that. But um, I

want to give a shout out to actually to um

(01:08):

uh scholars both sell sociologists of race. UM Professor Villnabashi

Treatler from UC Santa Barbara and Professor Tricia Rose of

Brown University both are experts on this stuff and they

helped me out big time with this and some other

research on on racism I’ve done, um and they Dr

(01:28):

Bashi Treatler said, hey, make sure you mentioned this hashtag

we have going called site hashtag. Sorry, and I’m making

the hashtag symbol like justin Timberlake hashtag site black women

ce I t e black women. UM, and that leads

you to all sorts of good often overlooked research by

black scholars. Um, who are women that don’t always get

(01:51):

a lot of credit. So I’m glad you told me

about that one. I wanted to tell everybody else. So

when you, uh, that was a stutter when he said

so so sociologists, you didn’t mean they were just mediocre sociologists. No,

I was. I was sociologist. I could see how that

would be confusing. I was doing my impression of Phil

Collins saying sociologist so so studio. Yeah, well that’s the

(02:16):

last joke we’re gonna tell you. Oh yeah, probably. I

was warned by Dr Bashi Treatler not to do our

usual stick when we’re talking about race stuff, and I

was like, well, I mean, we we can handle ourselves.

She said. I I listened to your stuff. I listened

to the Braws episode just trust me on this. It’s like,

all right, So then that means the housing discrimination episode

(02:38):

officially starts. Now, that’s right. So that’s what we’re talking about, dude.

Housing discrimination and um uh in the United States, and

there is a very long history of housing discrimination. And

you might say, like, well, that really sucks. That sucks

that people have trouble buying a home or maybe they

get less favorable terms on their loans just because of

(02:59):

their race, and that does suck. That’s absolutely true. But

it’s even worse than that because in the United States,

one of the biggest ways of growing wealth intergenerationally, like

over the course of generations within a single family is

through a house. Yeah, I mean it’s sometimes people don’t

(03:19):

have a ton of money to invest in the stock market.

Some people think the stock market is not something to trust.

But one thing that has always been fairly reliable in

this country, you know, say, for a few moments in history,

is real estate and the idea that if you scrap

up and save enough money for a down payment for

a home, that house will eventually be worth quite a

(03:42):

bit more years later, and you can sell it and

use that extra windfall of cash to invest in the

stock market or to pass down to your kids so

they can then get in the housing market sooner than

they might have and then it just becomes a cycle

where it just builds wealth. Yeah, Like the average family

(04:02):

in America has most of their net worth tied up

in their house, and then you know, when it comes

time to sell it and the house is paid off,

that’s a lot of money. And then when you kick

the bucket, your kids get that money and maybe they

get a better house, and it just keeps growing and growing.

So if you put up barriers to housing, you’re actually

putting up barriers to passing along intergenerational wealth. And as

(04:24):

a big, big problem in America. UM Still today, I

saw a study from I think Brookings that found that,

um the median. Yeah, brooking study said that the median

net worth of a white family in America is a

hundred and seventy one thousand dollars. The median net worth

(04:48):

of a black family in America is seventeen thousand, one

hundred and fifty dollars, about a ten of what the

median is for white people. And that is largely because

of housing discriminate in the history of housing discrimination in

this country. Yeah, and as far as history goes, you know,

it started with literal racist laws where they said, if

(05:10):

you’re a black person or a black family, you cannot

live here. Um. That went on for a while, and

then those laws were sort of altered to the Jim

Crows Separate but Equal era, where they said, you know what, Um,

we’ll say things are better, but it’s really the same

effect in the end. And then they got rid of

(05:30):

those laws and said, all right, now we’ve really passed

the meaningful legislation, and now we can just racially discriminate

on the down low and very creative ways. Yeah, that’s

basically the pattern that it’s followed. Um. And what kind

of stuck out to meet Chuck is is that before

about nine hundred, before like the rise of like industrialization

(05:53):

to a really legitimate degree in the United States, like,

there wasn’t not nearly as much segregation as we saw

starting around nineteen especially in the North, because if you

had a trade or a craft in the North and

you were an African American, there’s a really good chance

that you were going to be serving white people as

well as black people, right and because you usually were

(06:16):

very closely your home was tied close to your shop,

you often lived above it if you were like a

cobbler or something like that. Um, you made live next

door to a white baker or something like that. So

the there wasn’t a lot of segregation until industrialization came

along and there was a big call for labor, which

drew a lot of African Americans, a lot of Black

(06:38):

Americans out of the South up to the north. And

all of a sudden, all of those people who were

living in integrated neighborhoods, all those white people I should say,

had had a problem with this influx of black migration

from the South to the north, and they responded with

a lot of really disgusting violence. Yeah. I mean, we’ve

talked about some of these, um race incidents and race

(07:01):

riots and race almost race wars really uh here and

there on the show, and they’re always hard to talk about.

But that was just sort of the reality of things

at the time. Um. In the nineteen thirties, the New

Deal comes along, and this is when legislation starts to

kind of kick in. When the government stepped in and said,

you know what, we think we should make it easier

(07:23):

for people to own homes. We really want to boost

home ownership because that’s a boon for the economy of

the country. And we’re going to create the home Owners

Loan Corporation, which is going to help people refinance their mortgages.

But we need some criteria here to sort of establish

a uniform way of like how to how to dole

(07:45):

out this assistance. And they reckoned, let’s let’s look at

every population of forty or more and let’s create a

color coded map that’s based on riskiness of these loans.

And they said, you know, they talked to real estate brokers,

they talk to bankers, and they said, help us out,

help us draw these boundaries, and they came up with

a one, two, three, four color graded system. Right, yeah,

(08:07):

that’s right. Because again this was like long before credit

scores were developed, so you couldn’t really look at you know,

if somebody came into your bank to ask for a loan,

you couldn’t be like, well, you’re your your credit scores this,

So I’m not gonna look at that start. I don’t

know we should do an episode on if we haven’t already.

I don’t think for sure. Um, but yeah, so the

four color codes they had were also um delineated by

(08:29):

grades Grade A, B, C, and D. Grade A was

the most desirable neighborhood. They were usually homogeneous, meaning white. Um,

there were um lots of professionals living in there. Grade

B was maybe a step down, but still largely homogeneous,

if not totally homogeneous, and they were considered still desirable.

And then it started to get into the lower grades

(08:50):

grades C and D, and C was um, I think

colored yellow on the map, right, Yeah, the first two

were green and blue, and then Grade C was rated

as declining and colored yellow and that sort of. In fact,

I think it even said infiltration of a lower grade

population in the document, which you don’t have to be

(09:13):

a genius to figure out what they were saying there.

It means people of color were moving in. And then

finally you end up with the color red Grade D,

which is least desirable. Um, very densely populated areas almost

always communities of color. Right. So um, the h O

l C created these maps, and then um, along came

(09:36):

the Federal Housing Authority and they said, well, we need

similar maps because we’re not we’re not here to help

stem the tide of foreclosures. We’re actually here to generate

new home ownership among Americans. Um, but we still have

the same issue. We got to figure out who’s credit

worthy and who’s not. So we’re going to base it

on where the people live. And they basically made identical

maps to the h O l C maps, and so

(09:58):

they probably used them. Right, there’s a lot of debate.

I don’t think anyone’s found the smoking gun yet. But

if you take an h O l C map in

an f h A map and you put them over

one another, they’re basically the same thing. And I I

it’s kind of all. It’s up for the debate still.

But the the the upshot was that because of these maps, Um,

(10:22):

if you lived in one of these red and often

yellow communities, they wouldn’t lend to you, for um, for

a new mortgage or even a second mortgage to say,

remodel your home. And they also wouldn’t assist you with

refinancing your existing mortgage, which means you’re subject to foreclosure.

And if you were in a red or yellow community,

(10:43):

you were probably um black or a person of color

or some other ethnic minority. And UM, that means that

they were shut out of this enormous housing boom that

generated a tremendous amount of prosperity immediately after the New

Deal in World War Two. As we’ll see, so African

Americans were left out of or on the fringes of

(11:04):

the New Deal anyway. And this is where we get

to shout out Francis Perkins. Perkins again, which is it’s

fun to now that we know so much about her,

to continually shout her out. But she did a lot

of work arguing in favor of inclusion for black people

in the New Deal. Um, I guess you know, sometimes successfully,

sometimes not. But at the end of the day, the

(11:25):

f h A imposed these rules through the New Deal. Uh.

Their maps were just like the UH the h O

l C. And the process of excluding these groups because

they were colored red was called redlining. That is that

like the where that whole term comes from. That’s exactly

where it comes from. So now today, any any time

you’re discriminated against, whether it’s buying insurance or anything like that, um,

(11:49):

based on your race or say your community. Um, it’s

called redlining now. But that’s where it grew out of

those h O l C maps and f A J maps. UM.

And I mean they would use terms and like their

their handbooks that like these communities had quote undesirable racial

or nationality groups in them, so you couldn’t you couldn’t

lend them any money or whatever. Um. And it was

(12:11):

I mean like this is still like a really big

problem today. Yeah, I mean back then basically and still today.

In many cases, that leaves you with a couple of

options as a person of color. You can rent uh

forever um often times back then and still now from

a white landlord who doesn’t live anywhere near that community,

(12:31):

not always, but usually, or just pay for the home

in cash, which is a stretch for anybody. Uh, it’s

it’s tough to do unless you’re like wealthy. And there

were there were, I have to say there were black

owned banks. But there was nine black own banks in

the entire United States in the thirties. So that is

a place where you could turn to if you’re lucky

enough to have one in your area. But that that

(12:53):

was not a solution to the general population for Black Americans. Yeah,

and like you said, also affected their ability to get

second mortgages, to do home improvements or to like expand

on their house and upgrade it, remodel it. So that

means that the properties are gonna deteriorate and decline over

(13:13):

the years, and it’s just it’s part of that systemic

racist cycle that is just prevalent. Yeah, because still today, eventually,

over time people from the outside looking in say, look,

black people can’t even take care of their communities. Look

at look at how their houses are. Um, just as

a result of this. That is definitely like the definition

(13:33):

of systemic racism for sure. It’s just by the way

into the structures. If you hear dogs barking, My dogs

are upstairs and they’re just very excited about this topic. Yeah,

and I don’t know what’s going on there, but they’re

not going to shut up. So let’s say we press on.

We’ll press on. Should we take a break, then press on.

We’re going to press on like some lee nails right

(13:53):

after a break. How about that? All right, it sounds good.

(14:19):

All right, we’re back and look, these things look amazing

on me. Yeah, they’re very nice. There’s a little bit

of cuticle showing. I didn’t put them right up against it,

but it’s still it’s passable. Well, I think if you

paint them just right, that’s not so noticeable. Right, fill ins,

that’s what I need. I need to get some fill ins.

So back to the topic at hand, joking is over. Um,

(14:43):

so here’s the deal. There’s, like you said, a lot

of debate whether or not or I don’t think we

said this part, whether or not the lenders actually use

these maps because these were government maps from government programs.

It’s not like they said, here, banks have these and

use these. Uh. If you look at the statistics, it

seems like they probably got their hands on some of

(15:03):

these maps. It does. And also, don’t forget the government

figured out, you know, how to draw these maps for

every city over forty people from the lenders, from the banks,

from the Yeah, so they knew this anyway, but now

the government has basically said it is okay to do this, um.

And so so yeah, if you if you look at

the outcome of this redlining, these red line maps, um,

(15:28):

it’s it’s really hard to say, no, this didn’t happen

like this definitely didn’t make it out of government hands

like forts here just great, let’s trade off. Between ninety

four and nineteen sixty two, over of all the federally

backed mortgages that were issued in the United States went

(15:49):

to white buyers. Between four and nineteen sixty two, that’s right,

because of this black ownership since then and can tinuing

today is lagged behind white homeownership in America, and seventeen

just a few short years ago, of black Americans own

their homes versus seventy of white Americans. And then the

(16:13):

other problem with redlining a community is you basically put

a pox on it. It’s cursed, because that means that

those houses are not going to get any kind of

attention UM, and so they’re going to continue to deteriorate.

And if you live in this community, as far as

a banker is concerned, you are a huge credit risk. Right,

And so still today UM sev of the neighborhoods that

(16:35):

were originally redlined in those maps are our redline UM

low income communities today, And which is I mean, that’s

pretty surprising. And I also saw that UM study found

that homes and red line neighborhoods we’re still worth less

than half of those in green neighborhoods. Yeah, and here’s

(16:57):

the one. I marked these as stats with an exclamation point,

just that’s how excited I get. But the ones that

I’m really floored by, I don’t even write anything except

for three exclamation points. I’ve got three exclamation points by

that of back federally back mortgages. For sure, that is

definitely one. Um here’s mine. If if you might say, well,

(17:18):

what about variables man and education level and income level

and stuff like that, Like you gotta factor all that in.

That’s a whole other side conversation as far as systemic

racism and being able to go to good schools and

afford a good education and get a good job and

all that. So just park that to the side. But

if you control for all those variables, college educated black

(17:40):

Americans are still less likely to own their home than

white Americans without a high school diploma. Yeah, That’s That’s

what really gets you is when they they’re like, well,

let us just control for all these factors and only

variable that remains is the race of the people applying

for a owner owning a home, and it’s still the case.

(18:02):

That’s when it’s like, well this is indisputable. Actually yeah,

and you know you can put a price on this.

Red Fen did a study um just last year in

twenty that black American families missed out on the opportunity

to accumulate an average of two hundred and twelve thousand

dollars of you know what, we’re talking about that intergenerational

(18:22):

wealth per household over the last forty years, just over

the last forty years. I mean we’re talking about stuff

that started, I mean back in the days of slavery,

but really started to take off in the nineteen thirties

with the New Deal. And this is just since nineteen

eighty they’ve lost out on that amount of money per household.

That’s nuts and still today, Chuck, here’s another one that

gets me. Black American is five times likelier to own

(18:45):

a home in a red line neighborhood than a white

American is. So this is still an issue today. Um.

So redlining these maps just set off this enormous amount

of um discrimination and I guess is all you can say.

And then all of the horrible effects that come out

of that that level of discrimination. But they weren’t the

(19:06):

only things that set it off. Um. The g I

Bill really kind of came in and said, well, hold on,

hold my beer, I want to mess things up to

what does hold my beer mean? It means that like

there’s some dude just kind of sitting there with like

his shirt, um just barely covering his gut drinking a beer,

watching somebody do something stupid and he says, hold my beer,

(19:26):

and then he doesn’t stupid. That’s right. Yeah, I thought

that’s what it meant. But you know me, I’m a

I’m an old man with a shirt barely covering his gut.

So I wasn’t quite short. You should spend more time

on Urban Dictionary. It should. I don’t drink much beer anymore, though,

although I do love it. What’s your favorite? I mean,

you know I love Tropicalia here out of Athens, Georgia.

(19:49):

The creature comfort. I still never had one. Well, you

should come over. I have a cagorator now on my deck.

Oh my god, I’m serving it up. But I don’t

know why I got it. I got it for friends

because I don’t drink. It’s on a beer. And then

the pandemic happened, and now I’ve just got a half

keg of beer sitting ship. All right. So yeah, the

(20:09):

g I Bill um this, you know, in theory, the

g I Bill is a great thing, and it has

done a lot of good. But in this case, it

did block access to home ownership among black Americans because,

uh they would come home from World War Two. The

g I Bill was passed. Banks are handing out mortgages

to veterans and they were actually allowed to discriminate based

(20:31):

on race. Yes, it’s shocking. Yeah, well it’s like whenever

you see that kind of thing, you’re like, this doesn’t

jibe with what I understand. Just look to the Dixiecrats,

the segregationists of the South, who were a very powerful

voting block and during the Jim Crow era, and they

were like to appease them and get them to vote

(20:52):

for something like a New Deal program or to not

do everything they could to block it. You had to say, okay,

well we’ll make sure that that blacks are excluded them

this that that that Black Americans won’t have access to

this amazing program. And they’d be like, okay, cool, let’s

let’s do it. That’s that’s that’s where a lot of

that came from. And I mean, it’s easy to blame

the Dixie Krats, but you can also be like, well,

(21:14):

you know, how hard did you try to go around

the Dixie Kratz too. I mean it was allowed to happen, yes, yeah,

by everybody, despite Francis perkins best efforts. Yeah, here’s the

stat For instance, in Mississippi in Uh, they build out

told out more than three thousand v A backed home

loans that year. Uh, and two of them were two

(21:37):

black veterans. Uh. Pretty startling. I don’t even know the

percentage on that point nine eight. Oh yeah, there’s got

to be a repeating something in there somewhere. Uh. And

you know this is a big deal because when World

War Two ended, they wanted a housing boom. There was

a lot of the supplies that would have gone to

home construction during the war went to the war effort.

(21:58):

So the f h A said, you know what, we

we need a housing boom here. We’re going to guarantee

construction loans to you like big construction companies out there.

And that’s when the suburbs popped up for the first time,

and that changed everything forever. Yeah. I mean, like they

they the birth of the suburbs were like a deliberate

(22:18):

program created by the federal government to to basically get

more people buying houses, to start that intergenerational wealth and

to create a middle class or to expand the middle

class dramatically. And they were able to do that partially

through just like when the f h came along and said, hey,

you know, we’re going to back these people’s loans as

(22:39):

long as they’re not in a red line neighborhood. That

says to the lenders, well, then you know that means

even if this person defaults, the government will buy the

loan from me. I’m gonna get paid back no matter what.

They did the same thing to these construction companies to

which created this huge housing boom. But there’s a caveat

to it. Just like with the v A loans that

said you can discriminate based on race for loans, even

(23:01):

though this is really important, Chuck. Even though the government

the v A would back the loan of a black

veteran just like they would back the loan of a

white veteran and you would be repaid no matter what,

you were still allowed to discriminate based on race. The

f h A, supposedly with the birth of the suburbs,

said we’re going to guarantee your construction loans, so you

(23:22):

can build suburbs, but you can’t sell two black Americans.

That’s another one that I don’t think there’s a smoking

gun that I saw, so I don’t know if that means,

like get the word out, like you can’t sell the

black people or else we’re not going to back these loans,

or if it was stated policy, that haven’t been able

to turn up. But it’s pretty well understood that the

(23:43):

f h A discriminated against black people basically moving to

the suburbs by not backing construction loans like that. Well. Yeah,

and there were neighborhood covenants in place that said that

black people cannot own homes in these neighborhoods they were

there were clauses that said you cannot resell your home

if you go to move, you can’t sell it to

(24:04):

a black family. Yeah, dude, if you want to be startled,

go search that um on Google Images. There’s like pictures

of these clauses and deeds that say you can’t sell

to anybody who’s not white, or even specifically, you can’t

sell anybody who’s black. It’s really jarring. Yeah, and it’s um,

I mean, it was sort of expressly understood that the

suburbs were being created for a reason, and that’s to

(24:26):

get white people out of the city to a place

where they could live among themselves. And it’s it’s something

that’s still going on. I mean, during the uh most

recent presidential election campaign, Donald Trump started playing praying on

these fears again. He was saying things like, literally, suburban

housewives of America, Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your

(24:49):

American dream. People living their suburban lifestyle dream will no

longer be bothered of fine or financially hurt by having

low income housing built in your neighborhood. And the these

are literal quotes, and it’s just he’s trying to to

garner a certain kind of vote, to be sure. But

you know, we’ll get to other stuff. I mean, Trump

(25:09):

has a long history and his and his family with

he and his father of housing discrimination. But the end

result of all this is white people. You know, people

call it white flight. They left the cities, moved to

the suburbs. People that were in the city still, these

African American families in these yellow and red line communities,

we’re sort of stuck there. So the government steps in

(25:32):

to build affordable housing, which at first were racially integrated.

There were black people and white people, but then even

the lower income white people, uh fled for the suburbs. Yeah,

because wages rose. Yeah, and they left cities in an

urban communities almost entirely black. Um. Yeah. So proportionately speaking,

there was a tremendous drain of white people from the cities.

(25:57):

I’m sure it was different on a city to city based.

As a matter of fact, I know it was. There’s

not a you can’t put a whole blanket of history

over every square inch of the United States, so different

cities had different experiences. But proportionately speaking, black people have

always made up a smaller amount of the American population overall.

(26:17):

But then if you look at the you know, percentage

of black people, say in a city in nine I

think is when it peaked. For Atlanta in particular, Um,

it’s like say black or something that’s a way larger

proportion or disproportionate amount of black people living in the

city than say, um, in the suburbs. And then conversely, Chuck,

(26:38):

when you look at the suburbs and the statistics about

race or demography in the suburbs, then it really kind

of all comes home. Yeah, and you know they’re living

in the suburbs. They decide, you know, we still need

to go into the city sometimes, so we need interstates

to get us there because we like going to concerts

occasionally or seeing a professional sports team play, right, and

(27:01):

so they built these interstates, Uh, they kind of barreled

through black neighborhoods built them there they often became a

dividing line. UH. And you know, these communities were set

up to fail. They had less frequent garbage pickup, they

had inadequate funding to keep up this public housing that

they built, UM, lower access to basic utilities, and they

(27:22):

were just in no position to to succeed basically. Now.

And I’m trying to remember what episode we talked about

prow I Go Housing UM project in in St. Louis.

I think it was the Environmental Psychology episode, if I’m

not mistaken, But that was a really good example of

this of how people pointed to that people from the

outside and we’re like, look, you can’t like black people

(27:43):

can’t take care of anything. Look at the degraded state

that this housing project is in. And it’s, like you said,

like they were set up to fail through all through

like a lack of attention, a lack of funding, UM,

just a lack of basically everything UM. And it’s it’s

that kind of seem to keep perpetuating these um uh biases.

(28:07):

For example, and this is a big one that we’ll

talk about later, that white people think if black people

move into an area, their housing values are going to

go down because of stuff like that. Yeah, I mean,

that’s sort of the I guess you’d call it the

dog whistle that everyone leans on there like, hey, we

you know, we don’t mind. Uh, we’re not bigoted at all.

(28:27):

We just want to keep our housing values up. That’s right.

That that so that one and then the the um

the myth that black people are just inherently um uncredit

worthy or not credit worthy are the two things that

seem to be used the most as cover for, like

you said, post civil rights are segregation in the United States,

(28:51):

the dog whistle, like you said, yeah, I mean, and

now is when we can talk a little bit about

um gentrification, because I mean, the way housing has worked

in this country is really fascinating and really gross in

a lot of ways, but just interesting to look at

from a bird’s eye point of view. The way people

move around and what eventually happened with the cities is that, uh,

(29:16):

you know, call them what you want, yuppies or dinks.

There’s a lot of name for upwardly mobile white people.

They’re like, Hey, I want to move into the city,

I want to be closer to to the concerts. Although

this is going to be controversial, I’m gonna get a

lot of cred for this, but one of the most

annoying trends of the last like fifteen years is building

(29:37):

all these concert venues out in the suburbs. It’s so annoying.

And I know they want their concert venues out there

so they don’t have to come into the city, but

I hate it when I one of my bands plays,

you know, thirty miles out into the suburbs. I won’t go. Yeah,

it’s kind of a pain. Although we did go out.

It’s a huge Motley Crewe thanks to that was Nita Strauss. No,

(30:02):

that’s true, So that was that was worth the trip

because it was Miley Crue and Alice Cooper. I just think,

I don’t know, I think all sports stadiums and all

concerts and you should be in the city. I’m with you.

That’s definitely traditional into the city for a big day out.

You know, when they start moving museums way out in

the exurbs and I’m done. Um. But the same thing.

(30:23):

You could make the same case. When they built the

highways and everything, they just kind of built them through

black communities. That’s what they did with with the stadiums

and all that as well too. Well, no, that’s true.

You know, think about Braves. They just plunked Braves Stadium

ted Turner out just right in the middle of Mechanicsville,

which is a historically black community, and said, everybody moves

(30:45):

move aside, and don’t harass all the white people who

come down to see the game on you know, same day.

We should do I mean, I love sports, but we

should do a There’s such a problematic side to pro

sports from that too. Um, these billionaire owners is using

city money to build new stadiums when their other stadium

is just like ten years old or whatever. That is

(31:06):

definitely problematic. It’s crazy, what a crazy amount of waste

that produces a loan just that alone. Yeah, um, alright,

so where was I? All right? Uh, white dinks are

moving into the neighborhoods again in the city because they

want good Thai food, and uh, these neighborhoods become a

(31:28):

little more attractive the more white people move into, other

white people to move in, and they start moving in

and increasing numbers, and the houses are generally renovated or

improved over time or sometimes they might bulldoze you know,

a pretty decent house with good bones just to build

you know, the biggest house possible on their postage stamp

(31:48):

of a lot. It’s crazy how close they build these

mammoth houses together. I’m sure it happens everywhere. Atlanta’s got

a real problem with it. But what happens is, you know,

home user going to increase, that’s gonna raise taxes on

the other homes around them. A lot of time, those

other homes are owned by UM, longtime lower income residents,

(32:10):

most times people of color, it becomes unsustainable. UM. We

have a great, great program here in my neighborhood and

east like called Neighbor in Need. That is UH Emily

and I have four main charities that we work with

and give to every year, and Neighbor in Need is

one of them because we like to stay really locally focused.

But Neighbor in Need basically addresses this head on and

(32:33):

they you know, raise a lot of money and they

use that money to take care of these people. UM,

if they hear about a neighbor that’s like, you know,

in need, like an older African American couple who’s been

here for forty years, they’re having to pay way too

much in property taxes so they can’t afford a roof

on their house. They’ll go put a roof on their house,

or they’ll pay their power bill, um whatever. I mean.

(32:56):

It’s a really really great grassroots organization, so UM very

happy to be working with them and uh, you know,

trying to fight the sort of ills of gentrification overall. Yeah,

that’s neat because it also draws the community together to

help the longest term residents of that community rather than

that whole everybody’s on their own kind of thing, which

(33:17):

I’m sure most people who move into a community like

you know that is gentrifying probably would want to do.

They just don’t know how to do it, or they

don’t know how to contact anybody. People don’t just usually

go over to their neighbor’s house and knock on the

door and introduce themselves anymore. So that’s cool. Yeah, and

you know this is uh sometimes they are able to

sell their house for a pretty good you know, the

(33:39):

housing value does increase, so they’re able to get more

money than they might have before, which can be a

nice windfall. But I’ve also seen firsthand, literally with my neighbors, UM,

these sort of predatory home builders that come in there,

and while they think it’s probably decent money compared to

what they thought they could get, it’s still a lower

(34:00):

than what they would offer a white family. But even

if they were treated fairly and they walked away with

the big windfall from the sale, um and you know,

had a lot of money to retire on, that community

was still fractured. You know, the people who are having

to move and their neighbors who already had to move

may have lived there for generations or even you know,

(34:22):

just their whole lives and they formed a community. And

it’s not like that whole community just moves elsewhere together.

They all go to different communities, often towards the end

of their life, and it leads to alienation, isolation. Um.

It’s a that I mean, that’s a real problem. Even

even if they are being paid well for the the

houses they’re they’re being bought out of because they don’t

(34:43):

necessarily want to move, but they just can’t afford the

taxes anymore. Um. So there’s there’s that’s a big issue

with gentrification. It’s tough to get around sounds like that

neighborhood group that you’re talking about what’s the name again

that they that they’ve they’ve figured out a way or

round it. Do you know what there needs to be

dude is uh and this is chuck twenty two stuff. Okay.

(35:08):

I think if you live in a house long enough,

you shouldn’t have to pay property tax anymore. Yeah, I

think there are I mean, I have to be a lot.

Maybe it’s like twenty years or something, but that would

solve a lot of this problem. There is zero reason

why some elderly African American couple that’s been in a

home for forty years needs to be paying taxes at

(35:28):

all on that house, much less these jacked up rates. Yeah. No,

I think that’s that’s totally true. Um. Yeah, I think

there’s a if it’s not law, there’s a proposal in

Georgia to do that once you’re sixty five or something

like that. Maybe. I mean, I’m ad about property tax anyway,

just because it’s I don’t know, we pay so much

in taxes. Then you finally scrape up enough to buy

(35:50):

a place that’s your own, and the government’s then like, well,

if you’re going to have to pay tax on that,

do right? You know, I know, it’s seems unfair. Also,

you shouldn’t have to pay full price for coffee anywhere

once you reach sixty five or old agreed, especially after

three pm. Uh, All right, well, should we take a

break and then talk about the Fair Housing Act, which

(36:11):

solved everything. It totally did. It’s all great now, alright,

we’ll be right back up to this. Alright, spoiler, So

(36:41):

we ruined things. They passed the Fair Housing Act, and

racism has been solved in America. That’s right. Ninety eight

And we talked about the Fair Housing Act a little bit, UM,

and you know, it’s a good thing they passed it.

It did banned discrimination in housing practices officially, but it

just led to a little trickier way to get around

(37:03):

stuff by UM doing it on the download. Yeah, and

that is that is for if you’re studying systemic racisicism

in the United States. The passing of like the Voting

Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act UH,

and some other legislation UM during the sixties really changed

things in that no longer was the government in the

(37:27):

business of enforcing discrimination and segregation UM. And also now

you had recourse in the courts if you were discriminated

against UM. But it didn’t just a race racism in

the United States that that task of enforcing basically white

supremacy and racial discrimination and segregation and all the stuff

(37:48):

that comes along with it fell to um lesser institutions

in everyday people who carried out. And when you’re talking

about something like housing discrimination, UM, the people who now

are best able to continue enforcing segregation and discrimination in

the United States are people like lenders and real estate

(38:10):

agents and even people who are deciding where to buy

a house. Um. Everyday americans buying the house UM often

make choices that they don’t necessarily think our racist, and

they might they probably don’t think that they’re racist, but

they’re still they’re housing choices often reflect um inadvertent or

(38:32):

otherwise racial choices or choices along racial lines. Yeah, and

this you know this next bit, we’re we’re sort of

busting on real estate professionals a little bit. I have

very good friends that are real estate agents. They’re great

people for the most part. We don’t mean to just

paint everything with the big broadbrush, but the industry does

(38:54):

have a history of it, for sure. Yeah, and we

have to talk about it. So there was one in

the in the eighties, there was one practice called block

busting god um not having anything to do with video stores,

I know it was the eighties, but um literally busting

up a block. When a real estate agent would work

or sort of act as a speculator and say, either, hey,

(39:19):

you know what you know, there are some black families

that are moving into the area. You may want to

think about selling just to protect your home values before

they fall. Or they might sell to a black family

and introduce them to the area so they could then

turn around, um, buy these houses from the white residents

and then sell them to the black residents or you know,

(39:41):

hopefully black residents, but at a big mark up. Yeah,

which has insult to injury, Like they created a basically

white flight from an area just from the rumor of

black people moving in, and then they move black people

in and sell them sell to them at wildly inflated rates,

which is crazy. And I read one story to Chuck

of one of these real estate agents that was doing blockbusting.

(40:03):

They would have a black dad with the stroller walk

around the neighborhood, um like he had moved in or

was thinking of moving in or whatever, and apparently just

that was enough to get people to start to sell.

And again you’re like, you know, this is this is

terrible that real estate agents are doing it. But the

fact that it was effective really says a lot about

every day you know, white homeowners too. And also again

(40:27):

like it it doesn’t mean like that these white homeowners

hate black people like they were worried about their property values,

because it’s such an embedded myth in America that when

a black family moves into a neighborhood, they’re so bad

at taking care of their their house and their home

values that it’s going to drag the home values down

in throughout the entire neighborhood. And so everybody needed to

(40:49):

get out before that happened. That’s that’s again, that’s the

definition of systemic racism. Yeah, and you know this has

been busted up to a large degree officially, but up

until nineteen fifty, the official policy of the National Association

of Real Estate Boards UM said a realtor should never

be instrumental and introducing into a neighborhood members of any

(41:13):

race or nationality whose presence will clearly be detrimental to

property values in that neighborhood. That was like literal policy

up until nineteen fifty, and then there was a study

in two thousand six by the National Fair Housing Alliance

that said, and this is something else called steering, which

is not blockbusting, but it’s like, hey, like we want

(41:34):

to show you houses over here in this neighborhood because

we think it’s a better fit for you. Uh. And

you know here the financial instruments available to get mortgages

for you and maybe not just for everybody. And black

people historically have not given the full picture. They’re maybe

not shown white neighborhoods. Uh. And the study found that

steering occurred sent of the time when researchers posed as

(41:58):

buyers and we’re shown homes like these sort of undercover operations. Yeah,

and steering occurs, um not just you know, if you’re

if you’re a black home buyer, you’re not just going

to be shown a black neighborhoods. If you’re a white

home buyer, they’re probably not going to take you to

black neighborhoods either. So through this process of racial steering,

this is basically enforcing patterns of segregation still in the

(42:22):

United States. Yeah, there was another study by Brookings. They

found that black owned homes are undervalued by an average

of forty thou dollars. And this is one that’s controlled

by all the factors like home quality and amenities and everything. Exclamation, Yeah,

it’s forty eight grand literally because it is a home

(42:43):

owned by a black individual. When they control for amenities

where the home is the size of the house, everything

else about the house. If you compare apples to apples,

and it’s the same house owned by a white person

and the other house that’s exactly the same home by

a black person, the black person’s house is going to

be forty thousand dollars less in value just because it’s

(43:05):

owned by a black person. And that’s that’s just basically

that whole idea of um that black people drag home

values down becoming a self fulfilling prophecy, and um that

those same home values are all of that undervaluing that

same Brooking study found amounts to a loss of about

(43:27):

a hundred and fifty six billion dollars for Black Americans. Yeah,

for wealth they were not able to achieve. And uh,

you know, we talked a lot about the Great Recession

in the mortgage crisis kind of when it was going

on and shortly thereafter, Um, Black Americans back then were

likelier to receive subprime mortgages. These were the loans that

(43:47):

were really expensive to repay. They had higher fees, they

had higher interest rates, um they also had mechanisms built

in if you were a black loan owner that made

it easier for the lender to seize their collateral with

usually meant their house and so like, it makes sense

that if you are taking a greater risk lending to

somebody as the bank, you should be able to get

(44:10):

more money for it, right, But the problem is is

like subprime mortgages were doled out to black homeowners or

black home buyers at way higher rates than they were

to white home buyers. And that’s a problem in and

of itself if the if the rates are less favorable

and it’s easier for the bank to repossess the house.

But especially it proved to be a big problem during

(44:32):

the mortgage crisis when that bubble bursts, because if you

were a low income Black American, you were probably denied

a mortgage of any kind. But even if you were

a middle to high income black home buyer, you probably

got a subprime mortgage compared to say, a white buyer

(44:52):

with the same criteria that you had to offer. UM.

So that meant that when those foreclosures happened because the

bubble bursts, Black Americans, especially UM, wealthier Black Americans, were

disproportionately impacted, so that that subprime mortgage debacle erased way

more Black intergenerational wealth than it did for white people. Yeah,

(45:15):

I have my last three exclamation points. Stat during the

subprime mortgage crisis, there was a study that found black

and Latino families, because you know we’ve mentioned people of

color a few times, is not just solely African American

families affected? Um, And the study found that black and

Latino families making two hundred thousand dollars a year or more,

(45:39):

we’re still more likely to receive a subprime loan than

white families making less than thirty thousand dollars a year.

That nuts, and six point two percent of white people

with a credit score of six sixty or higher received

a subprime mortgage compared to twenty one point four percent

of black borrowers with that same credit score. So, Chuck, UM,

(46:00):

there’s a big problem with all this. And it’s kind

of like you said at the beginning, like when you’re

talking about race and especially discrimination by race. Um, people

tend to be like, especially white people tend to be like, well,

I don’t know about that. I mean, there’s a lot

of other factors involved, Like it could be anything. So

you really have to kind of prove that this is

a thing. And ever since the federal government got out

(46:22):

of discriminating on paper, um, it’s gotten a lot harder

to track. So back in the seventies, the Department of

Housing and Urban Development, they have an office of Research

and Policy. They came up with the way of testing

this to control for as many variables as possible and

just see if it’s just race that is being discriminated against.

(46:43):

And it’s called paired testing. It’s actually pretty clever from

what I understand. Yeah, that’s when you get to equally

qualified candidates to apply for homeown or to go to

a real estate agent and like look at apartments or

houses or whatever. Uh. They are trained to basically be

as identical as they can be to one another, to

(47:04):

respond to the questions in the same way, have the

same credit history, same job status, same income level, and

basically sort of be duplicates of one another except for

their skin color. Uh, they’re not working together so they

don’t even know, um, like there’s no bias there even

because they’re not like paired together, right, They’re not like,

oh they got too, I’m gonna try this with them.

Like they don’t. They don’t meet one another, they don’t

(47:26):

interact with one another. They’re just doing their thing and

they’re just trained to do it exactly the same way.

The only distinction between them is their their race. Right.

And so the Urban Institute, which is a think tank,

UM study this and they came up with kind of

four big points from this paired testing UH exercise, which

(47:47):

is UH. They found about discrimination and housing vouchers that

are intended to let low income renters choose from a

bigger pool a rental housing uh than the realtors even showed. UM,

there were fewer homes and apartments available to minorities like

we were, like I kind of mentioned earlier, like just

a smaller like no, you know, we’ll just look here. Yeah,

(48:09):

the racial steering usually results in fewer, fewer places being shown. Um.

They were steered again to primarily um, you know, neighborhoods

of their own ethnicity, and then given less information overall.

Like I mentioned about mortgage products, UM, different kinds of loans,

different kinds of ways of structuring a loan, just not

(48:31):

given that information at all. Right, Um, so the they

also found this paired testing turns up very frequently that um,

it’s not just even people of colors, not just black Americans,

but it’s people of color in general. But um, it’s

not even just down to to racial discrimination. There’s also

a lot of discrimination against people who are differently abled.

(48:53):

They actually sometimes fair worse than minorities when it comes

to housing discrimination. Paired testing is has turned that up

as well. So it’s still the upshot of all this

is that it’s still a problem and there is like

some silver lining to it. Um the I think. Uh.

That same think tank, the Urban Institute, also turned up

(49:14):

that there’s been a general decline overall. It’s not huge,

but it’s it’s noteworthy. It’s remarkable. Um of preference in

favoritism toward white white buyers over buyers of of like

minority buyers by about five percent between and two thousand.

It went from about so And there does seem to

(49:38):

be a general decline in racism or discrimination, I should say, uh,

in the United States. So that’s the good news, is

that America seems to be getting less racist. The bad

news is that America is still racist. Like, we still

have a long way to go. It’s, as the study

put the studies findings confirm a hard truth that America’s

(49:58):

long journey to end housing discrimination remains unfinished. Um. And

so there’s still a long way to go. And I

think it’s really important for everybody to realize that there’s

a long history of discriminating against people of color, but

also very specifically Black Americans, and that it’s still going

on today. And even though it’s in a slightly lesser form,

it’s very important if it’s going on at all, that

(50:21):

we we erase it. That’s right, agreed, You got anything else?

Nothing else? All right, Chuck, Well then that’s housing discrimination.

And since I said all right, Chuck, it’s time for

a listener mail. Well instead of reading a specific listener mail.

And because this episode is a little heavy, we thought

we’d have a little fun. Um. We got maybe more

(50:45):

emails than we have for any other episode in our

history down literally about Neco wavers Um. A lot of

support for the Neco for people, and a lot of

condemnation for yucking yums without giving having tried them. You

were all correct. We honor you all, and we’re gonna

Josh got some sent them to me. We’re gonna try

(51:06):

some necka wafers on the air. Listen there. I just

realized I think I made a grave mistake by not

having any water in the basement. Yeah, I just realized

this as well. Do you have a pipe to tap into?

I think we should eat the same color. Oh really? Okay,

all right, so we can kind of go, you know,

nose to nose. I’m never open one these before. Okay, exactly, already,

(51:29):

so nasty. You know, everybody was right about yucking people’s

yams in general, but also because we hadn’t tried them.

So that’s why we’re doing this. I mean, they’re just

falling apart when I opened the package. So to strike one,

I’ve got a mess on my table. What color are

we gonna do? I mean it’s hard to tell. This

looks sort of like a very pale yellow. That’s the

(51:51):

only whole one in my hand. Pale yellow. I don’t

even have that. I got white. I’ve got orange it

maybe maybe it is white, Okay, I’ll call it. Wait wait, wait, wait,

I might have a palio when I do, I do it. Okay,

apology to the people of Mesophonia, but here we go.

Oh my god, it’s just like it’s like a flatter um,

(52:18):

bigger candy heart. The conversation hart, it’s not bam like okay,

very hard, the crunches. I think what probably gets people.

I mean, the taste isn’t bad, but it’s not great. No,

they’re not great, But I mean, who’s crazy for conversation hearts,

sickos and weirdos? You know, the same goes for me. Well,

(52:40):

what’s the verdict? Would you ever buy and eat Neca

wafers after this? I will tell you what. I will

probably eat the rest of these. And I like sugar.

I like as atter fact, I’m gonna do one of

the gray ones real quick. What about you? Uh no, no,

that is not my up my alley. But I’m gonna

(53:02):

try one of those chocolates because those where I think

recommended steer clear, the dark gray ones, the liquorice ones.

They’re awful. It tastes Oh no, it is slightly different. Yeah,

I get a little hint up cocoa. I’ve come around

a little bit to the liquorice ones. At the end Wow,

I’m turning into an eco weirdo. Actually, the chocolate aren’t bad.

(53:23):

What about pink? Try pink? Well, that’s um, this is

winter green. I think people are so disgusted right now. Yeah,

this is all right. We’re literally the last two people

listening to this. Man, I think we should wrap this. Okay. Well, um,

if you want to tell us that we shouldn’t yuck

everybody’s jump, especially about something we haven’t tried, we need

(53:44):

to hear that whenever we do that. It’s totally true

and totally right. Thank you everybody who wrote him. You

can get in touch with us at Stuff podcast at

I heart radio dot calm Stuff. You should know it

is pretty action of I heart Radio. For more podcasts

for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

(54:05):

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H

Older Episo

Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.

Speaker 1 (00:01):

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I

Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I’m Josh Clark,

and there’s Charles W Chuck Bryan over there, and this

is stuff you should know. Um the man oh man addition,

(00:25):

do you know what I love about this topic is

that it’s not just a bunch of like ranting about

how we think things are and how people think things are.

It’s like so studied and statistic heavy that you can

talk about how things are and then say, and here’s

(00:45):

the proof exactly, here’s a lot of data to back

it up. It’s really great. I love it when they

dovetail like this. Yeah. I get the impression, though, UM

that you when you’re talking about the studying race and

especially in America like you are, you have to back

it up with data like people are like, oh, yeah,

I don’t I don’t know about that. But um, I

want to give a shout out to actually to um

(01:08):

uh scholars both sell sociologists of race. UM Professor Villnabashi

Treatler from UC Santa Barbara and Professor Tricia Rose of

Brown University both are experts on this stuff and they

helped me out big time with this and some other

research on on racism I’ve done, um and they Dr

(01:28):

Bashi Treatler said, hey, make sure you mentioned this hashtag

we have going called site hashtag. Sorry, and I’m making

the hashtag symbol like justin Timberlake hashtag site black women

ce I t e black women. UM, and that leads

you to all sorts of good often overlooked research by

black scholars. Um, who are women that don’t always get

(01:51):

a lot of credit. So I’m glad you told me

about that one. I wanted to tell everybody else. So

when you, uh, that was a stutter when he said

so so sociologists, you didn’t mean they were just mediocre sociologists. No,

I was. I was sociologist. I could see how that

would be confusing. I was doing my impression of Phil

Collins saying sociologist so so studio. Yeah, well that’s the

(02:16):

last joke we’re gonna tell you. Oh yeah, probably. I

was warned by Dr Bashi Treatler not to do our

usual stick when we’re talking about race stuff, and I

was like, well, I mean, we we can handle ourselves.

She said. I I listened to your stuff. I listened

to the Braws episode just trust me on this. It’s like,

all right, So then that means the housing discrimination episode

(02:38):

officially starts. Now, that’s right. So that’s what we’re talking about, dude.

Housing discrimination and um uh in the United States, and

there is a very long history of housing discrimination. And

you might say, like, well, that really sucks. That sucks

that people have trouble buying a home or maybe they

get less favorable terms on their loans just because of

(02:59):

their race, and that does suck. That’s absolutely true. But

it’s even worse than that because in the United States,

one of the biggest ways of growing wealth intergenerationally, like

over the course of generations within a single family is

through a house. Yeah, I mean it’s sometimes people don’t

(03:19):

have a ton of money to invest in the stock market.

Some people think the stock market is not something to trust.

But one thing that has always been fairly reliable in

this country, you know, say, for a few moments in history,

is real estate and the idea that if you scrap

up and save enough money for a down payment for

a home, that house will eventually be worth quite a

(03:42):

bit more years later, and you can sell it and

use that extra windfall of cash to invest in the

stock market or to pass down to your kids so

they can then get in the housing market sooner than

they might have and then it just becomes a cycle

where it just builds wealth. Yeah, Like the average family

(04:02):

in America has most of their net worth tied up

in their house, and then you know, when it comes

time to sell it and the house is paid off,

that’s a lot of money. And then when you kick

the bucket, your kids get that money and maybe they

get a better house, and it just keeps growing and growing.

So if you put up barriers to housing, you’re actually

putting up barriers to passing along intergenerational wealth. And as

(04:24):

a big, big problem in America. UM Still today, I

saw a study from I think Brookings that found that,

um the median. Yeah, brooking study said that the median

net worth of a white family in America is a

hundred and seventy one thousand dollars. The median net worth

(04:48):

of a black family in America is seventeen thousand, one

hundred and fifty dollars, about a ten of what the

median is for white people. And that is largely because

of housing discriminate in the history of housing discrimination in

this country. Yeah, and as far as history goes, you know,

it started with literal racist laws where they said, if

(05:10):

you’re a black person or a black family, you cannot

live here. Um. That went on for a while, and

then those laws were sort of altered to the Jim

Crows Separate but Equal era, where they said, you know what, Um,

we’ll say things are better, but it’s really the same

effect in the end. And then they got rid of

(05:30):

those laws and said, all right, now we’ve really passed

the meaningful legislation, and now we can just racially discriminate

on the down low and very creative ways. Yeah, that’s

basically the pattern that it’s followed. Um. And what kind

of stuck out to meet Chuck is is that before

about nine hundred, before like the rise of like industrialization

(05:53):

to a really legitimate degree in the United States, like,

there wasn’t not nearly as much segregation as we saw

starting around nineteen especially in the North, because if you

had a trade or a craft in the North and

you were an African American, there’s a really good chance

that you were going to be serving white people as

well as black people, right and because you usually were

(06:16):

very closely your home was tied close to your shop,

you often lived above it if you were like a

cobbler or something like that. Um, you made live next

door to a white baker or something like that. So

the there wasn’t a lot of segregation until industrialization came

along and there was a big call for labor, which

drew a lot of African Americans, a lot of Black

(06:38):

Americans out of the South up to the north. And

all of a sudden, all of those people who were

living in integrated neighborhoods, all those white people I should say,

had had a problem with this influx of black migration

from the South to the north, and they responded with

a lot of really disgusting violence. Yeah. I mean, we’ve

talked about some of these, um race incidents and race

(07:01):

riots and race almost race wars really uh here and

there on the show, and they’re always hard to talk about.

But that was just sort of the reality of things

at the time. Um. In the nineteen thirties, the New

Deal comes along, and this is when legislation starts to

kind of kick in. When the government stepped in and said,

you know what, we think we should make it easier

(07:23):

for people to own homes. We really want to boost

home ownership because that’s a boon for the economy of

the country. And we’re going to create the home Owners

Loan Corporation, which is going to help people refinance their mortgages.

But we need some criteria here to sort of establish

a uniform way of like how to how to dole

(07:45):

out this assistance. And they reckoned, let’s let’s look at

every population of forty or more and let’s create a

color coded map that’s based on riskiness of these loans.

And they said, you know, they talked to real estate brokers,

they talk to bankers, and they said, help us out,

help us draw these boundaries, and they came up with

a one, two, three, four color graded system. Right, yeah,

(08:07):

that’s right. Because again this was like long before credit

scores were developed, so you couldn’t really look at you know,

if somebody came into your bank to ask for a loan,

you couldn’t be like, well, you’re your your credit scores this,

So I’m not gonna look at that start. I don’t

know we should do an episode on if we haven’t already.

I don’t think for sure. Um, but yeah, so the

four color codes they had were also um delineated by

(08:29):

grades Grade A, B, C, and D. Grade A was

the most desirable neighborhood. They were usually homogeneous, meaning white. Um,

there were um lots of professionals living in there. Grade

B was maybe a step down, but still largely homogeneous,

if not totally homogeneous, and they were considered still desirable.

And then it started to get into the lower grades

(08:50):

grades C and D, and C was um, I think

colored yellow on the map, right, Yeah, the first two

were green and blue, and then Grade C was rated

as declining and colored yellow and that sort of. In fact,

I think it even said infiltration of a lower grade

population in the document, which you don’t have to be

(09:13):

a genius to figure out what they were saying there.

It means people of color were moving in. And then

finally you end up with the color red Grade D,

which is least desirable. Um, very densely populated areas almost

always communities of color. Right. So um, the h O

l C created these maps, and then um, along came

(09:36):

the Federal Housing Authority and they said, well, we need

similar maps because we’re not we’re not here to help

stem the tide of foreclosures. We’re actually here to generate

new home ownership among Americans. Um, but we still have

the same issue. We got to figure out who’s credit

worthy and who’s not. So we’re going to base it

on where the people live. And they basically made identical

maps to the h O l C maps, and so

(09:58):

they probably used them. Right, there’s a lot of debate.

I don’t think anyone’s found the smoking gun yet. But

if you take an h O l C map in

an f h A map and you put them over

one another, they’re basically the same thing. And I I

it’s kind of all. It’s up for the debate still.

But the the the upshot was that because of these maps, Um,

(10:22):

if you lived in one of these red and often

yellow communities, they wouldn’t lend to you, for um, for

a new mortgage or even a second mortgage to say,

remodel your home. And they also wouldn’t assist you with

refinancing your existing mortgage, which means you’re subject to foreclosure.

And if you were in a red or yellow community,

(10:43):

you were probably um black or a person of color

or some other ethnic minority. And UM, that means that

they were shut out of this enormous housing boom that

generated a tremendous amount of prosperity immediately after the New

Deal in World War Two. As we’ll see, so African

Americans were left out of or on the fringes of

(11:04):

the New Deal anyway. And this is where we get

to shout out Francis Perkins. Perkins again, which is it’s

fun to now that we know so much about her,

to continually shout her out. But she did a lot

of work arguing in favor of inclusion for black people

in the New Deal. Um, I guess you know, sometimes successfully,

sometimes not. But at the end of the day, the

(11:25):

f h A imposed these rules through the New Deal. Uh.

Their maps were just like the UH the h O

l C. And the process of excluding these groups because

they were colored red was called redlining. That is that

like the where that whole term comes from. That’s exactly

where it comes from. So now today, any any time

you’re discriminated against, whether it’s buying insurance or anything like that, um,

(11:49):

based on your race or say your community. Um, it’s

called redlining now. But that’s where it grew out of

those h O l C maps and f A J maps. UM.

And I mean they would use terms and like their

their handbooks that like these communities had quote undesirable racial

or nationality groups in them, so you couldn’t you couldn’t

lend them any money or whatever. Um. And it was

(12:11):

I mean like this is still like a really big

problem today. Yeah, I mean back then basically and still today.

In many cases, that leaves you with a couple of

options as a person of color. You can rent uh

forever um often times back then and still now from

a white landlord who doesn’t live anywhere near that community,

(12:31):

not always, but usually, or just pay for the home

in cash, which is a stretch for anybody. Uh, it’s

it’s tough to do unless you’re like wealthy. And there

were there were, I have to say there were black

owned banks. But there was nine black own banks in

the entire United States in the thirties. So that is

a place where you could turn to if you’re lucky

enough to have one in your area. But that that

(12:53):

was not a solution to the general population for Black Americans. Yeah,

and like you said, also affected their ability to get

second mortgages, to do home improvements or to like expand

on their house and upgrade it, remodel it. So that

means that the properties are gonna deteriorate and decline over

(13:13):

the years, and it’s just it’s part of that systemic

racist cycle that is just prevalent. Yeah, because still today, eventually,

over time people from the outside looking in say, look,

black people can’t even take care of their communities. Look

at look at how their houses are. Um, just as

a result of this. That is definitely like the definition

(13:33):

of systemic racism for sure. It’s just by the way

into the structures. If you hear dogs barking, My dogs

are upstairs and they’re just very excited about this topic. Yeah,

and I don’t know what’s going on there, but they’re

not going to shut up. So let’s say we press on.

We’ll press on. Should we take a break, then press on.

We’re going to press on like some lee nails right

(13:53):

after a break. How about that? All right, it sounds good.

(14:19):

All right, we’re back and look, these things look amazing

on me. Yeah, they’re very nice. There’s a little bit

of cuticle showing. I didn’t put them right up against it,

but it’s still it’s passable. Well, I think if you

paint them just right, that’s not so noticeable. Right, fill ins,

that’s what I need. I need to get some fill ins.

So back to the topic at hand, joking is over. Um,

(14:43):

so here’s the deal. There’s, like you said, a lot

of debate whether or not or I don’t think we

said this part, whether or not the lenders actually use

these maps because these were government maps from government programs.

It’s not like they said, here, banks have these and

use these. Uh. If you look at the statistics, it

seems like they probably got their hands on some of

(15:03):

these maps. It does. And also, don’t forget the government

figured out, you know, how to draw these maps for

every city over forty people from the lenders, from the banks,

from the Yeah, so they knew this anyway, but now

the government has basically said it is okay to do this, um.

And so so yeah, if you if you look at

the outcome of this redlining, these red line maps, um,

(15:28):

it’s it’s really hard to say, no, this didn’t happen

like this definitely didn’t make it out of government hands

like forts here just great, let’s trade off. Between ninety

four and nineteen sixty two, over of all the federally

backed mortgages that were issued in the United States went

(15:49):

to white buyers. Between four and nineteen sixty two, that’s right,

because of this black ownership since then and can tinuing

today is lagged behind white homeownership in America, and seventeen

just a few short years ago, of black Americans own

their homes versus seventy of white Americans. And then the

(16:13):

other problem with redlining a community is you basically put

a pox on it. It’s cursed, because that means that

those houses are not going to get any kind of

attention UM, and so they’re going to continue to deteriorate.

And if you live in this community, as far as

a banker is concerned, you are a huge credit risk. Right,

And so still today UM sev of the neighborhoods that

(16:35):

were originally redlined in those maps are our redline UM

low income communities today, And which is I mean, that’s

pretty surprising. And I also saw that UM study found

that homes and red line neighborhoods we’re still worth less

than half of those in green neighborhoods. Yeah, and here’s

(16:57):

the one. I marked these as stats with an exclamation point,

just that’s how excited I get. But the ones that

I’m really floored by, I don’t even write anything except

for three exclamation points. I’ve got three exclamation points by

that of back federally back mortgages. For sure, that is

definitely one. Um here’s mine. If if you might say, well,

(17:18):

what about variables man and education level and income level

and stuff like that, Like you gotta factor all that in.

That’s a whole other side conversation as far as systemic

racism and being able to go to good schools and

afford a good education and get a good job and

all that. So just park that to the side. But

if you control for all those variables, college educated black

(17:40):

Americans are still less likely to own their home than

white Americans without a high school diploma. Yeah, That’s That’s

what really gets you is when they they’re like, well,

let us just control for all these factors and only

variable that remains is the race of the people applying

for a owner owning a home, and it’s still the case.

(18:02):

That’s when it’s like, well this is indisputable. Actually yeah,

and you know you can put a price on this.

Red Fen did a study um just last year in

twenty that black American families missed out on the opportunity

to accumulate an average of two hundred and twelve thousand

dollars of you know what, we’re talking about that intergenerational

(18:22):

wealth per household over the last forty years, just over

the last forty years. I mean we’re talking about stuff

that started, I mean back in the days of slavery,

but really started to take off in the nineteen thirties

with the New Deal. And this is just since nineteen

eighty they’ve lost out on that amount of money per household.

That’s nuts and still today, Chuck, here’s another one that

gets me. Black American is five times likelier to own

(18:45):

a home in a red line neighborhood than a white

American is. So this is still an issue today. Um.

So redlining these maps just set off this enormous amount

of um discrimination and I guess is all you can say.

And then all of the horrible effects that come out

of that that level of discrimination. But they weren’t the

(19:06):

only things that set it off. Um. The g I

Bill really kind of came in and said, well, hold on,

hold my beer, I want to mess things up to

what does hold my beer mean? It means that like

there’s some dude just kind of sitting there with like

his shirt, um just barely covering his gut drinking a beer,

watching somebody do something stupid and he says, hold my beer,

(19:26):

and then he doesn’t stupid. That’s right. Yeah, I thought

that’s what it meant. But you know me, I’m a

I’m an old man with a shirt barely covering his gut.

So I wasn’t quite short. You should spend more time

on Urban Dictionary. It should. I don’t drink much beer anymore, though,

although I do love it. What’s your favorite? I mean,

you know I love Tropicalia here out of Athens, Georgia.

(19:49):

The creature comfort. I still never had one. Well, you

should come over. I have a cagorator now on my deck.

Oh my god, I’m serving it up. But I don’t

know why I got it. I got it for friends

because I don’t drink. It’s on a beer. And then

the pandemic happened, and now I’ve just got a half

keg of beer sitting ship. All right. So yeah, the

(20:09):

g I Bill um this, you know, in theory, the

g I Bill is a great thing, and it has

done a lot of good. But in this case, it

did block access to home ownership among black Americans because,

uh they would come home from World War Two. The

g I Bill was passed. Banks are handing out mortgages

to veterans and they were actually allowed to discriminate based

(20:31):

on race. Yes, it’s shocking. Yeah, well it’s like whenever

you see that kind of thing, you’re like, this doesn’t

jibe with what I understand. Just look to the Dixiecrats,

the segregationists of the South, who were a very powerful

voting block and during the Jim Crow era, and they

were like to appease them and get them to vote

(20:52):

for something like a New Deal program or to not

do everything they could to block it. You had to say, okay,

well we’ll make sure that that blacks are excluded them

this that that that Black Americans won’t have access to

this amazing program. And they’d be like, okay, cool, let’s

let’s do it. That’s that’s that’s where a lot of

that came from. And I mean, it’s easy to blame

the Dixie Krats, but you can also be like, well,

(21:14):

you know, how hard did you try to go around

the Dixie Kratz too. I mean it was allowed to happen, yes, yeah,

by everybody, despite Francis perkins best efforts. Yeah, here’s the

stat For instance, in Mississippi in Uh, they build out

told out more than three thousand v A backed home

loans that year. Uh, and two of them were two

(21:37):

black veterans. Uh. Pretty startling. I don’t even know the

percentage on that point nine eight. Oh yeah, there’s got

to be a repeating something in there somewhere. Uh. And

you know this is a big deal because when World

War Two ended, they wanted a housing boom. There was

a lot of the supplies that would have gone to

home construction during the war went to the war effort.

(21:58):

So the f h A said, you know what, we

we need a housing boom here. We’re going to guarantee

construction loans to you like big construction companies out there.

And that’s when the suburbs popped up for the first time,

and that changed everything forever. Yeah. I mean, like they

they the birth of the suburbs were like a deliberate

(22:18):

program created by the federal government to to basically get

more people buying houses, to start that intergenerational wealth and

to create a middle class or to expand the middle

class dramatically. And they were able to do that partially

through just like when the f h came along and said, hey,

you know, we’re going to back these people’s loans as

(22:39):

long as they’re not in a red line neighborhood. That

says to the lenders, well, then you know that means

even if this person defaults, the government will buy the

loan from me. I’m gonna get paid back no matter what.

They did the same thing to these construction companies to

which created this huge housing boom. But there’s a caveat

to it. Just like with the v A loans that

said you can discriminate based on race for loans, even

(23:01):

though this is really important, Chuck. Even though the government

the v A would back the loan of a black

veteran just like they would back the loan of a

white veteran and you would be repaid no matter what,

you were still allowed to discriminate based on race. The

f h A, supposedly with the birth of the suburbs,

said we’re going to guarantee your construction loans, so you

(23:22):

can build suburbs, but you can’t sell two black Americans.

That’s another one that I don’t think there’s a smoking

gun that I saw, so I don’t know if that means,

like get the word out, like you can’t sell the

black people or else we’re not going to back these loans,

or if it was stated policy, that haven’t been able

to turn up. But it’s pretty well understood that the

(23:43):

f h A discriminated against black people basically moving to

the suburbs by not backing construction loans like that. Well. Yeah,

and there were neighborhood covenants in place that said that

black people cannot own homes in these neighborhoods they were

there were clauses that said you cannot resell your home

if you go to move, you can’t sell it to

(24:04):

a black family. Yeah, dude, if you want to be startled,

go search that um on Google Images. There’s like pictures

of these clauses and deeds that say you can’t sell

to anybody who’s not white, or even specifically, you can’t

sell anybody who’s black. It’s really jarring. Yeah, and it’s um,

I mean, it was sort of expressly understood that the

suburbs were being created for a reason, and that’s to

(24:26):

get white people out of the city to a place

where they could live among themselves. And it’s it’s something

that’s still going on. I mean, during the uh most

recent presidential election campaign, Donald Trump started playing praying on

these fears again. He was saying things like, literally, suburban

housewives of America, Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your

(24:49):

American dream. People living their suburban lifestyle dream will no

longer be bothered of fine or financially hurt by having

low income housing built in your neighborhood. And the these

are literal quotes, and it’s just he’s trying to to

garner a certain kind of vote, to be sure. But

you know, we’ll get to other stuff. I mean, Trump

(25:09):

has a long history and his and his family with

he and his father of housing discrimination. But the end

result of all this is white people. You know, people

call it white flight. They left the cities, moved to

the suburbs. People that were in the city still, these

African American families in these yellow and red line communities,

we’re sort of stuck there. So the government steps in

(25:32):

to build affordable housing, which at first were racially integrated.

There were black people and white people, but then even

the lower income white people, uh fled for the suburbs. Yeah,

because wages rose. Yeah, and they left cities in an

urban communities almost entirely black. Um. Yeah. So proportionately speaking,

there was a tremendous drain of white people from the cities.

(25:57):

I’m sure it was different on a city to city based.

As a matter of fact, I know it was. There’s

not a you can’t put a whole blanket of history

over every square inch of the United States, so different

cities had different experiences. But proportionately speaking, black people have

always made up a smaller amount of the American population overall.

(26:17):

But then if you look at the you know, percentage

of black people, say in a city in nine I

think is when it peaked. For Atlanta in particular, Um,

it’s like say black or something that’s a way larger

proportion or disproportionate amount of black people living in the

city than say, um, in the suburbs. And then conversely, Chuck,

(26:38):

when you look at the suburbs and the statistics about

race or demography in the suburbs, then it really kind

of all comes home. Yeah, and you know they’re living

in the suburbs. They decide, you know, we still need

to go into the city sometimes, so we need interstates

to get us there because we like going to concerts

occasionally or seeing a professional sports team play, right, and

(27:01):

so they built these interstates, Uh, they kind of barreled

through black neighborhoods built them there they often became a

dividing line. UH. And you know, these communities were set

up to fail. They had less frequent garbage pickup, they

had inadequate funding to keep up this public housing that

they built, UM, lower access to basic utilities, and they

(27:22):

were just in no position to to succeed basically. Now.

And I’m trying to remember what episode we talked about

prow I Go Housing UM project in in St. Louis.

I think it was the Environmental Psychology episode, if I’m

not mistaken, But that was a really good example of

this of how people pointed to that people from the

outside and we’re like, look, you can’t like black people

(27:43):

can’t take care of anything. Look at the degraded state

that this housing project is in. And it’s, like you said,

like they were set up to fail through all through

like a lack of attention, a lack of funding, UM,

just a lack of basically everything UM. And it’s it’s

that kind of seem to keep perpetuating these um uh biases.

(28:07):

For example, and this is a big one that we’ll

talk about later, that white people think if black people

move into an area, their housing values are going to

go down because of stuff like that. Yeah, I mean,

that’s sort of the I guess you’d call it the

dog whistle that everyone leans on there like, hey, we

you know, we don’t mind. Uh, we’re not bigoted at all.

(28:27):

We just want to keep our housing values up. That’s right.

That that so that one and then the the um

the myth that black people are just inherently um uncredit

worthy or not credit worthy are the two things that

seem to be used the most as cover for, like

you said, post civil rights are segregation in the United States,

(28:51):

the dog whistle, like you said, yeah, I mean, and

now is when we can talk a little bit about

um gentrification, because I mean, the way housing has worked

in this country is really fascinating and really gross in

a lot of ways, but just interesting to look at

from a bird’s eye point of view. The way people

move around and what eventually happened with the cities is that, uh,

(29:16):

you know, call them what you want, yuppies or dinks.

There’s a lot of name for upwardly mobile white people.

They’re like, Hey, I want to move into the city,

I want to be closer to to the concerts. Although

this is going to be controversial, I’m gonna get a

lot of cred for this, but one of the most

annoying trends of the last like fifteen years is building

(29:37):

all these concert venues out in the suburbs. It’s so annoying.

And I know they want their concert venues out there

so they don’t have to come into the city, but

I hate it when I one of my bands plays,

you know, thirty miles out into the suburbs. I won’t go. Yeah,

it’s kind of a pain. Although we did go out.

It’s a huge Motley Crewe thanks to that was Nita Strauss. No,

(30:02):

that’s true, So that was that was worth the trip

because it was Miley Crue and Alice Cooper. I just think,

I don’t know, I think all sports stadiums and all

concerts and you should be in the city. I’m with you.

That’s definitely traditional into the city for a big day out.

You know, when they start moving museums way out in

the exurbs and I’m done. Um. But the same thing.

(30:23):

You could make the same case. When they built the

highways and everything, they just kind of built them through

black communities. That’s what they did with with the stadiums

and all that as well too. Well, no, that’s true.

You know, think about Braves. They just plunked Braves Stadium

ted Turner out just right in the middle of Mechanicsville,

which is a historically black community, and said, everybody moves

(30:45):

move aside, and don’t harass all the white people who

come down to see the game on you know, same day.

We should do I mean, I love sports, but we

should do a There’s such a problematic side to pro

sports from that too. Um, these billionaire owners is using

city money to build new stadiums when their other stadium

is just like ten years old or whatever. That is

(31:06):

definitely problematic. It’s crazy, what a crazy amount of waste

that produces a loan just that alone. Yeah, um, alright,

so where was I? All right? Uh, white dinks are

moving into the neighborhoods again in the city because they

want good Thai food, and uh, these neighborhoods become a

(31:28):

little more attractive the more white people move into, other

white people to move in, and they start moving in

and increasing numbers, and the houses are generally renovated or

improved over time or sometimes they might bulldoze you know,

a pretty decent house with good bones just to build

you know, the biggest house possible on their postage stamp

(31:48):

of a lot. It’s crazy how close they build these

mammoth houses together. I’m sure it happens everywhere. Atlanta’s got

a real problem with it. But what happens is, you know,

home user going to increase, that’s gonna raise taxes on

the other homes around them. A lot of time, those

other homes are owned by UM, longtime lower income residents,

(32:10):

most times people of color, it becomes unsustainable. UM. We

have a great, great program here in my neighborhood and

east like called Neighbor in Need. That is UH Emily

and I have four main charities that we work with

and give to every year, and Neighbor in Need is

one of them because we like to stay really locally focused.

But Neighbor in Need basically addresses this head on and

(32:33):

they you know, raise a lot of money and they

use that money to take care of these people. UM,

if they hear about a neighbor that’s like, you know,

in need, like an older African American couple who’s been

here for forty years, they’re having to pay way too

much in property taxes so they can’t afford a roof

on their house. They’ll go put a roof on their house,

or they’ll pay their power bill, um whatever. I mean.

(32:56):

It’s a really really great grassroots organization, so UM very

happy to be working with them and uh, you know,

trying to fight the sort of ills of gentrification overall. Yeah,

that’s neat because it also draws the community together to

help the longest term residents of that community rather than

that whole everybody’s on their own kind of thing, which

(33:17):

I’m sure most people who move into a community like

you know that is gentrifying probably would want to do.

They just don’t know how to do it, or they

don’t know how to contact anybody. People don’t just usually

go over to their neighbor’s house and knock on the

door and introduce themselves anymore. So that’s cool. Yeah, and

you know this is uh sometimes they are able to

sell their house for a pretty good you know, the

(33:39):

housing value does increase, so they’re able to get more

money than they might have before, which can be a

nice windfall. But I’ve also seen firsthand, literally with my neighbors, UM,

these sort of predatory home builders that come in there,

and while they think it’s probably decent money compared to

what they thought they could get, it’s still a lower

(34:00):

than what they would offer a white family. But even

if they were treated fairly and they walked away with

the big windfall from the sale, um and you know,

had a lot of money to retire on, that community

was still fractured. You know, the people who are having

to move and their neighbors who already had to move

may have lived there for generations or even you know,

(34:22):

just their whole lives and they formed a community. And

it’s not like that whole community just moves elsewhere together.

They all go to different communities, often towards the end

of their life, and it leads to alienation, isolation. Um.

It’s a that I mean, that’s a real problem. Even

even if they are being paid well for the the

houses they’re they’re being bought out of because they don’t

(34:43):

necessarily want to move, but they just can’t afford the

taxes anymore. Um. So there’s there’s that’s a big issue

with gentrification. It’s tough to get around sounds like that

neighborhood group that you’re talking about what’s the name again

that they that they’ve they’ve figured out a way or

round it. Do you know what there needs to be

dude is uh and this is chuck twenty two stuff. Okay.

(35:08):

I think if you live in a house long enough,

you shouldn’t have to pay property tax anymore. Yeah, I

think there are I mean, I have to be a lot.

Maybe it’s like twenty years or something, but that would

solve a lot of this problem. There is zero reason

why some elderly African American couple that’s been in a

home for forty years needs to be paying taxes at

(35:28):

all on that house, much less these jacked up rates. Yeah. No,

I think that’s that’s totally true. Um. Yeah, I think

there’s a if it’s not law, there’s a proposal in

Georgia to do that once you’re sixty five or something

like that. Maybe. I mean, I’m ad about property tax anyway,

just because it’s I don’t know, we pay so much

in taxes. Then you finally scrape up enough to buy

(35:50):

a place that’s your own, and the government’s then like, well,

if you’re going to have to pay tax on that,

do right? You know, I know, it’s seems unfair. Also,

you shouldn’t have to pay full price for coffee anywhere

once you reach sixty five or old agreed, especially after

three pm. Uh, All right, well, should we take a

break and then talk about the Fair Housing Act, which

(36:11):

solved everything. It totally did. It’s all great now, alright,

we’ll be right back up to this. Alright, spoiler, So

(36:41):

we ruined things. They passed the Fair Housing Act, and

racism has been solved in America. That’s right. Ninety eight

And we talked about the Fair Housing Act a little bit, UM,

and you know, it’s a good thing they passed it.

It did banned discrimination in housing practices officially, but it

just led to a little trickier way to get around

(37:03):

stuff by UM doing it on the download. Yeah, and

that is that is for if you’re studying systemic racisicism

in the United States. The passing of like the Voting

Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act UH,

and some other legislation UM during the sixties really changed

things in that no longer was the government in the

(37:27):

business of enforcing discrimination and segregation UM. And also now

you had recourse in the courts if you were discriminated

against UM. But it didn’t just a race racism in

the United States that that task of enforcing basically white

supremacy and racial discrimination and segregation and all the stuff

(37:48):

that comes along with it fell to um lesser institutions

in everyday people who carried out. And when you’re talking

about something like housing discrimination, UM, the people who now

are best able to continue enforcing segregation and discrimination in

the United States are people like lenders and real estate

(38:10):

agents and even people who are deciding where to buy

a house. Um. Everyday americans buying the house UM often

make choices that they don’t necessarily think our racist, and

they might they probably don’t think that they’re racist, but

they’re still they’re housing choices often reflect um inadvertent or

(38:32):

otherwise racial choices or choices along racial lines. Yeah, and

this you know this next bit, we’re we’re sort of

busting on real estate professionals a little bit. I have

very good friends that are real estate agents. They’re great

people for the most part. We don’t mean to just

paint everything with the big broadbrush, but the industry does

(38:54):

have a history of it, for sure. Yeah, and we

have to talk about it. So there was one in

the in the eighties, there was one practice called block

busting god um not having anything to do with video stores,

I know it was the eighties, but um literally busting

up a block. When a real estate agent would work

or sort of act as a speculator and say, either, hey,

(39:19):

you know what you know, there are some black families

that are moving into the area. You may want to

think about selling just to protect your home values before

they fall. Or they might sell to a black family

and introduce them to the area so they could then

turn around, um, buy these houses from the white residents

and then sell them to the black residents or you know,

(39:41):

hopefully black residents, but at a big mark up. Yeah,

which has insult to injury, Like they created a basically

white flight from an area just from the rumor of

black people moving in, and then they move black people

in and sell them sell to them at wildly inflated rates,

which is crazy. And I read one story to Chuck

of one of these real estate agents that was doing blockbusting.

(40:03):

They would have a black dad with the stroller walk

around the neighborhood, um like he had moved in or

was thinking of moving in or whatever, and apparently just

that was enough to get people to start to sell.

And again you’re like, you know, this is this is

terrible that real estate agents are doing it. But the

fact that it was effective really says a lot about

every day you know, white homeowners too. And also again

(40:27):

like it it doesn’t mean like that these white homeowners

hate black people like they were worried about their property values,

because it’s such an embedded myth in America that when

a black family moves into a neighborhood, they’re so bad

at taking care of their their house and their home

values that it’s going to drag the home values down

in throughout the entire neighborhood. And so everybody needed to

(40:49):

get out before that happened. That’s that’s again, that’s the

definition of systemic racism. Yeah, and you know this has

been busted up to a large degree officially, but up

until nineteen fifty, the official policy of the National Association

of Real Estate Boards UM said a realtor should never

be instrumental and introducing into a neighborhood members of any

(41:13):

race or nationality whose presence will clearly be detrimental to

property values in that neighborhood. That was like literal policy

up until nineteen fifty, and then there was a study

in two thousand six by the National Fair Housing Alliance

that said, and this is something else called steering, which

is not blockbusting, but it’s like, hey, like we want

(41:34):

to show you houses over here in this neighborhood because

we think it’s a better fit for you. Uh. And

you know here the financial instruments available to get mortgages

for you and maybe not just for everybody. And black

people historically have not given the full picture. They’re maybe

not shown white neighborhoods. Uh. And the study found that

steering occurred sent of the time when researchers posed as

(41:58):

buyers and we’re shown homes like these sort of undercover operations. Yeah,

and steering occurs, um not just you know, if you’re

if you’re a black home buyer, you’re not just going

to be shown a black neighborhoods. If you’re a white

home buyer, they’re probably not going to take you to

black neighborhoods either. So through this process of racial steering,

this is basically enforcing patterns of segregation still in the

(42:22):

United States. Yeah, there was another study by Brookings. They

found that black owned homes are undervalued by an average

of forty thou dollars. And this is one that’s controlled

by all the factors like home quality and amenities and everything. Exclamation, Yeah,

it’s forty eight grand literally because it is a home

(42:43):

owned by a black individual. When they control for amenities

where the home is the size of the house, everything

else about the house. If you compare apples to apples,

and it’s the same house owned by a white person

and the other house that’s exactly the same home by

a black person, the black person’s house is going to

be forty thousand dollars less in value just because it’s

(43:05):

owned by a black person. And that’s that’s just basically

that whole idea of um that black people drag home

values down becoming a self fulfilling prophecy, and um that

those same home values are all of that undervaluing that

same Brooking study found amounts to a loss of about

(43:27):

a hundred and fifty six billion dollars for Black Americans. Yeah,

for wealth they were not able to achieve. And uh,

you know, we talked a lot about the Great Recession

in the mortgage crisis kind of when it was going

on and shortly thereafter, Um, Black Americans back then were

likelier to receive subprime mortgages. These were the loans that

(43:47):

were really expensive to repay. They had higher fees, they

had higher interest rates, um they also had mechanisms built

in if you were a black loan owner that made

it easier for the lender to seize their collateral with

usually meant their house and so like, it makes sense

that if you are taking a greater risk lending to

somebody as the bank, you should be able to get

(44:10):

more money for it, right, But the problem is is

like subprime mortgages were doled out to black homeowners or

black home buyers at way higher rates than they were

to white home buyers. And that’s a problem in and

of itself if the if the rates are less favorable

and it’s easier for the bank to repossess the house.

But especially it proved to be a big problem during

(44:32):

the mortgage crisis when that bubble bursts, because if you

were a low income Black American, you were probably denied

a mortgage of any kind. But even if you were

a middle to high income black home buyer, you probably

got a subprime mortgage compared to say, a white buyer

(44:52):

with the same criteria that you had to offer. UM.

So that meant that when those foreclosures happened because the

bubble bursts, Black Americans, especially UM, wealthier Black Americans, were

disproportionately impacted, so that that subprime mortgage debacle erased way

more Black intergenerational wealth than it did for white people. Yeah,

(45:15):

I have my last three exclamation points. Stat during the

subprime mortgage crisis, there was a study that found black

and Latino families, because you know we’ve mentioned people of

color a few times, is not just solely African American

families affected? Um, And the study found that black and

Latino families making two hundred thousand dollars a year or more,

(45:39):

we’re still more likely to receive a subprime loan than

white families making less than thirty thousand dollars a year.

That nuts, and six point two percent of white people

with a credit score of six sixty or higher received

a subprime mortgage compared to twenty one point four percent

of black borrowers with that same credit score. So, Chuck, UM,

(46:00):

there’s a big problem with all this. And it’s kind

of like you said at the beginning, like when you’re

talking about race and especially discrimination by race. Um, people

tend to be like, especially white people tend to be like, well,

I don’t know about that. I mean, there’s a lot

of other factors involved, Like it could be anything. So

you really have to kind of prove that this is

a thing. And ever since the federal government got out

(46:22):

of discriminating on paper, um, it’s gotten a lot harder

to track. So back in the seventies, the Department of

Housing and Urban Development, they have an office of Research

and Policy. They came up with the way of testing

this to control for as many variables as possible and

just see if it’s just race that is being discriminated against.

(46:43):

And it’s called paired testing. It’s actually pretty clever from

what I understand. Yeah, that’s when you get to equally

qualified candidates to apply for homeown or to go to

a real estate agent and like look at apartments or

houses or whatever. Uh. They are trained to basically be

as identical as they can be to one another, to

(47:04):

respond to the questions in the same way, have the

same credit history, same job status, same income level, and

basically sort of be duplicates of one another except for

their skin color. Uh, they’re not working together so they

don’t even know, um, like there’s no bias there even

because they’re not like paired together, right, They’re not like,

oh they got too, I’m gonna try this with them.

Like they don’t. They don’t meet one another, they don’t

(47:26):

interact with one another. They’re just doing their thing and

they’re just trained to do it exactly the same way.

The only distinction between them is their their race. Right.

And so the Urban Institute, which is a think tank,

UM study this and they came up with kind of

four big points from this paired testing UH exercise, which

(47:47):

is UH. They found about discrimination and housing vouchers that

are intended to let low income renters choose from a

bigger pool a rental housing uh than the realtors even showed. UM,

there were fewer homes and apartments available to minorities like

we were, like I kind of mentioned earlier, like just

a smaller like no, you know, we’ll just look here. Yeah,

(48:09):

the racial steering usually results in fewer, fewer places being shown. Um.

They were steered again to primarily um, you know, neighborhoods

of their own ethnicity, and then given less information overall.

Like I mentioned about mortgage products, UM, different kinds of loans,

different kinds of ways of structuring a loan, just not

(48:31):

given that information at all. Right, Um, so the they

also found this paired testing turns up very frequently that um,

it’s not just even people of colors, not just black Americans,

but it’s people of color in general. But um, it’s

not even just down to to racial discrimination. There’s also

a lot of discrimination against people who are differently abled.

(48:53):

They actually sometimes fair worse than minorities when it comes

to housing discrimination. Paired testing is has turned that up

as well. So it’s still the upshot of all this

is that it’s still a problem and there is like

some silver lining to it. Um the I think. Uh.

That same think tank, the Urban Institute, also turned up

(49:14):

that there’s been a general decline overall. It’s not huge,

but it’s it’s noteworthy. It’s remarkable. Um of preference in

favoritism toward white white buyers over buyers of of like

minority buyers by about five percent between and two thousand.

It went from about so And there does seem to

(49:38):

be a general decline in racism or discrimination, I should say, uh,

in the United States. So that’s the good news, is

that America seems to be getting less racist. The bad

news is that America is still racist. Like, we still

have a long way to go. It’s, as the study

put the studies findings confirm a hard truth that America’s

(49:58):

long journey to end housing discrimination remains unfinished. Um. And

so there’s still a long way to go. And I

think it’s really important for everybody to realize that there’s

a long history of discriminating against people of color, but

also very specifically Black Americans, and that it’s still going

on today. And even though it’s in a slightly lesser form,

it’s very important if it’s going on at all, that

(50:21):

we we erase it. That’s right, agreed, You got anything else?

Nothing else? All right, Chuck, Well then that’s housing discrimination.

And since I said all right, Chuck, it’s time for

a listener mail. Well instead of reading a specific listener mail.

And because this episode is a little heavy, we thought

we’d have a little fun. Um. We got maybe more

(50:45):

emails than we have for any other episode in our

history down literally about Neco wavers Um. A lot of

support for the Neco for people, and a lot of

condemnation for yucking yums without giving having tried them. You

were all correct. We honor you all, and we’re gonna

Josh got some sent them to me. We’re gonna try

(51:06):

some necka wafers on the air. Listen there. I just

realized I think I made a grave mistake by not

having any water in the basement. Yeah, I just realized

this as well. Do you have a pipe to tap into?

I think we should eat the same color. Oh really? Okay,

all right, so we can kind of go, you know,

nose to nose. I’m never open one these before. Okay, exactly, already,

(51:29):

so nasty. You know, everybody was right about yucking people’s

yams in general, but also because we hadn’t tried them.

So that’s why we’re doing this. I mean, they’re just

falling apart when I opened the package. So to strike one,

I’ve got a mess on my table. What color are

we gonna do? I mean it’s hard to tell. This

looks sort of like a very pale yellow. That’s the

(51:51):

only whole one in my hand. Pale yellow. I don’t

even have that. I got white. I’ve got orange it

maybe maybe it is white, Okay, I’ll call it. Wait wait, wait, wait,

I might have a palio when I do, I do it. Okay,

apology to the people of Mesophonia, but here we go.

Oh my god, it’s just like it’s like a flatter um,

(52:18):

bigger candy heart. The conversation hart, it’s not bam like okay,

very hard, the crunches. I think what probably gets people.

I mean, the taste isn’t bad, but it’s not great. No,

they’re not great, But I mean, who’s crazy for conversation hearts,

sickos and weirdos? You know, the same goes for me. Well,

(52:40):

what’s the verdict? Would you ever buy and eat Neca

wafers after this? I will tell you what. I will

probably eat the rest of these. And I like sugar.

I like as atter fact, I’m gonna do one of

the gray ones real quick. What about you? Uh no, no,

that is not my up my alley. But I’m gonna

(53:02):

try one of those chocolates because those where I think

recommended steer clear, the dark gray ones, the liquorice ones.

They’re awful. It tastes Oh no, it is slightly different. Yeah,

I get a little hint up cocoa. I’ve come around

a little bit to the liquorice ones. At the end Wow,

I’m turning into an eco weirdo. Actually, the chocolate aren’t bad.

(53:23):

What about pink? Try pink? Well, that’s um, this is

winter green. I think people are so disgusted right now. Yeah,

this is all right. We’re literally the last two people

listening to this. Man, I think we should wrap this. Okay. Well, um,

if you want to tell us that we shouldn’t yuck

everybody’s jump, especially about something we haven’t tried, we need

(53:44):

to hear that whenever we do that. It’s totally true

and totally right. Thank you everybody who wrote him. You

can get in touch with us at Stuff podcast at

I heart radio dot calm Stuff. You should know it

is pretty action of I heart Radio. For more podcasts

for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

(54:05):

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H

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How One Company Secretly Poisoned The Planet

Duration: 00:52:13

Duration: 00:45:57

Released: 2023

Series: Agents of Change in Environmental Justice

Open Episode in Spotify

Open Series in Spotify

Nsilo Berry joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss hidden toxics lurking in buildings and what sustainable construction looks like.

Agents of Change in Environmental Justice · Nsilo Berry on making buildings healthier

Transcript

Brian Bienkowski

All right, I am super happy to be joined by Nsilo Berry. Nsilo, how you doing today?

Nsilo Berry

I’m chillin’, man. Really good outside Portland here in Oregon’s pretty decent right now. And I don’t think it’s raining right now at the moment, i might say so. So, but the last few weeks have been kind of pouring. So I like the rain. So I’m kind of disappointed it’s not raining, actually.

Brian Bienkowski

Well, I drove home in in a snowstorm yesterday from west of where I live. And I’m the same I’m strange and that I like the bad weather. There’s something about it that does something to the mood. Well, speaking of, speaking of place, let’s let’s go way back to the beginning. So you’re not originally from Portland, you grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. So tell me about your upbringing and how you think it shaped you

Nsilo Berry

Yeah, great question. My parents, my mother specifically was in the military. So I did a lot of moving around. One of the other senior fellows, Lariah, she had a similar experience in her podcast talking about that. So for me, I kind of connected with that as well. So for me moving around, seeing different, a bunch of different places living with a bunch of different family, extended family in particular. But we started in St. Louis around 2000s, my mom got out of the military, if she had my brother in the late 90s, she took a job as a flight attendant. And so we kind of settled down there, it’s kind of being like our home base. So growing up in St. Louis was a really, really unique situation for me a really fun time kind of growing up African American middle class family. And so for us, it was really important about just kind of experience different things growing up. I was in Boy Scouts, became an Eagle Scout, went to public school, went the private school, had a chance to to be part of different liberal organizations grown up throughout the community. And so for me, St. Louis is really kind of the foundation for who I am today. A lot of my great friends still live there today. Fell in love with sports there too. And so for me, St. Louis has a special place in my heart. But really, you know, when I became a teen, I felt like I just kind of outgrew the place because in that in a way it is kind of small. And so once you kind of do everything there, I was looking out to the world and so living next to the airport was kind of this always “my head in the clouds” in a way type of thing, because I saw plants come and go. And so I was like, “you know, I’m gonna be on the next plane out of here when I have an opportunity to see the world for myself.”

Brian Bienkowski

I want to hear more about Eagle Scouts. Was this something that was just something that was part of your family did other people go through this and and did it open your eyes at all to the environment and nature?

Nsilo Berry

Yeah, my father he was in he was in Boy Scouts when he was growing up. But he had a bad train accident when he was little and he lost his legs. And so now he’s permanently disabled. But for him being part of just kind of that environment. And at the time, it was kind of just the young boys growing up together. So for me, Boy Scouts was a way to just experience the space around me and my community, but also to nature. So camping was a big part of that. So having a chance to go into different cabin reservations, explore the campsite, keeping them clean, of course, but also respecting the space in nature around you and also having an understanding of kind of like animals and environment and ecosystem too, also while learning different skills. Like for example, I remember through Boy Scouts, I had a chance to ride a horse. I don’t think I would have ever done that if it would have been for Boy Scouts or something like that, right? starting a fire, surviving, putting tents together. And for me Eagle Scouts is the highest rank of that too. And so that was just an opportunity for me to go grow outside of myself, but also challenging myself and also do with some of my great friends. They recently just had, I think the Eagle Scout organization just had their 50th anniversary. And so I had a chance in a book to talk about my experience, I got a book back from that. And one thing that was unique about kind of where I grew up is that all my closest friends, like three of my closest friends, all Black, all Eagle Scouts, which is really unique for that scenario, and the situation at the time in St. Louis. So thank you, my troop, troop 531. And then the leaders at the time to help me shape that and also my friends was incredibly invaluable experience I still talk about to the to this day that people ask about my resume, you know, when I bring it up, or when I talk about it.

Brian Bienkowski

That’s so cool. And I think I mistakenly call that Eagle Scout. So it’s Boy Scouts, but Eagle Scout is something that you reach

Nsilo Berry

Yeah, it’s that it’s the highest rank in Boy Scouts. So it’s like through all kinds of your merit badge collection, camping, being in leadership positions, but also kind of culminating in an Eagle Scout project. And so that project is then kind of encapsulate, encapsulate all the work that you’ve done over kind of the period of your scouting career. And then you do that project, you get it approved, then you talk about certain things. And so you got to do that before your 18s, like when you age out. And so I was able to do that, got my Eagle Scout, and then graduated high school, and then you know, went on to college, and so on and so forth.

Brian Bienkowski

I promise I’ll move on from this, but I’m fascinated. What was your project?

Nsilo Berry

yeah, it was a I worked at. So we have a there’s an eagle bird sanctuary in Missouri. And so they do a bunch of different projects with scouting, scouts and stuff like that. So I chose a project related to honeysuckle kind of extermination. Honeysuckle in Missouri at the time is an invasive species. So it sucks up the nutrients of local kind of ecology and wildlife in the area. And it makes it hard for other animals like deer to kind of eat the native plants that are responsible for it, and they can’t eat it fast enough, then fashion grows. And so honeysuckle getting to suck the nutrients out of all local plant life. And so for me, I chose that –I have this weird kind of masochistic thing where I got to do the hardest thing and challenge myself– And what’s all about layering, I guess, when it comes to sports and stuff like that. So I said, they said, Hey, we have this problem, honeysuckle, can you help us get rid of it? I said no problem. So I got a bunch of pals together, my friends and I people, my troop troop mates, we went together started pulling the honeysuckle out, put them on the palette. So they they they can be exterminator take it to another place, an exterminator burned, whatever the case may be. So we put all those out. And after that, they came back, I think there was another project that kind of ran concurrently with mine. And that was replaced with other more natural life species, plant-like species that were able to be then eaten and maintained by the local plant life and animal life there too. Another one, my friends build the bird cage at the bird sanctuary. So we have a lot of people that kind of just like involve ourselves within that space. And so super thankful to that organization and the people there at the bird sanctuary. And I’m really thankful for the opportunity too. I think I have like a plaque somewhere on a tree over there. But I haven’t been back in so long. I haven’t really like confirmed or anything like that, too. But really unique experience for that.

Brian Bienkowski

Yeah, that’s so cool. Thanks so much for sharing that. And it sounds like there was a lot of a lot of engagement with the environment and nature here. But this kind of leads into my next question is where did kind of science in the environment come into play during those early years?

Nsilo Berry

Yeah, like, and I don’t know, if you remember this, I don’t know if this is the St. Louis thing. But in the summer, this is back when West Nile virus was like a huge thing, right. And so they used to have these trucks, they used to go around spraying these chemicals throughout the neighborhoods. And it was to help maintain mosquito birth and help decline and helps prevent that from happening. But it always smells so nasty all the time. You knew when they were coming out, you didn’t want to be outside with your friends, when the vehicle come out. The vehicle didn’t care, they would just drive by you probably wave out I’m not thinking twice about because the same person doing the work every single day. But it had this really bad smell to it. And so I always thought about like, what does that like that can’t be good for you know, people coming inside, I know, my parents would tell me to come inside when that pressure would come outside. So I had this weird kind of, this weird kind of relationship with things like that happening in our neighborhood and thinking about these type of things. But the most I was growing up I knew about mold obviously, I knew about lead in water those type of things. But for me, that was kind of where that that fascination with the environment in the things came apart. My family has always been into respecting the where you where you go, where you come from, and leaving places better than where you found them, which also has to be a scout slogan, too, as well, we’re talking about the environment as well. And so those type of things kind of just reinforced kind of personal behaviors of mine. And when I think about the world, animals, and the environment around us when it comes to to care about these things that then extended through my education, and then ultimately into where we are now when we talk about environmental justice and housing and other sorts and also toxic materials, too. So that’s kind of where all those foundation things, the initial curiosity came into play but then, you know, formalized with, you know, formal education practice and also experiences and talking to people and so on and so forth.

Brian Bienkowski

Yeah, and you’ve been able to take these these early values and make a career out of it, which is very cool. And before we get to that, which we’re going to I want to know what is the defining moment or event that shaped your identity up to this point?

Nsilo Berry

Yeah, it’s it’s a big one. And I think that it kind of leads into the question we talked about, some of the work I did in Africa. And for me, that’s the biggest one. I had an opportunity when I was in college, undergraduate at Drexel University in Philadelphia, to travel to the Gambia, Western Africa, very small country in Africa. And so I had opportunity to work as a kind of biomedical engineer and in a program there through their Drexel University. And for me, you know, as an, as an African American person growing up in America, obviously, there’s you have the understanding of kind of like, think about it like point z, which is obviously being in America. So obviously, knowing that I’m an American here at this point. But point A being what is the beginning point of that? We know it’s historically Africa. But we but we don’t have any kind of like formal connection to that as as Black people here unless you kind of trace your lineage back through slavery, and so on, and so forth. And so for me having the opportunity to really go back to Africa and reconnect with kind of that part, knowing that, not necessarily specifically knowing what maybe what tribe or what kind of country that I emanate from, my family came from, but really just having this, this influence of understanding of some part of me feels connected to this continent in a certain way. And that will be one thing that, you know, for anybody who, who goes back to a place that they know that their family comes from, but especially a Black person going back to the continent, I think having the opportunity to really immerse yourself in the culture and the people around you is, was the biggest shapeshifting thing. I had a person tell me, he said, Hey, Nsilo, you look, I can show you a picture, you look just like one of my cousins here, right? And that’s me, I’ve, that’s the crazy thing I’ve ever heard, right? I’ve never, I’ve never really got that in the United States. But having somebody saying that, to me was just like this opportunity. Like you have people here that there is some lineage here of you that, you know, comes from this place here. And that, to me is the biggest, I think one of the biggest shapeshifting opportunities for myself, I turned 21 there. So it was a coming-of-age thing for me personally, to experience that in Africa. And so that has, to me, is the ultimately the biggest Shapeshifter when it comes to my identity, and thinking about Africa and talking about and supporting the economy, even to this day.

Brian Bienkowski

That’s so cool. And I know at the time you were working at the intersection of engineering, public health and environmental justice while you were down there. So can you tell us about the actual work while you were there, and any challenges working in a different country, and also any victories, any good things that came with the work?

Nsilo Berry

Yeah, a lot of the work involved, I worked with a group called Power Gambia and they’re a solar kind of working group. And they work with kind of with renewable energies. And so they have a claim that they invested in down there, where they have solar energy, really, to the clinic, because a lot of sun when it comes to kind of petrol fuel sources, they’re unreliable, they’re hard to get. And at the hospital, they can go to anytime. And so in a hospital, you obviously need functioning things in order to help with kind of the patients in in different things in the moment, so. So for me, they have these things called solar suitcases, and these are kind of like, like a smaller miniature version of solar power systems, where you can then connect them to different clinics. And so I had the opportunity with me, and another another woman named Mary, she was a journalist, but also did some nursing stuff down there, too. And so we traveled throughout these different clinics here and installed the solar suitcases in these different clinics. And throughout all different parts of Gambia traveled the whole, the whole country there. And for that, for that reason, there were people, doctors delivering children with kind of thing about like an old Nokia phone, with a flashlight in their mouth, delivering the child, you know, in the dark, right. And so these are kind of things that where they have the opportunity now to have the solar system where if the child did come at, you know, a inconvenient time like children do, especially when they’re being born, obviously, they had opportunities now to have the adequate equipment, the lighting sources to have say, hey, we can deliver shot in a safe environment, where we can then have the right tools to do what we have to do but also if you have to escalate the issue to another clinic, we have the ability to make that communication and say, Hey, we need to go to the bigger clinic in a closer neighborhood or closer community, so we can get the children what they need. So a lot of that work on that development type of things. And also just kind of fixing, you know, equipment throughout these different hospitals, a lot of people would ask you to do certain things for them. So leaving things again, better than what I found them, but also investing in these clinics for long term so that they can have things that they need, because it is hard to get these places. Like if you don’t have the proper four-by-four vehicle, a lot of places are hard to get to a lot of people use donkey cart, which is very, you know, when we’re talking about an emergency, just not economical and not viable. Or people use transportation, which is hard to get to as well. And then after that significant walking obviously, because the distances are just so vast on the continent, especially in Gambia too, even as a small place, a small country. So that’s what much of my work centered around that. I had a whole hospital also an opportunity to travel to different parts of the country, especially during the holidays and stuff like that, too. So, but again, very, very important. The victories part of that world, having just opportunity to meet different people, to get some of this equipment up as equipment was, is hand-me-down equipment, so things that hospitals don’t need anymore, they pass to the clinic, and a lot of times they’re broken, they’re not very viable. So I had to fix them and then had to send the information to the other people that are addresses, that are there, so they know how to fix it when I’m gone. And so those are type of things that I think for me ultimately the most frustrating thing because you know if you want to be you want to see people succeed, you give them the best chance to, that’s what, I think that’s what a great coach will always told me so you know when you’re good giving bad equipment and people coming to you don’t really see them, you don’t want to see them succeed. It’s just something that you know how no longer have to pay for, to maintain, so you’re passing that along with somebody else to deal with that, which to me, I think is completely unfair if you’re talking about kind of like helping people and giving people the best opportunity to be kind of successful in their own environment. So that’s the biggest challenge. But you know, everybody else around it knows kind of their situation. And they’re constantly working to better their situation, which is always, to me, the most kind of respect I have for the group and the people that work in those environments in those places.

Brian Bienkowski

And maybe this is hard to answer. But I’m wondering, how you’ve carried that forward, that feeling that you had of having been there and having met people? And that sense of place? How was that? How have you carried that forward?

Nsilo Berry

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think for me, when I got there as a 20 year old initially, there’s this kind of feeling like, um I, what I’m the stuff am I doing isn’t impactful enough, there was a moment in in when I was working there, where I was walking to kind of my office, and you see some there was somebody on a morgue, they were covered up, and I mean, on a gurney, they’re covered up deceased, and there’ll be taken to the morgue. And so it’s free, that’s a real moment of kind of understanding, of really understanding that, you know, this is people’s lives are on the line here, like, and the work that I’m doing has impact on people’s lives. And so that responsibility weighed on me in a way where it didn’t feel like a burden, or something that you would fall but felt like a responsibility and a moment of opportunity to be your best version of yourself through the combination of work and training that you got up to this very moment here. And so I took that kind of that, that motivation, and carried that with me, but also with that, but also with the support of the people in the clinic who trusted I knew that I knew what I was doing there, right, that would in middle night would call me to come fix the oxygen concentrator for somebody that was you know, that needed it, that would come in and say, hey, great job on this great job in this facility, we need your we need you to go to this clinic in this part of the Gambia. And so I took that, that that motivation and courage and that support. And that’s something that’s been stuck with me throughout this moment in time, everywhere I’ve gone. And it’s always this kind of this, this idea that wherever where I am in that moment, I’m supposed to be there. Because the work that I put in, prove that I’m supposed to be there. I had a moment in college and I forget this was kind of like, I was in a lecture hall, giant lecture hall, and we’re talking about, you know, electronic stuff about, the teacher’s laying out their expectations and what to expect from you. And I remember coming on to lecture hall, just got because like 18 or so. And I felt like at the moment in time, the stage was too bright for me, like metaphorically speaking, like, I don’t know if I can handle this., I remember I called my mom from the lunchroom at Drexel. I was like, You know what, I’m gonna transfer, I’m gonna get into something else. Like, in that moment, I really want to run away from that thing. And my mom said something that was just the simplest thing, but she said “Nsilo, you know, where you are? I’m like, I’m at school, and she said,”the job of the teachers there is to also to teach you those things, too, right?” And I said, You know what, that makes a ton of sense. So that all that anxiety I had pent up about I should know these things already. What didn’t make any sense in that moment? Because I’m getting to a place where they’re supposed to teach me how to how to put these connections together, how to solder this, how to do that, what is the capacitor? What is that, whatever. I said, You know what, okay, I’ll do that. And from then on, I take in the moment, like, when I’m jumping into something new, this is the first moment where I’m gonna be the least kind of knowledgeable on the situation, and then you build upon that day each and every single day doesn’t mean they’re not gonna be harder days later. But this is the moment in time where you’re gonna just be the most lack of you’re gonna have the most lack of knowledge in the moment. And that you can build upon that moving forward. And so I’ve always kind of taken that mindset. And then really, from there jumping in things with both feet, and then figure them out as you go in that thing, with the support of others in your team and people around you too.

Brian Bienkowski

those things are so common among successful people, I think. Both learning humility, I think is really important. But also, there’s something and I see it with people in this program all the time, is people who are really hard on themselves, you know, feel like you should know all these things. But learning to rely on others is so important. So I want to fast forward to your work that you’re doing now, which ehn.org is very familiar with, because we’ve we’ve worked with, worked with you folks a little bit. So you are at the Healthy Building Network. And I don’t think most people think of buildings when they think of toxic chemicals. So first off, what are the concerns there? And how do these materials impact people’s health?

Nsilo Berry

And that’s a great question, Brian, for me, think about it like this. I want everybody who listened to the podcast, think about how much time you spent within the building, whether it’s your home, whether it’s a place of worship, whether it’s your work, whether it’s a school, right? think about what that really means and compare that to the time you spend outside, right, I’m not talking about like cracking a window from inside your home, but really spending time outside. I think people will be hard pressed to think that they spent a lot of their time inside, taking in kind of all the fumes and the materials that they build from, either from furniture or from carpet or for whatever the case may be or from maybe paint that they maybe they painted a new room in their home or something like that. Um, so when it comes to toxic materials, we’re talking about things that, you know, manufacturers put into their their products to make them more viable, to last longer on the shelves. But oftentimes these things have detriments on kind of our development human beings. Rather, it’s kind of things related to carcinogens, things related to kind of developmental toxics, it’s for individuals who are pregnant, or things that just don’t go away what you call PBTS, a persistent biochemical bioaccumulative, toxic, it’s things that just don’t go away, they’re mad annoying, trust me, right. And so when we talk about these, these chemicals, and the impact of these, these are some things that if I go into a room for like an hour or so and then leave, okay, and I never go back in the room, that’s one thing. But we’re sleeping in these, we’re staying in these, we’re building our lives in these. And so that’s where kind of the, the systems of these chemicals begin to infiltrate into ourselves, in our body. And our body begins to kind of be impacted on these in a way where we see more cases of higher asthma in poor housing, right? we see higher incidence of carcinogens and people who work in PVC locations or PVC factories, right? we see these things where individuals are becoming contracted with the disease at a higher rate, right, where it just doesn’t make sense compared to the rest of the population, right. And then you start looking at kind of the digest of materials when it comes to building homes. And places that have affordable housing are built with legacy systems, poor materials that that needs to be replaced, that haven’t been replace compared to maybe a suburban home, that has the most green places, is the most green kind of facility or home management, whatever you want to say, that has just a much more healthy kind of one, functional way to it, but also scientifically, a lot healthier compared to the individuals who live in the community housing that you might see in more urban areas. So think about, think about the impact of that. And think about kind of what that means for you long term, what that means for your kids. And what that means kind of for individuals who might find themselves kind of immuno-compromised, but also develop conditions, you think that would just don’t make quite much sense when you compare it to either your cohort, the people who live next to you or the people who live in different communities that you see just lower incidences of these type of things like asthma, like the development of cancer in particular. So that’s kind of where those those kinds of two fields intersect. It’s one of the type of things that if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’re not going to find it, you don’t think it’s just a home I’m coming into. But people have an idea when they see these type of things about, I don’t feel safe in this home, this home feels kind of like a kind of maybe like a prison, I don’t feel healthy in this place. I want to get out of this place. We have this intuition as human beings. So I think it’s very interesting to, to think about too, when it comes to kind of the place that we live and where we, you know, make our lives and so on and so forth.

Brian Bienkowski

I think the bringing up the idea that low-income housing is often more saddled with these things is really important. Because when I talk to people about the work that we do on toxic chemicals, is you okay, yes, it’s bad, you’re exposed to something that could harm you. It’s bad, but then you think about the downstream impacts. So you have a family who’s already low income, now is saddled with health problems and their children are, so is their health care available? they probably don’t have adequate access to health care or aren’t offered from their jobs if they’re low income. So it’s the cycle, you know, and then the kids are growing up in an environment that makes them sick more, and then they stay in low income housing and the cycle continues. So I think it’s important to think about these kinds of generational impacts. And it’s just kind of a system keeping the foot on the throat of certain, certain groups of people. So I think that work, the work that you’re doing is very important. And where does kind of Healthy Building Network fit into this? Is it just on kind of the advocacy of safer materials and trying to get these bad actors out of building materials?

Nsilo Berry

Yeah, as a we, we kind of ourselves as a research organization. And that’s where we are. So a lot of the work that we’re doing, we put together, we look into research. So we’re looking at a bunch of safety data sheets, and harmful product declarations, what are in these chemicals? How do we get rid of them, but also how we manage them too. Another part of our work is kind of managing our Pharos database, which is a database full of different chemicals that come together from different lists and regulatory lists throughout the world. So we have lists from Japan, we have lists from America, we have lists from Canada, Europe, that list where these kinds of chemicals fall on these different registrar’s and what they mean for kind of the the human impact, but also environmental impact too, where they’re talking about ozone depletion in particular, as well, but also kind of where these chemicals fall among kind of the toxic spaces and, and kind of how do we get the information out to people so they know, architects know, building owners know, developers know, “hey, I’m putting this type of paint that has these type of chemicals in it, just so you know, this chemicals are associated with these types of hazards. So you got to make better decisions here.” Right and also part of our work is creating these kind of this product guidance or these how to spectra that shows you kind of ranking these things from like a stoplight system like saying hey, Green has the least toxics in it, where Red is kind of the worst type of thing you want to avoid these type of things and really, you know a lot of our guys is kind of staying out of this kind of orange zone and moving away from the red and and making the the easy wins and the easy victory so to speak, when it comes to kind of developing your home and putting kind of the best things in your home for the right reason, so to speak. So that’s where we fall on it. We’re a small organization. So we have to know our limitations. So when it comes to the advocacy side, Brian of it, a lot of it is working with groups like coming clean, for example, health organizations like that, who have the kind of the bandwidth to kind of do the more kind of vocal stuff or working with kind of more grassroots things related to that maybe like the NAACP, they have a great CSBs sustainable equity, and the sustainable building sector. That’s the kind of their side organization is related to building. So working groups like that, when it comes to the activist side of it to help kind of push that message out, helps with kind of our work so that we’re not overextending ourselves, too. Because I think as researchers, I think that one thing we have to kind of do is focus on our thing, but find the ways where we can work with other people in a team to impact the space more kind of effectively.

Brian Bienkowski

And are there examples of whether it’s companies, building practices, projects that you’re seeing that are doing this construction in a healthy, sustainable way?

Nsilo Berry

Yeah, there’s two that come into mind. We worked with a group called Sara architects, I believe they were started in Portland, but they have offices in California. It was a demonstration project that we work with them about a new project they’re building in California for individuals who are low income, low income housing. And for them, they’re really I really want to champion them as an organization because they care about healthy materials, and building them and making them part of their mission there too. So they came to us, we talked about the project and they said, “Hey, we’re building these prizes with these so many units here. What are the ways that we can improve this project to make sure we can make it the healthiest as possible as viable within a kind of our constraints, our budget, so on and so forth.” So we have the opportunity to go back and forth with them. So my colleagues… we did a great job at kind of telling us, okay, this is a victory. This is a point here, you can do choose better paint here. What about the drywall here? What about the carpet here? Making just better decisions throughout that so people don’t have to think about that, because you mentioned that earlier, Brian, people saddled with all these issues here. And I think part of our work is it’s kind of take that burden off of them. So they can focus on the things within their lives, rather than thinking about, hey, can you replace these pipes, can you places drywall, can you replace this paint for me, like those things should already be taken care for. If you care about the people early on, that’s something that people shouldn’t have to worry about. They should be trusting that coming into a home, they’re getting a safe product, like almost like ordering some food, they’re getting a safe, healthy, you know, dish that they’re getting here, it hasn’t been tainted with this, and it has good, you know, products in it, ingredients in it, so to speak. And the same thing should be with your home too. When you’re coming into your house, you space, those things should also be healthy too. I don’t care if the person is low income, I don’t care if the person is a veteran, that has no impact on those type of things. In comparison, we’re talking about individuals who are higher income, who are more privileged, right, those things should be the same for both people. And so that group is a group that gets that we’ve worked with them previously, we do a bunch of webinars with them. And so that’s something that they care about, too, as well. Another group is United Interest for Justice, a community grassroots organization based in Minnesota. And they did a great job at working with different groups and helping getting people away from abusive landlords. And doing so they take over the the kind of the, the the tenant to take over the apartment complex. And in doing so they have the opportunity now, to redefine what’s important to us, what are the things that matter to us, more building these apartment complexes out, right. So a lot of it is retroactive birchbark, and get these old materials out that didn’t replace, we’re getting this old paint out, they didn’t replace, we’re getting this old drywall out, they didn’t replace so working with kind of the local banks and getting the loans that they need, but also working with us to say, Hey, if you’re going to replace your place, think about this paint that you should be using because this paint doesn’t have XY and Z in it. Right to help with kind of long term impacts we’re talking about. We’re talking about furniture, look with furniture that doesn’t have halogenated flame retardants in it. Right? So working with a group like that, who’s taken the opportunity to say, hey, we’re at the foundation, we need to start building a foundation properly. So how do we how do we reach out to Who do you work with so those are two groups that I believe that, you know, when they’re talking about a foundation, they know kind of who to get involved early with. And so when it comes to health materials start early, it is a lot easier and a lot cheaper for you in the long run to put the stuff in at the beginning. Rather than try to come come back in later or try to redefine processes later, where you kind of have the systematic approach to something already, it is a lot harder to redefine behavior that you learn especially bad habits, rather than starting a good habit and building upon good habits moving forward. That’s a lot more. And that’s I think that’s a lot more fundamental, fundamentally viable for your organization moving forward, but also for the people who occupy your space that you build, moving forward to as well. So start with good habits early, build on good habits later and maintain those in the present. That’s what helps impact healthy materials, you know, on a systematic level.

Brian Bienkowski

It’s a great point. I mean, the most obvious example of that is lead paint, right? I mean, we use lead paint for years and to try to get rid of it in houses now create sometimes creates more problems because you’re just kicking up dust. So that points well taken. So in your Agency of Change essay you talked about inadequate affordable housing in the US and ways to do it better. So you’ve talked about the links between toxics in the home and low income housing, but this essay was more about just being able to afford a home. I mean, you talked a little bit about healthy materials, but it was more about just having homes that are affordable and something you can be proud of. Can you explain why this too is a health issue and how this fits into your Healthy Buildings work?

Nsilo Berry

Yeah, that’s a great question I mentioned at the end of it, starting with kind of the fundamentals and the foundation, which I kind of ended my essay with come to that point, too, as well. And the point is that is that we’re talking about healthy materials. Think about it like this. It’s a it’s it’s a part of the umbrella that you go way down in the chain it but it’s not the biggest part that covers the entire kind of encapsulation of affordable housing. Like for me, you have to begin with the foundation part of it, which is affordable housing and wheeling starting with those those positive systematic impacts. If you cannot do that, then when you get to healthy materials, you’re just not going to have the time or the space or the opportunity to say, hey, we need to get this lead paint out of here, right? The lead paint being in those in those homes. That is a systematic that people did way back when that people now have to live with today till today. So getting those out, and it’s going to cost even more money, it’s going to be a retroactive issue that builds up over time, like, and so we’re talking about groups like NYCHA, for example, who I was critical of in the essay, it’s not that because people in there don’t care about that they don’t have the opportunity or the space to care about these type of things. Because they’re, they don’t have a lot of individuals who are committed as far as just kind of having the the power, the employee power to do what they have to do. But it becomes an increasingly expensive issue when your organization is lacking the funding either from state or from a federal sense to make the change that you need required, right, it’s a lot more, it’s a lot easier to have just a plot of land and build up and have everything that’s just clean and green, and so on and so forth, rather than having these old decrepit buildings, tearing them down, building them back up doing this doing that getting construction in there, it all becomes a logistical nightmare, because these are in urban areas with surrounding businesses, and you have to get permits, and it becomes just a thing where at this point, why are we even talking about the materials at this point? there are so many other issues that linger throughout this place that healthy materials is not even like, you just listen to me like, like five minutes in like a community hearing just because you have to, you know, do have the time or whatever the case may be so. So when it comes to healthy materials, you know, I like to advocate for solution that when it becomes really sensible and viable to do so just saying, hey, we need to do these things. That’s great. Right? But you have to understand the concept of what you’re asking people to do what you’re asking for folks, right? If people get to them, say, hey, we can we can talk about health materials law, like United Interest for Justice, right? That’s a great opportunity talk about that moment, after they secured the new apartments after they secured after the move away from the landlords, after they secured the funding, rather than trying to talk to them as they’re going through this kind of this logist this kind of legislative nightmare to try and beat the landlord, the abusive landlord from you know, getting separating them from their the current apartment complexes, right. So you have to have this opportunity to understanding when to do these things, and get to people early, but be smart about and recognize kind of what’s on their plate, and not just pile more stuff on there. Because if you’re piling a bunch of solutions that aren’t, that aren’t, that people cannot hold together, it’s all just going to fall apart. You’ve seen that before in a bunch of different spaces where people try to do too much. You have to do enough in the moment and be forceful in those moments, to then push things forward at the next moment, if that makes sense, right?

Brian Bienkowski

It does make sense and your point about almost making it for people who are doing the building and making those decisions, making it an economic win for them, you’re not going to have to go in and redo things and constantly be changing things do it right from the beginning, and then you save money in the long run. Unfortunately, we don’t we don’t often think like that. What are people that are making decisions don’t. So before I switch gears a little bit and get into some fun stuff I’d like to ask folks some of this work can be can be heavy, although it sounds like you guys have had some some significant victories along the way. But what makes you optimistic in this space?

Nsilo Berry

And it’s a great question. I think for me, the big part of is that I’m I’m meeting different people every day that that that are that one wants to have the conversation, but how can materials which is important in anything, but are saying hey, let’s do a project together. Let’s do these things together. So they’re reaching out to us or to other organizations about the materials. They want to know more about them, and maintaining a relationship and moments like that. So we can build upon kind of a new culture of healthy materials. That’s what makes me the most optimistic about it today. I think that a lot of kind of in in having it being a small organization that we are as HBN we have a lot of influence and a lot of different space from either connections and people knowing us. And so we’re, we get constantly invited to talk about things to do about to do these things. But I think something that we’re now asking people to is that if you’re going to ask them do these things. What are you being committed to after this conference, right? Don’t just take this this weekend here in June or July just to have us here. But let’s build upon something moving forward. You know, how are you building these practices into your architecture firm? How are you building these things into local legislation? if you’re part of kind of like statewide legislation that comes to housing, these things are things that people are excited to do, and we brainstorm and we have this conversation with them about. So I think for me, that’s the most optimistic part about this. And I think people are getting to the moment where we’re understanding that, that you know, as the dawdling can’t continue to go on, because that means that the people who are most saddled with this, as you mentioned, Brian, continue to still be in that situation, we don’t have time to dot all this, we know what the issues are, we know what the problems are, it is now to start building things, you know, correctly moving forward. And course correcting kind of that work that we that was done previous before us a proof of work jumped into these positions, up position until today. So a lot of that is, I think, for me, where my optimism lies in this kind of work. And I’m really excited about the the people that I’ve met, and the people that I’ve continued to meet, that are doing this work, and it seems like you’re just meeting different people in different spaces in different kind of, you know, you know, positions that you don’t have the influence to say, hey, you know, we’re gonna start doing this now moving forward. And to me, that’s a big victory, because that’s gonna mean something to that family that moves into that development two years from now, right. And that’s gonna be something to you know, that generation, family, and so on, and so forth. So and that community, so to speak. So that, to me is where my I think my optimism lies the most.

Brian Bienkowski

That’s excellent. And I mean, those kinds of collaborations in my work to you, when you start realizing that a lot of people are rowing in the same direction, and you can kind of combine your power is, it really is a bright spot in a lot of this environmental work. So you mentioned earlier, taking the hardest path and being a masochist. And maybe in sports. Well, I’m a Detroit Lions fan. So I, I think I may be when the masochism on that front. But I want to talk about sports, we had a chance in person to talk about this. And I know, we’re both sports fans. So what’s, what role do they play in your life? And who are some of your must-see teams?

Nsilo Berry

Yeah, absolutely. I think sports for me is a big part of kind of what I think about today, I watched less kind of the sport debate shows just because I think they’re so dramatic and really corny at times, but, but I’m always down to have a sports conversation with people that I work with, and things like that. But for me, sports is has been a big part of kind of my development as a person. I think it helps me kind of understand this, this understanding of, you know, when you make a decision, you have to understand a few things associated with that. One, you have to make the choice. So kind of the courage and bravery to do so. The second part is understanding sacrifice, and other part is consequence. So those are those three type of things. I think I learned that from playing sports and understanding that these things all play a role in the space here, especially in a team sport, right? There’s gonna be people next to you, you don’t know how hard in the offseason they’re working to do their, their their game, right. But if they put on that same jersey, as you, they’re your teammate in this moment, and you gotta live with whatever happens in that moment, whether you make this a mistake, whether they make a mistake, it’s, it is what it is, but you have to live with that. And that’s something that you accept when you put that jersey on, right. So that’s the decision you have to make. I think for me understanding consequence and sacrifice, I think about those things when I make decisions today even kind of in my in my work, but also kind of in in my personal life too, as well. And I think it helped me understand that you know, anything worth having, you have to make a certain sacrifice for it. And I think that when we talk about certain things, and we discuss things, maybe on a more kind of political and societal level, I think we, the patterns that we run into, are individuals unable to understand that they have to make the sacrifice, or they don’t want to make a sacrifice, because they want to have it all. And you really can’t have it all. If you want to see the changes that you want to see as a society, we’re gonna have to make a sacrifice on this particular issue. It’s going to be certain consequences, you might get a certain backlash from your group or constituents. But there’s some things that you have to do. We’ve seen that when, when we talked about kind of January 6, and the attack on the Capitol, you saw the Republicans who said, Hey, I think we should have a committee, and you saw the backlash they got from their other constituents on that, right. So those type of things were, that’s the kind of a sacrifice and you get frozen out from that. And you might have just killed your own political career, because you went against the grain of everybody else associated with you, right. And so that’s just one example. But that’s kind of how we talked about it on the bigger scale, and we tried to have it all but you really can’t have it all. You have to make a decision. And I think and I think having that helps me understand, face disappointment, helps me helps me kind of understand success, and helps me how to build upon the next day too. Because that moment doesn’t signify everything for you. You also have the opportunity in the next moment to be better than you were in this previous moment. Whether that whether that was a victory or a loss in that current moment, you can still build upon the next one. And so we’ll be talking about kind of like my favorite teams watch obviously being from me, I should say, obviously, I’m a huge Eagles fan. So watching that stuff, obviously tough loss in the Super Bowl. I don’t want to talk about it – I blame Rihanna dammit, you know, that halftime show. I’m just kidding, just kidding, she was sensational, sensational image, even if she was pregnant she was sensational in that half-time show, really. But somebody like Patrick Mahomes is it’s must-see TV. Like, if you want to lose to somebody, you want to somebody who might be one of the greatest ever do it. Like, he might be those people like you know, we’ve talked about great players he prevented a lot of other great players win winning championships because he was so damn good. That to me is incredible and but also seems more like Andy Reid in it, it takes the pain away less. I did cry dude, after I was mad because I spent so much money on food. I My, People came over, I sent them home, I think I closed my door and I think I just went to sleep. I maybe cried. I think I woke up I saw some tears my pillows. But the point is that but people like that it’s just people you have to, you have to respect people like that. Those people who go through it, who fought he was having a bad ankle, he fought through it, still was able to a way to get through it. Even Jalen Hurts, our own quarterback, bad fumble comes back brings the team back, he was going toe to toe with him, with Patrick Mahomes. And so someone like that is someone you’re incredibly proud of as Eagles fan to see that. So, for me, it’s always going to be the Eagles, Mercy TV. And now so I’m Patty. So Dallas is my must-see TV two, because they’re going to disappoint you, when you need the most to do it. They’re gonna disappoint you too. So there must-see TV too, for me as well. So, but no, I think that’s sports, for me is an incredible moment and something that I think about even to this day, and I love of course, the competition of it, there’s some competition, I think is is very beneficial for your growth. People understand it’s not about the person you’re facing on the field or wherever you are, that person is a physical manifestation of an impediment in that moment, because I personally want to change next week when you come to a different type of game, right? So it’s not the person, that’s important, right? It’s that moment, and how do you overcome that moment, and that’s the preparation to your teamwork, to the sacrifice, to the consequence, all those decision making. That’s what’s important in that space. And I love that part of sports so much.

Brian Bienkowski

I do too. And I think you put it really well, all the lessons you draw from playing sports and, and watching it to a large extent too and learning from the people that that that put up all that sacrifice. There’s a couple other things I’d add, and maybe they’re not as important, but I feel like sports is a real connector for me. I mean, the first time I met you, I mean, we talked about it I when I when I don’t see my uncle’s who maybe I disagree with on all kinds of other things. It’s something it’s common, it’s just common ground. It’s something that we connect with. And the other thing is it’s it’s relatively light. Like I could listen to podcasts on sports throughout the day and not feel the existential crises of the work that we engage in. So I like that about it a lot too. Awesome. Well, the sale this has been a lot of fun. I have a few more questions here. And this is just rapid fire three questions where you can just answer with one word, or a phrase. So if I could vacation, anywhere it would be

Nsilo Berry

I’d be in a submarine or on a boat, traveling the seas for an extended period of time that I would do something like that, something involving the water

Brian Bienkowski

I like that. My first concert was

Nsilo Berry

My mom took me to, when I was little, KC and the Sunshine Band. They were on tour somewhere I think in Virginia, something like that. So I went to one of their concerts,

Brian Bienkowski

Man, that is a that is a really good one. If I could have dinner with one person living or deceased, it would be

Nsilo Berry

Baseball opening day’s around the corner, Jackie Robinson. I would love to talk to him.

Brian Bienkowski

Another great one. Well Nsilo, what is the last book you read for fun and you don’t have to confine yourself to one word or phrase here.

Nsilo Berry

I did The Little Prince and check this pronunciation now: by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. You see, I didn’t practice it, practice that right before the podcast everybody. I’m just kidding. I practiced that right before the podcast, I was practicing in the greenroom. But no, I think the Little Prince is it’s essentially just about a pilot who crashes lands on a planet. And meets this Little Prince, and they just have a conversation about life and talk about these different things like this. And so it’s a really interesting journey about kind of just finding your own growth in your own space. Something similar too. if you’ve ever had the collection of short stories of The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling. It’s not the kind of thing about that when Mowgli is kind of going through his own his own kind of transition where he kind of missed the jungle. But he gets to a point where Bagheera the Panther tells him say, hey, Mowgli, like you’re of age, you’re your of age now and the people that you, you know that we will always love you. But that’s not who you are. You have to go be with your people. And you have to go can experience life on your own and on your own terms. And that’s something that I think about a lot too, especially growing up in from St. Louis, like, you move away from those people that are your best friends and all your childhood friends. And you have to grow and experience the world that the way that you know for what’s best for you. And that’s always a I think it’s always a tough intersection to overcome. And think about, but books like that always helped me kind of just think about kind of similarities in those tough choices we think about kind of in life today and so on, so forth.

Brian Bienkowski

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. It’s been really great to hear more about your work and your personal story. Nsilo, thanks so much for doing this.

Right-Sizing Traffic Enforcement for Safer Roadways

Duration: 00:19:07

Released: 2026

Series: Public Health On Call

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About this episode: The U.S. stands out among peer countries for having the worst rate of traffic deaths. Approaching this issue from a public health angle can help to make roadways safer by focusing on population-level interventions rather than directing resources towards policing “bad apple” individuals. In this episode: Tiffany Joyce Smith, lead author of a new report on the role of enforcement in road safety, explains the value of a proactive approach to preventing crashes versus a reactive one. Guest: Tiffany Joyce Smith, MPH, is a public health and mobility expert and program advisor with the Vision Zero Network. Host: Dr. Josh Sharfstein is distinguished professor of the practice in Health Policy and Management, a pediatrician, and former secretary of Maryland’s Health Department. He served as the Baltimore City Commissioner of Health from 2005 to 2009. Show links and related content: Right-Sizing the Role of Traffic Enforcement: Prioritizing Effective, Cost-Efficient and Equitable Improvements to Road Safety—Vision Zero Network Money Drove Criminal Justice System In Ferguson, DOJ Report Says—NPR The Surprising Benefits of Narrower Traffic Lanes—Public Health On Call (November 2023) Why Are So Many Pedestrians Getting Struck and Killed By Cars, and Why Aren’t We Doing More To Stop It?—Public Health On Call (July 2023) Transcript information: Looking for episode transcripts? Open our podcast on the Apple Podcasts app (desktop or mobile) or the Spotify mobile app to access an auto-generated transcript of any episode. Closed captioning is also available for every episode on our YouTube channel. Contact us: Have a question about something you heard? Looking for a transcript? Want to suggest a topic or guest? Contact us via email or visit our website. Follow us: @‌PublicHealthPod on Bluesky @‌PublicHealthPod on Instagram @‌JohnsHopkinsSPH on Facebook @‌PublicHealthOnCall on YouTube Here’s our RSS feed Note: These podcasts are a conversation between the participants, and do not represent the position of Johns Hopkins University.

Sabah Usmani on making cities healthy and just

Duration: 00:39:44

Released: 2023

Series: Agents of Change in Environmental Justice

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Sabah Usmani joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss the role of urban planners in tackling environmental injustice.

Some Chemicals are Forever

Duration: 00:58:05

Released: 2025

Series: Big Picture Science

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As their name suggests, “forever chemicals” have extraordinary staying power. When these nearly indestructible compounds find their way into our soil and water, they don’t break down for hundreds or thousands of years. PFAS – the name for these synthetic chemicals – isn’t just in our natural environment. Scientists have found it everywhere, including in the blood of nearly every living being. In this episode, we talk to the reporter who broke open the story about a decades-long corporate coverup regarding forever chemicals, look at what we know about their health effects, and consider how a kneecapping of the EPA’s regulatory power may weaken the best tool we have for protecting ourselves from PFAS contamination. Guests: Nathaniel Rich – Author of “Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade,” and the New York Times Magazine article, “The Lawyer Who Became Dupont’s Worst Nightmare” Rachel Frazin – Energy and Environment Policy reporter for The Hill, co-author of “Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America” Janet McCabe – visiting professor at the Robert McKinney School of Law at Indiana University, former deputy administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sugar’s Dark Shadow

Duration: 00:52:33

Released: 2024

Series: Gastropod

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Your pantry’s sweetest ingredient has an extremely bitter history. The sap-producing grass known as sugarcane has been grown and enjoyed by humans for at least 10,000 years, but it was only relatively recently that it went from a luxury to an everyday ingredient—a change that also triggered genocide, slavery, and the invention of modern racism. In this episode, how the Crusades got Europeans addicted to the sweet stuff, and how that appetite deforested southern Europe and kicked off the trade in enslaved Africans, before decimating indigenous populations in the New World and codifying racism into law. It’s a dark story that involves Christopher Columbus’ mistress, the early human rights advocate whose campaign to save indigenous people encouraged the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, and a trip to southern Louisiana, where we met Black sugarcane farmers to explore sugar’s troubling legacy there. No sugar coating here: join us for the fascinating and horrifying history of this household staple. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Canal (Love Canal)

Duration: 00:39:40

Released: 2018

Series: Swindled

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Once envisioned as a model community, the neighborhood of Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York, became the victim of a massive, man-made environmental disaster. Prelude: James Denney, a Missouri farmer, makes a deal for a local chemical company to bury its waste on his property.–––-–—BECOME A VALUEDLISTENER™ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ –––-–—CONSUME: Shop.Swindled.com–––-–—MUSIC: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Deformr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠–––-–—FOLLOW: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SwindledPodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Thanks for listening. :-)

The Devil They Knew

Duration: 00:48:58

Released: 2024

Series: The Poison Detectives

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We learn about the contamination of military bases in the U.S. and Canada from PFAS chemicals in firefighting foam. And how the foam residue has poisoned drinking water sources in both countries. We hear about one community in Quebec that was faced with a big problem finding a new source of drinking water.And a group of firefighters who decided to create a safe alternative to the foam. But because it is a gel instead of a foam, they ran into roadblocks getting it certified for firefighters to use.The issue was a big one for a congressional committee looking into PFAS. It called the military, the Environmental Protection Agency and the companies making the PFAS chemicals to testify and explain their actions. The members of Congress were looking for clear answers and weren’t happy when they didn’t get them. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Ghost Town (Times Beach, Missouri)

Duration: 01:07:19

Released: 2026

Series: Swindled

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A small Missouri town faces a compounded catastrophe as a devastating flood follows the discovery of toxic contamination.Prelude: A mysterious illness attacks the horses and humans at Shenandoah Stables.–––-–—BECOME A VALUEDLISTENER™ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ –––-–—CONSUME: Shop.Swindled.com–––-–—MUSIC: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Deformr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠–––-–—FOLLOW: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SwindledPodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Thanks for listening. :-)

The History And Legacy Of Hurricane Helene

Duration: 00:28:18

Released: 2026

Series: 1A

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On the night of Sept. 27, 2024, Hurricane Helene dropped a historic wall of rain on the southern Appalachian mountains.Some 31 inches of water fell in three days. The Swannanoa River rose 27 feet. Roads, bridges, and entire communities – very little was left in the storm’s aftermath. More than 250 people died across the Southeast. More than a hundred of them in North Carolina alone. It was the deadliest hurricane to hit the continental United States since Katrina.We check in on how much western North Carolina has rebuilt in the nearly two years since the storm. And how far it still has to go. Find more of our programs online. Listen to 1A sponsor-free by signing up for 1A+ at plus.npr.org/the1a.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The Most Interesting Oil in the World

Duration: 00:50:54

Released: 2021

Series: Gastropod

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Here’s a little riddle for you: What’s all around you, but can’t be seen, smelled, or tasted? Hint: It’s in your Oreos, Nutella, instant noodles, dish soap, shampoo, lipstick, potato chips, pizza dough, packaged bread, chocolate bars, ice-cream, and biodiesel. The answer is … palm oil, the hidden ingredient on just about every aisle of the grocery store. It’s the most ubiquitous, most important, most interesting oil that most of us don’t really know. But palm oil wasn’t always so big, or so anonymous—in its West African homeland, it’s a fragrant red oil traditionally used in cooking and ceremonies. So how did palm oil go global? What does it have to do with the European colonization of Africa, soap for grimy factory workers, Girl Scout cookies, and Alfred Nobel of Nobel Prize-fame? How has growing demand for all things palm oil driven deforestation and peat fires in Southeast Asia—and what can we do if we want to rethink our destructive palm oil addiction? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

EMILY KWONG, BYLINE: You’re listening to SHORT WAVE from NPR.

AARON SCOTT, HOST:

Hey, SHORT WAVErs. Time to slip on those rubber boots because we’re off for a field trip with NPR correspondent Kirk Siegler. Hey, Kirk.

KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: Hey, Aaron.

SCOTT: So where are you taking us today?

SIEGLER: Well, we’re going to the Great Salt Lake in Utah. I trekked out there earlier this winter with Carly Biedul. She’s a biologist with the Great Salt Lake Institute.

CARLY BIEDUL: These might even be my footprints from last week.

SIEGLER: Carly is bundled up in an orange, puffy jacket, gloves and hat. And most importantly, she’s wearing thick, sturdy, rubber boots ’cause the mud with the frozen slick layer of ice on top is treacherous.

BIEDUL: Probably not fully, fully fresh, but…

SIEGLER: But the only thing we’re not prepared for is the stench.

This is pungent right here.

BIEDUL: Yeah.

SIEGLER: Smells like dead fish, almost.

SCOTT: Oh, yes. I’ve been on similar salty lakes here in Oregon. Whew. That smell is intense and immense.

SIEGLER: It is. And the stink is actually a good thing because it’s a sign of a biologically healthy saline lake.

BIEDUL: People have been saying that they miss the lake stink ’cause it just makes it feel like home, and it’s just not here anymore. So you’re lucky that it gets to smell so bad.

SCOTT: Oh, so the smell is disappearing?

SIEGLER: It is. Because, Aaron, the Great Salt Lake is drying and dying. Biedul hikes out here weekly. She’s trying to collect samples of tiny brine fly larva, which are getting harder and harder to find.

BIEDUL: I’m going to get my jar out.

SIEGLER: So think of it, the brine flies she’s looking for are at the bottom of the food chain. They’re feed for the migrating birds and so on. And most of the water that’s left out there is too salty now.

BIEDUL: The threshold is - we’re kind of at the threshold. So if things get any saltier, we’re super, super worried.

SIEGLER: And they may have good reason. A recent report says climate change, farming and population growth in Utah may dry up the lake in five years.

SCOTT: So today on the show - the future of the Great Salt Lake and similar lakes across the West. Why are they drying up? And what’ll we lose if they do? I’m Aaron Scott, and you’re listening to SHORT WAVE, the daily science podcast from NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SCOTT: OK, Kirk. So to begin, I’d love it if you would just paint us a picture of the Great Salt Lake, for those who’ve never had the pleasure of seeing it. What does it look like, and how did a big, salty lake end up so far from the ocean?

SIEGLER: Well, it - I can’t even overstate how large it is. It’s huge. And especially in the winter, it’s quite eerie. When we were out there, it was foggy and otherworldly and very, very shallow. In fact, we - you know, you heard there, trekking out in the mud where there should have been water because the lake is receding. So to answer your question, these saline lakes occur at the bottom of basins where there’s no way for the water to flow out to the sea. So basically, in Utah, when all the snow off the Wasatch Mountains right by Salt Lake City melts, it pools into the rivers, into these lakes in the spring and then they evaporate over the summer, leaving all sorts of particles behind and minerals, including saline.

SCOTT: And as you said, I mean, these saline lakes occur all across the Great Basin in the West. And they - they’re actually essential ecosystems, right?

SIEGLER: Exactly. They’re very important for migrating birds at the top of the food chain. And so when Carly Biedul is out there looking for larva at the bottom of the food chain, that’s an indicator of a potential ecological collapse. And I’m not being dramatic. These lakes occur in the Great Basin from Utah to Nevada, across to eastern California, even in parts of Oregon, as you say. There’s this huge geological anomaly. And a lot of these lakes have dried up over time. Some naturally, but a lot due to water diversions. Utah’s Wasatch Front, where the majority of the state’s population lives along Salt Lake City, is one of the fastest-growing places in the country. So water is in high demand. But also, just like across the West, most of the water being diverted out of the rivers that would be going to the Great Salt Lake are being diverted for farming and, in particular in Northern Utah, alfalfa farming in the high desert.

SCOTT: So water diversions is playing a huge role in why they’re disappearing. I’m guessing climate change also plays a role?

SIEGLER: Yes, because we’re in the West and - I don’t have to tell you - we’re in the midst of a 23-year megadrought. So drought and climate change are a big factor.

SCOTT: And so if these lakes are essential stopovers for birds as they migrate from Alaska and Canada down to South America, I mean, just millions of birds kind of stopping here, like this rest stop all-you-can-eat buffet, what’s it going to mean for them if these lakes dry up?

SIEGLER: Well, it’s another species that we know will be in peril. This is an essential flyover spot for migratory birds, and the effects could be devastating.

SCOTT: And it’s not just the birds, of course. I mean, there’s a lot of creatures around the lakes that depend on them, including us humans. What’s it going to mean for us?

SIEGLER: Well, one of the most immediate impacts may be pollution. This is a dried-up lake bed. And we’ve seen this in other parts of the West. Dust storms off of a dried-up lake bed that has toxins in it - naturally occurring toxins - blowing into a large population base will have untold impacts on health. And the Salt Lake City area, particularly in the winter, already has some of the dirtiest air in the nation as a result of natural inversions that occur in that basin, but also a lot of cars and a lot of other industries. So that’s the most immediate impact. But then there are also trickle-down effects, as well. There’s tourism. There’s mining that depends on the lake, and Utah’s famous ski resorts actually benefit from getting more snow from lake effect storms. So the impacts are countless, to be honest.

SCOTT: I mean, given all of that, Kirk, I’m guessing there’s probably a lot of outcry and activism and such going on by people living near the lake, right?

SIEGLER: There is. This is a huge topic that’s all over the news these days.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED NEWS ANCHOR #1: Utah still remains in a drought.

UNIDENTIFIED NEWS ANCHOR #2: Now to what some tonight are calling a looming environmental nuclear bomb in Utah. The mighty Great Salt Lake is drying up and…

UNIDENTIFIED NEWS ANCHOR #3: As the Great Salt Lake continues to shrink, a…

SIEGLER: Some of the neighborhoods that are closest to the lake, it’s a huge concern. I met Turner Bitton. He’s a community activist and neighborhood council leader in Salt Lake City’s West Valley.

TURNER BITTON: If the lake bed dries up and we’re having winds blowing dust storms into our neighborhood, the heavy metals are going to land right on top of this neighborhood.

SCOTT: Nobody wants giant clouds of toxic dust blanketing their backyard.

SIEGLER: They don’t. And he’s particularly concerned there because these neighborhoods in the West Valley - they’re more working class. They’re already hemmed in by two busy freeways. There’s a planned freeway expansion. Salt Lake City International Airport is right there and Utah’s largest oil refinery.

BITTON: I mean, we’re talking about something that could potentially make these neighborhoods - I don’t want to say uninhabitable - but for those that are vulnerable, for those that have lung issues, uninhabitable.

SCOTT: Is he being a little dramatic there, Kirk?

SIEGLER: He really isn’t. You know, researchers have found higher rates of asthma and cardiovascular disease in neighborhoods like these. And one University of Utah study even showed that students in schools around there scored lower on tests during bad air days. Dr. Brian Moench is president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. He says the state should have declared an emergency years ago.

BRIAN MOENCH: A lot of people think that dust is pretty benign because it’s, quote, \“natural.\” Well, that’s not the case. And in the case of dust from the Great Salt Lake, it is particularly toxic because we know that it’s laced with high concentrations of heavy metals.

SIEGLER: And most of Utah’s 3 million or so residents live just east of the lake along the Wasatch Mountains. Now, the lake is about 9 feet lower than normal right now, despite a good winter. And locals are already complaining of these dust storms.

SCOTT: OK, Kirk, so a lot of people upset about this. What’s being done about it? Is there any sort of movement in, like, the state legislature?

SIEGLER: There is. And there are a lot of promises so far, but it’s been remarkable in this, you know, politically divided time in a Republican-controlled state, how - in particular, how there’s bipartisan agreement over trying to fix the lake. There was a lot of pressure on lawmakers to do that. Some ideas floated, I have to say, sounded a bit like sci-fi - cloud seeding, even a pipeline to pump Pacific Ocean water in. Not exactly the same thing…

SCOTT: Wow.

SIEGLER: …But everything seems to be on the table. Lawmakers this past session debated setting a target elevation for the lake and also a half-billion-dollar package that would do things like pay farmers and cities to use less water. Here’s Republican Governor Spencer Cox in his recent State of the State address.

(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)

SPENCER COX: Earlier this month, a report predicted that in just five short years, the Great Salt Lake will completely disappear. Let me be absolutely clear - we are not going to let that happen.

SCOTT: Wow. Strong words. So did they pass any of those measures?

SIEGLER: Sort of? You know, they didn’t pass any big water use regulations or major targets for the lake. Now, they did include money in the budget for more water conservation, but they took out language from a bill that would have required the conserved water actually make it to the lake. The federal government, though, is also a player here, and they’re clearly paying attention. In the final days of last year, you had President Biden signing a bipartisan bill called the Saline Lake Ecosystems in the Great Basin States Program Act. Yeah.

SCOTT: That is a mouthful.

SIEGLER: Right. Well, but what you need to know - it allocates $25 million for the U.S. Geological Survey to work with other agencies - local land managers, scientists and nonprofits - to study and monitor these saline lakes in the Great Basin and come up with a conservation plan. But, you know, there’s a real sense of urgency here with the Great Salt Lake if, in fact, it could dry up in five years.

SCOTT: So the idea is we need more information before we can come up with a plan.

SIEGLER: Yeah. But, you know, in large part, I think it’s going to come down to the states because they manage the water rights. Last year, the Utah legislature did approve some money to try to buy up water rights. But pointing to the Salt Lake Tribune, they’ve been reporting that no farmers have actually taken them up on it. And this is a thing across the West right now, although we did get news just this week that one powerful player in Utah who you might have heard of - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - they’re getting involved. They’ve announced that they will permanently donate 20,000 acre feet of their water rights to the lake. So it’s something.

SCOTT: I think I hear those little brine fly larvae rejoicing just a little bit.

SIEGLER: You can. Wow. That’s good. So we don’t have to end on such a doom and gloom note. And I have to tell you, down at the lake, trekking out there with Carly Biedul, the biologist - she’s privy to all these negative headlines, and she goes out there every week. But she is just trying to stay positive herself.

BIEDUL: And that’s kind of what we’ve been trying to do - is find these moments to see the beauty when it’s so sad.

SIEGLER: It is beautiful out there. But Biedul says it’s sad because there’s not much time left to save the Great Salt Lake.

SCOTT: Thank you, as always, for bringing this to us, Kirk.

SIEGLER: You’re welcome.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SCOTT: This episode was produced by Margaret Cirino and Liz Metzger, edited by Gabriel Spitzer and fact-checked by Anil Oza. Our audio engineer was Jay Czys. Brendan Crump is our podcast coordinator. Beth Donovan is the senior director of programming. And Anya Grundmann is the senior vice president of programming. I’m Aaron Scott. Thanks for listening to SHORT WAVE from NPR.

What Worsening Floods Mean For Superfund Sites

Duration: 00:17:52

Released: 2024

Series: Science Friday

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Superfund sites are some of the most polluted areas in the country, containing highly toxic waste such as asbestos, lead, and dioxin. Cleaning them up, which follows a systematic, science-based process as required by law, can take decades.There are more than 1,300 of these sites across the US, from Florida’s Panhandle to the banks of the Rio Grande in New Mexico. They’re found in nearly every state, often near residential areas. The EPA estimates that 78 million people live within three miles of a Superfund site—nearly 1 in 4 Americans.But these waste dumps face a growing threat: the worsening effects of climate change. The EPA has determined that more than 300 Superfund sites are at risk of flooding. The actual number of flood-prone sites, however, may be more than twice that amount, according to a 2021 Government Accountability Office report. Floodwaters can move toxic waste into neighboring communities, which threatens drinking water, agriculture, and broader ecosystem health.Read more at sciencefriday.comTranscripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Video Clips

A Brief History of Environmental Justice

ProPublica, 08 04, 2017

Video (3:35)

Description

Landfills, chemical waste facilities and power plants are more often built in poor and minority communities, which don’t have the power or money to advocate for themselves.

Images:

Music:

“Climbing the Mountain” - Podington Bear

“Falcon Hood Tight” - Podington Bear

Transcript

Environmental justice concept

0:06 · Nationally the facilities where we dump our garbage and process dangerous chemicals tend to be located in poor and minority communities.

0:14 · The people who live there have little or no protection from the industries around them.

0:18 · And things could get worse.

0:22 · So, there’s this idea of environmental justice.

0:24 · It’s pretty simple: Communities shouldn’t be forced to deal with more pollution because they belong to a certain race, national origin or income bracket.

0:33 · Yet, America has struggled over the years to implement any serious policy that actually protects these communities.

0:38 · So, let’s lay out the ways the government has failed them.

The fight for justice

0:42 · “We will not allow Warren County to become a dump site.”

0:59 · The EPA investigated four similar landfills in southern states and found that they were all located in black or low-income neighborhoods.

1:07 · In 1987, the United Church of Christ Racial Justice Commission found that around the country, hazardous waste facilities were more likely to be located in mostly minority communities.

1:18 · Amid mounting proof, the federal government was forced to act.

Government action and policy

1:23 · So, in 1992 President George H.W. Bush founded the Office of Environmental Justice inside the EPA.

1:42 · But Congress never passed a bill to make Clinton’s executive order law.

Political shifts and delays

1:47 · Then came George W. Bush.

2:02 · “80% of New Orleans, including much of downtown, is under water.”

2:05 · Under Bush, many environmental civil rights claims were rejected or delayed for years.

2:11 · In 2009, after President Barack Obama’s election, his administration recommitted to environmental justice.

Congressional inaction

2:18 · Generally speaking, in this country a lot of environmentally problematic facilities tend to be located in places where poor folks live.

2:30 · Yet, during the two years Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the White House they didn’t file a single bill focused on strengthening environmental justice protections.

2:40 · Passing major environmental legislation faded further when Republicans took control of Congress in the 2010 midterm elections.

Current EPA threats

2:47 · Now, President Donald J. Trump is making good on his vow to weaken the EPA.

2:52 · “Environmental protection, what they do is a disgrace.”

2:55 · “Every week they come out with new regulations.”

2:57 · “Who’s going to protect the environment?”

2:59 · “We’ll be fine with the environment.”

3:00 · “We can leave a little bit.”

3:04 · This budget–a 31% cut to the EPA, $2.6 billion cut away from the EPA, that’s what the president wants.

3:10 · As the EPA loses funding and regulations are rolled back, vulnerable communities may very likely fall through the cracks.

3:18 · I’m Talia Buford. I’ll be covering these communities and digging into systemic environmental injustice.

3:23 · If you have something to tell me, email me at Talia.Buford@ProPublica.org.

A history of redlining in Omaha

KMTV 3 News Now, 09 14, 2021

Video (2:20)

Description

3 News Now reporter Danielle Davis visited the Union for Contemporary Arts where a display outlines the history of redlining with a call.

Transcript

0:01 · a top Nixon adviser was r Nixon White House had two left and black people. We make it illegal to be eit or black, but by getting the hippies with marijuan heroin and then criminali we could disrupt those co a reading from one of the un designed.

0:25 · The red line the beginning and how som of Omaha’s near north and systematically segregated the city. They did this b and discriminatory home l with coded racial languag of allowing banks to lend but when you translate th it’s basically picking wi a community in a city bas race.

0:56 · Um, that also tend parts of the city. So it of institutionalized raci it the blueprint here in rather red and white. You were literally drawn on c funded home owner’s loan identified predominantly immigrant communities as for investment.

1:22 · Redlining schools, even during blac when, you know, the histo can better understand the to bring about change und opens up discussions abou and power in an honest co about guilt or blame.

1:40 · Um so I learned like America and freedom and and fairn about all these things li so I get hope from at eve fighting back and working for fairness and that tha spirit of like this isn’t like a little kids like t can we include everyone?

2:08 · educating and uniting. We leaders, raid their homes

A housing alternative right in your own backyard

CBS Sunday Morning, 08 30, 2026

Video (6:36)

Description

Accessory Dwelling Units, or ADUs, are small, fully-functional secondary homes located on the same property as a main home (usually in the backyard) that serve as carriage houses or “granny flats.” But as wildfires have displaced residents in the West, ADUs have filled a vital need where housing has proved scant or expensive. Correspondent Lee Cowan looks at the practical and legal challenges to making ADUs available. [Original air date: May 17, 2026.]

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Transcript

0:01 · Philadelphia is known for all types and styles of homes. Few as memorable as this one, Ardrasen. You might describe it as the embodiment of the Gilded Age, an era of opulence. Today, at a time when the quest for owning a home of your own is increasingly elusive, Lee Cowan shows us one solution almost anyone can find right in your own backyard.

0:28 · This is insane. When the Elmeida fire tore through the Rogue Valley in southern Oregon back in 2020, it took thousands of homes with it. The result wasn’t just a moonscape, but a housing crisis on top of an already tight rental market.

0:44 · Artist and contractor Jacob Fry and his wife Elise, hi hores, were spared the flames, but not the desire to help. They had to do something. So they took out a loan to build two small rental units in their own yard.

1:00 · So this was never about getting extra income or it was more about the community and like needing, you know, needing infill housing for people that had been displaced really was the main the main thing.

1:14 · They’re called ADUs, accessory dwelling units, small, fully functional secondary homes located on the same property as the main home, usually in the backyard. They’ve been called granny flats, carriage houses, or mother-in-law suites.

1:30 · Start planning your ADU today.

1:32 · A wave of reforms have made it faster and cheaper, and in theory anyway, legally simpler to add these ADUs almost anywhere. In California, at least three modestsiz units are now allowed on a single family lot. Now, they can’t be used as short-term rentals, so no Airbnb. The law allows for only long-term tenants, and it’s become a booming industry.

1:58 · It’s had more impact than any other housing law uh in the last 10 12 years.

2:04 · In what way?

2:05 · Well, there are 82,000 building permits right now in California.

2:10 · Yeah.

2:10 · Dana Cuff, professor of architecture and urban design at UCLA, helped push the original legislation through. We met her in her ADU. So where we’re sitting used to be your backyard.

2:22 · That’s right. Well, this used to be That’s right. There was kind of a half dead citrus tree probably right here and a treehouse for our kids. And you know, we did lose something in building the house, but we gained a lot more.

2:35 · They rent their original home to mostly young tenants just starting out and they live in the ADU designed by her husband to fit like a Tetris piece onto their long skinny lot. sprawl has hit the wall now. So, you can’t keep going out. So, then I mean the beauty of that from an environmental and a housing and an urban perspective is that then you start building back in.

2:57 · It will come as no surprise when you’re talking about building in backyards. There are plenty of not in my backyard critics.

3:03 · This is not granny flats. This is not helping people.

3:07 · Some argue parking, sewer, garbage, the infrastructure designed for single family homes is being stretched too thin. But in the aftermath of those Oregon fires, the Fries saw an opportunity.

3:18 · They say, you know, if you want to test your marriage, buy IKEA furniture, you know, build an ADU.

3:24 · It worked out. The Fry marriage survived, and so did the rental income from the ADUs. In fact, the buildings have almost paid for themselves, even though they continue to rent them at well below market value.

3:35 · We want things to be affordable, you know, so that we can get people in that might not otherwise be able to get a decent situation with a decent landlord. Both the tenants that live here now are like young newlyweds. Like they’re in their early 20s and they both just got married.

3:51 · If this hadn’t been an option for you, where do you think you guys would have been?

3:55 · Probably still at our parents’ houses.

3:58 · It’s compact living to be sure, but if you design an ADU right, it can feel much bigger than it sounds. making this.

4:07 · Jared Weber, Katrina Bowser Smith, and their one-year-old daughter Miller have been living in these 400 square ft happily for nearly 3 years now.

4:17 · We tried to look at other places just to even see what there is still on the market, and there’s nothing comparable to what we have.

4:25 · So, it’s small, but it’s enough.

4:27 · It’s perfect.

4:28 · Perfect.

4:28 · So, I don’t feel cramped at all. I feel like I have a lot of space for one old lady.

4:34 · Down the coast in Los Angeles, 72-year-old Mona Field turned her garage into a two-bedroom ADU.

4:40 · So, were you using your garage before?

4:42 · The garage was everybody and their brother’s storage. [laughter] Everywhere I look, I see green. So, I like that.

4:50 · But she didn’t build the ADU for tenants. She built it for herself.

4:55 · I knew I did not want to stay, you know, aging in a big house by myself. And there’s Miss Ruth.

5:02 · The ADU was her retirement home, which allowed her to offer her house as affordable housing for her daughter.

5:09 · Raise your hand.

5:10 · Raise your hand if you’re having fun.

5:11 · And her family.

5:12 · Do you want to help, baby?

5:14 · Naen Levyfield, her husband, Charlie Marshack, and their two small kids.

5:19 · What is that?

5:20 · A microphone.

5:22 · But there was still a question, one asked by almost everyone in the 80year space. even though we had separate spaces, would we be able to, you know, cohabitate on the same property in a functional way?

5:33 · The answer for them anyway has been a resounding yes.

5:37 · You know, we have regular standing dinners with my mom and the kids. My mom helps with child care. We spend time together. We say, “Hey, do you want to join us for a stroller walk, which is really a gift.

5:46 · It’s amazing. We’re so grateful.”

5:48 · Oh, there you are.

5:51 · Well, now you’re getting the fun part.

5:53 · It used to be a home in the suburbs with a white picket fence and two-car garage was all anyone would want. Today, people need housing more than cars, and backyard barbecues might not need an entire backyard. They may not be for everyone, but these days, every square foot matters. Adus offer a different lifestyle for a different age.

6:18 · We have to start imagining new ways of living together. Well,

A Mother’s Asthma-friendly Housing Story

American Lung Association, 12 11, 2014

Video (1:06)

Description

Smoking in multi-unit housing poses serious health threats to children and adults even if no one smokes in their home. In multi-unit housing like apartment buildings and condominiums, secondhand smoke from one unit can move into other units. Smoking in multi-unit housing can also lead to fires, which can have deadly consequences. The videos below feature stories from residents, firemen, and public health advocates who have worked to make multi-unit housing properties smokefree.

Transcript

A public housing project where healthy living is the foundation

PBS NewsHour, 07 07, 2017

Video (6:29)

Description

In downtown Denver, a recently built public housing project is designed to foster healthy living, with access to nutritious food, access to doctors and ease of exercise and public transportation. Jeffrey Brown reports.

Transcript

0:00 · JUDY WOODRUFF: But first: an experiment in rethinking public housing that encourages healthier living by changing the larger environment for residents.

0:09 · Jeffrey Brown reports from Denver.

0:12 · JEFFREY BROWN: At age 71, Noel Taylor says she’s become more active and health-conscious than ever before.

0:19 · NOEL TAYLOR, Denver: Every year, I improve my diet, I improve my exercise.

0:25 · JEFFREY BROWN: Her change in behavior didn’t happen by accident.

0:28 · Four years ago, here in downtown Denver, Taylor joined an experiment in making healthy living part of the design and daily life of a public housing project.

0:38 · Among the amenities here, access to a garden plot.

0:42 · NOEL TAYLOR: I noticed, all summer long, I was getting healthier.

0:45 · The more of my own vegetables I was eating, the more energy I had.

0:51 · It’s made a huge difference.

0:52 · JEFFREY BROWN: So, this sounds all too good to be true.

0:54 · NOEL TAYLOR: I know.

0:56 · (LAUGHTER) JEFFREY BROWN: And there’s more.

0:58 · The Denver Botanic Gardens hosts a farmers market giving away free produce to residents.

1:03 · WOMAN: We’re going to talk about how to shop healthy on a budget.

1:06 · JEFFREY BROWN: Another group offers classes on healthy recipes and shopping.

1:10 · MAN: Now we will take your blood pressure.

1:12 · JEFFREY BROWN: In a clinic on the ground floor of one building, public health physicians schedule regular visits to do routine checkups.

1:19 · There’s a light rail stop, both for easy transportation and to get residents out of their cars.

1:25 · MAN: Do the other side now.

1:27 · JEFFREY BROWN: Plus, bike rentals and a nearby shop to teach kids how to maintain their bikes.

1:33 · Even the architecture and public art was designed to encourage residents to get outside and take a walk.

1:40 · ISMAEL GUERRERO, Director, Denver Housing Authority: We really wanted this to look like a neighborhood, not a development.

1:43 · JEFFREY BROWN: Ismael Guerrero, director of the Denver Housing Authority, says that, 10 years ago, this was a high-crime neighborhood, with 250 units of rundown public housing.

1:55 · Something had to be done.

1:56 · ISMAEL GUERRERO: What we learned in early conversations with residents in particular was, they didn’t just want a new unit to move into.

2:04 · They wanted a better quality of life.

2:05 · So we really started expanding our perspective on what we were trying to accomplish here.

2:10 · JEFFREY BROWN: The result completed earlier this summer is the Mariposa development, a mixture of 800 apartments and town homes, one-third public housing, a third subsidized, and a third rented at market value.

2:24 · The overall cost was $150 million; $60 million came from federal, state and local government programs, with the rest coming through private investment.

2:34 · Already, Mariposa is becoming a model for rethinking public housing.

2:39 · ISMAEL GUERRERO: Part of it is physical health, and part of it is what we call neighborhood health.

2:45 · Right?

2:46 · How healthy is the place?

2:47 · Is it safe?

2:48 · Are there healthy activities for you to do?

2:50 · Is there healthy food in the neighborhood for you to go and eat?

2:53 · Is there a healthy economy where people can get jobs and start a business?

2:56 · JEFFREY BROWN: The Osage Cafe, located in one of the apartment buildings, is designed to meet some of those needs.

3:04 · In addition to the food, it provides culinary training and internships for young people in the neighborhood, like 20-year-old Israel Trejo.

3:12 · ISRAEL TREJO, Denver: And I think that’s where I discovered I had a passion for cooking.

3:15 · JEFFREY BROWN: What did it give you?

3:16 · ISRAEL TREJO: It gave me the entire world, basically.

3:19 · Like, with the skills that I have learned now, I could go anywhere.

3:23 · I could go be anything.

3:24 · JEFFREY BROWN: Trejo now has a job at one of Denver’s top restaurants, and plans to operate his own food truck soon.

3:30 · ANGELA RODRIGUEZ, Denver: Are you looking forward to helping me grow some fruits and vegetables?

3:36 · JEFFREY BROWN: Angela Rodriguez, a single mother of two teens, dreams of one day buying her own home.

3:42 · She has a full-time job at a nearby community college, but Denver’s booming housing market makes ownership difficult.

3:50 · She lives in a subsidized town home at Mariposa, which she says is very different from the old-style projects she grew up in nearby.

3:57 · ANGELA RODRIGUEZ: As a new style of public housing, it did take me a little bit of time for the adjustment.

4:03 · When new tenants are mingling with other tenants that come from different walks of life, it’s helping us to develop into new perspectives of modern living.

4:13 · JEFFREY BROWN: Rodriguez uses public transportation, has taken up gardening, and has fully embraced the culture of health that is promoted here.

4:22 · But is Mariposa working?

4:24 · It’s too early for definitive answers.

4:27 · According to a 2015 study by the Denver Public Health Department, about half the residents had participated in health-related activities over the previous three years.

4:38 · But the study also showed the amount of exercise residents pursued had changed little.

4:43 · Just over a third said they exercised five times a week.

4:47 · About the same amount said they exercised one to four times a week, and 26 percent said they rarely or never exercised.

4:55 · Smoking rates decreased, but only slightly, from 30 percent of residents down to 24 percent.

5:01 · And these so-called active staircases, designed with a bit of whimsy…

5:05 · ISMAEL GUERRERO: It’s a way to engage kids, and actually now the adults enjoy it.

5:09 · JEFFREY BROWN: … to lure residents away from using the elevator.

5:12 · Well, so far, they’re not having a big impact.

5:15 · THERESA MICKIEWICZ, Denver Public Health: We actually did observational counts, where we sat there and we counted people who used the stairs vs. people who used the elevator, and we compared it against a control staircase in the Mariposa redevelopment, and we found absolutely no difference.

5:32 · JEFFREY BROWN: Theresa Mickiewicz, an epidemiologist with Denver Public Health, is overseeing a study of the development.

5:38 · And while major improvements in health remain to be seen, she believes something important is happening here, and she expects the numbers to reflect that soon.

5:47 · THERESA MICKIEWICZ: While maintaining my objectivity as an evaluator, do I think that there is value in this type of project?

5:55 · I would say yes.

5:57 · Individually, these components have been shown in the evidence, in literature, to improve health outcomes.

6:04 · JEFFREY BROWN: The city of Denver is so confident in this new model, it’s about to embark on a similar development that will be three times larger than Mariposa.

6:13 · That construction is expected to begin later next year.

6:17 · For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown, reporting from Denver.

America Made Its Most Toxic Lake. Now We Need What’s Inside

PBS Terra, 04 16, 2026

Video (15:56)

Description

Watch the latest episode of @NinePBS ’s What Do I Do with This? here: https://youtu.be/jnBuX8LFTqM?si=YBuv9BOUgkVP4KGj

PBS Earth Month playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnNZYWyBGJ1F8ofFm4H9UTrHxqU8zngK4

America’s most toxic lake may also be one of its most overlooked resources. At the Berkeley Pit Superfund Site, scientists are extracting clean energy materials from a century of mining waste.

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Transcript

The toxic Berkeley Pit

0:00 · This might be one of the most beautiful lakes in Montana. (bright music) (cannon booming) (birds squawking) So this is one of the propane cannons, that loud noise that birds don’t like and scare ’em away.

0:18 · So why go to so much trouble to keep birds from enjoying it?

0:23 · Because this is one of the most toxic lakes in America. The water here is acidic enough to dissolve metal and could spell certain death for any bird that lands on it. Well, if I was a bird, I’d be outta here, man. Nature didn’t build this place. We did.

0:44 · For nearly a century, miners dug away a mountain in search of valuable minerals here, but when the mining stopped, the pumps were turned off and this mile-wide scar in the earth filled with water. Today, the Berkeley Pit is filled with nearly 50 billion gallons of toxic, highly acidic water polluted with the remnants of all of that extraction.

1:10 · So why would scientists want to dive into this?

1:14 · What could possibly be worth searching for in a place like that?

1:19 · (bright music) Well, there’s treasure in these waters. The Berkeley Pit sits above Butte, Montana, situated near the headwaters of the Clark Fork River. This area has been shaped by more than a century of mining. Diving into a lake this toxic seems like the last thing you want to do.

Industrial legacy in Butte

1:44 · All right.

1:45 · [Joe] So why are scientists doing just that?

1:47 · Let’s go see some fun stuff.

1:49 · [Joe] Because the acidic waters that make this place dangerous are doing something unusual. In the 1860s, Butte was little more than a mining camp. By the early 1900s, Butte had become one of the busiest industrial mining regions on earth. At its peak, 25% of the world’s copper came from these mines, helping to electrify America. Telegraphs, telephones, power grids. And then in 1955, the Anaconda Mining Company pivoted to a radical strategy.

2:23 · Instead of tunneling underground, they began removing the mountain itself. Eventually, the Berkeley mine stretched a mile long and more than 1,700 feet deep. That’s deep enough to swallow the Empire State Building. But when you dig a hole this big, rain and groundwater want back in. When mining stopped in 1982, the massive pumps that had kept the pit dry were shut off.

2:52 · Today this water is about 900 feet deep, but if you’re tempted to take a dip, consider that in 2016, thousands of migrating snow geese, forced to land here thanks to a storm, died after drinking from these poisonous waters. Hydrogeologist Jackson Quarles studies what makes this lake so toxic. He has deep ties to Butte.

3:16 · [Jackson] It is the place to be.

3:17 · I came out as a kid every summer, and the day that we would leave, I’d always be crying in the backseat, asking to stay. And now here we are. I made it happen.

3:27 · [Joe] Jackson is sampling this mining waste on the hunt for rare earth elements, valuable and critical minerals that may be hiding in these waters. The rocks here contain sulfide minerals, and when exposed to air and water, they react and form sulfuric acid. That acid dissolves metals trapped in the surrounding rock, a process called acid mine drainage.

Seeking rare minerals

3:54 · The Berkeley Pit is now a giant chemical reactor, highly acidic water loaded with dissolved metals, some at concentrations more than 5,000% above drinking water standards. Jackson and other scientists are hoping that those valuable rare earths are lurking here in this chemical soup. Because the Berkeley Pit is so polluted, in 1987, the Environmental Protection Agency designated it as a superfund site.

4:21 · They were established by law so that, whenever possible, the parties responsible for the mess must help pay for its cleanup, and they must be carefully managed to protect human health and the environment. Jackson and his colleagues have a creative idea for how to clean up part of this environmental disaster.

4:39 · So we’ve got the submersible here.

4:42 · So we’ve got a 4K camera, got four lights here on the front that allow us to see what we’re doing. Vertical rotors here, horizontal propellers here. And then we also have our sediment sampler, kind of just jammer it in. - Controlled collision.

4:56 · And we’ll hopefully get back to the surface with a full one of these.

5:01 · [Joe] Take this puppy down to the water. Exploring the pit is like a new frontier, one that very few people have ever seen. Each journey down is like traveling through a foreign world.

5:16 · It’s kinda like we’re going to Mars.

5:18 · It’s a place that nobody’s seen, nobody’s been to in, oh, since ’82 when they shut down the pumps. (water creaking) And we’ll turn on our headlights here so we can see what’s going on. And touch down, whoa.

5:37 · (earth booming) [Joe] What kind of samples are you looking for?

5:43 · What’s it doing down there?

5:45 · [Jackson] We’re trying to find where these critical minerals or rare earths might be.

Extracting resources

5:49 · [Joe] These rare earth elements include a group of 17 metals that are critical to modern technology. Among them are elements like neodymium and praseodymium, used to make the powerful magnets that spin inside wind turbines and electric vehicle motors. Others, like dysprosium, help those magnets survive extreme heat. Without them, turbines would be heavier, electric cars less efficient. Global demand for these elements is expected to surge as countries build more renewable energy and buy more electric vehicles.

6:23 · Today, mining these rare earths often means digging new holes. They’re usually difficult to extract and mining and refining them often comes with its own environmental cost.

6:37 · So what if we could find these valuable minerals in places that we’ve already dug?

6:44 · Shockingly enough, the Berkeley is home to more than we’ve really ever found anywhere else. There’s a lot of sites, and most places in the US even, they’ll be very heavy in one specific rare earth or even just the light rare earth. Whereas what we found in the pit was kind of something we’ve never seen and it had that full array of, that full distribution of those rare earths.

7:07 · These elements aren’t actually rare.

7:10 · They’re just rarely found in high concentrations. But here, the pit’s chemistry has already done part of the work. Acidic water has leached those metals out of the rock, ready to be filtered out. So there might be hotspots here where there’s just really rich deposits that you wanna focus your attention on.

7:29 · Yes, and, you know, kind of now is that hot point because we know the rare earths are still in the water and they haven’t precipitated into the sediment yet. And so processing them is immensely easier now. All right, well, let’s go see what we can find here.

7:46 · Hey, we got a lot of sludge out of that pit.

7:49 · And we got what we were looking for.

7:51 · [Joe] Extracting them isn’t simple.

7:53 · So, yeah, I don’t know what you would call that.

7:56 · [Joe] That is forbidden gravy.

7:58 · Forbidden gravy.

Environmental restoration

8:01 · All right, well, I got my science helper, Joe.

8:03 · [Joe] In order to extract rare earth elements from the Berkeley Pit, researchers are testing new chemical techniques that could bind specifically to rare earth elements.

8:11 · I don’t necessarily wanna know, is it in the mud?

8:14 · I wanna know, is it in the sediment that is making the mud or is it in the water that’s making the mud?

8:20 · And so this will just help narrow that channel down a little bit. So now we got our sludge. (bright music) [Joe] Oh, boy.

8:31 · And then what we do is we’ll seal her up, we’ll write on it, we’ll let the lab know where it came from, the date we took it, what analysis we’re looking for. Rare earths are not truly all that rare, but finding them in mineable quantities, that’s when they become very rare. We have to get an idea of where the rarest and critical minerals are coming from before we do a deeper dive into that said mine.

8:54 · We do the preliminary search, throw darts all over the board, and then whichever one lands on the bullseye, that’s where we’re gonna go back to and do a lot of darts at that spot and see kind of, yeah, what we can find.

9:06 · [Joe] You get a little bit of like a warm spot or something.

9:09 · Exactly. - And then you do a bunch more there and you’re like, “Oh, warmer, warmer, warmer.”

9:12 · And you just keep working your way closer and closer and closer until you find what you’re looking for.

9:17 · [Joe] And then you just might find that one pile of magic sediment. And another benefit to this work is that the process of extracting rare earths and other critical minerals actually helps undo the damage caused by mining.

9:32 · That environmental benefit doesn’t just pertain to the pit, but pertains to every other form of waste that we find, and they’ve already been exhumed. So we’re no longer digging a new hole to process new rare earths. We’re cleaning up our mess.

9:46 · [Joe] This idea is still in its infancy and it’s too early to say whether it will prove to be viable. But extracting rare earth elements and other minerals from existing waste may let places like the pit inch closer to a more natural state with less long-term contamination.

10:05 · The Anaconda slag pile, those are an enormous scar on the environment. And for one day that those might just be gone because we’ve found an economic way to remove it and not just put it in a hole in the ground somewhere else, but to actually reprocess, make money, and get rid of it, I mean, yeah, it’s a no brainer.

10:26 · [Joe] It won’t replace mining tomorrow, but it could reduce the need to dig new holes. If the Berkeley Pit represents how badly an environmental disaster can scar the earth, downstream, there’s a place that shows us what’s possible when it comes to cleaning up nature. Milltown Park, at the meeting of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers, was once home to a dam that trapped tons of contaminated sediment from mines upstream.

Lessons from Miltown Park

10:57 · This is Michael Kustudia, Milltown State Park manager, whose family ties to the area go back generations.

11:06 · Here at Milltown, they built the Milltown Dam, which was right over there, and that was finished in January in 1908. In June of 1908, we saw the biggest flood in recorded history. It was that 1908 flood that washed in a lot of mine waste from the upper watershed and that kind of kicked off this whole superfund issue. Milltown was the first superfund site in Montana.

11:29 · [Joe] After years of hard work, the dam, along with over three million tons of contaminated sediment, was removed from this site. Two and a half miles of the river channel had to be re-engineered back to the river’s natural flow, and tens of thousands of trees were planted as part of the restoration efforts.

11:49 · A project like this is enormous and complex. We had, you know, multiple state agencies involved, from the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks and the Montana Natural Resource Damage Program, the Department of Environmental Equality. Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes were very much involved. They were a trustee in all of this because of their treaty rights.

12:09 · We talk about it being a confluence of people almost because a lot of people came together to make this happen over a long, sustained period of time. It did not happen quickly.

12:21 · [Joe] In 2018, the gates opened to Milltown State Park. If it weren’t for a few signs, visitors may not be able to tell that they’re fishing, boating, hiking, and viewing wildlife in what was once home to piles of toxic waste. It will never be exactly the same as it was before the dam, but it has returned to a living, breathing ecosystem.

12:47 · And so we had our grand opening.

12:48 · It was in June of 2018. Parents were here, which was really exciting, especially having my mom out here ’cause she, you know, grew up here and she had all kinds of stories. It was a very emotional day for some of us. And, yeah, for me, you know, I’ve been really fortunate. It’s a labor of love.

13:08 · [Joe] So we can’t reverse all the damage of the past, but we can transform it into something better. At the Berkeley Pit, scientists focus not on erasing scars, but on asking what the damage can become.

Looking toward the future

13:25 · Butte has always been home and hopefully always will be. My great-grandfather started here as an underground miner. All my family worked underground all the way up until my grandfather, and to be able to work in the environment that he did is just the family legacy to me. It, yeah, puts a smile on my face. They call it the richest hill on earth, but I think it’s my favorite place on earth.

13:45 · (bright music) For a century, we treated this place as evidence of what we destroyed, but chemistry kept working. The same reactions that made this water toxic are now concentrating elements that the modern world will depend on. Rare earths that help spin wind turbines and power electric vehicles. Right now, extracting those rare earths from mining waste cannot meet global demand. This will not replace mining tomorrow.

14:17 · But it’s an opportunity to look at our relationship with earth’s resources in a new way. The Berkeley Pit will never be restored to exactly what it was before mining. The Clark Fork will always bear the marks of what happened there. But maybe the point isn’t to erase those scars or ignore them, pretend they don’t exist.

14:40 · It’s to take an honest look at them and ask, what could they become next?

14:45 · We’re dreaming for a better Butte.

14:47 · One day the pit may be clean enough that we don’t have to chase the birds off of it. It might be my grandkids that see it happen, but to know that my name was a part of it and, yeah, I’m here to help.

15:02 · Happy Earth Month.

15:04 · PBS is celebrating by releasing a ton of great new episodes across all of our channels, diving deep into our amazing planet, like the latest episode of Nine PBS’s “What Do I Do with This?”, “Disc Junkies.” This video explores how we consume media today. A super fun topic after a superfund video. You know, insert rim shot. All right, links to that video and the full Earth Month playlist are down in the description. (gentle music)

America’s deadliest road, explained

Vox, 11 10, 2022

Video (7:16)

Description

US road design favors speed over pedestrian safety.

Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don’t miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO

Most American roads aren’t just unpleasant for pedestrians, they can be dangerous. Pedestrian fatalities have been rising in the past few years, and urban planners point to the way roads are designed as the culprit.

A group of urban planners identified 60 pedestrian fatality hot spots throughout the US, and a 1,000-meter corridor of US-19 in New Port Richey, Florida, topped their list. Seventeen pedestrians lost their lives along this short stretch of road in the study period of 2001 to 2016.

The fatality hot spots on the study’s list shared a lot of design characteristics. Many of them are arterial thoroughfares: roads historically built to keep high-speed traffic off of nearby residential streets. But the way US communities developed in a sprawling fashion along these roads meant these roadways also became business centers that pedestrians might need to access. The number of lanes and distances between crosswalks are among other dangerous design elements.

For this video, we went to New Port Richey to walk along US-19 and document the design characteristics identified in the study.

–

Correction - A previous version of this video featured an interview that spoke to a memorial at Main Street and US-19. Locals from the New Port Richey area brought to our attention that the interview misrepresented the memorial, which honors a young man who was killed during an accident between two cars, not a bicycle as stated in the interview. Our sincere apologies for including the misrepresentation of the victim’s story. We have edited the video to correct that error.

This is a link to a GoFundMe for the victim’s family which includes more details about the incident: https://www.gofundme.com/f/qe5jkz-funeral-expenses-for-logan-blakley

–

This video is an adaptation of Vox.com reporter Marin Cogan’s investigation of US-19:

https://www.vox.com/23178764/florida-us19-deadliest-pedestrian-fatality-crisis

Local journalists have credited Marin’s reporting for pressuring local officials to follow through on planned improvements to US-19:

https://www.tampabay.com/news/pasco/2022/09/26/deadliest-road-pasco-county-getting-millions-safety-upgrades/

The pedestrian fatality study this story is based on is below:

https://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/1825

A source for this story was Eric Dumbaugh, who authored a study on arterial roads:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01944360902950349

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Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what’s really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com

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Transcript

0:00 · I’ve just arrived at the most dangerous place to be a pedestrian in the US.

0:05 · US-19 in New Port Richey, Florida on the state’s Gulf Coast.

0:10 · A group of urban planners looked at the entire US roadway network and identified 60 pedestrian fatality hotspots: 1000 meter corridors where pedestrian deaths are most common.

0:21 · And this 1000 meter stretch topped their list.

0:24 · 17 fatal crashes here in a 16 year study window.

0:28 · Pedestrian fatalities in the U.S.

0:30 · have been creeping up in the past decade thanks mostly to the way road infrastructure favors cars above all else.

0:37 · And nowhere is that more clear than right here.

0:47 · US-19 runs north to south, down Florida’s Gulf Coast and bisects the small community of New Port Richey cutting off its downtown from its coastal features.

0:56 · Which means traveling east to west, or vice versa requires you to cross it.

1:00 · It’s a type of roadway that would feel familiar to Americans.

1:03 · Car culture is visible everywhere from the volume of drivers to the businesses alongside it.

1:10 · And along US-19, drivers are moving fast.

1:13 · The posted speed limit on this stretch is 45 miles per hour.

1:16 · But driving speeds appear to be much faster than that.

1:19 · Traffic safety experts will tell you that speed is one of the most important factors in pedestrian safety.

1:27 · A street design report established that traveling up to 15 miles per hour drivers have a wide peripheral vision.

1:33 · They only need 25 feet to come to a full stop and the risk of fatality if they hit someone is 2%.

1:40 · Once drivers are traveling over 40 miles per hour their peripheral view narrows.

1:45 · They require more room to stop and the risk of fatality climbs to 85%.

1:50 · Enforcing speed limits can only do so much.

1:53 · The built environment, as we call it is sending a message that this is for high speed travel.

2:00 · Robert Schneider led the pedestrian safety study that found that 97% of the roadways with high pedestrian fatalities had multiple lanes.

2:08 · At its widest, US-19 spans 8 lanes which allows cars to pass and move faster than if they were stuck behind another car in a single lane.

2:17 · And the road is straight as an arrow.

2:19 · No curves that would nudge drivers to take it slow.

2:22 · The type of businesses along US-19 support a car-first fast driving environment: Big box stores and strip malls that sit far away from the road with large parking lots in between.

2:32 · And billboards displayed up high for an audience of fast drivers rather than at human scale.

2:38 · Arterial roads like US-19 not quite a street, but not quite a highway were built to keep this high speed traffic off of nearby residential neighborhoods.

2:48 · But this type of sprawling development grew along arterial roads creating a dangerous mix of car centric design with the possibility that pedestrians, cyclists, or public transit users would want to access these business centers.

3:01 · And it explains why arterial roads only make up 13% of US roadways but are the site of 59% of pedestrian deaths.

3:13 · Now, let’s relate that to US-19’s pedestrian design or lack thereof.

3:17 · or… lack thereof.

3:19 · Not everyone can or wants to drive but they still have to get to where they’re going.

3:23 · I walk along US-19 about 3 or 4 times a week, to and from work.

3:27 · It’s a lot cheaper than taking the bus.

3:29 · I was crossing the crosswalk someone was turning and just bumped right into me.

3:35 · I had a few bumps, bruises, you know, some cracked ribs.

3:38 · I have a hearing disability…

3:40 · which causes severe vertigo and issues with balance.

3:45 · So it’s not wise to drive.

3:47 · Every single day…

3:52 · I am…

3:56 · afraid of either getting…

3:58 · bumped or yelled at or honked at or cut off…

4:03 · every day.

4:07 · As a pedestrian trying to cross the road I’d have to choose between this crosswalk…

4:12 · or this one, which is nearly 950 meters away.

4:16 · That’s a 30 or 40 minute walk.

4:18 · A distance so far that it encourages risky jaywalking.

4:21 · There’s a better term for that, it turns out.

4:23 · Cross at a location where there’s no signal.

4:26 · In the profession, we tend to try to say that.

4:28 · Jaywalk is a term that was developed by the auto interests in the early 1900s to essentially shame people who were crossing in the middle of the block which had been okay socially prior to the 1920s, 1930s.

4:46 · The sidewalks are constantly interrupted by the curb cuts into parking lots which introduce more opportunities to interact with a moving car without a signal.

4:53 · I first tried this crosswalk, waited for 10 minutes only to find out it didn’t work, so I tried the next crossing.

5:00 · Robert Schneider told me that the longer you wait at a crosswalk the more pedestrians are incentivized to cross before the signal.

5:07 · Finally, once you do cross you have to traverse the length of the eight lanes…

5:11 · which puts US-19 in the company of 70% of the hot spot roadways in Robert Schneider’s study that force pedestrians to cross five or more lanes.

5:20 · And all of this is so much more treacherous when there is less light.

5:28 · There’s a concept in urbanism called safety in numbers.

5:32 · The more pedestrians there are in an environment, the safer it is to be one.

5:36 · There aren’t many pedestrians along US-19 which makes the high number of fatalities even more alarming.

5:42 · The lower the median household income in a neighborhood the more common it is for pedestrian fatalities to occur there.

5:48 · And that’s because bad street design and arterial roads like US-19 are more likely to exist in those communities.

5:55 · Improving pedestrian design would invite more people to walk making it safer for people who have no other choice.

6:02 · Florida transportation officials are spending millions to improve this stretch of US-19.

6:07 · Like reducing the speed limit, adding more crosswalks adding more lights, and delaying green light to intersections.

6:14 · The mayor of New Port Richey told me he favors adding pedestrian and cyclist bridges here to get people off the road entirely.

6:22 · These are expensive solutions and unpopular among drivers.

6:25 · But not nearly as hard as the long term goal which is undoing decades of car centric design like removing lanes, adding street parking instead and developing retail and housing in parking lots.

6:36 · A built environment that will get more people on foot more drivers to slow down and will save lives.

6:43 · It’s not a quick solution, but something we need to actually be starting to move towards…

6:48 · rather than continuing to build the sprawling development that we know is dangerous.

7:22 · This video is an adaptation of a Vox.com story by reporter Marin Cogan.

7:28 · Local officials and journalists have credited her reporting for raising awareness about pedestrian safety along this deadly stretch of road.

7:36 · I highly recommend you check out her story that I linked in the description below.

7:40 · Thanks so much for watching.

America’s infrastructure is crumbling. What should be prioritized

PBS NewsHour, 04 07, 2021

Video (5:45)

Description

President Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan would prioritize transportation, drinking water and broadband projects, among others. It comes after the American Society of Civil Engineers released its 2021 report card, giving the U.S. infrastructure a C-minus. Emily Feenstra, ASCE’s managing director of government relations and infrastructure initiatives, joins William Brangham to discuss.

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Transcript

Introduction to Plan

0:00 · JUDY WOODRUFF: As we reported earlier, President Biden is floating proposals to pay for his $2 trillion infrastructure package.

0:08 · Our William Brangham brings us this look at why America’s infrastructure is in such need of repair.

0:14 · WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The president’s plan includes funding for many infrastructure priorities, more than $600 billion in transportation infrastructure, more than $100 billion for drinking water projects, and more than $100 billion to expand broadband.

0:30 · Just last month, the American Society of Civil Engineers released its 2021 report card, and it gave America’s infrastructure a C-minus.

ASCE Report Card Findings

0:41 · I’m joined now by Emily Feenstra. She is ASCE’s managing director of government relations and infrastructure initiatives.

0:49 · Emily, great to have you on the “NewsHour.”

0:52 · I have to imagine, on one level, for people – for civil engineers like you, this has got to be an incredibly exciting time, when the president proposes a nearly $2 trillion infrastructure bill.

1:03 · But, more seriously, this is meant to address some very serious deficiencies in our country.

1:11 · Could you just give us a snapshot of what your record card tells us?

1:15 · EMILY FEENSTRA, American Society of Civil Engineers: That is an exciting time.

1:18 · I think it’s been a long time coming, where a lot of these issues, the roads that we travel on and our transit networks and our water systems, have flown under the radar. And it’s great to see the national attention on this issue.

1:31 · At the same time, I am a parent. I would not be happy if my kid brought home a C-minus. So we have a lot of work to do. And we have 11 categories still in that D range. And those are a lot of our legacy systems.

1:42 · WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, what types of things do you think jump to the top of the priority list of, look, if I had to choose, this is the stuff I think we have got to get done?

Highest Priority Repairs

1:51 · EMILY FEENSTRA: One thing that we like is really that comprehensive approach.

1:54 · We look at 17 categories of the report card, and it’s really a connected system. So, in a way, our ports are only as good as the roads and the rail that connect to them. At the same time, if you look at those categories and the D’s, there’s like a few that stand out.

2:12 · Our lowest grade and the report card were our transit systems. Our communities across the country are just facing a huge maintenance backlog when it comes to transit, and the pandemic certainly didn’t help that. The agencies have been facing huge revenue declines.

2:28 · And so they were kind of kicked while they were already down. Wastewater utilities, another area where we’re in the D’s. There’s a lot of work we could be doing. Inland waterways is another one, definitely under the radar for most Americans, but that’s how farmers get their goods to market.

2:43 · And when those barges have to stop on the Mississippi River, it costs goods to increase more, hours of delay.

2:52 · And that’s something we really need to prioritize.

2:54 · WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I know there’s been semantic quibbling going on, where the administration says infrastructure can include broadband and water systems and electric charging stations for E.V. cars.

Defining Infrastructure

3:08 · And Republicans say, no, that’s not what we traditionally think of as infrastructure.

3:13 · I know the American Society tries to be nonpartisan and apolitical in all of this, but do you guys come down on this issue of what is infrastructure and what is not?

3:23 · EMILY FEENSTRA: I certainly think one road map is, again, our infrastructure report card.

3:29 · People are surprised to know that we look at those 17 categories. And one that I would point out that’s been in our report card since 1998 – we have been doing this since 1998 once every four years – is school facilities.

3:42 · So, we have looked at schools. They have not gotten a lot of attention. But when you’re thinking about where our kids are spending eight or more hours a day, and you look at the number of kids that are in portable classrooms or HVAC systems aren’t updated, there’s a lot of common ground. There are new things in the proposal that might go beyond the 17 categories.

4:03 · But, again, we appreciate that it includes core programs like surface transportation, but also water, the energy grid, inland waterways, and so many of these – these things that go out of sight, out of mind.

4:17 · WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I hear everything that you’re saying about the importance of these projects, but we know that many people look at this and think it’s too much money to spend, a $2 trillion infrastructure bill is too high a price.

The Cost of Inaction

4:31 · What is your response to that?

4:32 · EMILY FEENSTRA: I can absolutely understand how, sometimes, it seems like sticker shock.

4:36 · But what people don’t realize is that we’re already paying. It’s almost like a hidden tax from this gradually declining, deteriorating infrastructure that doesn’t work the way that it should. And we have actually quantified that costs. In addition to the poor grades, we know that it costs American households on average $3,300 a year in personal disposable income.

4:57 · That’s the equivalent of…

4:58 · (CROSSTALK) WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That’s a huge amount of money.

4:59 · EMILY FEENSTRA: Yes, it’s a takeout dinner for a family of four each week. And that’s significant.

5:06 · And it’s things we know intuitively. When the pothole messes with your alignment that you have driven over five or six times on the way to work, when a water main break shuts down a business, when a blackout, as we saw in Texas, you know wreaks havoc, these things cost money. They add up. They make our economy less productive.

5:25 · And I think what – there actually is strong voter support for these investments.

5:31 · They pass in overwhelming margins at the ballot box at the local and state level. And what we need is that strong federal partner that we have been missing.

5:39 · WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, Emily Feenstra of the American Society of Civil Engineers, thank you very much for being here.

5:44 · EMILY FEENSTRA: Thanks so much.

City Hall’s plans to put out new trash bins may impact street parking

Eyewitness News ABC7NY, 04 17, 2026

Video (2:52)

Description

Darla Miles has the latest on the new trash bins in New York City.

https://abc7ny.com/post/containerized-trash-expand-6-new-districts-york-city/18905826/

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Transcript

0:06 · BEANS WILL SOON BE HITTING THE STREETS OF NEW YORK CITY AS PART OF THE ADMINISTRATION’S PUSH TO KEEP BAGS OF TRASH OFF THE SIDEWALKS.

0:13 · BUT THESE BINS TAKE UP SPACE, ESPECIALLY PARKING SPOTS IN A CITY WHERE PARKING SPOTS ARE ALREADY HARD TO COME BY. EYEWITNESS NEWS REPORTER DARLA MILES IS LIVE THIS AFTERNOON IN CROWN HEIGHTS, WHERE THE MAYOR SPOKE JUST A SHORT TIME AGO.

0:26 · DARLA.

0:28 · THAT’S THAT’S RIGHT. SANDRA AND DAVID, WE KNOW THAT THERE IS A DIRECT CORRELATION TO TRASH TRASH CONTAINERIZATION, NOT JUST WITH THE REDUCTION OF PARKING SPACES, BUT THE BIG THING HERE IS ITS IMPACT ON THE RAT POPULATION. AND THE NUMBERS DO NOT LIE. THERE WAS A 25% DECREASE IN 311 RAT SIGHTINGS WHEN THIS PROGRAM WAS IMPLEMENTED IN WEST HARLEM.

0:50 · NOW, THIS MORNING HERE IN CROWN HEIGHTS, MAYOR MAMDANI AND NEW SANITATION COMMISSIONER GREGORY ANDERSON ANNOUNCED NEW FUNDING AND A PLAN TO CONTINUE THE IMPLEMENTATION OF CITYWIDE TRASH CONTAINERIZATION THAT STARTED BACK IN 2023. THIS IS A LOOK AT WHAT THEY CALL EMPIRE BINS THAT ARE BEING PHASED IN AT LOW DENSITY APARTMENT BUILDINGS. NOW, UNLIKE THE PHASE WHERE FOOD RELATED BUSINESSES, THESE ARE BEING PROVIDED TO PROPERTY OWNERS BY THE CITY AT NO COST TO THEM.

1:22 · AND MAYOR MAMDANI THIS MORNING SAYS HE HAS ALLOCATED $15 MILLION TO LEASE THESE BINS AND STAFFING RELATED COSTS, AS WELL AS ANOTHER $35 MILLION IN CAPITAL IN THE CAPITAL GAINS BUDGET, IN THE CAPITAL BUDGET. RATHER, TO PURCHASE THOSE SANITATION TRUCKS THAT ARE SPECIALLY DESIGNED TO LIFT THESE BINS.

1:47 · WE HAVE ABOUT. YOU CAN CORRECT ME IF I’M WRONG HERE, 70% OF TRASH IN NEW YORK CITY IS CONTAINERIZED AT THIS POINT. THIS IS ADDRESSING THE REMAINING 30%. THESE ARE THE LARGER SCALE RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS THAT RIGHT NOW ARE PUTTING THEIR TRASH OUT IN BAGS.

2:04 · AND AS GROWING UP IN NEW YORK CITY, WE’VE BECOME ACCUSTOMED TO THIS. BUT I THINK, FRANKLY, THERE’S TOO MUCH IN OUR POLITICS THAT WE EXCEPTIONAL SAYING THAT THIS IS JUST HOW IT IS IN NEW YORK CITY. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. WE LOOK AT CITIES ACROSS THE WORLD. THIS IS NOT HOW THEY LIVE.

2:19 · NOW LET’S ■TAKE A LOOK AT WHERE THESE EMPIRE BINS WILL BE DISTRIBUTED. FIRST, THEY’RE GOING TO BE THREE NEIGHBORHOODS IN BROOKLYN. YOU SEE HERE, THE SIX NEIGHBORHOODS IN THE BRONX.

2:29 · THERE ARE FIVE NEIGHBORHOODS IN MANHATTAN, THREE IN QUEENS AND THE NORTH SHORE OF STATEN ISLAND. NOW, AGAIN, THIS APPLIES TO LOW DENSITY APARTMENT BUILDINGS WITH 30 OR MORE UNITS AND MAY IMPACT SOME APARTMENT BUILDINGS WITH 10 TO 30 UNITS. BUT THE PLAN, THE GOAL HERE IS TO KICK THIS TRASH BAGS OFF THE CURB AND ALL RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS BY 2031.

Climate Change Resilience Cooling an Urban Heat Island

American Museum of Natural History, 08 11, 2018

Video (1:42)

Description

Cities tend to be much warmer than their surrounding areas, and global warming is exacerbating this heat island effect. Painting roofs white helps cool buildings and lower energy demand. In New York City, installing these reflective rooftops supports the City’s goal to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

Visit the Museum’s Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth to explore how climate works and the consequences of climate change. Find more info here: https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/rose-center-for-earth-and-space/david-s.-and-ruth-l.-gottesman-hall-of-planet-earth

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Transcript

0:02 · COMMISSIONER GREGG BISHOP: The “urban heat island” effect affects a lot of cities like New York. Because a tremendous amount of buildings, a lot of concrete, and little vegetation increases the overall temperature of the city. And when the city is really, really, really hot, it affects the health of our citizens, individuals who may suffer from asthma, or may be susceptible to heat waves, our elderly population. So, heat actually affects life and safety.

0:31 · One of the strategies that we have to combat the urban heat island effect is the NYC CoolRoofs initiative, which works simply by painting the roofs white.

0:39 · BRIDGET CARTER: See how the coating is going inside the seams?

0:42 · Put it on as heavy as you can get it.

0:44 · BISHOP: Many buildings, because of the black roof, absorb heat. And painting them white reduces the internal temperature of a building by 10-30 percent.

0:53 · CARTER: Remember guys, don’t stretch the coating.

0:55 · Don’t stretch the coating.

0:56 · Where is your bucket?

0:57 · That reflective coating is going to keep the building cooler, conserve energy for the people that live in the building— less air conditioning and less fans being run. People can save some money.

1:07 · Very energy efficient.

1:08 · BISHOP: This CoolRoofs program is really a part of the Mayor’s strategy to lower New York City’s emissions by 80 percent by 2050, and to really help New York City become a great partner in fighting climate change.

Could this be a Solution to Gentrification

About Here, 10 15, 2023

Video (13:00)

Description

Kensington Market Community Land Trust’s community bond campaign is now live! You can inquire about them at this link: https://kmclt.ca/Kensington-Community-Bond

Thank you to both the Kensington Market Community Land Trust and Tapestry Community Capital for partnering with me on this video.

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Transcript

Intro

0:01 · Kensington Market is one of the most culturally significant neighborhoods in Toronto it’s a chaotic mixture of over 30 different cultures expressed through it shops artwork music and food all crammed into a 4x4 block area squeeze all of Toronto’s cultures into one neighborhood and it might look like this how did it happen well it all started with immigrants moving here and saying youa zoning by laws in the early 1900s

0:26 · Jewish newcomers moved here and began to open stores in their Victorian houses selling everything from produce and milk to deli meats and live chickens in the following decades the neighborhood welcomed wave after wave of new immigrants including Italians ukrainians afro Caribbeans pugu Indians Chinese Koreans who also said the zoning bylaws

0:45 · and also set up businesses in their houses and over the years this law bending Melting Pot of cultures proved to be an ideal home for other Renegade groups as well like queer artists hippies and [Music] punks basically if you weren’t your typical whitebred Canadian this was a welcoming Community for you today this history has

1:07 · made Kensington Market a beloved neighborhood that symbolizes Toronto’s diversity and entrepreneurial spirit it’s been featured in music videos TV shows documentaries it was designated a National Historic Site and it even has its own Heritage minut it by bringing newcomers shoulder-to-shoulder to build new lives together the reason I bring

Kensington Market

1:26 · this up is because Kensington Market is changing and not like in the ways it’s changed before people love it today which of course means so does the real estate and tourism industry property values in Kensington Market have skyrocketed resulting in a ton of Redevelopment pressure increasingly unaffordable rents and short-term rentals like airbnbs displacing longtime residents but this change isn’t just affecting renters either commercial rents have sometimes tripled overnight

1:54 · leading to many historic small businesses and grocery stores closing to make way for trendy shops restaurants and way too many weed stores for some reason there have even been proposals to introduce a Starbucks a la bla or a Walmart here Kensington Market story isn’t uncommon there are culturally significant neighborhoods all across North America today facing Market pressures that threaten to erase the community that made it so valuable in the first place and I’ll be honest with

2:23 · you I used to think that there’s not much you can do about this sort of change neighborhoods evolve and sometimes they become viral influencer tourist traps but what’s happening here in Kensington Market is kind of changing my [Music]

2:55 · mind our story Starts Here 5456 Ken inton Avenue in 2018 this property was bought by investors to be turned into a weed themed Airbnb and the 12 tenants living here were given 3 months to vacate the building but this is where the story takes a turn you see there was a ton of push back from tenants and the broader Community about this eviction which pressured the new owners to eventually put the property back up for sale and that is when a nonprofit group called The Kensington Market Community Land Trust bought this

3:28 · building today 5456 Kensington Avenue is owned by this nonprofit organization who manages the land and building and guarantees its long-term affordability okay great we saved one property but that’s just a drop in the bucket what about the rest of the neighborhood what are they going to do buy up all of Kensington Market

3:51 · well kind of you see the main reason why Kensington Market Community Land Trust exists is to acquire properties in Kensington Market for the community whenever a property comes up for sale in this neighborhood this organization will make an effort to acquire it rather than see it sold off to another private buyer and with each new property the Community Land Trust gains a larger and larger voice over how their neighborhood changes in fact they’re currently working on more properties right now like this parking lot at 25 bellw Avenue

4:21 · the plan here is to use that land to build non-market housing but this isn’t just happening in Kensington Market Community lust are increasing ly being used to protect culturally significant neighborhoods all across North America take Boston’s Chinatown the downtown east side in Vancouver the Bronx in New York Toronto’s Chinatown San Jose Harlem New York the Parkdale neighborhood in Toronto Lan Square in Chicago Atlanta and many many other neighborhoods people are forming Community Land trusts to acquire properties in response to real estate pressures so that begs the

4:53 · question what even is a Community Land Trust in the broadest sense Community Land Land Trust are nonprofit organizations that Acquire and manage land at the direction of their membership which is typically open to Residents and other stakeholders that

5:08 · membership decides on what their Community needs and uses their land to address those needs for example if the neighborhood needs more affordable housing they could lease some of the land to a co-op or nonprofit housing provider if they’d like to support arts and culture they could develop Studio spaces or performing venues if the goal is to celebrate Toronto’s natural Wildlife they could build a a raccoon ping Zoo hypothetically the point is

5:32 · it’s up to their membership so how does that membership make decisions well a community land trust is kind of run like a mini democracy its members elect a board who make decisions for the land trust and that board is typically required to have representatives from different stakeholder groups a common governance structure is the tripartite

5:52 · model where one-third of the board needs to be made up of residents inside theant properties a third made up of members from the surrounding community and a third made up of government officials housing experts and other stakeholders getting this balance of power right is key because it ensures that a Community Land Trust doesn’t only act in the interest of any one stakeholder this isn’t a glorified nimi group I think

6:13 · that’s what makes Community Land Trust such a promising idea for neighborhoods facing gentrification through its governance structure and ownership of land a Community Land Trust can serve as a way for all members of a community to have a say over its future not just those who can AFF to buy property that also makes a community land trust a very formidable advocacy group because they regularly engage with neighborhood stakeholders Community Land trusts hold a ton of soft power locally even if they

6:42 · don’t hold a ton of land take for example the Parkdale Neighborhood Land Trust in Toronto for a while it owned just three properties in Parkdale but ended up being a major voice for the neighborhood publishing policy papers conducting research on neighborhood issues and regularly organizing residents through various committees classes and other initiatives just last year the city of Toronto transferred 81 single family home properties into their

7:06 · portfolio finally I should add that Community Land trusts aren’t just for addressing gentrification it can ultimately be formed by any group of people who want to come together to acquire land and make decisions for what happens on it in fact the First Community Land Trust called new community Inc was formed by civil rights activists in the 1960s their mission was to provide stable housing and farming land for black residents in Georgia who are being evicted and persecuted for participating in the Civil Rights Movement today it owns 1600 acres of

7:36 · land just outside the city of Albany in Vancouver a new Community Land Trust is being used to write historical wrongs as the city prepares to tear down these viaducts part of the lands left over will be leased to the Hogan’s alley Society a community land trust for the city’s black community many of whom were displaced by the construction of these viaducts in the’ 60s today that Community Land Trust plans to develop housing shops and a black Cultural Center on their new property and in Owens Sound Ontario a community land

8:04 · trust is working to address both the housing and climate crises the Glassworks Cooperative holds 46 acres of land in a community land trust and plans to use that land to build a net zero Community with affordable housing Economic Development projects and environmental programs so Community Land trusts are clearly a powerful organizing tool for a variety of reasons but I want

8:26 · to address the elephant in the room here how how do you pay for all this if you haven’t figured it out by now the largest challenge for a community land trust is getting the land in the first place it either has to be donated provided by the government or bought for the Kensington Market Community Land Trust they were only able to acquire 5456 Kensington Market because of a $3 million forgivable loan from the city of Toronto through Section $300,000 Prime

8:53 · $50,000 ,000 $50,000 in affordable housing grants 3.2 million doet acquiring properties is a ton of work and doing this for every property in Kensington Market would be a massive Endeavor there are no shortcuts here but the reality is that there are

9:14 · no shortcuts when it comes to addressing gentrification it’s a complicated topic with so many differing opinions while Kensington Market and other culturally significant neighborhoods are valuable to so many people preserving that value is often at OD with the private real estate market that they’re a part of so though it might not be easy the most effective solution I can think of is

9:37 · supporting nonprofit organizations like Community Land Trust to acquire the land outright taking it outside of a system that prioritizes profit and into a system that prioritizes the community if we can do it for parks and churches maybe we can do it for this one of the ways that we can support Community Land trusts acquire more more properties right now is through a social Finance tool called Community bonds which one of our partners tapestry Community Capital specializes in a bond

Community Bonds

10:08 · is like an IOU where an organization borrows money and Promises to repay it plus interest at a specific date a community bond is a bond that helps a nonprofit pursue its Mission like a regular Bond the nonprofit is borrowing the money and commits to paying it plus interest but unlike regular bonds

10:25 · Community bonds aren’t just about making a financial return they’re also about soci cultural and environmental returns for example in the case of Kensington Market Community Land Trust a person would invest their money in the organization not just to collect interest but to see their money making a tangible impact in their own Community like making sure Kensington Market Remains the unique and interesting place that it is and because they offer more than just a financial return nonprofits can ask to borrow money with lower interest Community bonds can be a really

10:53 · effective tool for a community land trust for a couple reasons first off a Community Land Trust almost always needs to take out a loan anyways to buy properties a community Bond lets them set out their own terms for how they’d like to borrow money and pay out interest to their supporters instead of a traditional lender keeping the wealth within their own Community second most people already invest money in mutual funds stocks or cryptocurrencies anyways

11:18 · so I think the option to invest that money in a local cause you really believe in that benefits your community instead would be a pretty compelling idea to a lot of people Community Land Trust might not always start with a ton of money but they almost always start with a lot of community support and through Community bonds they can turn that Social Capital into actual Capital

11:39 · to acquire more properties the Kensington Market Community list is actually preparing to launch their own Community Bond offering right now to develop a fund to acquire more properties and scale up their work if you’d like to sign up to be on their interest list visit km c.ca and if you’re curious about Community Bonds in general check out tapestry Community Capital I want to leave the final word for this video with ch Tam from the Kensington Market Community Land Trust Kensington

Final Word

12:05 · Market is changing it’s going to keep on changing we’re not here to freeze this neighborhood in time but that change right now is disproportionately being shaped by people who have massive amounts of money and property already I believe and a lot of us believe that kington market is interesting and weird

12:23 · because it’s a place where new generations of businesses and artists have come to try out their ideas it’s affordable enough for them to do so the renters businesses artists and other folks who don’t have the means to own property and that’s why we started a community land trust is because we believe that those people deserve to shape this neighborhood too we don’t have to only fun when we we do need to

12:49 · Insurance the night walk in the were made for [Music] cars sh

Creating Climate-Resilient Communities through Vacant Lot Restoration

National Wildlife, 06 29, 2021

Video (5:36)

Description

Over the last two years, National Wildlife Federation piloted a project with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Philadelphia LandCare program to transform a network of vacant lots into climate-resilient wildlife habitat. We wanted to explore how cities with vacant lots can restore these sites to provide pollinator habitat, green stormwater infrastructure, equitable access to nearby nature, and create economic/job training opportunities.

Learn more: 1) https://www.nwf.org/Magazines/National-Wildlife/2021/April-May/Conservation/Lot-Revival 2) https://blog.nwf.org/2021/02/vacant-lots-to-pollinator-habitat-in-philadelphia-pa/

Transcript

Transforming communities

0:00 · I mean, for me, it’s inspirational and it gives me hope in seeing investment from the city, from nonprofits, from community members transforming lots that are public health hazards and eyesores, and dangerous, and turning them into usable, safe, beautiful green spaces.

0:25 · Yeah, I love it.

0:27 · It It’s making a difference. It’s making an impact in people’s lives.

The land care program

0:34 · The city of Philadelphia is a post-industrial city, and so we have a lot of vacant lots in the city. And unfortunately, most of them, whether they’re privately owned or city-owned, don’t have the capacity to maintain them.

0:47 · And so they grow heavy weeds, and, you know, people dump their trash on there, and there’s debris, and it’s just It’s an eyesore. It’s not something that people deserve to live by.

0:58 · So that’s where we at PHS come in. We have our Philadelphia Land Care program, where we completely clean and green these vacant lots, so that you know, what was formerly a terrible eyesore is now a community asset, which people can use, and people can enjoy, and they feel safer around.

1:17 · Through this project, we’re trying to change the narrative behind vacant lots, and switching it from a detriment and a negative to a community asset, and realizing that we have all this open, accessible land, and that it could serve as easy and equitable access to nature and to green space in urban environments, but it can also provide ecological habitat as well.

Greening and infrastructure

1:42 · We’ve noticed the soil quality has improved, which helps with drainage. And we In Philadelphia, have a lot of of stormwater management issues when it rains heavily.

1:52 · PHS, their Land Care program, they’ll stabilize a lot, and they’ll bring in sod, and they’ll plant some trees, but we are taking this awesome program to the next level, and we’re installing pollinator gardens, um which serve as habitat for birds, bees, and butterflies, and all sorts of critters. These gardens are able to absorb more runoff and stormwater, preventing overflows in sewers. So we’re really hoping that not only can we provide habitat, but we can provide water quality benefits as well.

2:21 · Some of our our lots, we collaborate with the Mural Arts program, which they paint these beautiful murals. And then, the National Wildlife Federation, in collaboration with the a local university, they found that it has a positive impact on the climate, as well.

Art and wildlife impact

2:36 · So when we have the the clean lawn, the mural, and then the added texture and and beauty from the gardens, it really creates such a beautiful space for the community.

Local economic impact

2:49 · We’re also working with 12,000 lots, which is a lot. You can’t manage that much through a volunteer basis. So we found it actually to be much more sustainable by hiring local contractors or working with community organizations to maintain the lot itself. And what’s great is that we actively search to work with local landscape contractors to help build their capacity. And they hire community members from the neighborhoods that we’re that we’re working in.

3:18 · And so really, you know, we’re investing a lot of dollars to clean these lots, but that money’s going right back into the neighborhoods, helping to create jobs, and then it it helps kind of build ownership, as well.

Personal perspective

3:32 · When you get up in the morning, you know, just taking your kids to daycare, school, you want your community to look right. You don’t want to come out, see trash everywhere, or just a mess. I’m only like 30 days, if that, in, but it’s giving me a different perspective on like everything, far as beautifying your neighborhood. Even though it’s a job, when you go back home and you see like a lot on your block when you’re not at work, you’re going to probably want to do something to it, like, why we can’t just make every block and every street in the city look good? Landscaping gave me a a different outlook about life.

4:06 · What landscaping really is not just like weed whacking, cleaning, it’s a whole lot of other aspects that go into it to try to help brighten and raise awareness in different communities. I wanted a contractor to really give me like an opportunity that I never had. I’m here to just get the experience, you know, listen, observe, pay attention to details.

4:27 · You know, there’s a lot of lots that need work, and if you can get a lot of positive people and people to work with you, clean the lots up, it’s a mess in the beginning, but when you step back and look at it with, you know, all the heart for the community, um it’ll weigh much more nice for the neighborhood.

Future expansion goals

4:45 · We would really love to see vacant lot restoration at scale throughout the Mid-Atlantic, and so we are really using this project and this opportunity to learn as much as we can about what has worked and what hasn’t, so that we can really bring this to other cities and make it a stronger priority.

Extreme Heat Is the New Normal

New York Times Opinion, 08 28, 2026

Video (15:42)

Description

We filmed “A New Inferno,” the short documentary above, in Phoenix, one of the hottest cities in America, through some of the city’s hottest days of 2025, during one of the hottest years on record globally. On one of our production days, temperatures reached 118 while we were filming outside.

In the face of extreme heat, we documented firefighters and paramedics of the Phoenix Fire Department saving lives in real time. We wanted to call attention to a specialized technique of ice bag immersion for people facing life-threatening heat stroke. We hope that telling their story and showcasing the efficacy of this strategy will encourage wider adoption of this protocol across the country.

Yet this procedure is ultimately a stopgap, as firefighters do their best to adapt to the climate crisis in front of them. The underlying story of heat in Phoenix is one of broader, interlocking crises: homelessness and substance use disorders that are deeply entangled with urban heat, each amplifying the other, illustrating how climate change affects the disenfranchised most brutally.

With our film, we aim to reframe how the public thinks about heat: as an invisible, silent killer reshaping the rhythms of urban life.

Documentary and text by By Nita Blum-Reddick and Jonathan Pickett

More from Op-Docs: https://www.nytimes.com/column/op-docs

Subscribe: http://bit.ly/U8Ys7n

0:00 Phoenix is only getting hotter

2:06 ‘The feedback loop of nightmares’

3:53 Ice bag immersion training simulation

7:40 How firefighters respond to heat-related emergencies

12:55 ‘He was really close. He was at that threshold.’

14:40 Facing a warming world

Transcript

Phoenix is only getting hotter

0:00 · [SIREN]

0:20 · Special call rescue 903.

0:23 · So it looks like the male patient —— he’s on the side of the road, probably heat-related.

0:28 · He’s not responsive at all.

0:30 · How long has he been down?

0:32 · Unknown downtime.

0:34 · OK, cool.

0:35 · We’ll be there in a minute, bro.

0:36 · Easy.

0:38 · [HONKING] [TENSE MUSIC] “Phoenix is known for heat, but it’s never been this hot before.”

0:52 · “That’s a record.”

0:53 · “Broken a record.”

0:54 · “An all-time record.”

0:56 · “And we’re already experiencing that human toll.”

0:59 · “Arizona has reported over 800 heat-related deaths.”

1:02 · “Governor Hobbs declaring a state of emergency.”

1:05 · [SCREECHING TIRES] “They’re turning to tools that could be the difference between life or death.”

1:19 · “Starting this year, each Phoenix fire truck will be immersing heatstroke victims in ice.”

1:26 · Put it right over their chest and their groin.

1:29 · Get it right on top of them.

1:31 · It’s the evolution of our job.

1:34 · Heat-related emergencies are definitely on the rise, and we’re on the front lines.

1:39 · This is what we have to do.

1:42 · So they’re kind in this little cocoon filled with ice and water.

1:47 · “Potentially saving them before reaching a hospital.”

1:50 · [HONKING] Another day in paradise, baby.

2:04 · Go check him out.

2:04 · Go check his temp.

‘The feedback loop of nightmares’

2:08 · He’s overheated.

2:09 · Sir, we’re going to take you to the hospital, OK?

2:15 · OK, keep that arm still, OK?

2:16 · What’s your name?

2:19 · Do you know where you are?

2:22 · He’s ODing.

2:26 · K-1 fire dispatch.

2:29 · 11,309.

2:32 · This is where we’re at in the city of Phoenix.

2:37 · You hang around our station long enough, you see people living a feedback loop of nightmares —— the heat, the drugs, and homelessness.

2:54 · I know that I won’t be able to help everyone.

2:58 · But I just want to be that relief for as long as possible.

3:12 · Did you do any alcohol or drugs today?

3:15 · Use any alcohol or drugs?

3:16 · Yeah?

3:16 · What did you use?

3:17 · Did you use fentanyl?

3:18 · [SIREN] Yeah, mate.

3:29 · The heat makes people do some strange things.

3:32 · [SINGING] When you’re strange, faces come out.

3:38 · When you’re strange.

3:40 · When you’re strange.

3:46 · OK, he still has a pulse.

3:47 · It’s just high.

3:49 · Hypothermia alert.

3:50 · Arriving.

Ice bag immersion training simulation

3:56 · It’s going to be a 40s male, altered level of consciousness.

3:59 · We found this patient down at a bus stop.

4:02 · His temperature was too high for our thermometer to read.

4:04 · It just said high.

4:05 · Can you just hand whatever she needs?

4:07 · Let’s add some ice.

4:08 · Let’s add some water.

4:09 · Let’s get them on the monitor.

4:10 · Let’s see what we’re dealing with.

4:11 · So we can help with this.

4:12 · Alert, five minutes out.

4:14 · And it sounds like we got another one coming.

4:16 · [BEEPING] We got more ice.

4:19 · We’re going to try to get them down to under 41.

4:21 · And under 41, we’ll get them out of the cold water immersion.

4:25 · She had a GCS of 5 and a temperature of 107.6 on arrival.

4:30 · Shannon, can you bring some Levophed?

4:31 · I think his pressure’s going to tank on us.

4:35 · Hopefully, our temp will be coming down soon.

4:37 · Your temp is 42.6.

4:40 · 42.6?

4:40 · Great.

4:40 · So we’re starting to make some progress here, guys.

4:43 · I’ve got 42.2.

4:45 · I love that.

4:45 · [TRAFFIC WHIRRING] “The heat is taking a devastating toll again this summer with 44 deaths confirmed so far.

5:08 · And with homeless shelters across the valley full, demand for those cooling center seats has been enormous.”

5:27 · There’s a large population of unhoused people that is out in the heat constantly, right?

5:31 · And so it compounds, OK?

5:34 · So one of you —— I want you to come up and establish if they’re conscious.

5:38 · Eric, I want you to take the back of your hand and touch the sidewalk.

5:42 · OK?

5:43 · Pull your glove back.

5:44 · If that’s hot, that patient is really hot.

5:47 · This is also, potentially, a patient who now has burn injuries.

5:50 · Right?

5:51 · They’ve been laying on the pavement.

5:53 · That might be 170 degrees with potential first- and second- degree burns.

5:59 · That’s it.

6:00 · Anybody got any questions?

6:09 · I mean, it’s so simple, right.

6:12 · Like, OK?

6:13 · This is kind of barbaric in a sense because it’s just a blue bag with ice.

6:21 · But the heat is definitely not going away.

6:25 · And this is all we have right now.

6:35 · Engine 18.

6:41 · K deck 9.

6:48 · This is going to be a busy day, though.

6:49 · It’s not really hot yet.

6:51 · It’s probably 100 degrees, but it’s super humid.

6:53 · It’s not a good start to the day.

6:56 · Why do you sweat so much, man?

6:57 · Are you watching “Cops”?

6:58 · Man, that dumpster fire almost kicked my ass.

7:02 · Have a good day.

7:04 · Thank you, my friend.

7:10 · Yeah, she’s moving too fast.

7:14 · Exactly.

7:14 · Tell her to slow down.

7:15 · ’Cause I haven’t introduced my daughter to nobody.

7:17 · Ooh, that’s crucial.

7:19 · But, yeah.

7:20 · So I think I’m going to pull back a little bit.

7:24 · And fallback game is like Nick Van Exel three.

7:26 · Dog.

7:27 · Wet.

7:28 · Kobe.

7:30 · The universe will always work it out, bro.

7:33 · [BEEPING] Fire Department.

7:36 · What’s the address?

How firefighters respond to heat-related emergencies

7:40 · OK. And is she awake right now?

7:45 · OK. OK, thank you.

7:53 · We’ll see you soon.

7:55 · This is where the secret is.

7:56 · That’s that cool.

7:58 · Engine 18.

7:59 · Ill person.

8:01 · Showtime.

8:02 · [ENGINE STARTING] This is really hot out.

8:11 · Those jalapeños didn’t help.

8:13 · [SIREN] I do have some help on the way for you.

8:24 · They are three minutes away, so they’ll be there in just a few minutes, OK?

8:28 · Do what you can to stay in the shade.

8:30 · [SIREN] “This is your homework, Larry.”

8:45 · “Get your car out front.”

8:46 · “This is this your homework, Larry.”

8:48 · “I know what this ——” [RADIO CHATTER] How are you doing?

8:59 · I’m going to check your temperature, OK?

9:02 · Are you having a hard time breathing, dear?

9:05 · OK. Patient is presenting lethargic, also complaining of nausea/vomiting, 20-gauge IV was administered to right hand.

9:19 · [BEEPING] Can you ask him if they’re having a medical emergency?

9:28 · Again, they’re completely unresponsive right now.

9:31 · Engine 18, K dock 9 for an ill person, heat-related.

9:35 · 23rd Avenue and Camelback.

9:36 · Engine 18, K dock 9.

9:38 · [SIREN] K-1 fire dispatch.

9:43 · They’re on the sidewalk, so they’re baking for sure.

9:47 · It’s got to be on my side.

9:49 · Copy.

9:49 · [SIREN] Wrong side, buddy.

10:01 · I hope everybody good, man.

10:04 · Turn right here.

10:05 · [SIREN] Engine 341.

10:18 · and Battalion 321.

10:19 · K dock 9.

10:25 · You want to put a carry-on underneath?

10:28 · Ladder 273.

10:29 · K dock 7.

10:44 · Put him over like this.

10:45 · And we’re going to slide this out.

10:47 · OK?

10:48 · [COUGHING] Zip that up.

10:56 · Zip that up, so we don’t lose any —— capture that.

10:58 · Uh-huh.

11:00 · No.

11:04 · [RADIO CHATTER] 18-gauge.

11:17 · Right AC good.

11:18 · I called an ambulance for four additional bags of ice.

11:21 · [RADIO CHATTER] And his tympanic temp was 107.

11:29 · Rescue is rolling up.

11:30 · Have another full bag, guys.

11:34 · We got two.

11:34 · Now we just need the bag.

11:35 · K dock 8.

11:39 · [THUNK] One, two, three.

12:01 · [SIREN]

12:35 · OK, give us a call if you get anything else about it.

12:37 · OK, all right.

12:38 · All right.

12:38 · Have a good day.

12:43 · How’s he looking?

12:45 · So he was real close.

12:50 · Like, he was at that threshold to where it’s a few more minutes.

‘He was really close. He was at that threshold.’

12:58 · Like, if somebody didn’t find him at that particular moment.

13:01 · So I don’t know if they induced coma, but he was in bad shape.

13:05 · To be intubated is —— a lot of times, that was associated with, like, they’re probably not coming out of the hospital, right?

13:11 · [MUSIC PLAYING] Engine 18, arrived on scene, finding patient lying next to bus stop, overheating and not breathing.

13:30 · Patient was placed in cold immersion bag with ice on top and surrounding his body.

13:39 · Part of you knows, like, damn, we did all this stuff.

13:44 · But even our best effort —— he might not have had a good outcome.

13:54 · Fortunately, it’s part of life, you know.

13:59 · But we try to do the best.

14:00 · So I felt like we did the best we could for him.

14:13 · It’s a nice night, bro.

14:15 · Yeah, it is, dog.

14:17 · But if it’s so hot out here that we got to throw people in bags, what are we doing here?

14:24 · Maybe that’s a sign.

14:25 · It’s the devil’s playground, bro.

14:27 · [Expletive] It ain’t fun here anymore.

14:30 · You know what I mean?

14:35 · [SIREN CHIRPS] Ooh, the boys.

14:38 · Go get some.

Fixing Boston’s Housing Crisis with Good Zoning

City of Boston, 11 15, 2023

Video (1:15)

Description

What’s behind the chaos of Boston’s housing crisis? 4,000 pages of zoning. We’re modernizing the zoning code to create a resilient, affordable and equitable future where all our families and neighbors, old and new, can call Boston home.

Learn more: https://www.boston.gov/zoning

Transcript

0:01 · rent hikes skyrocketing prices and bidding wars it’s harder than ever to call Boston home for families that have been here for generations and those just getting started housing that used to be affordable is simply Out Of Reach behind that chaos is a zoning policy decades overdue for an update zoning is a set of rules that dictate how we live in Boston defining which type of buildings go where how high and how many and Boston zoning policy is nearly 4,000 p of dense

0:30 · and contradictory language that means what would take a day and less than $100 to get approved in other cities takes 6 months countless meetings and more than $10,000 here but zoning doesn’t have to be a bureaucratic stumbling block good zoning tells us where we are now where we want to go and how we’ll get there it respects the character of every neighborhood and ensures predictable community-driven growth so neighbors old and new can build lives right where they belong at home in Boston by modernizing

1:02 · our zoning code we create a future where Boston can be the best place in the country to raise a family let’s start making that Vision a reality

Greenlining Fund Invests in Omaha’s Historically Redlined Neighborhoods

The Omaha News, 03 12, 2025

Video (1:32)

Description

The Omaha News streams live every Wednesday at 4 p.m. on YouTube, Facebook and The Knowledge Network (TKN) during the academic year. The half-hour newscast also airs state-wide on NET reaching all of Nebraska’s 1.9 million residents.

Our mission is to fully immerse University of Nebraska at Omaha journalists into the business of reporting and investigating live, local stories that impact our region. Located in the Community of Public Affairs and Community Service building, our newsroom is home to state-of-the-art facilities and award-winning journalism.

Subscribe- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrtGgsQoOlVKYm2LMk8SpgQ

Website- unomahanews.com

Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/UNOTheOmahaNews

Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/unomahanews/

Transcript

0:02 · front porch Investments green lining fund is helping homeowners in historically Redline areas invest in their properties and enhance the community redlining is the practice of denying loans and services to minority neighborhoods which led to long-term disinvestment and though outlawed in 1968 its effects still linger Yolanda

0:19 · Williams housing Justice and grants manager at front porch Investments says this impact is still evident today how can this impact North Omaha residents particularly the black North Omaha residents that’s struggle to find affordable housing that are struggling with home ownership and just the valuations of these homes are much lower than counterparts in you know Midtown or West Omaha in 2023 the green lining fund launched a program providing 0% interest loans of up to $5,000 per property to

0:48 · help homeowners with critical repairs These funds support Home Improvements and Renovations aiming to stabilize households and address critical housing needs etel Lopez CEO of the Latino Economic Development Council says many homeowners are forced to choose between basic maintenance and other essential costs and it’s expensive I mean you talk about you know replacing a window all of this windows in my home office have not been replaced and it’s really cold here do I want to replace the windows which is you know going to cost me so much or

1:17 · do I want to pay a higher monthly bill the green Ling fund isn’t just about fixing homes it’s about restoring investment empowering residents and ensuring North and South Omaha communities can Thrive for generations for the Omaha news I’m marry mitoff

Healthy living in the Philippines

CNN, 04 07, 2013

Video (2:57)

Description

A major housing development in the Philippines tries to combine happy and healthy living. Pauline Chiou reports. For more CNN videos, visit our site at http://www.cnn.com/video/

Transcript

Housing and Health

Northern California Public Media, 07 31, 2017

Video (2:04)

Description

KRCB North Bay Public Media and the Sonoma County Department of Health Services have partnered to raise awareness about the ways in which the social determinants of health affect our community. This Health Connections video explores the direct impact homelessness and inadequate housing have on public health and how better housing can lead to better health for all.

Transcript

0:03 · in our local area our most recent homeless census told us that over 63 percent of the people living on the streets here in Greenville were residents of Western Sonoma County before becoming homeless another 20% were permanent residents of Sonoma County these are our local residents who have been priced out of housing homelessness and lack of adequate housing have a detrimental impact on health access to adequate food to

0:31 · shelter to transportation these are all things that greatly impact somebody’s overall help section 8 subsidized housing aims to make rent more affordable for qualifying low income residents however it can often be challenging finding a landlord willing to accept the section 8 voucher you’re stressed out about not having a place to live than here that’s going to be your primary focus it’s a great stressor when

0:59 · you’re homeless you don’t have a cook stove you don’t have a way to heat food you tend to want to eat pre-prepared meals and you tend to want to do that in the most affordable way possible and in America that means fast food you’re eating sugary stuff because that’s what’s available a lot of processed foods not so much of the fresh vegetables and fruits because you have no refrigeration you have no way to keep it many who are homeless must resort to using the emergency room to address their basic health needs when somebody

1:26 · is using the emergency room as their primary care home we have a real problem and the cost-saving measure is for the health care system to invest in housing because when we have somebody we know that within the first 90 days their dependence on the emergency rooms decreases by over 50% there is a clear relationship between good housing and good health housing along with all the

1:50 · stability that provides greatly impacts somebody’s ability to live a long productive healthy life you

Housing Segregation and Redlining in America A Short History Code Switch NPR

NPR, 04 11, 2018

Video (6:36)

Description

In 1968, Congress passed the Fair Housing Act that made it illegal to discriminate in housing. Gene Demby of NPR’s Code Switch explains why neighborhoods are still so segregated today.

• Read “How Segregation Shapes Fatal Police Violence” at https://n.pr/2Ic6A1Q

• Read or listen to: “‘The Color Of Law’ Details How U.S. Housing Policies Created Segregation” at https://n.pr/2HgqATh

WHAT’S CODE SWITCH?

It’s the fearless conversations about race that you’ve been waiting for! Hosted by journalists of color, our podcast tackles the subject of race head-on. We explore how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and everything in between. This podcast makes ALL OF US part of the conversation — because we’re all part of the story.

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Transcript

0:00 · Chris Rock: You know what’s so sad, man?

0:00 · You know what’s wild?

0:01 · Martin Luther King stood for nonviolence.

0:03 · Now what’s Martin Luther King?

0:05 · A street.

0:07 · And I don’t give a f*** where you at in America, If you on Martin Luther King Boulevard there’s some violence going down.

0:13 · Gene: That, of course, is Chris Rock’s famous joke about streets named for Martin Luther King Jr., which tend to be in – let’s say distressed areas.

0:22 · And he’s not wrong, because if you look at the way housing segregation works in America you can see how things ended up this way.

0:28 · Once you see it, you won’t be able to unsee it.

0:31 · OK, let’s look at MLK Boulevard in Baltimore.

0:35 · I want to show you how to see housing segregation in schools, in health, in family wealth, in policing.

0:41 · But first, an explanatory comma.

0:45 · It’s the 1930s in the wake of the Great Depression.

0:47 · FDR is president.

0:48 · He wants to bring economic relief to millions of Americans through a collection of federal programs and projects called The New Deal.

0:54 · One part of that “new deal” was The National Housing Act of 1934, which introduced ideas like the 30-year mortgage and low, fixed interest rates.

1:03 · So now you have all these lower-income people who can afford homes, but how do you make sure they don’t default on their new mortgages?

1:09 · Enter the Home Owners Loan Corp.

1:12 · The HOLC created residential security maps.

RESIDENTIAL SECURITY MAPS

1:15 · And these maps? They’re where the term redlining comes from.

1:20 · Green meant “best area, best people,” aka businessmen; blue meant “good people,” like white-collar families; yellow meant a “declining area,” with working class families; and red meant “detrimental influences, hazardous,” like “foreign-born” people, “low-class whites,” and – most significantly – “Negroes.”

1:41 · Again and again on these HOLC maps, one of the most consistent criteria for redlined neighborhoods is the presence of black and

brown people.

1:49 · Let’s be clear.

1:50 · Studies show that people who lived in redlined areas were not necessarily more likely to default on their mortgages.

1:57 · But redlining made it difficult — if not impossible — to buy or refinance.

2:02 · So landlords abandon their properties.

2:04 · City services become unreliable.

2:06 · In most places, crime increases.

2:09 · And property values drop.

2:11 · All of these conditions fester for 30 years as white people flee to the brand new suburbs popping up all over the country.

2:18 · Many of those suburbs institute rules, called covenants, that explicitly forbid selling homes to black people.

2:23 · And all of this was perfectly legal.

2:27 · Now it’s 1968.

2:29 · And MLK is assassinated.

2:31 · News Report: Good evening.

2:32 · The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, 39 years old, The apostle of nonviolence in the civil rights movement has been shot to death in Memphis, Tenn.

2:39 · Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tenn.

2:42 · In the aftermath, Congress passes the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

2:47 · It’s a policy meant to encourage equal housing opportunities regardless of race, or religion or national origin.

2:52 · And it offers protections for future homeowners and renters, but does little to fix the damage already done.

2:58 · Over the next 50 years, the Fair Housing Act is rarely enforced.

3:02 · So you can still see housing segregation and its effects, in Baltimore and often along any MLK Boulevard in any U.S. city.

3:11 · Like its effects on wealth.

WEALTH

3:13 · So homeownership is the major way Americans create wealth, right?

3:16 · Well, discrimination in housing is the major reason that black families up and down the income scale have a tiny fraction of the family wealth that white families do – even white families with less education and lower incomes.

3:28 · For almost 30 years, 98 percent of FHA loans were handed out to white borrowers.

3:33 · Not only were black neighborhoods redlined, and not only was the Fair Housing Act selectively enforced, if at all, but it is still today much harder for a black person to get a mortgage or home loan than it is for a white person.

3:46 · John: Families are fearful of speaking up about a basic human right that should be afforded to everyone in the world but definitely in the richest country in the world.

3:59 · And housing segregation in schools.

4:02 · The primary way that Americans pay for public schools is by paying property taxes.

4:07 · People who live in more valuable homes have better-funded local schools, better-paid teachers, better school facilities and more resources.

4:15 · Here’s a feedback loop: The better the schools in a neighborhood, the more those homes in that neighborhood are worth.

4:21 · And the higher the property values of those homes, the more money there is for schools.

4:25 · And so on and so on.

4:27 · And housing segregation in health.

4:29 · Because of urban planning that benefited those richer, whiter neighborhoods, people of color are more likely to live near industrial plants that spew toxic fumes; they’re more likely to live far away from grocery stores with fresh food, and in places where

the water isn’t drinkable.

HEALTH

4:43 · They’re more likely to live in neighborhoods with crumbling infrastructure, and in homes with toxic paint.

4:49 · Karen: When you’re living with rats, roaches, and things like that – that’s deplorable.

4:53 · You cannot have that kind of stuff with children running around in the building.

4:56 · A building that may be full of lead.

5:00 · And, not coincidentally, people of color have higher incidences of certain cancers, asthma and heart disease.

5:08 · And housing segregation in policing.

POLICING

5:11 · Housing segregation means we are having vastly different experiences with crime and vastly different experiences with policing.

5:17 · Because our neighborhoods are so segregated, sometimes racial profiling can be camouflaged as spatial profiling — where living in certain areas can make you more likely to be stopped by the police.

5:29 · And it means people have a lot of unnecessary contact with the criminal justice system just because of where they live.

5:38 · Reggie: The problem in our city?

5:41 · The police and the citizens are fighting.

5:43 · They keep targeting my brothers and sisters who don’t really have nothing.

5:49 · And that heavy, aggressive kind of policing that you see in black neighborhoods in particular makes people feel like they can’t trust the police.

5:55 · And when people don’t trust the police, crimes go unsolved and people have to find other ways to keep themselves safe.

6:03 · But, of course, it’s not just Baltimore.

6:05 · Because housing segregation and discrimination fundamentally shape the lives of people in nearly every major American city.

6:14 · It really is in everything.

6:18 · To hear more about how race shapes American life, visit npr.org/codeswitch.

6:23 · I’m Gene Demby. Be easy.

How ‘green gentrification’ is pricing out longtime East Boston residents

PBS NewsHour, 06 06, 2022

Video (7:56)

Description

The city of Boston faces two enormous problems: Sea level rise in its harbor that is getting worse with climate change and a dearth of affordable housing, pricing out many longtime residents. Solutions to one of the problems may compound the challenge of solving the other, a phenomenon researchers have called this “green gentrification.” Paul Solman reports.

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Transcript

Boston’s twin crises

0:04 · The city of Boston faces two enormous problems, sea level rise in its harbor that is getting worse with climate change, and a dearth of affordable housing, pricing out many longtime residents.

0:13 · Solutions to one of the problems may compound the challenge of solving the other.

0:18 · Researchers have called this green genritication.

Luxury waterfront development

0:23 · – Green gentrification.

0:25 · Paul Solman reports on the fallout in Boston.

0:29 · Paul in east Boston, long home : To the city’s latest wave of immigrants, sparkling new waterfront apartments where abandoned piers once rotted.

0:34 · A brief ferry ride away, downtown Boston.

0:39 · Convenient.

0:40 · Stunning.

0:41 · We unlocked a part of the waterfront that had been fenced off from the community and reintroduced it to the people free to calm use the place. Paul: And to folks dying to live here, says developer Nick iselin.

1:03 · We thought there was not such a thing as a one million-dollar condominium in Boston. Paul: Which came to a startling $1 million for just 1500 square feet. But a major selling point for those who can afford it, the project is carbon neutral. As it says on its website, climate change ready. A newly created living shoreline, with the stabilization of existing sea walls.

1:34 · New public open spaces support wildlife habitats, promote community gatherings, a kayak launcher, highlight recreational and programming opportunities. There are even a few dozen affordable housing units.

Community displacement

1:48 · What is not to like?

1:52 · Are you from around here?

1:54 · I live here.

1:56 · Paul: What about all these condos going up?

2:00 · They created a ghetto, a white ghetto.

2:04 · Paul: He feels unwelcome. A group of students from east Boston high school, possibly more so.

2:10 · Last summer me and my friends were skipping rocks and they said we were disturbing them.

2:18 · They are snobby people.

2:21 · They say you can’t be here, but it is not private property. Paul: In fact, it’s a public area, with public bathrooms, mandated by state law.

2:30 · We finally got the leasing office.

2:34 · Paul: But, challenges community activist Kannan thiruvengadam – Do I know there is a public restroom I can use?

2:45 · Those things have to be obvious, that makes a space welcoming. The sign is writing here. Paul: Public restroom in port said lobby.

2:58 · And if you can’t find a bathroom, how public is the space?

3:00 · Is it open?

3:03 · It is locked.

3:07 · In fact, guitar player Rios and the students, off after a half day at school, were among the very few non residents on these 9 acres of public space.

3:12 · We used to live here and we were forced to move out.

3:20 · Paul: You could not afford it?

3:22 · We were forced to move out, there is a lot of gentrification. Paul: Gentrification the age-old , problem of urban redevelopment.

3:33 · People are getting displaced, there is not enough opportunity for people with middle to lower income or even a bit above. Paul: This is gentrification with a new twist, green development greening. Green gentrification, adding appeal to a project, and cost, implying – There will be, little by little, a removal of socially more vulnerable groups, working class, middle-class groups. Paul: Researcher Isabelle anguelovski champions climate control but enclaves like this, in her words – Become islands of resilience, privatized.

Defining green gentrification

4:16 · Paul: While their 47,000 or so east Boston neighbors are discouraged from coming near, if not forced out of town, as so many of the students we ran into were.

4:25 · I have to walk to school now, it is like an hour.

4:31 · Paul: You walk an hour a day to school?

4:34 · It used to be 10 minutes.

4:37 · My shoes are messed up.

Unmet climate promises

4:38 · Paul: How long have you had those?

4:39 · A month.

4:41 · Paul: Meanwhile, those who get to stay will be at the mercy of time and tide. East Boston, once five separate islands, is mostly landfilled. The sea level will rise 40 inches by 2070, creating a flood risk to half the neighborhood. Low tide not a problem, but a few hours away, storm surges like one in 2018 which flooded this complex.

5:16 · It got up to the sidewalk?

5:17 · It came onto the ground level.

5:22 · I could not step on without being in the water.

5:24 · Paul: And the east bostonians behind the development?

5:28 · This is a ramp.

5:30 · If rain falls, it will be here.

5:33 · Paul: As for the promised amenities, that public kayak launch has become a tavern – the living shoreline?

5:39 · This is meant to be the living shoreline.

5:44 · Where are the kids, the grass, the blue hair?

5:51 · Paul: The fact is this very , project is now vulnerable to climate change.

5:58 · Nobody built in anticipation of the vulnerability because why?

6:01 · Because they were not required to.

Seeking equitable solutions

6:06 · The assessments had not been done.

6:07 · Paul: So, any fixes?

6:10 · Boston now has a new mayor, Michelle Wu, who ran on a platform of economic equity. She has reverend mariama white-hammond to help implement it.

6:17 · I went to a little, all girls private school and the girls were afraid to come to my house, said they were worried they would get shot. Paul: White-hammond actually protested this project when it was first proposed some seven years ago.

6:32 · We marched because we were deeply concerned the units built were not billed for the residents that were currently here. Paul: But how does she see east Boston development now, as the mayor’s top climate adviser.

6:44 · It is not the melding of the old and new, it is the old being overwhelmed by the new.

6:50 · If people live near a good part, the prices are higher, which means poor people live in the places nobody wants to live.

7:00 · Do not improve those neighborhoods?

7:02 · It is a real catch 22. My family has as much a right to live near a great park as the people who live downtown. The problem is, if I upgrade the park in that community, property values rise.

7:15 · Gentrification is a problem.

7:20 · It is happening for many reasons. Market forces, people are getting displaced. Whether or not we have green spaces here, that gentrification would be happening. Paul: And thus the last question, to community activist la Battaglia.

7:38 · Green gentrification compounds the problem?

7:39 · It exacerbates it.

7:42 · Paul: Exacerbates the problem of choice venues versus this land. – A problem facing choice urban venues all over this land. For the pbs newshour, Paul

How “Third Places” Make Cities Healthier, Stronger

Martin Felsen - City Design, 10 02, 2025

Video (7:38)

Description

Cities can boost our health—when we feel like we belong. Explore how “third places” (neither home nor work) turn bricks and mortar into trust, ties, and well-being. From cafés and libraries to community centers and markets, see how everyday spaces compound into social capital—and why some cities now invest in third places first.

Watch to learn: - What “third places” are and why they matter for health and democracy - How small, low-stakes interactions build social capital - Why participation in clubs and associations has declined—and how design can counter it - How social prescribing links people to community groups - The U.S. Industrial Policy playbook: jobs → families → civic groups → trust in third place - The “third-place-first” strategy in cities beyond the U.S. and how quality of place attracts families and jobs - A tour of PILARES in Mexico City—how design + programming drive belonging and well-being - Practical examples of third place programs any city can host today

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About me

Martin Felsen, FAIA, co-founded UrbanLab, an architecture and urban design firm in Chicago. Martin is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and a Professor in the Illinois Institute of Technology’s (IIT, aka, Illinois Tech) College of Architecture. UrbanLab’s work synthesizes diverse design methodologies and technical innovations drawn equally from architecture and its complex urban and natural contexts. Built work to date includes houses, housing, mixed-use buildings, installations, and urban infrastructural projects. UrbanLab has received many design awards for projects across scales of production.

Attributions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uei6btqSy80

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fiwOe6TxIo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjNxHlmJElk&list=RDkjNxHlmJElk&start_radio=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aufuow_M-M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6TyZj4gkYQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ynUbkAEuHg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxGdyYwQWN4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2KlIaJOzEc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXjJrD8qqe0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS7XDghax-E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4hLkXWv8cI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_TJHIV5vDs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmxDjhVMoLI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_5dZe1yDXo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWFKFaW0iBA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUryHj6L1Bg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uni0LL338oA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5IVlffPZeg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmXfwJ-zrMQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAEd1uDOZJE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe0UroHVrQQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KECW7chv0w8

Transcript

The decline of civic ties

0:00 · Hi, I’m Martin Felson. Welcome to City Design, the channel where we explore how we shape cities and how cities shape us.

0:08 · Today’s question is, how do cities improve our health and well-being?

0:13 · Cities physically connect us. A first principle of city design is simple. We are not meant to be alone. We do much better when we share purpose in shared places. But today, our civic ties have thinned. Participation in clubs, associations, and congregations is way down. What’s at stake isn’t nostalgia.

0:34 · It’s social capital. The trust, the norms, and networks that help communities solve problems together. Why the decline in our physical connections, familiar forces, mobility uproots us, and screens capture our attention. As an urban designer, I also see an antidote.

The role of third places

0:54 · Brick and mortar third places. These are gathering spots that are neither home nor work. They’re where we swap ideas, organize, and belong. Cafes and barber shops, libraries and schools, faith halls and field houses. Third places normalize low stakes contact, and those weak ties add up to deliver enhanced well-being. They help us connect and cope together. Third places aren’t new.

1:22 · In the 1830s, Alexis Dtoqueville observed that Americans penchant for starting civic associations was a key factor to our unprecedented ability to make democracy work. He wrote that we’re forever forming a thousand different kinds of associations, every kind, large and small. What happens inside third places? They convert bricks and mortar into trust and ties. Physical capital into social capital. Their design matters, too.

Policies for healthy cities

3:50 · Doctors and clinicians now use social prescribing, which are patient referrals to groups, classes, and caregivers circles. Because joining a third place group measurably improves our health.

4:03 · More broadly in the US, national public policies focus on jobs, families, and third places as direct paths to citizen and community well-being. Our industrial policy targets business sectors with incentives and penalties to raise job quantity and quality.

4:21 · Stabilizes families with home ownership and good jobs. channels family members into community organizations to spur civic participation, which finally deepens civic trust and well-being through participation in third places abroad.

A third place first strategy

4:40 · Some cities flip the order with a third place first strategy. Build third place social infrastructure. Catalyze networks of people and organizations that undergur local economies. Attract investment in jobs via quality of place.

4:56 · stabilize family and home as civic life strengthens. Let’s look at how this strategy works in practice. Polaris are small community centers cited across Mexico City. These are places to find free computers in internet, flexible classrooms, and hands-on workshops from carpentry to coding. Many include courtyards that flip from classes to festivals to civic meetings. Polaris work because sites are prioritized in underserved areas. Buildings are well-designed and easy to identify.

5:29 · Programs are free and ongoing. In Ketal Kowal, this Polaris offers educational and practical support to rebuild social ties and safety within a dicey neighborhood. Classrooms and workshops open onto a shared courtyard and the operable facade signals that the space is open to all and available for everyday use and community ownership. In ease to Palapa on a tight site with little open space, the entry plaza and column threshold pulls the street inside the Polaris.

Case study: Polaris centers

6:02 · Simple materials, strided block, concrete tile, steel create light, shade and durable rooms that flex from forum to classroom. In qui Quilo, a slender steel frame shades the interior spaces of this neighborhood hub. The inverted roof captures rainwater architecture doing double duty in a water stressed city. In La Pula, this educational center has a single unified room on two levels.

6:31 · The large multi-purpose space offers free training workshops of all kinds for everyone in the neighborhood. In Valentine Gomez FAS, this Polaris is filled with naturally lit classrooms linked to a public walkway with lattice walls and gardens used for learning and neighborhood life. Free classes, workshops, and outdoor forums entice people of all ages to gather, learn, and belong. The bottom line here is that third places aren’t a luxury.

Innovation in belonging

7:01 · They’re our everyday infrastructure of connection and well-being. Design them well. Program them predictably. Open them to everyone. The benefits compound.

7:14 · We talk a lot about innovation in technology. Here’s another kind.

7:18 · Innovation in belonging. Cities that invest in it will be healthier, safer, and more confident about their future.

7:26 · Thanks for watching City Design. If you’re enjoying these episodes, please like, share, and subscribe.

How America’s hottest city is trying to cool down

Vox, 09 20, 2021

Video (6:48)

Description

Can trees help save Phoenix from extreme heat?

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It’s time to stop looking at trees as a form of “beautification.” They are, instead, a living form of infrastructure, providing a variety of services that include stormwater management, air filtering, carbon sequestration, and, most importantly for a city like Phoenix, Arizona, they cool the environment around them.

Trees can lower neighborhood temperatures in three ways: 1) Their shade prevents solar radiation from hitting paved surfaces like concrete and asphalt, which absorb energy and rerelease it into the air as heat. 2) Their leaves pull heat from the immediate area in order to evapotranspirate water that’s drawn from the soil. And, 3) If you’re standing under one, a tree protects your body directly from the sun’s rays. If you’ve ever made a summer visit to a dry, hot city like Phoenix, you’ll know how important shade is for making any outdoor experiences tolerable.

As Phoenix deals with a rising frequency of extreme heat waves — which aren’t only deadly, but also cause worrisome spikes in energy demand — the city is looking to trees as part of its heat mitigation strategy. Phoenix isn’t devoid of trees, but they’re distributed unevenly across the city. A quick glance at a satellite image of the metro area reveals substantial green splotches in the north and east and brown ones in the south and west, where many lower-income neighborhoods are located.

So Phoenix recently pledged to reach “tree equity” by 2030, under an agreement with American Forests, a national tree organization. I visited Phoenix recently to take a look at the current state of the city’s urban forest. In this video, we use drone imagery and thermal cameras to understand how the urban design of the city contributes to extreme heat, and what it can do to cool down.

This is the first video of five videos we’re releasing on climate change. You can watch the second video, about high-voltage transmission lines ⚡️ and why the US isn’t ready for clean energy, here: https://youtu.be/s3ScJ_FwaZk

And the third video dives into prescribed burns, and how a decade of suppressing forest fires 🔥 may have made them worse, here: https://youtu.be/0o6ezu_h6iE

Transcript

0:02 · I’m looking at a map of surface temperatures in the Phoenix metro area.

0:05 · So this is in Arizona, in the southwest US and it shows how hot the ground is in June.

0:10 · And this is a map of child poverty rates.

0:13 · Darker blue means more poverty.

0:15 · So this is heat.

0:16 · And this is poverty.

0:18 · Heat.

0:19 · Poverty.

0:20 · Heat, Poverty.

0:21 · The correlation is pretty obvious.

0:24 · This is where it becomes clear that climate change and wealth inequality are not really separate issues.

0:29 · And you can probably find examples of that wherever you go in the world, but for this story, I went… there.

0:36 · “An excessive heat warning is in effect.”

0:39 · “Warmer is the new normal in Phoenix.”

0:41 · “The city’s grappling with an increase in heat related deaths.”

0:44 · “Phoenix, last year, hitting 100 degrees or higher for more than 144 days.”

0:49 · “Climate change is one factor causing rising temperature.

0:53 · “Urban development is the other.”

0:58 · The forecasted high that day was 112 degrees Fahrenheit.

1:02 · That’s 44 degrees Celsius.

1:04 · But in reality, some areas can feel warmer or cooler than that.

1:09 · So here I am in a neighborhood with some of the hottest surface temperatures, but when I drove 8 miles north of there, I was in one of the coolest parts of Phoenix.

1:19 · And it was in the hot neighborhood where I met up with Eva Olivas.

1:23 · She’s a local community advocate and Phoenix native.

1:26 · It’s nice to meet you.

1:27 · OLIVAS: It’s nice to meet you.

1:28 · Can you tell me a little bit about this neighborhood and who lives here?

1:31 · OLIVAS: So the community of Central City South is located just south of the downtown business district.

1:38 · OLIVAS: The average income level for a family of four is about $19,000.

1:42 · OLIVAS: The vehicle ownership rate is between 23-28% of the population.

1:45 · Oh wow.

1:46 · OLIVAS: Yes, very low.

1:47 · So they’re very dependent on public transportation.

1:50 · This zip code has the highest rate of heat-related illnesses in the city, what makes people here vulnerable to extreme heat?

1:58 · Well, I think it’s a combination of things.

2:00 · We have the freeway.

2:02 · OLIVAS: We have the railroad tracks on the north.

2:04 · OLIVAS: We have the airport on the east.

2:06 · OLIVAS: So we’re like a little pocket.

2:07 · That’s a lot of pavement.

2:08 · OLIVAS: A lot of concrete, a lot of industry here.

2:13 · A lot of our streets, as you can see, don’t have sidewalks.

2:17 · You’re having to walk in the street, like we are.

2:20 · And there’s not a lot of shade.

2:22 · If you can look around, you don’t see a lot of trees.

2:26 · This is the Sonoran Desert, so of course the summers are hot.

2:29 · But it also seems like this entire city was almost designed to capture heat.

2:34 · The streets are so wide.

2:36 · This isn’t a highway, this is just the Phoenix grid.

2:38 · And the buildings are so flat and set back from the sidewalk, so they don’t create much shade at all.

2:44 · And then there’s the parking lots.

2:46 · I read one estimate that there are more than 4 parking spots for every car in Phoenix.

2:52 · The sun just beams into all that pavement.

2:54 · And it doesn’t just roast anyone who happens to walk across it, it’s also transferring heat to the air, day and night.

3:02 · Wow I really … did that poorly.

3:05 · Also, I promise this is not a Chevy ad, I just borrowed my dad’s car.

3:09 · So what do you do to try to mitigate heat in a city like this?

3:13 · Well, reflective roofs can help a bit.

3:15 · The thermal image shows the surface temperature of the dark roof is hotter than the white ones.

3:20 · And the city has also tried painting some roads with a more reflective coating.

3:25 · But if you compare the hottest and coolest neighborhoods, it’s pretty clear that the big difference between them isn’t the black or white surfaces.

3:33 · It’s the green ones.

3:36 · Plants are the variable that connects this map of heat to this map of poverty.

3:41 · And studies have confirmed that the cooling effect of cool roofs and cool pavements is smaller than the cooling effect of trees.

3:48 · “One of the best ways to beat the urban heat.”

3:50 · “The more trees you plant, the more benefits.”

3:53 · “It’s cleansing for the air.”

3:54 · “Reduce carbon footprint.”

3:55 · “Lower levels of stress.”

3:56 · “Decrease energy costs.”

3:58 · “Storm water management.”

3:59 · “It’s a very important engine of cooling.”

4:01 · If you take an area that’s just parking lots and buildings, and cover at least a quarter of the space with trees, you can lower air temperatures there by around 8 degrees Fahrenheit or 4.4 degrees Celsius.

4:12 · That’s according to a study from Arizona State University.

4:15 · For those who are used to humid summers, it can be hard to understand just how much relief shade provides in a dry heat.

4:22 · You can easily see the temperature difference on my arms and on the concrete there.

4:27 · So the city of Phoenix has committed funds to planting more trees.

4:30 · They want all neighborhoods to reach a minimal level of canopy cover by 2030.

4:36 · And I love the idea of recruiting an army of trees to protect the vulnerable from extreme heat.

4:42 · But there’s a problem.

4:44 · Outside of parks and along major streets, the urban forest currently depends not on public resources, but on private ones.

4:55 · What would it take for a street like this one to become one of those shady tree-lined streets that they have uptown.

5:02 · OLIVAS: Well, any tree that’s planted in this neighborhood in front of someone’s home, they would have to maintain.

5:09 · OLIVAS: The city does not maintain them in these residential areas.

5:13 · I see, okay.

5:14 · So there are some utility companies here that will give you a couple of free trees if you agree to plant them on the west side or south side of your home, because eventually that can end up saving something like 30% on your air conditioning bill.

5:26 · But it sounds like that doesn’t really solve the maintenance issue.

5:29 · OLIVAS: Correct.

5:30 · OLIVAS: Because there’s that tradeoff between shade or increased water bill.

5:35 · But it’s the cost of maintaining the trees that is challenging, obviously in a very low income neighborhood like ours.

5:41 · And it’s not a priority for them in their family, in their home.

5:45 · Are there no programs here that are actually going to take on the watering cost?

5:50 · OLIVAS: Zero.

5:51 · That is the responsibility of the homeowner and you have to remember, what did I say?

5:54 · These are mostly renters.

5:57 · I walked with Eva along Buckeye Road where there’s a big triangular lot, it’s owned by the city, and has been left unplanted.

6:04 · She said that would probably change with the city’s new tree equity plans.

6:07 · But she also hoped for some more basic things: like sidewalks, and shade shelters for all the bus stops.

6:15 · It was a reminder that wealth already affects access to infrastructure, even infrastructure that doesn’t have to be watered and pruned.

6:22 · And that’s what will have to change if cities like Phoenix want to make sure that the heaviest burdens of climate warming don’t fall on those who are least prepared to withstand them.

How Can Walkable Cities Become the Norm One Small Step

Did You See This?, 11 15, 2021

Video (12:45)

Description

Living in walkable cities is not only healthier for you, it’s healthier for the environment — here’s how we can make more cities accessible and how that could benefit us in the long run. This episode is sponsored by Pikmin Bloom, which makes walking around your neighborhood even more fun. Download the app here: https://app.adjust.com/wik9ucr

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Transcript

Intro

0:02 · i’m standing in new york city which is considered the most walkable city in the country walkable cities could be the key to a longer shelf life for us and the planet and it’s clear why one study found that folks who walk for more than eight minutes a day we’re 72 more likely

0:17 · to report better physical health and 33 more likely to report better mental health not only is a walkable community likely to be healthier but it’s probably also wealthier according to research pedestrians spend 65 percent more at local retailers than drivers do now despite a mind-boggling array of benefits like these walkable cities are still the minority in this sprawl-heavy american landscape so i want to know how

0:42 · can walkable cities become the norm on this episode of one small step sponsored by pikmin bloom i’ll be chatting with city planner jet spec and engineer and city designer vignesh swaminathan about all the benefits walkable cities have to offer but i’m not all talk i’ll also be tagging along with the environmental organization known as shore walkers nyc to walk the walk i’m alejandro alba and this is one small step

What is Walkability

1:12 · off the bat let’s talk about the term walkability for the lack of a better word i’ll be using it throughout this episode but in this context it covers much more than walking the premise is simple however you get around whether you walk use a wheelchair or pushing a child in a stroller use a walking aid such as a walking stick or a crutches or you’re just learning to walk there should be as few hindrances to that as

1:35 · possible we’re talking about level sidewalks safe crosswalks with visibility and ramps clearly define obstacle-free pedestrian routes and tactile paving leaning into a more accessible infrastructure benefits everyone it’s no coincidence that some of the most popular cities in the world are the most walkable take paris for example the city is slowly starting to prioritize pedestrians in 2015 paris held its first car-free day parisians

2:01 · got to see their city in a new way without the usual traffic and noise pollution it was so popular that car-free day has returned and expanded every year since paris venice and new york city all have one thing in common they were all established prior to the advent of the automobile there were cities built for people not cars but now

Why Walkability Matters

2:20 · most cities have regulations that only allow land to be utilized for a single use retail and commercial entities might be sown rendering them miles from residential areas so for someone to navigate the city they have to use a car until the middle of the 20th century

2:36 · almost every place built in the world literally for 10 000 years consisted of neighborhoods they tended to be about a half mile across five minute walk from the edge to the center and they tended to contain most of the needs of our daily life that’s jeff speck city planner author and urban decider he’s been a long time advocate for city planning on the pedestrian scale so he’s here to walk us through all of this no pun intended so what happened to those small but convenient neighborhoods of the past jeff that was thrown out discarded

3:06 · entirely in favor of a new planning paradigm that started in the early 20th century in europe with folks like le corbusier who said actually the city of the future will separate work from home but it will also separate commerce from home and work from commerce and the whole idea was that we would generate economic energy by asking

3:27 · people to move from place to place by automobile but unfortunately we burdened ourselves with the economic cost of getting around in the most expensive way possible and that’s no joke according to the aaa it cost the average american over nine thousand and five hundred dollars annually to own a car or 13 of

3:45 · the average household income and all of this sitting behind the wheel has disastrous effects on her health there were a whole bunch of doctors who started telling us that actually the reason why we had the first generation of americans who were expected to live shorter lives than their parents was because we had engineered out of existence the useful walk in our city so driving is harmful to the environment if you complete five trips a 1.2 miles a week on a foot instead of car we could decrease the number of emissions by 190 pounds a year once they started studying carbon and not carbon output per

4:18 · mile but carbon output per household they realize that it’s the densest areas the most inner city parts of every metropolitan area that have the lowest carbon output because they used to tell us you know and most people have done it now we need to change all our light bulbs to these energy saver light bulbs right it turns out that turning all your light bulbs into energy saver light bulbs saves as much energy in a year as moving to a walkable neighborhood saves in one week and it’s due to a whole bunch of factors but principally just not driving driving is

4:49 · also extremely dangerous to pedestrians it’s half a mile between crosswalks someone crosses with their kids outside of a crosswalk because they save themselves literally 10 minutes of walking by doing that and they’re hit by a car and we blame the victim in those circumstances without asking you know how could we make these places safer and and why are we asking people without cars to live in places that demand car

5:12 · use i know what you’re thinking sure a car can be expensive but walkable cities are infamous for their high housing prices well it’s true that the cost of housing is higher in more densely populated areas like new york city san francisco and washington dc

5:27 · however when you take into account housing and transportation costs together these places are far more affordable than sprawling cities according to data from citizens budget commission new york city ranks ninth lowest in combined housing and transportation costs the least affordable cities when housing and transportation are considered together are actually sprawling a lot of these communities especially in historically redlined communities they never ever had

Housing and Transportation Costs

5:52 · good walking and biking and transit infrastructure and so to try and explain that sometimes it’s just like oh that’s what happens in the rich side of town it doesn’t happen over here and you’re making this area more expensive and that’s where the gentrification conversation comes up and so being able to facilitate hey no you even if you’re

6:08 · undocumented and you don’t speak the language you have every right to talk about your child crossing the street that’s vignesh aminata he’s a city infrastructure designer and the ceo and president of crossroads lab an innovative active transportation firm specializing in feasible protected intersections he’s also a tick-tock sensation but most of all vignesh is a

6:27 · strong advocate for giving everyone a seat at the table when it comes to rebuilding the community they live and work in we’re trying to get to the bottom of planning where we’re listening to community and they’re helping us get solutions so we can actually give them stuff that they need instead of this top down and a lot of communities they feel that they’re being displaced because of gentrification and they feel that hey

6:48 · we’ve been advocating for good great streets in this area for a long time and we never got it i made a tick tock about a crosswalk in oakland that the black panther party when they actually started they were advocating for street lighting crosswalks drainage in oakland for many many years and they never had any reception and they said one day we’re going to have crossing guards to help the kids get across the street and right

7:13 · before the event was planned the city went and implemented the signal and they were like hey if it was that fast for them to implement a signal how come they didn’t do it for this x amount of years and a lot of what crossroad lab does is this quick build where we try not to rip out the entire street because we need to listen to the community first and so when we want to make roads more walkable there’s a lot of things that we can do with paint and plastic before we do concrete work now we do do a lot of

7:40 · the civil coffee work of curb extensions and more ada ramps directional ada ramps to make these areas more comfortable and and walkable but those just honestly are very expensive i try to do stuff that is quick build where we implement something now and we learn from that and we use what we’ve learned from that to go get actual funding to build stuff out

8:01 · fully i don’t like leaving the painted plastic out there for too long that’s not the point of it it’s just there was a permanent product the point is to help us use that to warrant building bigger better projects while vignesh is a strong advocate for making cities more accessible for everyone many city planners aren’t very ada sensitive

8:19 · and more often than not end up building new infrastructure for the perceived majority if you design for the majority then you end up designing for somebody who’s typically male who’s an able person who maybe has a charged cell phone who has a car and you design for that user because you’re just trying to design for majority people if you design for that user you you design for in theory you design for most people one of the things that i advocate for is if you design for somebody who’s maybe blind in a wheelchair who’s undocumented

8:47 · who doesn’t speak the language then you actually design for more users because if you can make it wide enough for a wheelchair and you can make it lit enough for somebody who’s blind or visually impaired and if you can design for somebody who does not speak english to just intuitively know how to use the facilities then you actually design for more people that may require more investment but i think what i advocate

9:08 · for is that actually allows for more access walkable cities still have a long way to go but all this talk of them and the benefits they offer made me really excited to go out and well walk that’s why i’m here with show walkers nyc an environmental walking organization dedicated to promoting and preserving new york’s waterfront shore walkers was started by our founder psy adler he had a vision

Shore Walkers NYC

9:34 · that the future of new york city was walking he also thought of himself as an islander since he lived on the island of manhattan he wanted to walk around the shore of manhattan but at that time right where we are right now you could not walk there were railroad yards and

9:51 · factories and it was dangerous and at some points it was illegal because you couldn’t trust bass he put an ad in the village voice and he asked for other people intrepid walkers come out and walk with me around the island of manhattan people came out he got a small group and that was the beginning of shore walkers back in 1982. tell me a little bit about the walk that we did today what is that structure like how do you plan a walk like that so the hike leader comes up with the idea for the walk and it’s then up to them to go out and scout

10:22 · the walks that means to walk the walk two or three times making sure there are restrooms finding out what the mileage is they do all that work and then we post our walks on meetup and we set a max of maybe 25 per walk and people sign

10:37 · up and show up on the day out of the things that have been built is there one that’s your favorite and that you actually find it very useful and would like to kind of see it replicated around the city to me this whole hudson river park is amazing i mean these were piers that were here each one now has been restored and they have a theme this is a

10:58 · wonderful part we’re so lucky to have it and is there something that maybe you haven’t seen and then they haven’t been working on that you would love to see and that you think is very necessary i think that what happened on the brooklyn bridge is a really good step we’re very happy we’re happy to be able to walk on the bridge and to feel safe and i think it’s a win-win for both the bikers and the walkers what advice you have to those people how would you kind of feel them feel comfortable to come out and join you maybe the beauty about urban walking is if you start out on a six mile walk

11:30 · and after about two or three miles you’ve reached your limit there’s a subway or a bus very close by you can jump on and then come out the next week and and try it again walkable cities may be the minority for now but today we met some of the people doing impactful work to ensure cities will have accessible and safe infrastructure for all i want to stress that the onus is not on you though to save the planet and usher in brand new infrastructure much of this is out of our control but you can still do things

11:59 · to help if it’s safe to do so and convenient maybe you can try walking when running nearby errands instead of hopping in the car you can also organize people in your community and attend a city council meeting and speak up about infrastructure issues that are important to you let your voice be heard i want to

12:15 · thank pikmin bloom for sponsoring this episode pikmin blue makes walking even more fun and encourages you to go out there and explore your city the game transforms your neighborhood into a world of colorful flowers where you can discover different seedlings that grow into your collection of pikmin pikmin bloom is available now that’s all for this episode thank you all for watching and i’ll see you next time [Music]

How Do You Share a Shrinking River Fairly

PBS, 09 10, 2026

Video (8:53)

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The Colorado River is running out — and the Imperial Valley is ground zero. As policymakers battle over rights to a shrinking river, farmers are grappling with the practical realities of growing food with less water. Miles O’Brien meets two Imperial Valley farmers who are finding ways to feed people and livestock, nearby and abroad, while trying to make good use of every drop of this hard-working river.

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Resolve to Solve with Miles O’Brien

Miles O’Brien travels the globe searching for solutions to climate, water, and health crises. From building sea curtains in Antarctica to restoring wildlife in Argentina, the answers are closer than we think thanks to people with a “Resolve to Solve.”

Transcript

The Imperial Valley oasis

0:01 · The Imperial Valley sits downstream of two massive reservoirs: Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

0:08 · Together, they act as a giant savings account, buffering water users from the whims of weather and the uncertainty of the annual snowpack.

0:18 · The incongruous, almost magical, nature of this lush oasis in the desert really dawned on me during a visit to Gina Dockstader’s Citrus Grove.

0:29 · DOCKSTADER: What do you think, Lalo, you want to pick one off for us?

0:32 · This one right here? DOCKSTADER: Yeah.

0:33 · O’BRIEN: There we go.

0:34 · (voiceover): It was January, early morning, not long after sunrise, when she gave me a fresh-as-it-gets taste test.

0:43 · We sampled some organic minneolas.

0:48 · All right, so– and so, what’s the proper way to eat it?

0:50 · Well, we, we could– we could’ve sectioned it, but yeah, just…

0:53 · the juice is great. O’BRIEN: Oh, my gosh.

0:54 · Oh, that’s delicious.

0:56 · (voiceover): Citrus isn’t the big story here.

0:59 · Vegetables are.

1:01 · About two-thirds of the winter produce sold in the U.S. is grown here.

1:07 · Fine-looking lemons here!

1:08 · DOCKSTADER: We need some lemonade, huh?

1:11 · O’BRIEN (voiceover): Gina took me to her family’s packing plant.

1:14 · This is a place that can produce a lot of food in a very relatively small area, right?

1:21 · Right.

1:22 · High economic value in a small area.

1:24 · O’BRIEN (voiceover): After all the lemons were boxed and shipped, Gina unpacked her family story.

Water use and crop priorities

1:31 · I am fourth-generation, and my son is fifth-generation.

1:34 · We are very, very proud of that fact.

1:36 · O’BRIEN (voiceover): Gina is also a director on the board of the Imperial Irrigation District– the public agency that holds and manages the single largest entitlement to water from the Colorado River.

1:48 · Besides citrus, her family grows dates and, like just about everyone here, alfalfa and Bermuda grass, both of which get bundled up into hay bales to be fed to livestock.

2:02 · You can’t put all your eggs in one basket, right?

2:04 · Otherwise, how do you make it from year to year?

2:05 · O’BRIEN: No crop demands more Colorado River water than alfalfa.

2:10 · Farmers across the basin use roughly five to six million acre-feet a year to grow hay for cattle and dairy operations.

2:19 · The Imperial Valley is one of the world’s most productive hay-growing regions.

2:23 · Thanks to a year-round growing season and easy access to Pacific ports, as much as half of its alfalfa is exported to Asia and the Middle East– controversial destinations for a crop irrigated by one of America’s most stressed rivers.

2:43 · You’re kind of shipping the Colorado River to other countries. DOCKSTADER: Right.

2:47 · What do farmers say to that?

2:49 · I will say…

2:52 · “Do you like your leather belt?

2:55 · “Do you like your tennis shoes?

2:58 · “Do you like the modern conveniences”that you have in your life that’s coming from these places?”

3:04 · Because they’re feeding their cattle, and that’s how you’re getting leather products back into the United States.

3:11 · O’BRIEN: Alfalfa is a thirsty crop, and the fact that a significant share of it ultimately leaves the country doesn’t sit well with many people.

3:21 · But Gina says folks in the Imperial Valley are accustomed to being in the crosshairs.

3:27 · DOCKSTADER: We’ve always felt that other people were looking at our water because we have such a significant… priority right.

3:34 · You think municipalities are gonna come in, you think the cities are gonna come and, and take our water.

Water management and policy

3:40 · O’BRIEN: That’s exactly what happened in 2003.

3:43 · As it became clear the Colorado River could no longer meet all the demands placed on it, the federal government required California to live within its legal allocation.

3:55 · The result was the Quantification Settlement Agreement, or QSA.

4:00 · It requires the Imperial Irrigation District to transfer water to San Diego.

4:06 · In return, the San Diego County Water Authority helps fund conservation projects that enable farmers to use less water while keeping much of their land in production.

4:18 · DOCKSTADER: Now I can pay for a sprinkler pipe.

4:20 · I can sprinkle, I can use less water to grow the same crop, and that’s how the water gets created.

4:27 · We’re getting smarter.

4:28 · Farmers are resilient.

4:30 · They, we all know we have to do more with less.

4:33 · ♪ O’BRIEN (voiceover): That message is resonating in the Imperial Valley.

4:40 · Not far from Gina’s citrus grove, we caught up with farmer Jon Shields.

4:46 · It was watering day for one of his fields.

4:50 · This one is wheat.

4:52 · I got 9.3…

4:55 · feet going into the field.

4:57 · O’BRIEN: Farmers around here don’t pray for rain, they just order it up, and a zanjero– or ditch rider– making the morning rounds opens the floodgate.

5:09 · It all flows downhill, no pumps required.

5:14 · (water rushing) SHIELDS: And he delivered it at 6:30, and then here’s his measurement what he took, 9.3.

Modern irrigation strategies

5:21 · So, how long will this gate be open today?

5:23 · Uh, well, this gate, um…

5:26 · it’ll probably run till morning to irrigate that whole field.

5:30 · The next morning. - Yeah, till– it’s probably a 24-hour run.

5:34 · O’BRIEN (voiceover): The water flows into some canals on his property.

5:38 · SHIELDS: It goes under this pipe, then it goes into our delivery ditch.

5:41 · O’BRIEN (voiceover): From the ditch, water flows directly onto the field, already seeded and fertilized.

5:47 · It is flooded from edge to edge.

5:51 · How frequently do you have to water?

5:52 · 30, 40 days we’ll be back with another water.

5:54 · So you’re good for a month.

5:55 · On the, on the– after the first water, then when the crop starts to mature more, then… the demand will be more, we’ll have to irrigate more frequently.

6:05 · ♪ O’BRIEN: Flood irrigation requires very little energy.

6:10 · But because it wets the entire soil surface, more water is lost to evaporation in hot, dry climates than with sprinkler or drip irrigation.

6:21 · To conserve, Jon is not tilling as frequently as he used to– and a few years ago, he had his field laser-leveled, ensuring a more even and efficient distribution of water.

6:33 · SHIELDS: Before we started doing leveling, I think we were using significantly more water.

6:38 · And the minimum tillage also, I think, is…

6:41 · the ground isn’t loosened up, so the water’s not penetrating as deep.

6:46 · And, uh, it’s sliding across a little bit faster, so we’re using less water.

6:51 · O’BRIEN: Jon has also tried some other water-saving strategies.

6:55 · He showed me an alfalfa field that he put in the Imperial Irrigation District’s Deficit Irrigation Program, or DIP.

Adapting to a limited supply

7:04 · Farmers are paid to cease irrigating some of their crops during the hot summer months when evaporation is at its peak.

7:13 · SHIELDS: I think we stopped watering here for 45 or 49 days, something like that, and then, um…

7:19 · O’BRIEN: This is the hottest part of the year.

7:22 · (voiceover): The hope is that the alfalfa will be stressed but not killed.

7:27 · Jon had mixed results.

7:29 · SHIELDS: Maybe 50% of the crowns came back.

7:32 · There’s a crown right there. O’BRIEN: And that’s dead?

7:35 · SHIELDS: Well, I don’t know if it’s gonna come back or not.

7:38 · O’BRIEN: And you sort of knew that going in, that that might be a consequence…

7:42 · I knew that. I had some more optimism that it would come back better than it did, but um, it hasn’t.

7:48 · We had a really hot summer, so…

7:51 · O’BRIEN (voiceover): Even so, he continues to participate in the program.

7:55 · The century-old system that created this agricultural oasis is built on the notion of an endless supply of cheap water.

8:04 · But everything has its limits.

8:08 · It’s hard to do this with less water is what it comes down to. - Exactly, yeah, and we’re all on a budget. We’re all on a water budget.

8:15 · We have an apportionment…

8:19 · So, we have an apportionment and we have to live within that apportionment, and…

8:25 · that’s it, you know, so we have to be careful with our water.

8:28 · It’s not like the old days where we could just water at will.

How FIVE BILLION Pounds of Las Vegas Garbage Powers a City

PBS Terra, 04 20, 2021

Video (9:14)

Description

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateTerra

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Most of the 600 billion pounds of waste that Americans produce every year ends up in landfills. All that trash can have huge impacts on the environment. But modern landfills have found a new use for all that trash — they’re turning it into energy. In spite of their reputation as “dumps,” these landfills are feats of engineering, more akin to construction sites.

One of North America’s biggest landfills lies on the outskirts of Las Vegas. The Apex Landfill is not only one of the country’s largest, it’s also one of the busiest. Because it serves a non-stop city, the landfill must operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. It receives upwards of 16 million pounds of trash per day or 5 billion pounds per year.

Landfills like Apex are required to deal with the toxic chemicals they produce, like methane, a greenhouse gas that’s 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide. At Apex, they capture that methane and turn it into energy that powers 11,000 homes in southern Nevada.

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Hosted by Joe Hanson from It’s Okay to be Smart, Overview uses incredible 4k drone footage to reveal the natural phenomena shaping our planet from a 10,000-foot view—literally.

Transcript

Intro

0:02 · [Host Joe Hanson] Americans produce 4.9 pounds of waste per person per day. That’s nearly 600 billion pounds per year.

0:11 · Where does it all go?

0:13 · It goes to places like this. The mountains of trash we throw away can have huge impacts on our environment and climate.

0:23 · But what if I told you that all of this waste could one day power a city?

0:29 · [synth music] ♪ [Joe] Welcome to Las Vegas, the place for glitz, glam, gambling and garbage. Three main categories of waste are solid waste, recyclables, and food waste. And here in the neon city, we’re going to explore the ways they’re turning each of these trash types into treasure. Las Vegas produces more than five billion pounds of waste per year, and all that trash ends up here. The Apex Landfill lies in the mountains beyond the city.

Apex Landfill

1:12 · At 1900 acres, it’s one of the largest landfills in North America, and also one of the busiest. Apex is one of the only landfills in North America that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. As many as 250 trucks enter the landfill each day and deliver up to 16 million pounds of waste. It used to be a place like this was called a dump, and that’s exactly what they were.

1:46 · trash dumped in piles with little regard for sanitation. As trash decays, it produces methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. The dumps of yesteryear all but ignored this, as well as other environmental problems. But today’s landfills are feats of engineering. They are long-term storehouses for society’s garbage and places where we manage its potential hazards.

2:14 · [David Vossmer]: It would be comparable to a construction site, where you’re building homes in a neighborhood. We would envision an entire city being built basically as a landfill.

2:26 · [Joe]: David Vossmer has been working in the solid waste industry for 42 years and oversees operations at Apex.

Working Phase

2:33 · [David]: The working face is the active area of the landfill, usually anywhere from two to three acres in size.

2:41 · [Joe]: Each truck that dumps its load carries about 30 tons of garbage. Compactors then take that trash, spread it across the working face, and mash it down.

2:57 · [David]: Each one of those machines is about 120 to 130,000 pounds. There’s a lot of weight that will smash all the cardboard boxes or trash or any other material that comes in. It’ll lay it down in a nice, even layer. That’s what the landfill business is trying to do, get as much compacted waste into that area or that acre that we can. That’s what extends the life of the landfill.

3:24 · [Joe]: As more and more trash comes in, the landfill grows in height.

3:29 · [David]: It’s just like building a pyramid. The wider the base, the higher we can go with the trash here in the landfill.

3:36 · [Joe]: In some areas, the local landfill is the highest point in the region. Here in Vegas, this mountain of trash is 500 feet high and rising taller by the day. In spite of the enormous volume of garbage coming in, the landfill will be able to take in trash for another 300 plus years.

3:57 · How is that possible?

4:01 · Not only is the site large, but it’s also growing. A mining company on site digs out the surrounding mountains. In the process, it expands the landfill’s footprint and the space it has to operate. But the best way to keep a landfill from filling up is to waste less. Las Vegas boasts the largest residential recycling center in North America. The state-of-the-art facility takes in up to 1.8 million pounds of recyclables per day.

Recycling

4:32 · Because Las Vegas uses single stream recycling, all the sorting happens here. These recyclables will get conveyed through a complex system of sorting machines.

4:45 · [Jeremy Walters]: We have some very unique pieces of equipment, things that do just simple mechanical separation through disks and screens, but we also have computerized machines that are physically reading the material based on its color and density. It’s very smart, and it’s very quick. After a machine initially separates material, people quality control what the machine did.

5:10 · They’re physically looking at the material to ensure that the machine sorted correctly and there are no contaminants within that final product.

5:19 · [Joe]: A new challenge confronting recycling centers like this is the Amazon effect. Facilities around the country are being inundated with cardboard from online retailers. Here at this facility, they’ve had to recalibrate their machines and processes just to handle the deluge. While 1.8 million pounds of daily recyclables might sound like a lot, it’s still just a fraction of the overall waste that gets created each day.

5:49 · Food is another thing that inundates the waste stream and doesn’t belong in a landfill. Las Vegas is renowned buffets produce a lot of it. But here in Sin City, they’ve found an innovative solution. It’s not just people who pig out on buffets. The residents of the Las Vegas Livestock Farm enjoy it too. The farm sits on Apex property, but is family-owned.

6:17 · [Hank Combs]: Hog farming in Nevada is not very popular, because of the access to feed. We’ve circumvented that by doing the food scrap route, which is a very sustainable way to raise our hogs.

6:28 · [Joe]: They take in up to 40,000 pounds per day of the casinos’ food waste. Everything from lobster to ice cream gets processed in giant cookers to make it safe for the hogs to eat. This fragrant stew won’t make the menu in any casino, but it’s irresistible to these hogs.

Food Waste

6:48 · I mean, yummy.

6:50 · [Hank]: They’re a lot like a human, so they love their sweets and their meat and the potatoes. They’re not too big on salads. They won’t eat anything. They’re picky.

7:00 · [Joe]: It’s not just food waste that’s finding a second life in Vegas. The garbage is too. In the U.S., landfills like this account for nearly 20% of the human-caused methane emissions. Some landfills capture and burn it. But here at Apex, and at a growing number of landfills around the country, they’re turning it into energy. 160 wells have been drilled into this mountain of trash, some as deep as 200 feet.

7:31 · The wells siphon off the gas coming from landfill. After it’s purified, it’s sent to an onsite power plant where it’s burned to spin turbines, which create energy. That energy is fed back into the electric grid and powers 11,000 homes here in Southern Nevada. The total amount of energy produced annually by U.S. landfills powers the equivalent of more than 1 million homes.

7:56 · [Jeremy]: We’re actually able to take something that is always going to exist in a landfill, and turn it into something that the community can benefit from. Most people go day to day without thinking about the trash or the recyclables that they make. It’s just a simple toss it in the bin and forget about it.

8:10 · And there’s so much involved behind the scenes to make sure that we are handling all those materials in the most environmentally responsible way.

8:20 · [David]: Not everything in our world is recyclable. And as long as society throws things away, we’re one of the things that take care of making sure it’s done the right way.

8:33 · [Joe]: Hey guys, our PBS friends across YouTube are celebrating Earth Day with us. Follow me over to Reactions to find out why catalytic converters are being stolen from cars worldwide, and what this weird mystery has to do with the health of our environment. Tell them Joe sent you.

8:51 · And one more thing, for those of you in the U.S., you should check out “Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World,” a new three-hour Earth Day broadcast event on your local PBS station. The special is going to premiere on Thursday, April 22nd at 8:00 pm, 7:00 pm Central, and will then repeat starting Wednesday, April 28th at 8:00 pm, 7:00 pm Central.

9:10 · See you then.

How highways make traffic worse

Vox, 02 12, 2021

Video (6:04)

Description

Expanding highways doesn’t do what you think it does.

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Big, expensive highway expansion projects are the source of a lot US transportation funding — but they aren’t a silver bullet for congestion relief. In communities that were built for cars, solving traffic problems requires much more holistic problem-solving.

At 1:00, we show a bar graph of travel times on the Katy Freeway that was originally put together by City Observatory, which has covered the Katy Freeway expansion project at length:

https://cityobservatory.org/reducing-congestion-katy-didnt/

This video was based in large part on research by Gilles Duranton and Matthew A. Turner:

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.101.6.2616

For more reading on induced demand:

https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-06/traffic-jam-blame-induced-demand?sref=PxYB8Mnq

For Kyle Shelton’s work on urbanism:

https://kinder.rice.edu/urban-edge/author/541

Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what’s really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com.

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Transcript

The Katy Freeway’s scale

0:01 · The Katy Freeway in Texas connects Houston’s western suburbs with the city’s downtown.

0:08 · At its widest point, right here, it spans 26 lanes including parallel roads, before it intersects with another freeway, creating this massive web of pavement. The Katy Freeway is among the widest in the world. But it didn’t start out this big. The freeway was initially built in the 1960’s with 6 lanes in most places. But as the suburbs and office space around Houston started growing in the 1980’ s and 90’s and more people began using the freeway— it became a traffic nightmare. By 2004, it was ranked the second worst bottleneck in the country.

Expansion and continued traffic

0:40 · To accommodate the growing commuter class, the city began a nearly 3 billion dollar expansion project, to add the additional lanes. The solution seems natural — more lanes equals less congestion. But traffic didn’t get any better. In fact, it got worse, in both the morning and afternoon commutes.

Economic theory of traffic

1:02 · The reason why hinges on a simple economic theory. One that is often overlooked, because actually reducing traffic is far from simple. Highway expansion has gone hand in hand with the suburbanization of American cities like Houston. It becomes a self-fulfilling recipe for urban sprawl: a highway gets built to connect suburbs to a city center, which encourages more development along it, which necessitates even more highways when those get congested — and on and on and on.

1:33 · The instinct to widen highways to relieve traffic makes sense—but there’s a reason it doesn’t work: due to a concept called “induced demand.” These represent 3 highway lanes. And these balls are the commuters that drive on them. These particular commuters — the red ones — will sit in traffic no matter how bad it gets, because they have to. Driving to work on the highway is their only option. Let’s say this is what congestion looks like, during peak rush hours. Once a certain number of cars get on the highway, traffic slows to a crawl. Now let’s add a new lane.

Understanding induced demand

2:04 · These drivers now have more room to spread out — which should make traffic flow better. That might happen at first, but it doesn’t stay that way. That’s because there’s another set of people who will take the highway under the right conditions — even though they have other commuting options. When a highway is congested, they might take local roads instead. Or be able to drive during off-peak hours. They might use other modes of transportation, like public transit or biking.

2:34 · Or maybe they can work from home that day and skip the commute altogether. In a few years, these people will start taking the highway, enticed by less congestion. This is induced demand at play: the more supply there is, the more demand will follow, to exhaustion. And in this case, the supply is highway lanes. And sometimes, like on the Katy freeway, congestion gets even worse after a highway expansion, until some of those people with more options go back to their old ways. But in the end, you’re still left with more drivers, and congestion that’s at least as bad as it was before.

3:02 · When our transportation system is so reliant on highways and private automobiles, there’s almost no way around it because that’s the system that we’ve created. This is Kyle Shelton, an urbanist based in Houston. The endless reduction of congestion… should that be…the driving, honestly the driving policy question for a lot of our transportation funding? Big expensive highway infrastructure projects are still the prevailing band-aid to congestion in the US.

Challenges to the system

3:32 · The transit advocacy group Transportation for America found that between 1993 and 2017, the US added over 30,000 miles of new freeway lanes in 100 metro areas. Building more highways may provide some short-term relief. And it’s easier than most infrastructure projects to get federal funding to do a highway expansion. But if we want less traffic and fewer drivers, giving flexible commuters better choices is a good place to start. Like by improving public transit by adding more and better bus routes or trains.

4:06 · That alone might not be a silver bullet for congestion relief, for the same reason that adding another lane isn’t: new drivers will take the place of transit commuters on the highway. And for many people living off highways in sprawling US cities, public transit may never be an adequate solution.

4:23 · ‘Cause it’s not just about the infrastructure. It’s also about individual behaviors. It’s about where job opportunities are located. And most of our cities have now been constructed in this way where the car is the prime mode. Another option is to enact policies that actively disincentivize people from using the highway. Like congestion pricing, which charges people who drive on highways during rush hours. Or remote work programs that deter people from traveling during the highest traffic times — or make it so they don’t have to commute at all.

Alternative solutions

4:54 · And in the long-term, better land use policies can help as well, like by building communities that put people closer to where they need to go. And if building more highways results in more drivers and congestion, then removing them could have the opposite effect.

Highway removal and future

5:10 · For example, the city of Boston removed a freeway in its city center in the 1990s, and replaced it with a boulevard with biking and bus lanes and more space to walk. It reduced congestion by 62%. And now the Democratically controlled Senate is considering nearly $10 billion in funding for similar highway-removal projects in other cities. What we build and invest in in the world of transportation truly changes our behavior.

5:38 · If building more roads makes us drive on them more. Then giving people better choices by investing in the right things, will make us drive less. Because, if we build it, they will come.

How is Taiwan beating everyone at plastics recycling

DW Planet A, 12 26, 2025

Video (10:20)

Description

Taiwan used to be flooded with trash – but the country is now one of the top plastics recyclers in the world. How did they do it?

Planet A reycling taiwan

Credits:

Reporter: Beina Xu

Camera: Kaley Emerson, Shaundie Hsu, Norman Pan

Video Editor: Frederik Willmann

Supervising Editor: Adam Baheej Adada

Fact Check: Kirsten Funck

Thumbnail: Em Chabridon

Supporting a circular economy: Insights from Taiwan’s plastic waste sector and lessons for developing countries

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235255092031349X

Taiwan’s Transition – from Garbage Island to Recycling Leader

https://rapidtransition.org/stories/taiwans-transition-from-garbage-island-to-recycling-leader/

Analysis of plastic waste reduction and recycling in Taiwan

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0734242X21996821

Management strategy of plastic wastes in Taiwan

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s42834-022-00123-0

Time series analysis of the effects of refuse collection on recycling: Taiwan’s “Keep Trash Off the Ground” measure

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0956053X07000694

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:43 Trash in Taipei

02:09 On the recycling fleet

03:12 What about AI arms?

07:24 Pellet magic

08:32 The bigger picture

We’re destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn’t need to be this way. Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. We’ll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.

Follow Planet A on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dw_planeta

Transcript

Intro

0:00 · How did a country that used to look like this – now have one of the best recycling systems in the world?

0:06 · If you want a glimpse of what the future of plastic recycling looks like, this might be it.

0:12 · Each little robot is sifting through 55 pieces of garbage per minute – and it’s not humans running the machine here.

0:18 · It’s AI.

0:20 · But Taiwan is also a huge plastics consumer and manufacturer – just head to a night market, or walk around…

0:27 · anywhere.

0:28 · “We’re a poster child of that plastic pollution.”

0:32 · The country is no longer swamped with trash like it was in the 90s, so it’s obviously doing some things right.

0:38 · We went to Taipei to see for ourselves just how it’s done.

0:42 · And within hours of being there, I discovered that something pretty important was missing.

Trash in Taipei

0:47 · “So I just had my little snack, and look how much waste I already produced.”

0:51 · But I couldn’t find any public trash bins to put it in.”

0:54 · “There aren’t any trash bins on the street?”

0:57 · Turns out the city removed thousands of them about a decade ago.

1:00 · Why?

1:01 · Because in Taiwan, you have to pay for any waste that can’t be recycled.

1:05 · The whole point is to make people responsible for minimizing the amount of trash that goes into incinerators.

1:10 · Everyone holds on to their own garbage, and these iconic cars come around to pick it up five days a week.

1:15 · It’s a whole Taipei ritual.

1:17 · This way, people can’t cheat and throw their private waste in public bins to avoid the fees.

1:22 · And they’re not shy about getting shame involved.

1:37 · It’s a pretty intense recycling culture that places a lot of the burden on individuals.

1:42 · But it’s part of the policy structure that has gotten Taiwan in the top ranking in Asia for its waste recovery rate in last year’s Environmental Performance Index.

1:50 · Although…

1:51 · it also has its flaws.

2:01 · But I wondered what happens after this supposedly recyclable trash gets picked up…

2:06 · so what did I do?

2:07 · Got on one of these myself, of course.

On the recycling fleet

2:09 · “Ready, go!”

2:11 · These trucks belong to a private company, Da Fon, just one of the many businesses the government works with to collect, sort, and regenerate waste.

2:21 · “Not a lot of traffic, weather’s really nice.”

2:24 · These companies get subsidies from a centralized Recycling Management Fund.

2:28 · Their pay is guaranteed, so even if global plastic prices drop, recyclers are protected.

2:35 · “Smelling…

2:36 · It’s starting to smell a little bit.

2:38 · So this is the stuff we’re going to pick up, this is all residential plastic waste.”

2:43 · This centralized, national fund that directly subsidizes recycling is what sets Taiwan apart from other countries.

2:49 · Who pays into this recycling fund?

2:51 · Producers and importers, so the policy also keeps manufacturers responsible for their plastic footprint from the get-go.

2:57 · “Oh my god it stinks.

2:59 · So much milk!”

3:01 · And it makes it easy and profitable for businesses to get into the recycling game.

3:05 · “Recycling is great, but I am getting heat stroke!”

What about AI arms?

3:12 · To cool off, we went to another plant to hang out with some special robots, who have one of the most important jobs in the industry.

3:21 · “Hello!”

3:22 · “Hi!”

3:23 · “Welcome!”

3:23 · “Beina. Nice to meet you.”

3:25 · ” I’m Sandy!

3:26 · Welcome to our AI sorting robotic center!”

3:34 · “What are these toys here, what’s going on?”

3:36 · “This is kind of like a little trinket they do ’cause toys cannot be recycled, actually.”

3:40 · “Wait why can’t they be recycled?”

3:42 · “So for example this, there’s cushion inside, it’s cotton, you cannot recycle cotton.”

3:48 · “Okay, good to know.

3:49 · Toys.”

3:49 · “And it’s just cute, too!”

3:53 · “Save me!”

3:55 · The plant processes 40-50 tons of household recyclables every day.

4:00 · The AI sorting arms identify 17 types, from plastics and metals to paper.

4:26 · “Alright.”

4:31 · “Okay, wow, hello arm.”

5:11 · This facility handles recyclables from five cities around Taipei.

5:15 · And while AI improves sorting efficiency, one of its biggest flaws is that robot arms aren’t as agile as human hands.

5:23 · So, we still need real people, in the end.

5:45 · …which is exactly what happened next.

6:02 · “Don’t stuff your trash bags too tight, guys.

6:06 · Jams the machine.”

6:13 · “Okay I’ve been holding onto all of my trash.

6:16 · Can I just throw this out here?”

6:18 · “Let me see the trash first.”

6:20 · “I have onigiri, destroyed…

6:27 · doujiang (soy) bottle…”

6:29 · “PET, all good. This one is good, but all these flexible little ones, these are going to be treated as trash.

6:38 · “You can just throw it overboard.”

6:40 · “Bye.”

6:43 · Roughly 95% of what’s here is able to be recycled, so relatively little has to go to incinerators.

6:49 · “So basically this is the plastic that’s been sorted.

6:52 · And then this will go into another sorting facility that sorts out specifically milk bottle for HDPE, and PP will be lunch boxes.”

7:02 · “There’s a flyaway wok…”

7:04 · “Wait what, where?”

7:07 · “This wok is just like…”

7:09 · “It just fell, I think.”

7:11 · “Random casualties.”

7:14 · “These are all woks!

7:16 · “These are all woks!”

7:17 · “Oh my god.”

7:18 · You guys want a free wok?”

7:20 · “Yeah. Let’s take a free wok.

7:21 · I’m taking a free wok.”

Pellet magic

7:24 · The effort to AI upgrade everything isn’t just for the sorting facility – Da Fon also wants to bring it to its regeneration plant, which is where all the good plastic goes to get a chance at a second chance at life: this time as pellets.

7:37 · And it’s a family affair.

7:39 · This is Da Fon’s CEO, Matt Lin, who is…

7:41 · Sandy’s dad.

7:45 · This is where the bales of sorted plastic are cut, washed and dried.

7:52 · In recycling, purity of material is the most important factor, so this stage is crucial.

7:57 · Then, they’re molded into pellets.

8:00 · This plant employs only 50 or so people, but the AI takeover isn’t far in the future.

The bigger picture

8:32 · So how good is Taiwan at plastics recycling?

8:35 · A study showed that roughly 80% of imported and recycled plastic were used to make either finished products or pellets for export.

8:41 · Its recycling industry is larger than its domestic waste supply, so it actually imports plastic to be processed.

8:48 · But some say the metrics and good PR can be misleading.

8:53 · “Recycling means the material is being collected responsibly somehow, and then it’s responsibly…

9:00 · burned.”

9:02 · Arthur Huang is the CEO of Miniwiz, a Taiwanese company that converts waste materials into architectural fixtures.

9:08 · “Most people call that downcycling.

9:09 · And I call that actually just putting the particle into smaller particles into the air.”

9:15 · Taiwan actually has one of the highest densities of waste incinerators in the world.

9:20 · And that’s where most of the flimsier plastics like bags and straw wrappers have to be burned, since their quality is too low for recycling.

9:27 · Even if cities nail plastics recycling, there’s another big pile to deal with.

9:41 · Good news is industrial waste is also cleaner and there is a lot of it.

9:45 · Taiwan has a lot of big industry, in particular semiconductors and petrochemicals.

9:50 · So there is big potential for reuse there.

9:53 · That industry is exactly what makes its recycling infrastructure work – the country already has the industrial base to handle the manufacturing processes needed in recycling, at scale.

10:04 · “What’s the recycling system like where you live?

10:07 · Tell us in the comments below.

10:08 · And don’t forget to click like, and subscribe.

10:10 · See you next time.”

How redlining prevented Black and Brown families from becoming home owners

Harvard Kennedy School, 09 19, 2023

Video (4:28)

Description

The term “redlining” refers to the practice by banks of excluding Black and Brown Americans from receiving loans to buy homes and make improvements to their communities. Redlining arose during the Great Depression, when the federal government sought to boost homeownership by encouraging banks to lend to more Americans. Many neighborhoods, specifically those with majority Black and Brown residents, were deemed undeserving of these loans. Though redlining was made illegal by the Fair Housing Act, the effects of this practice still reverberate to this day.

In this video, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and director of the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project, provides background on the history and legacy of redlining.

About Harvard Kennedy School:

The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University is a graduate and professional school that brings together students, scholars, and practitioners who combine thought and action to make the world a better place.

Our mission is to improve public policy and public leadership across the United States and around the world so that people can lead safer, freer, and more prosperous lives. Harvard Kennedy School teaches current and future leaders the skills they need to effectively advance the public purpose in the public, nonprofit, and private sectors. Our renowned faculty and trailblazing research centers pioneer bold new ideas. And as the most international school at Harvard, we convene global leaders in the Forum, host visiting experts in the classroom, and attract a diverse community of faculty, students, and staff.

Transcript

0:00 · In every way imaginable, the consequences of redlining to many black and brown communities across America meant that those communities had the least and the last of everything.

0:16 · So I want to talk about redlining, because this is a term you may have heard, but most people don’t actually know the history.

0:24 · In 1933, in the midst of America’s Great Depression, when unemployment rates were 25% and millions of people were not only out of work, but many of them were houseless, the federal government under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established an agency called the Home Owners Loan Corporation.

0:42 · Basically, it tried to make home buying much more affordable by subsidizing the cost of building and lending such that people would be able to afford to buy for the first time.

0:55 · Millions of Americans participated, except that when the Home Owners Loan Corporation began to issue mortgages, it came up with a scheme to decide which communities were deserving of loans and which ones weren’t.

1:10 · They made maps and used a color coded scheme.

1:14 · Green meant this was a community that you could lend to and red you could not.

1:19 · The basic decision they made was to determine that any community with the presence of black people or brown people or people who, perhaps, spoke Italian, in certain parts of the country could not receive support from the Home Owners Loan Corporation.

1:36 · This created a system that came to be known as redlining because communities that were deemed risky by the mere presence of people of color, most especially black people, were disqualified from getting direct support from the federal government to purchase homes.

1:53 · This policy lasted until 1968, when the federal government passed the Fair Housing Act, which made all forms of discrimination in the buying and selling or renting of homes illegal.

2:08 · But the truth is that the legacies of redlining from that moment to the present meant that black people were subjected to other forms of exploitative lending.

2:18 · A system called contract buying grew up as a way to sell black people homes on a layaway plan.

2:26 · You made set payments over an extended period of time, but you never owned the home until the very last payment.

2:34 · It was very common for unscrupulous sellers to withhold that final payment in an effort to take back the home from a person who had worked incredibly hard to buy it.

2:45 · Home ownership has been the most important asset that a typical white family has in order to do simple things like borrow money to send a child to college.

2:58 · But most importantly, they have financial freedom.

3:01 · But for communities that have been subjected to redlining, they didn’t have those advantages.

3:08 · Not only that, the very communities that they lived in suffered from divestment, including the lack of grocery stores, the lack of businesses, the imposition of federal highways that often bisected their communities.

3:24 · In every way imaginable, the consequences of redlining to many black and brown communities across America meant that those communities had the least and the last of everything.

3:38 · And to this day, the median wages and income of those communities, and the financial insecurity that people who live in redlined communities face, has long term health consequences for families, has educational consequences for young people whose schools often don’t have the tax basis to give them the same resources that communities that were never redlined actually have.

How Singapore solved its looming water crisis

DW Planet A, 09 20, 2024

Video (12:46)

Description

In Singapore, water supply impacted wars, the economy and people’s health. Now, one of the most water-stressed countries is teaching the world how to handle water when there is hardly any. 

We’re destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn’t need to be this way. Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we’ll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.

Follow Planet A on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dw_planeta?lang=en

Credits:

Reporter: Tim Schauenberg

Supervising Editor: Michael Trobridge

Video Editor: David Jacobi

Fact-Check: Alexander Paquet

Thumbnail: Em Chabridon

United Nations Water, report on Singapore’s strategy:

https://www.unwater.org/sites/default/files/2023-11/sdg6-case-study-singapore_eng.pdf

Isocarp Institute, Singapore’s Water History:

https://www.isocarp-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Review10_Water-and-the-Cities-The-SIngapore-Story.pdf

International Water Association Fact sheet on Singapore:

https://iwa-network.org/city/singapore/

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:35 The challenge

01:56 History

03:32 Step 1: Imported Water

04:57 Step 2: Desalination

06:09 Step 3: Local Catchment

07:18 Step 4: NEWater

09:22 Policy and Education

10:14 Conclusion

Transcript

Intro

0:01 · No joke, but this place…

0:02 · has a serious issue with water.

0:06 · Water here has changed the course of war, started fights with neighboring countries, and dominates the city’s political agenda.

0:14 · And yet, this country is a role model.

0:18 · “Singapore got it right, as simple as that.”

0:20 · This is how Singapore is transforming itself from one of the most water-stressed countries in the world to self-sufficiency, from water rags – to riches.

The challenge

0:36 · Welcome to Singapore!

0:37 · A vibrant multicultural city-state, right on the equator.

0:41 · Densely populated, around 6 million people live on this tiny island.

0:45 · It’s an international hub for trade and finance.

0:48 · It’s clean, safe, modern, wealthy, green.

0:52 · Basically, it has a lot of everything you’d want.

0:55 · There’s just that one thing…

0:56 · Singapore has no natural freshwater resources.

1:00 · And the way its economy and population are growing, total water demand could almost double by 2060.

1:06 · But Singapore is on it.

1:10 · “None of what they’ve done is magic.”

1:13 · That’s Peter Gleick, he’s an award-winning water expert.

1:16 · He puts Singapore’s success down to what he calls the “soft path” approach to their problems.

1:21 · “So the soft path for water is in contrast to what we have done over the last century and more, more than a century, the hard path.

1:29 · To build hard infrastructure, to take more and more water out of nature, to ignore the consequences of our water policies for nature, to build narrow institutions.

1:39 · And the soft path tries to turn that around and say, let’s use water efficiently and carefully.

1:45 · Let’s stop wasting water.

1:47 · Let’s look at new sources of supply.”

1:50 · To understand how Singapore can pull this off, you first need to understand where they’re coming from.

History

1:58 · “The Singapore water story starts with World War 2.”

2:02 · That’s Jon Church, the guy for water at the United Nations.

2:06 · Singaporeans would argue that the story goes back a lot longer, but 1942 is certainly when the issue grabbed the world’s attention.

2:13 · That’s when allied troops, namely British, Australian and Indian forces, were battling fascist Japan on Singapore Island, which at the time was a British colony.

2:24 · The allies depended on imported water which was a bit of a problem when Japanese forces blew up the pipes transporting that water.

2:30 · “The bridge that connects Malaysia and Singapore was bombed.

2:35 · The result was lack of water in the city, a terrible episode of water scarcity.”

2:43 · The Allies lost the battle of Singapore, but after Japan’s overall surrender, the island remained in British hands.

2:50 · It took more than 20 years until it became fully independent.

2:53 · But political liberation didn’t free Singapore from its water crisis: water rationing, catastrophic sanitation, and regular floods continued.

3:01 · With its fate now in its own hands, Singapore began planning for the long-term.

3:06 · Cecilia Tortajada has spent almost three decades researching water policy and innovations around the world and is fascinated by Singapore’s path.

3:15 · “When Singapore became independent, they started planning to be water independent, as well as food independent, energy independent, but to have systems that can sustain stress.

3:28 · That was in 1965 for 2060.”

Step 1: Imported Water

3:32 · Their initial masterplan was fine-tuned over the years into a water strategy which they call their “4 national taps”.

3:40 · First: Water imports Second: Desalination Third: Local Catchment And fourth, something they call “NEWater”.

3:50 · Let’s dive into it!

3:53 · Firstly, Singapore knew there was plenty of water, right here: Two deals to import water from Malaysia in the 60’s, got the taps running again.

4:03 · It’s cheap and millions of liters are pumped over the border every day.

4:07 · But buying half your water from your neighbor isn’t sustainable long-term.

4:12 · On the contrary: From the start, Malaysia made threats to cut off the supply and argued over its price.

4:18 · The tensions have even led to warnings of a military conflict.

4:21 · Singapore’s leaders know their weak spot, so they want to stop importing water by 2061.

4:27 · So, it’s all the more important that the other three taps become more than a drop in the ocean.

4:31 · “Water planning is very important because they have so little water, Singapore must make sure, that this water is used wisely.

4:41 · And the objective of this master plan is to make the most out of every single drop of water.”

4:48 · This means keeping rivers and drains clean, investing billions, starting to collect more water, cleaning it and use what the island state Singapore already has.

Step 2: Desalination

4:57 · For example, this: The ocean!

5:02 · “Desalination, Desalination, Desalination.

5:05 · You take that undrinkable salt water, you remove the salt and you have an unlimited supply of fresh water.”

5:11 · Do you remember?

5:12 · We had an entire video about obtaining fresh water through desalination.

5:16 · It’s used in a number of extremely dry places around the world and is a real gamechanger for some.

5:23 · “Membrane desalination uses pressure.

5:25 · Salt water, here coloured in red for clarity, is pressed through a membrane that is only partially permeable.

5:30 · Fresh water can press through.

5:32 · Here coloured in blue.

5:33 · But the salt is trapped on the other side.”

5:35 · Singapore really pushed to advance this technology.

5:38 · This underground facility for example is state-of-the-art.

5:42 · Normally, it treats used water.

5:44 · In times of drought, it desalinates sea water.

5:47 · On top, people use it as a park.

5:49 · Today, five desalination plants provide up to 25 % of the entire island’s water supply.

5:55 · Singapore plans increase this capacity to meet 30% of its needs in 2060, by which time water use is expected to have doubled.

6:04 · But that’s no way near self-sufficiency.

6:07 · So, what’s next?

Step 3: Local Catchment

6:09 · Bingo! Rain!

6:11 · A lot of it, and Singapore is a master of maxing that out.

6:15 · Two third of the entire state’s surface is used for rainwater catchment.

6:20 · “Basically, the water falls on the roof and then goes through drains and then you make sure that as little water leaks from the drains and is captured by the drainage system and conveyed to reservoirs where it can be stored.

6:43 · And treated for further use.

6:46 · An extensive network of rivers, canals and drains channels the water into 17 reservoirs.

6:51 · The biggest is Marina Barrage, with an area of 10,000 hectares.

6:55 · It holds back fresh water from flowing into the ocean.

6:58 · And helps to control frequent floods.

7:02 · So does this underground tank that catches floodwater in extreme cases when the drains spill over.

7:08 · Even this water could potentially be treated and reused.

7:11 · By 2060, the government wants to use 90% of the land area for rain catchment.

Step 4: NEWater

7:18 · Catching rainwater is one thing, but what about the water already in circulation?

7:25 · “All drainage water is collected, and treated and reused as much as possible.

7:32 · Most countries, they do not invest, not even a fraction of what Singapore is investing.”

7:38 · The water authorities built a 206 kilometer sewage pipe-highway, costing 10 billion dollars that guides the city’s sewage into state-of-the-art reclamation and cleaning facilities.

7:50 · Ok, Singapore is by some measures the 5th richest country in the world so it can afford to splash out like that.

7:56 · It’s also a lot easier to push through such projects when you have the sort of “controlled democracy”, run by the same party, that Singapore has had since independence in 1965.

8:07 · Anyway, the entire city’s underground is basically one big sewer network.

8:12 · But the pride of Singapore’s water strategy is what happens after collecting the water – the treatment.

8:19 · The authorities call it NEWater.

8:21 · It’s produced by microfiltration, reverse osmosis and UV radiation.

8:29 · “Some of that water is so high quality, Singapore is using it in their chip manufacturing industry, which requires ultra-pure water, which is an indication of how good a quality of that water is.”

8:42 · Did you know, that around the world, half of our wastewater is released untreated?

8:46 · And only 11% is actually reused.

8:49 · In Singapore about 30% percent of the entire drinkable and non-drinkable demand can be met by recycling used water.

8:57 · And they want to increase that to 55% by 2060.

9:02 · Most of it is used by industry, only a fraction of it is mixed into the drinking water supply, because we’re all so squeamish.

9:09 · “It’s controversial because we’re taking wastewater which, you know, goes down our drains, we flush it down our toilets, industry dumps wastewater.

9:17 · And we typically think of that as a, a liability, as something to get rid of.”

Policy and Education

9:22 · So how do you get people on board?

9:25 · “Using the flush saver cistern bag and save with every flush!”

9:29 · “Make saving water pay!”

9:30 · “Reduce water consumption!”

9:32 · “Save up to 10 liters of water per hour!”

9:35 · Nationwide campaigns encourage people to install water-saving fittings.

9:38 · And nicely, if you install those fittings, you get discount vouchers for other sustainable products.

9:44 · Digital water meters track each household’s water consumption and detect leaks in pipes.

9:49 · That’s how Singapore comes down to an incredible 5% water loss from leaks.

9:53 · Which is first class.

9:55 · Globally, the average is estimated to be 30%.

9:58 · “What they’ve done incredibly well, in my opinion, is on the side of water education.

10:04 · They’ve educated their community about their water situation, about their water challenges, and about the solutions that they’ve chosen to push.”

Conclusion

10:14 · As good as Singapore is doing, it has big advantages over other countries.

10:18 · Besides being rich and a tightly-controlled society, the city only has a tiny agricultural sector and can focus almost entirely on urban and industrial wastewater.

10:29 · So, they have one problem less as food production pollutes and consumes enormous amounts of fresh water in many parts of the world.

10:36 · Despite that, they’ve shown: a lot is possible.

10:41 · “Everywhere in the world, when we start, again talking about water - when we see our management, how can it be improved?

10:50 · Who would be involved?

10:52 · How can we pay for it?

10:54 · There is always a “but”.

10:55 · “But” can we do it?

10:56 · And in Singapore it’s not.

10:58 · In Singapore it’s: how is it that we are going to do it?

11:01 · So, it’s a very different perspective, its proactive.

11:06 · They move very fast.

11:08 · So once a decision has been taken the things start happening.”

11:14 · So, to sum up: Incentivizing low-cost water-saving fittings could be easy for every government to implement.

11:20 · Desalination is only an option for coastal regions and it requires a lot of energy, often dirty fossil fuels.

11:27 · Singapore’s catchment, treatment and purification facilities are world class, as the result of a lot of investment in innovation and research.

11:34 · “But it turns out that a dollar invested in an efficiency improvement is much more productive than a dollar invested in new supply.”

11:45 · Reusing wastewater seems a no-brainer.

11:47 · It’s safe and tested to work and the tech is available.

11:52 · “This is really important to find the best solutions to every country’s problems, but also long-term planning.

12:01 · Singapore, from all the way from independence has been planning its way through water security.

12:09 · In Singapore it’s extremely high on the political agenda, all the way up to the Prime Minister.

12:16 · It’s something which is mainstreamed in each and every policy adopted and implemented by the country.”

12:25 · Singapore is blazing a trail in tackling some of the world’s biggest water challenges in the face of climate change.

12:30 · It’s not just about money, but also about decision-making, policy and long-term planning.

12:35 · Some of the ingredients with which any region could make it from water rags to riches.

How systemic racism shaped the ecosystems of U.S. cities

Science Magazine, 10 09, 2020

Video (4:08)

Description

Historically Black and immigrant communities are more vulnerable to environmental stressors

Read the research: https://scim.ag/3nzjnQE

Credits

producer

Meagan Cantwell

supervising producer

Joel Goldberd

research

Schell et al., Science 2020

DOI: 10.1126/science.aay4497

special thanks

Elizabeth Pennisi

Pratheek Rebala

Sacha Vigneri

video footage

Meagan Cantwell

Pond5

Videoblocks

Videvo

archival footage

Dynamic Films

Encyclopedia Britannica Films

FDR Presidential Library

Prelinger Archives

photos

Library of Congress

Ted Etyan/Flickr

Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program

Enoch Pratt Free Library/Maryland’s State Library Resource Center

illustrations

British Library/Flickr

maps/data

Google

Howard Center for Investigative Journalism/CNS/NPR

Johns Hopkins University

Library of Congress

Meagan Cantwell

Portland State/SUPR Lab

Robert K. Nelson et al., 2020 “Mapping Inequality”

music

“Vultures” by Chris Burns

Transcript

0:01 · The urban environment is a feat of human decision-making— from where to develop street grids lined with large glass office buildings, to which green spaces to preserve for outdoor recreation.

0:13 · How humans make these choices, and the natural environment’s response, can create extremely different ecosystems in neighborhoods just a few blocks away from each other.

0:23 · Researchers delved into dozens of studies to understand what drives these variations.

0:29 · One well documented phenomenon in cities is the relationship between wealth and biodiversity.

0:35 · More affluent areas generally have greater canopy cover, with larger, mature trees, as well as a higher diversity of birds.

0:45 · This is known as the “luxury effect.”

0:48 · Low-income areas typically have more man-made surfaces— including major heat-absorbers like asphalt and concrete, compared to higher-income areas.

0:59 · The lack of shade from trees and vegetation, combined with more asphalt and concrete, makes it hotter in these neighborhoods— a phenomenon known as an “urban heat island.”

1:10 · These communities are also more likely to be near sources of air pollutants, like expansive interstates pumping car exhaust.

1:19 · Although wealth can sometimes predict the outcomes of an urban ecosystem, there isn’t always a clear relationship.

1:26 · In some cases, the racial make-up of a neighborhood is better than income when forecasting canopy cover.

1:33 · Researchers explored studies that highlight how systemic racism shaped our build environment.

1:39 · One glaring example in the United States is residential segregation.

1:44 · From 1933-1968, the federal government limited access to homeownership among Black Americans through a practice known as redlining.

1:55 · Neighborhoods were graded based on the riskiness of providing a mortgage in the area.

2:00 · The grades ranged from A, the most desirable areas, full of wealthy businessmen, to D, neighborhoods considered high-risk investments due to a combination of factors: from their environmental quality and distance from large industrial factories to the main determinant, the presence of foreign-born and Black people.

2:22 · The inability for Black people to buy homes in these neighborhoods meant many types of capital investments left— landlords abandoned their properties, and public services, such as transportation and park maintenance, weren’t prioritized.

2:36 · Today, many U.S. cities still exhibit long-lasting environmental impacts from this discrimination.

2:42 · Neighborhoods which had a “D” grade in the 60s have about half the canopy cover of historically white communities.

2:50 · Some studies evaluate how the current environment relates to historically redlined communities, but researchers did not find any research that traces how ecosystems changed over time because of this segregation.

3:03 · They propose that because habitable regions are more spread out in these areas, animal populations struggle to breed since they are cut off from each other.

3:14 · The reduced breeding options for animals could have decreased gene diversity, an important way for animals to adapt to changing environments.

3:23 · And decreased gene flow of native species could promote the abundance of pest species, like mosquitos and brown rats, which carry diseases that can infect humans.

3:34 · The combination of all these outcomes— from urban heat islands to increased pests— make low-income, marginalized communities far more vulnerable to risks like climate change.

3:47 · Scientists say such evidence shows that conservation and social justice cross paths— especially along neighborhood streets.

How the U.S. Government Segregated Chicago Inside Chicago, Part 1

AJ+, 05 25, 2017

Video (8:24)

Description

Chicago has a long history of racist housing policies that have led to a racially divided city – a major factor behind the city’s reputation of violence.

Check out this similar video from AJ+: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ert_qPXQGQA

Senior Producer: Maggie Beidelman

Producers: Jun Stinson, Omar Duwaji, Emily Gibson

Executive Producer and Narration: Sarah Nasr

Editor: Michael Ngyuen

Animator: Kai Tang

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Transcript

0:00 · there are two faces to the city of Chicago first you see its spectacular downtown next to Lake Michigan with its famous theaters and incredible architecture top that off with some of the most passionate sports fans in the country you get the picture but the other face of Chicago is known for its violence and the thousands of lives lost in recent years one child is killed in Chicago every week and this is the face of Chicago that seems to dominate the headlines and the national conversations surrounding the city you walk down the street you get shot in Chicago they’ve

0:33 · had thousands of shootings thousands and I’m saying where is this is this a war torn country but this Narrative of Carnage of endemic violence is incomplete I know this because I’m from Chicago it’s a beautifully diverse place with a population almost evenly split between black white and Latino Americans

0:52 · but chai toown is also one of the most racially divided cities in the United States most of these ethnic groups live in different neighborhoods seated by geography segregation is like air and water we just live it we just breathe it we don’t really think about it it’s just sort of how things are I wanted to find out how Chicago got this way and how its segregation led to so many of its [Music]

1:19 · problems Chicago segregation is best explained on a map you have your North Side you have your south side and you have your west side to the east is the lake those terms North South and West have subtle meanings that relate to the racial segregation of Chicago and so when you say the north side people are sometimes subtly meaning the white side and the South Side especially today is

1:44 · predominantly black and so when you say the South Side you are subtly meaning the black Side Chicago is very territorial like for me growing up it was okay I know not to go to Bridgeport like this is a place that’s not really welcoming to African-Americans this graphic segregation is no accident it was engineered over years of deliberate policies in the early 1900 Chicago was

2:09 · largely a city of white immigrants The Great Migration of the 20th century brought millions of black Americans out of the violent gym Crow South hoping for a better life by the end of the 1940s nearly half a million black Americans lived in Chicago mostly in a small Corridor on the South Side called the black belt as the black population

2:27 · increased they faced housing practices that were completely racist and yet completely legal one of the worst was a practice called redlining which allowed Banks to refuse Home Loans to Black residents wanting to move into mostly white neighborhoods this happened to cities Nationwide from Chicago to Oakland to Baltimore Realtors and

2:46 · homeowners signed restrictive covenants saying they wouldn’t sell to black families in those white neighborhoods and after World War II the federal government subsidized white veterans with low interest loans for fresh new homes in Suburbia complete with big yard yards and highways to get there the federal government was basically saying neighborhoods that are racially integrated are a high are highrisk neighborhoods and so we’re not going to ensure those mortgages in those neighborhoods um so they were um supporting a suburbanization that led to

3:16 · predominantly white suburbs and predominantly black urban neighborhoods meanwhile Realtors often participated in Shady practices there were Brokers that would go into a block and they may move move a minority female

3:32 · with her four five or six children into a two-bedroom house and they would go down to block telling folks well they’re here your values are going to depreciate your daughters will be raped and which meant now what we can do is we can help you get out of here before it’s too late Brokers would cheat those white homeowners by buying those Homes at a low price and then turn around and cheat

3:56 · the black homeowners by selling them those same Homes at an in at ated rate these practices continued even after the Fair Housing Act of 1968 which made it illegal to refuse to sell or finance a home based on someone’s race but not all Realtors were so deceptive Frank who opened his real estate office in 1971 has often been credited with integrating the Beverly neighborhood on Chicago South Side our office windows were being broken and there was demonstrations uh and that very year the community

4:26 · organization was asking that I would sign a anti an solicitation list which meant that I would not solicit nor sell within those communities but Frank refused to back down and continued to sell to black families the neighborhood retaliated

4:43 · mobs marched on his real estate office neighborhood ladies would call and tie up his phone lines all day long so he couldn’t get business Frank was investigated multiple times over the years in an effort to stop his work and things got worse when Frank and his wife who’s white decided to buy their own home I was prepared to do what was necessary to buy it but we rejected for

5:06 · our loan they still managed to buy it and a year later in 1975 that home was targeted it was one evening uh I guess about about 8:00 you know the sun was going down Etc and uh you know my wife and I and the two girls and and our and our number two son was in the house number one son had not gotten home yet and boom at the front door that was a bomb a moltov cocktail you know that was placed

5:35 · you know within the mailbox and boom Frank’s family survived the incident but the front of the house was destroyed and the kids who placed the bomb they were never prosecuted so if black families couldn’t get loans to move to the suburbs or white neighborhoods in the city what was left for them black folks were living in the older parts of the city where overcrowding had very much led to the

5:58 · deterioration of hous housing in black neighborhoods and so black Chicagoans needed decent safe affordable housing the answer in the post-war era was public housing public housing was welcome these were brand new buildings built in a style that at that time was awesome these highrises with elevators

6:16 · and with big green spaces in in front of them so public housing began as Paradise for many families it was an escape from what was deteriorating housing after many decades of overcrowding um so that was the Golden Age of public housing in the 194 40s 50s early 60s but these

6:32 · paradises were also isolating and by the 70s and ’ 80s these highrises became as bad as the housing they sought to replace with a concentration of poverty that led to violence gangs and drug abuse as a result support for public housing waned through their sheer force of humanity had to maintain their own

6:51 · Community because the city and the federal government had very much abandoned them I remember these high-rise buildings like Cabrini Green and the Robert Taylor homes which everyone called the projects family and friends told us not to go there my high school English teacher called them prisons for the poor in 2000 the city started demolishing them to try to clean up the neighborhoods but today while the projects may be gone many of the people who lived in them are still suffering from the effects of poverty what happens is that people think that this is only a Chicago issue you know Baltimore Detroit

7:23 · Philadelphia urban places in this country are all dealing with these same issues of leg Legacy of segregation that has roots in housing inequity and violence comes along with that these cities continueed to suffer from their divisions from 1955 to 1970 62% of

7:42 · blacks and only 4% of whites Across America were raised in poor neighborhoods half a century later those numbers haven’t changed yes the whites only signs are gone and the rate of black poverty has decreased but the scars of a segregated City Run Deep from poor healthare access to of jobs and yes violence and all of this makes me wonder how do these color lines affect the city’s most vulnerable its

8:09 · kids Chicago is so segregated that more than half of the city’s black population lives in 20 of its 77 communities in the next video we’ll take a look at what segregation does to a city and how it affects the lives of those living there

How the US made affordable homes illegal

Vox, 08 16, 2021

Video (9:41)

Description

The rules that keep American housing expensive.

Subscribe and turn on notifications (🔔) so you don’t miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO

Over the past year, housing prices in the US rose precipitously. Low interest rates and millennials’ entry into the market spiked demand across the nation, leading housing prices in some cities to increase by more than 20 percent in one year, and crushing the dreams of many would-be homeowners.

But housing prices in the US were a problem long before 2020 — and while demand is a big part of the story, there’s an even bigger reason it’s increasingly difficult for Americans to find affordable housing: We don’t have enough houses. According to one estimate, the US is now facing a nearly four-million-home shortage. And the primary reason for that shortage is what’s called exclusionary zoning.

Zoning laws are the local rules and regulations that decide what types of homes can be built where. These rules can sometimes have good intentions. But they also have a dark history in the United States as a tool to keep certain races, religions, and nationalities out of white neighborhoods. And while zoning laws in the US are no longer explicitly racist, their effect remains basically the same: to keep affordable housing, and the people who need it, away from the wealthiest Americans.

Today, in the majority of the US, especially in cities with good jobs, it’s illegal to build many affordable types of housing. And it’s led to a widespread affordability crisis. Watch the video above for more.

Sources:

Jerusalem Demsas reports on housing policy for Vox, and she’s written a ton about this issue:

Houses are getting more and more expensive. There’s a simple fix for that: https://www.vox.com/22464801/housing-bubble-market-crash-supply-shortage-great-recession

What it’ll take to fix America’s housing rules: https://www.vox.com/22252625/america-racist-housing-rules-how-to-fix

The housing shortage is making discrimination a lot easier: https://www.vox.com/2021/5/26/22453293/housing-supply-shortage-discrimination-real-estate-cover-letters

Why the housing market boomed despite the recession: https://www.vox.com/22264268/covid-19-housing-insecurity-housing-prices-mortgage-rates-pandemic-zoning-supply-demand

The zoning maps in the video came from UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute: https://belonging.berkeley.edu/single-family-zoning-san-francisco-bay-area

Other data sources:

Redfin: https://www.redfin.com/us-housing-market

Freddie Mac: http://www.freddiemac.com/research/insight/20210507_housing_supply.page

US Census Bureau: https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/historical_data/index.html

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Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what’s really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com.

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Transcript

The national housing crisis

0:01 · So I spend a lot of time looking at houses on Zillow.

0:05 · And lately, I noticed that, even in places where houses are usually expensive…

0:10 · they seem even more expensive.

0:15 · Like here, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

0:19 · What has the last year been like?

0:34 · For years, the Bay Area has been an extreme example of how difficult it is to find affordable housing in the US.

0:41 · It’s where Silicon Valley bus drivers sleep in their cars at night, because they can’t afford housing near work.

0:48 · And where school teachers can’t afford to live in the counties they teach.

0:53 · But it’s not just the Bay Area.

0:55 · The lack of affordable housing is a national problem.

0:59 · And right now, it’s worse than ever.

1:02 · We’ve seen, over the last year, housing prices reach a level they’ve never reached before in American history.

1:08 · They kind of just look like a rocket ship going to the moon: housing prices reaching a median of $350,000 for the median American home.

1:16 · Those prices have made rents more expensive, and have made homeownership less attainable for millions of Americans.

Supply and demand imbalances

1:25 · So why is this happening?

1:27 · And how do we bring that rocket ship closer to Earth?

1:33 · We can think of today’s housing prices in terms of a supply-and-demand problem.

1:38 · On the demand side, there are a few things happening.

1:41 · The first is a generational shift in who’s buying homes.

1:45 · Millennials are the biggest generation in American history, and they’re aging into their prime home-buying years.

1:51 · On top of that, mortgage rates are at an all-time low, which means it’s very cheap to borrow the money needed to buy a house.

1:58 · That’s enticed more people to buy if they can, making demand for houses even higher.

2:04 · The problem is that supply isn’t matching that demand.

2:10 · From 2010 to 2019, there were fewer homes built in the US than in any decade since the 1960s.

2:18 · In particular, the construction of smaller, entry-level housing, the kind made for first-time home buyers, has dropped dramatically.

2:25 · In the 1980s, those “starter” homes made up around 40% of all homes built.

2:30 · Today, it’s closer to 7%.

2:33 · In 2018, one estimate said the US housing market was 2.5 million homes short of meeting demand.

2:41 · By the end of 2020, it was 3.8 million.

2:44 · And that’s driving a big part of the problem, both for renters and for people who want to be homeowners.

2:49 · The shortage is worst in the places where demand is highest, near good jobs, transit, and schools.

2:55 · And one pretty straightforward solution to that is to just build more homes in those places.

Impact of zoning regulations

3:02 · But for years, there’s been one big obstacle to that: we aren’t allowed to.

3:08 · Take a look at this map of the Bay Area.

3:11 · It’s showing something called zoning, or local regulations that decide what can be built where.

3:16 · This much of the region is zoned for residential housing.

3:20 · In blue are areas zoned to allow multi-family housing, while the areas shaded in pink are zoned for single-family housing only.

3:30 · That’s 82 percent of all residential land in the Bay Area.

3:35 · What it means is that you’ve banned the ability for anyone to build anything other than a single unit of housing on that lot of land.

3:43 · And in many towns, like Atherton, they’ve excluded all multi-family housing from their neighborhoods.

3:50 · And that doesn’t just mean a giant apartment building.

3:52 · It means things like duplexes, things like fourplexes…

3:56 · Things like that are illegal in the majority of the country.

3:59 · This is an example of something called “exclusionary zoning.”

4:03 · It’s a big part of the reason for the housing supply shortage in the US.

4:07 · And single-family-only zoning is just one way local laws limit how much housing we can build.

4:13 · Many places also employ height restrictions.

4:16 · In Cupertino, California, some areas are zoned for multi-family buildings, but they don’t allow any buildings over two stories.

Zoning barriers and segregation

4:27 · Parking requirements are often written into zoning laws, too.

4:30 · Cupertino requires developers to set aside space for two parking spaces for each unit of multi-family housing.

4:37 · That means, if you were building an apartment complex that had 100 units, you’d need to find space for 200 parking spots.

4:45 · Which usually means buildings that size don’t get built at all.

4:49 · They lower the number of units they’re actually building so they can save space for those parking spaces.

4:55 · And then, those units become more expensive because the land still stays the same cost to the developer.

5:00 · And you then get a situation where potentially more affordable units turn into higher-income-servicing units.

5:09 · Another feature of many zoning laws is minimum lot sizes.

5:12 · It means builders are legally required to allot a minimum amount of land for each home.

5:18 · Often a large amount of land.

5:21 · In Cupertino, most single-family lots must be at least 5,000 square feet each.

5:26 · Starter homes are usually around 1,400 to 1,500 square feet.

5:31 · And so you’ve basically banned all that type of housing.

5:34 · In Atherton, the minimum lot size for homes is one acre: more than 43,000 square feet.

5:41 · Which makes it virtually impossible to build any kind of affordable home there.

5:46 · Together, exclusionary zoning laws like this push builders across the country to focus on bigger, luxury homes, instead of smaller starter homes, or multi-family housing.

5:57 · Essentially creating gated communities in public spaces.

6:00 · What you are saying is that you are only allowing people who have already been able to partake in the wealth of this country, and to grow their income, and have access to high opportunity jobs and education, to live in our neighborhoods.

6:11 · Historically, some of the first zoning laws in the US were engineered for that exactly: to block people of color, and in particular Black Americans, from living in predominantly white neighborhoods.

6:22 · Today, the laws don’t explicitly mention race, but they continue to worsen segregation.

6:28 · In the Bay Area, the more single-family zoning in a neighborhood, the whiter it is.

6:34 · But all this has another effect as well: By shrinking the pot of new housing getting built, while demand keeps rising, it drives up the cost of housing for everyone.

Resistance to local changes

6:46 · Changing zoning laws can be difficult.

6:49 · And often, the biggest obstacles are the wealthiest residents.

6:52 · The process is usually defined by who shows up to these public meetings.

6:56 · And what you have is often a much whiter, wealthier crowd, the ones who come and say, “I don’t want this in my community,” “I’m concerned about what will happen to my property values.”

7:05 · And then there’s this kind of code word, “neighborhood character.”

7:09 · Remember those teachers I mentioned, who can’t afford to live in the counties where they teach?

7:14 · Well in 2018, one local school district proposed a solution: building affordable housing units for teachers in San Jose.

7:22 · It caused an uproar among San Jose parents, who petitioned against “changing the neighborhood.”

7:28 · It may not seem like a big deal when one wealthy neighborhood blocks one multi-family development.

7:34 · The problem is that it happens all the time: Communities block new housing everywhere.

7:39 · People are, when they hear this kind of rhetoric, very confused.

7:42 · Because they’re like, “I don’t want to live in a place with ten thousand apartment buildings.

7:47 · It doesn’t make sense to do that.”

7:49 · And they’re right. No one is saying that every neighborhood in every city should be ten thousand-foot apartment buildings or anything like that.

7:58 · But even small, gradual changes to zoning laws can have an impact.

8:02 · For example, allowing smaller homes on smaller lots, or simply allowing duplexes, would double capacity for housing in some areas.

8:12 · In recent years, some cities like Berkeley, Minneapolis, and Portland have taken the huge step of ending single-family zoning.

8:20 · But the problem is nationwide.

Statewide and federal solutions

8:22 · The real fix is going to happen when these decisions start being made, and start being regulated, at the statewide level or at the federal level in some capacity.

8:31 · Today, the Biden administration is attempting to tackle exclusionary zoning through a five billion-dollar program, that would give money to localities that remove exclusionary zoning policies.

8:41 · But even that may not be enough.

8:44 · This is more than any presidential administration has done on this topic, either Democrat or Republican.

8:51 · It is also very small in the face of this problem.

8:54 · They want to take action, they recognize how big of a deal it is, but they are not actually willing to create the kind of political blowback from often very high-value voters living in suburban environments.

9:06 · Ending America’s housing shortage will require real political willpower.

9:11 · And it’ll require people across the country to take a look at their own neighborhoods: what gets built, who gets excluded, and how to make homeownership achievable for the millions who are shut out.

How to Bring Back Front Yard Businesses

About Here, 06 22, 2022

Video (8:44)

Description

How do we add mixed uses in single detached neighbourhoods? People have some ideas…

I’m very honoured to have made this video in partnership with Urbanarium, check out the winners of their Mixing Middle competition at https://urbanarium.org/mixing-middle-competition

About Here

Twitter: https://twitter.com/aboutherevideos

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Urbanarium

Twitter: https://twitter.com/urbanarium

IG: https://www.instagram.com/urbanariumvan/?hl=en

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UrbanariumVancouver

Website: https://urbanarium.org/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3uAd4S76yWpYJxmQXoFWyg

Transcript

Intro

0:00 · a little while ago i made a video about front yard businesses these are businesses attached to people’s homes like this grocery store this barber shop or this cafe in the past people used to build these businesses all the time but then we made them illegal which has arguably led to large swaths of monotonous car dependent neighborhoods with single detached houses empty grass lawns and not much else so what if we were to make front yard businesses legal again what would that look like well people have some ideas

0:33 · [Music] earlier this year urbanarium hosted a design contest called the mixing middle competition the challenge come up with an idea to add new mixed uses into single detached neighborhoods over 40

0:52 · teams submitted designs for this contest so what i want to do is to highlight some common approaches i noticed and offer some of my thoughts about them [Music] the first approach is probably the most straightforward literally just add something anything onto your house

Build Anything

1:09 · for example in an entry called bimfy the designer proposes tiny towers you can build in your front or backyard creating spaces for small businesses without taking up too much room on your property but to some extent you don’t even need to build anything new at all in another entry called simple small things first the designer starts with just converting the garage into a business and using the driveway as a patio from there you can

1:32 · add more and more expansions over time to support the business or to add more housing i want to show you a real world example of how this could work the yonder cider bar in seattle during the pandemic the owners of this company decided to open up a store in their home’s garage this is what it looked like before and this is what they turned

1:50 · it into what i like about this approach is that it’s very easy to get started it doesn’t require a huge investment or a commitment up front and because of that it’s also very flexible you can build things out a bit at a time and make adjustments as you go many of the entrants really leaned into this idea by creating standardized designs that are easy to build for example do it together proposes an open source set of designs that can be cut out of plywood and then put together like ikea furniture and the results

2:19 · surprisingly beautiful [Music] then of course another approach is to just start from a blank slate tear the original house down and re-imagine the whole space at once take the co-11 quad

Start From A Blank Slate

2:35 · plex it turns a corner house into four units wrapped around a shared office space and it even has this public seating area on the second floor a key advantage of starting from a blank slate is that it can help you get the most out of a space you can really see that in the concept like mixed modal this design

2:51 · takes two properties and combines them to create a development with three commercial spaces and seven units of housing now some of my favorite examples of this kind of development can be found in japan cities here don’t restrict businesses in residential areas so you end up with a lot of buildings that seamlessly weave together people’s homes with their businesses for example this building in tokyo mixes donuts and coffee and housing and cafes which i think we can all agree are both great combinations

3:19 · [Music] then i came across an example that i found intriguing to say the least it involved a corporation building these mixed uses in backdoor plug and play a company leases space from homeowners to install pre-fabricated pods in their front yards or backyards these pods can be stacked

3:39 · up to three stories high and be rented out for a variety of activities like a bubble tea stand or a co-working pod or a balenciaga pop-up store once these pods have been installed people can book them through the company’s app which shows where these spaces are and their availability does it feel a bit silicon valley tech bro sure but i do think there’s some potential to this idea there’s a business in vancouver called city beat farm that works with homeowners to use their front lawns for agriculture people

4:09 · who offer up their front lawns receive a free box of produce every week while the rest of the harvest is sold off they currently have a network of 13 front yards for this if homeowners are willing to let businesses farm on their land i think there’s potential for other companies to negotiate similar arrangements instead of bean pods you could have co-working pods [Music]

Collective Building

4:34 · now this last approach goes beyond just mixing businesses with houses an idea that came through in many of the submissions was to have people come together to create these projects a really good example of this is lots in common their submission brings friends and neighbors to pool their finances to build communal living arrangements like co-op housing or co-housing all while creating shared spaces that benefit the larger community they offer a toolkit of

4:58 · designs that groups can use to build their development but they also suggest a number of public amenities like a covered patio an ev charging station or a community garden what i like about this approach is that it really captures the broader spirit of why i think we want more mixed uses in the first place

5:16 · as much as i talk about front yard businesses it’s really not just about businesses for me there’s something more profound here about how shared spaces can connect people and really bring a community together in the process the strength of a more collective building approach is that it can be much more intentional about this well that was fun but uh let’s be real

5:40 · here none of this is technically allowed right now i can’t stress this enough these buildings are pretty much impossible to build unless cities relax regulations in single detached neighborhoods the setback rules the height restrictions the far limits the home business regulations the zoning by 15 minutes later and the reality is that

6:01 · those regulations persist today because people have other expectations for those neighborhoods remember the yonder cider bar well here’s what happened to them an anonymous person filed this asking the city to shut them down concerned over reportedly blocked sidewalks and the proximity to churches and schools we have one person who’s been calling the city a bunch of times calling the cops on us a few times so after this weekend

6:26 · the door will come down for good the flip side of car dependent and monotonous neighborhoods is the fact that they’re also private neighborhoods where disruptions are minimal the ideas coming out of the mixing middle competition will often be in conflict with those ideals and that’s why i just don’t think it’ll ever happen

Solutions

6:50 · you thought i’d leave you on that note no i think there’s some ways we can make this work first off corners first concentrate the initial mixed use into key corners that could demonstrate how new businesses could fit well into these neighborhoods expand on what’s already happening if you look carefully enough there are already many businesses operating out of single detached neighborhoods usually in immigrant communities if we’re looking for people who’d be receptive to these kinds of changes i’d start here

7:17 · create social spaces as part of the rollout single detached neighborhoods just don’t have that much space for public life to happen to begin with so i think it makes a lot of sense that we’re also building spaces alongside these businesses that allow people to mill about without blocking the sidewalk or stepping onto other properties and finally create agreements between neighbors i honestly think many of these

7:39 · issues could be resolved in a conversation if you want to open a business maybe you could sign some sort of agreement with your neighbor about hours of operation and noise levels without getting municipal regulations involved but ultimately i think it’s important that we take a step back from the nitty gritty and reflect on what these single detached neighborhoods look like in the long term 20 or even 50 years from now

8:02 · do we still imagine rows and rows of the same houses with their front yards and backyards or do we see ourselves mixing it up a bit [Music] [Music]

8:26 · [Music] i’m so happy [Music] you can’t help him

How to Fix New York City’s $500M Trash Problem WSJ Pro Perfected

The Wall Street Journal, 08 14, 2026

Video (6:52)

Description

New York City handles nearly 3 million tons of trash a year. And much of it ends up on the curb in loose plastic bags — before getting shipped to landfills outside of the city altogether, on barges and then trains. This system costs the city around $500 million a year. So, can the largest city in the United States modernize its waste management?

WSJ explores how experts and city officials plan to tackle New York City’s giant trash problem.

Chapters:

0:00 NYC’s trash problem

0:34 Possible solutions

1:10 Why the issue exists

1:59 What the sanitation department does now

3:34 The bigger problem

6:13 The bigger solution

Pro Perfected

Experts in engineering and design break down a ubiquitous problem, examining how the world is built and what can make it better.

Transcript

NYC’s trash problem

0:00 · Every year, New York City handles nearly three million tons of trash. For decades, mountains of garbage bags have lined the streets, feeding rats and blocking sidewalks.

0:10 · Most people think that garbage goes up to solid waste heaven. It does quite the opposite.

0:15 · Now, the Sanitation Department says it has a solution. Its trash revolution program aims to finally put a lid on the countless garbage bags piling city blocks.

0:24 · But can redesigning the way New Yorkers throw out their trash solve a problem decades in the making?

0:29 · We asked people who know the system best. Steven Cohen is the Director of the Sustainability Management Program at Columbia University, and he says one of New York’s biggest solutions is surprisingly simple, changing how the city stores and collects its garbage. Instead of leaving flimsy trash bags on the sidewalk, the city’s sanitation department is now moving towards sealed containers emptied by mechanized trucks.

Possible solutions

0:55 · The motto of the Sanitation Department is New York’s strongest. And now I think we’re going to call them New York’s smartest because they figured out a way to get the machine to do the work.

1:04 · But changing how New York handles its garbage means undoing a system that’s been in place for more than half a century.

Why the issue exists

1:10 · We used to have metal cans that everybody had to put their garbage in that you would have to wash out after use. People in apartment buildings, superintendents didn’t like doing that so much.

1:21 · That’s how New Yorkers put out their trash until the late 1960s. But when sanitation workers went on strike in 1968, residents switched to plastic garbage bags. And when the strike ended, the bags stayed.

1:33 · This was really great news for the rats because it essentially created a buffet for them all over New York City of free food, because rats have no trouble at all getting into garbage bags.

1:43 · More than 50 years later, trash bags are just as common as the vermin they attract, and the city’s layout makes the problem even harder. Unlike other major American cities, Manhattan was built largely without alleys, leaving garbage with only one place to wait for pickup, the curb. The city is now trying to take those bags off the sidewalk altogether, replacing them with permanent containers like these.

What the sanitation department does now

2:05 · The model that’s used everywhere in the United States, either dumpsters in alleys, or 96 gallon sort of wheeled containers, wasn’t feasible in New York City, because of our density and because of the way that our city’s been built. So we looked to the model used in Europe, the stationary on-street containers, as the solution for a large number of our buildings.

2:27 · Buildings can store trash in these bins throughout the week, and they all get emptied on pickup days.

2:32 · You have a bin that’s made of plastic, that’s very durable, and there’s a lot of garbage in that bin. And you have a mechanical arm picking up a tremendous amount of garbage and dumping it into the truck. The worker you see here is operating a machine and he doesn’t have to go out and pick up the garbage himself.

2:52 · And these bins seem to be working to keep out pests.

2:55 · The pace is a little bit slower, but I think overall, I think for the community it’s great. It does, we’ve seen the difference. I know they’ve been trying to tackle the rat situation, and it’s definitely improved.

3:06 · Businesses have been required to use closed bins since March 2024. And next year, the city plans to expand these residential containers to six more districts. By 2031, officials say New York City will be fully containerized.

3:19 · This is a way to collect the garbage in a more efficient and frankly humane way, protecting the occupational health and safety of the workers. And I think this is really how robotics are changing all sorts of manual labor.

The bigger problem

3:34 · In Cohen’s vision for waste in the city, robotics would also play a larger role, sorting through the trash for recyclables to divert waste from landfills.

3:42 · Humans do not want to spend their day sorting garbage. Robots could care less. And what AI can do is train those robots to really be able to identify what’s coming past them. And as we get better at that, that waste stream suddenly becomes a trove of resources.

4:02 · That could address a much larger challenge for New York. The city has nowhere to put most of its garbage.

4:08 · The first place the waste goes in New York City is to a waste transfer station.

4:12 · New York once relied on its own landfills, but as they filled up, the city gradually closed them. Fresh Kills, which was the largest landfill in the world at the time, closed in 2001.

4:22 · We just ran out of space.

4:24 · Today, New York’s trash is offloaded at transfer stations, packed into shipping containers, and sent to landfills and waste-to-energy plants across the country. That process costs around $500 million per year. Waste-to-energy plants burn garbage to generate usable energy, offering an alternative to burying trash in landfills. But either way, the city still has to send its waste away.

4:45 · In the map here, what you see is that, once we could no longer landfill in the five boroughs, we had to go outside the city. And you can see we go already 1,000 miles or longer to find a place to bring our garbage. We go wherever we can.

5:05 · We’re constantly looking.

5:07 · That problem is only going to get worse.

5:10 · We are going to be forced to ship our trash further and further, to places in the south and the Midwest where there’s more space, there’s more landfills, there’s more capacity. And that’s going to become really expensive.

5:22 · Cohen’s proposal could change that equation by reducing how much waste needs to be shipped out of the city in the first place.

5:27 · The long-term vision I would have would be to build a waste processing plant that uses artificial intelligence and robotics to separate the useful resources and create separate places for those substances to be reused.

5:46 · This concept already exists.

5:48 · Materials processing facilities use automated systems to sort recyclables, but Cohen’s proposal is more ambitious, applying that technology to New York’s entire waste stream. Some tech companies are already experimenting with robots that can sort waste autonomously, separating out materials of all categories to be repurposed. In New York, Cohen says the technology would be economically transformative, using trash as a product to be sold rather than disposed of.

The bigger solution

6:13 · The question is how a city as large as New York can implement this technology in the long term. The Sanitation Department has multiple programs in place for recycling and composting, but the technology is still developing. So as New York’s trash disposal gets more expensive, recovering what’s inside could become increasingly valuable. But making that vision a reality requires a lot more than just rethinking the city’s trash collection.

6:36 · Anything that isn’t grown, anything that isn’t organic is finite. And at a certain point, digging it out of the planet becomes more expensive than digging it out of your garbage.

How to turn your Neighborhood into a Village

Andrew Millison, 03 16, 2023

Video (16:07)

Description

Permaculture instructor Andrew Millison journeys to Portland, Oregon to talk with architect Mark Lakeman, founder of Communitecture Architecture and the City Repair Project. Mark initiated a movement in Portland to transform the homogenous neighborhoods of the city into places that have many of the qualities and characteristics that are found in some of the most treasured villages on Earth. Mark reveals the things you need to know to transform your own neighborhood into a village.

Mark Lakeman’s architecture firm:

https://www.communitecture.net/

The City Repair Project:

https://cityrepair.org/

Special thanks to Maitreya Ecovillage in Eugene, Oregon for letting us film their sweet spot:

http://www.maitreya-ecovillage.org/

Andrew Millison’s links:

https://www.andrewmillison.com/

https://permaculturedesign.oregonstate.edu/

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Transcript

The problem with suburbs

0:00 · We have the fewest number of community gathering places of all first world nations in the neighborhoods of the United States, where we don’t live in villages.

0:07 · We live in a development mechanism propelled by the interests of developers and bankers to make money off of creating housing.

0:16 · It’s very different than a village that is created by villagers as a way of helping people to help themselves to meet their own needs.

Juxtaposing city and village

0:30 · So, the primary lesson of this model is to juxtapose where we live and the patterns that we’re living in, with a new understanding of how people live in villages with very high rates of participation and very high indicators of public health.

0:51 · When places are designed by other people than the people who live there, and then the people who live there are told that they are powerless, that that is a broken design.

1:01 · So, what we’re doing today is engaging a typical circumstance, a model that has been designed within a great imposed gridded landscape that is so familiar to people who live in North America.

1:14 · We’re engaging it with a villager sensibility, and we’re asking ourselves: how can we unlock the creativity which is resident here all the time, and yet people don’t tend to even speak to each other?

1:27 · It looks completely normal, and yet, at the same time, we don’t quite tend to understand what we’re seeing.

1:35 · Let’s look at the facts.

1:37 · All of the houses tend to address the street across the space where, all across the country, people are told that they have no power.

1:45 · They have no ability to take the street and make it into a space that actually brings people together.

1:51 · That’s a big issue.

1:53 · Also, though they might have back doors, back porches, back decks, and maybe even gardens, their separation is enforced by lines that say: “this is yours and this is mine”.

2:05 · I’m actually not decrying the idea that people have separate interests.

2:09 · It’s just that all across the country, quite unlike thousands upon thousands of years of village design, there’s been no effort made to create something that they would steward in common.

Village elements: centers

2:20 · Retrofitting a neighborhood block like this to make it work like a village again, consists of several different design patterns that characterize the most lovely and robust villages in the world.

2:32 · The first one being whether or not there’s a great village commons, where everyone knows that they belong.

2:39 · Such a space tends to exist in a central location, between where everyone lives, so they all have an equal access to it.

2:47 · In fact, this would tend to straddle property lines, and be something that brought people together across those lines, but this is the first piece.

2:55 · This is the most important piece of the village, because it tells everyone that they’re all part of a greater whole.

3:04 · Another one of the really significant design patterns that has to characterize a village is that when you come to the perimeter of the village that there are portals, you might call them gateways or entrances, that celebrate your arrival and also your passage out of the village.

3:20 · They can be a lovely, you know, arch with some grapes or kiwis arching overhead.

3:25 · Something that celebrates the fact that you’re entering the perimeter and it says welcome to you, and it also invites you to return as you leave.

Redesigning urban pathways

3:36 · When people live in the colonial grid, like we do, the pathways tend to be long and straight and flat.

3:42 · Americans have this challenge around obesity largely because their environments don’t engage them to want to get out and move around.

3:53 · If your environment is repetitious and monotonous, it’s not inviting to us to want to come outside and move around, but particularly because the environment, the experience of moving around, is kind of almost all the same, and you’re relying on the differences of architecture to make it more interesting.

4:13 · But when you don’t even have places where people are outside interacting and gathering, like you would in a good Spanish or Italian village, then why get off the couch?

4:23 · Why even go outside?

4:25 · You’re not going to have a place, a destination.

4:27 · So, what we’re seeing now are pathways that link people from the gateways where they arrive in their block to the common center.

4:36 · So, everyone is linked.

4:38 · Notice that these lines are not flat and straight, but they actually curve and they adjust as people are moving between things.

4:47 · The pathway can be established through something as simple as wood chips.

4:51 · There’s many different ways to create a sense of a path.

4:54 · Another thing to think about is connecting to people across public space.

4:59 · Typically, in the USA, we’re told that we don’t have any power in the public right-of-way.

5:05 · I can assure you in Portland, Oregon, that is no longer the case.

5:09 · We now have the ability to transform street intersections into public squares for free, beginning by painting the streets.

5:17 · We can install benches and kiosks for free, on our own authority, in a collaborative set of agreements that we’ve created.

5:27 · Before 1920, when the federal government decided that streets were only for cars, for all the millennia of human existence, streets had multiple different kinds of uses that were enacted in that space every single day.

5:44 · And maybe the biggest and more most important of all were the combined birthday parties of all the children that would live in an area of what we call a neighborhood.

5:53 · They would come out into the streets and that was the space where children would play, and they would be safe.

5:58 · There is a lot that’s missing.

Water management and commons

6:00 · Trees should have tree houses in them.

6:03 · Do you live in a neighborhood without a swing within a block of where every child lives?

6:09 · In my world, I would have a sitting bench at least within 50 feet of where everyone lives.

6:16 · So, we have some examples of the kinds of things that would bring people together as a village, like a community market, a tool sharing library, sacred spaces, greenhouses, things like that, benches everywhere all around the block.

6:30 · Why isn’t there an art studio?

6:32 · Why isn’t there a cafe?

6:34 · Why isn’t there a place for a music venue?

6:36 · Why do you have to go to a music festival or a place like Burning Man in order to find that kind of integration, and then you come home, save your money to want to go away again?

6:46 · Why don’t we engage in this place, and bring this rich program of the village back into our lives?

6:55 · So, I just put down orange circles designating water catchment cisterns on the back corner of everyone’s house, because we want to catch water.

7:03 · So, the reason we’re having these cisterns happen is because we’re going to put in a common water course, that is yet another form of commons that will bring people’s lives together.

7:13 · And all of their rooftops will be like hills and valleys where rain comes down from the high places and flows down to the low places, except with these cisterns we’re going to intercept that water so that we can collect it and use it, and then release it again letting it eventually get back into the landscape, so that it recharges the water table.

7:33 · I hope everyone is actually thrilled when you consider as you lay down these water courses that every time a pathway intersects with a watercourse it becomes an opportunity for a bridge.

7:48 · Imagine walking curving pathways through an abundant landscape punctuated by bridges over water as you simply walk from your house to your friends’, as opposed to having to go out your front door, walk a straight line, turn a 90° angle in order to come in through another front door, just to visit someone on your block.

Aesthetic ponds and legacy

8:10 · Okay, so, now I’m going to lay down some ponds.

8:13 · What if there were ponds on your block that were fed by the runoff from your rooftops, so that at the top of your watercourse there was actually a place with a fountain where ducks would sometimes land, and frogs and dragonflies loved to dwell, and as the water was flowing from that pond, down toward the center, your gathering place would also have bodies of water along the edge and perhaps those could reflect light at the end of the day as the sun was setting?

8:44 · These are the kinds of things that villagers actually create for their own aesthetic legacy to leave to the future generations.

8:52 · This is what Americans are missing out on when we just think of our homes as commodities that we liquidate, cash out, and move on from to somewhere that we hope will be better.

Community agriculture

9:07 · When you’re considering an urban agriculture strategy some of the most important pieces are going to be perennial systems, oftentimes in the form or form of food forests.

9:18 · You’re also going to be, at the same time as you’re thinking about that layer you’re probably going to be thinking about supporting native species and then also annual agriculture that tends to require more sunlight, tomatoes and basil, and, you know, artichokes, eggplant, corn.

9:38 · The abundance that is possible in places where we’ve just thought that we’re going to grow lawns that we scarcely use, becomes impossibly exciting.

9:48 · If we treat this side of the model as south, then I’m going to be placing these representations of annual gardens in light green on the south-facing available open spaces.

10:00 · I’m also going to be thinking of where the light is coming down, both in the summertime and in the wintertime, because in the wintertime we’re going to have much less available light.

10:10 · Where would those spots still be available, where we could actually grow anything in the form of say a winter garden?

10:16 · So, I’m going to locate these in open spaces in a neighborhood where people work.

10:21 · No one, typically, across the country, has ever looked at the sun, the direction of the sun, as it rises and as it sweeps across the landscape, and as it goes down over the horizon at the end of the day, to consider how sunlight actually falls upon the space.

10:42 · And I’m not just talking about passive solar gain or photovoltaic solar panels or solar hot water.

10:48 · I’m talking about the whole sensibility around spaces and places that you’ll find in villages across the world made by indigenous people.

10:58 · So, say some friends here don’t necessarily like to see each other all that often, one of the things you can consider is rather than having a fence, you could actually have a living edge with something like what we like to call a fedge, or a food hedge.

11:13 · These can go kind of all over the place, depending on the species that you’re planting.

11:17 · So, these food forests can freaking go everywhere!

11:23 · Another layer in the urban environment is animal husbandry.

11:27 · People love animals.

11:28 · Kids really thrive around animals, and learning how to take responsibility, taking care of animals, is a great way to grow up a kid.

11:36 · Just to mention some of the potential animal species that can easily coexist with people, even in the confines of a block like this: piglets, goats, rabbits, chickens, ducks, other kinds of fowl, and that’s just to get started.

11:52 · You can actually have bees as well in an urban environment.

Sustainable energy systems

11:57 · When it comes to talking about energy, what we like to say is that before you start calculating how to create an alternative energy system, first you can gauge strategies that reduce your load, that reduce your need.

12:11 · And so, one of the most popular things that we’ve been doing on our block is actually to paint rooftops with reflective colors so that we immediately reduce our energy load for cooling by creating reflective surfaces.

12:25 · So, you might have a south-facing greenhouse where you concentrate heat, and then you might have a reflective roof.

12:31 · You could do this all over the block.

12:33 · Another strategy related to energy is the idea of installing a green roof.

12:39 · So, on a slope and on a structural system that can handle an installation of an eco-roof, you could actually decide to create a living, respirating surface like a green roof.

12:57 · Imagine that every single house could be generating its own power, and then, tied together, in a resilient, localized, kind of network, so that you always had enough.

13:10 · So, imagine that every one of these homes could have a solar hot water system as well as solar electric.

Empowering community agency

13:22 · When we start to reconsider our lives at this scale, the greatest consequence of this is that our voice and our sense of capacity and power actually becomes limitless, and for an American that is a big deal.

13:42 · To go from thinking that we are just a consumer, or we are just a job description, or we are just what we have in our bank account, to feeling like you can do anything, then you start to do stuff like this.

13:55 · Why not curve the pathways of our lives into something more aesthetic and beautiful, that still enables us to have driveways and to come home, but that starts to fill in the surfaces of the grid, so that that arable land becomes available to us to grow and create.

14:23 · It becomes more beautiful and interesting for our gathering needs, and at the same time we no longer just travel long straight flat lines for the rest of our lives.

14:36 · And even more than that, considering the fact that where intersections happen, the pathways of our lives come together, that’s the most essential pattern of the public gathering place in the history of villages in all the world.

14:54 · So, every one of these nodes should be places of community convergence, so the village expands outward to connect all of the other scales of the village, as we transform the whole world really.

15:14 · So, whether the pathways become curving or they have stations for people to charge their vehicles or there are community bike-parking stations or there are just gathering places or sacred spaces or what have you.

15:28 · What if you’re able to walk through your entire neighborhood and have food just growing along the edge of the primary pathways you travel and your children travel?

15:38 · Would we have a food insecurity issue?

15:42 · So, I’ll just close by saying that the point of this game, again, is about people coming into their agency and realizing that anything is possible, and what we thought was boring and mundane is actually potentially a context or a palette for rediscovering the ancient village that still lives inside of all of us.

How Urban Heat Impacts Communities of Color

Did You See This?, 07 21, 2021

Video (7:14)

Description

The urban heat island effect is a phenomenon affecting more than 100 cities across the U.S. — here’s how it works and why it disproportionately impacts communities of color.

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Transcript

How urban heat islands make the impacts of excessive heat worse

PBS NewsHour, 07 27, 2023

Video (6:11)

Description

Living in certain parts of a city can make the impacts of extreme heat worse. That’s because of a phenomenon called the urban heat island effect. A recent report by the research group Climate Central showed that more than 40 million Americans live in these hot spots. William Brangham discussed what this means for those residents with Michael Mendez of the University of California, Irvine.

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Transcript

What is an urban heat island

0:00 · WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, in addition to the dangers faced by where someone works, sometimes, where you live can also make the impacts of extreme heat worse, like living in certain parts of a city.

0:10 · That’s because of a phenomenon called the urban heat island effect. A recent report by the research group Climate Central showed that more than 40 million Americans live in these hot spots.

0:22 · So, what does this mean for those residents? And is there any way that they can get relief?

0:26 · For that we turn to Michael Mendez. He’s assistant professor of environmental planning and policy at the University of California, Irvine, Professor Mendez, very good to have you on the “NewsHour.”

0:38 · Can you help us understand, what is the urban heat island effect?

0:43 · MICHAEL MENDEZ, University of California, Irvine: Thank you for having me here today.

0:45 · It’s a pleasure to be here to talk to you about this important issue that is affecting many people across the nation of – 40 percent of residents in the United States are under a heat advisory.

0:56 · And many of them are living in urban areas that don’t have adequate infrastructure, let alone environmental amenities like trees and other forms of greenery that provide shade. So, an urban heat island effect is where you have a lot of urbanized and suburban areas that are paved over with asphalt, concrete, other – other types of building materials that absorb the heat.

1:20 · And with little vegetation and trees for shade, and other types of cooling material, these areas and communities could be anywhere between five and even 20 degrees hotter than other neighborhoods that have more green space for shade.

1:36 · WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That is such a shocking difference in temperature, simply that can be driven by how a certain area is built and what the structures are made of?

1:45 · MICHAEL MENDEZ: Most definitely.

1:47 · I think many of us that are millennials, Gen Z or even older remember being on the hot turf, asphalt, in schools and see the steam actually permeate out of these hard heat-trapping surfaces. So imagine not just a schoolyard, which is just, unfortunately, an urban heat island, but an entire neighborhood, and how that can really change how you experience an extreme heat event, and let alone if you’re living in an older home that’s 100 years old.

2:19 · You may experience it even more inside of a home that isn’t climate-resilient, can have even hotter temperatures than the ambient air outside.

2:29 · WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I cited this study that says that millions of Americans are living in – under these types of conditions that you’re describing.

Can you explain why certain people are more vulnerable

2:36 · But I also understand that it is not equally spread across demographics, that certain people are more vulnerable than others. Can you explain?

2:46 · MICHAEL MENDEZ: Yes, this phenomenon of the heat waves, extreme climate events have disparate impact. It does not affect everyone equally.

2:55 · And this is because a heat wave is a natural phenomenon – phenomenon in some part, but there’s been political choices have been – have been made over the decades, if not centuries, that have withheld vital resources and infrastructure from communities, primarily low income-communities of color, African American and Latino communities.

3:16 · So it’s no surprise, when a heat wave or other type of extreme weather event strikes these communities, they’re the least prepared and often suffered the most impacts, because they don’t have – they have crumbling infrastructure, and they don’t have the amenities that will protect them and make them more resilient from our changing and extreme climate.

What are the possible solutions

3:36 · WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You have been describing or hinting at a few of what seem like the possible solutions here.

3:42 · Walk me through those things. If I were a city planner, what are the things that I can do to try to reduce the urban heat island effect?

3:50 · MICHAEL MENDEZ: First is, a lot of these campaigns, we hear about the million-dollar campaigns that a lot of urban mayors are trying to institute in their cities, planting trees.

4:02 · Climate-resilient trees that are resilient to drought as well can help cool down are cities, cool roofs, rooftops, making sure that we’re able to reflect some of the sun’s rays and ensure that our houses that are cooler, having more climate weatherization in our homes, and, of course, having more cool pavements, moving away from that black asphalt and concrete that is absorbing and retaining the heat.

4:32 · And other types of green spaces, watershed management practices are multibenefit.

4:38 · They can clean our water, recharge our groundwater, but also provide green space and recreational spaces. So, we need to look for multibenefit policies and projects that attack multiple problems that climate change is causing our urban areas and throughout our nation.

What communities are doing

4:56 · WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I mean, some of these things you’re talking about seem quite quick. I mean, you can paint a roof a different color quite quickly. Trees, we know, take longer to grow.

5:04 · Are there communities that you would point to in the country that are doing some of these things, that are taking this initiative head on and trying to do these things?

5:15 · MICHAEL MENDEZ: Well, in my in my hometown of Los Angeles, it’s often named – thought of as very suburban, very asphalt, concrete-driven area.

5:24 · But they’re really leading the way in terms of creating an Office of Climate Emergency and Resilience, where they have hired a full-time person and staff to understand these issues and try to target resources to the most immediate communities, those that are lacking these trees and green spaces.

5:44 · So, places like Los Angeles, Portland, of course, Seattle have been at the forefront of enacting climate action, but also having a strong equity and justice lens.

5:58 · WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, Professor Michael Mendez, U.C. Irvine, thank you so much for being here.

6:02 · MICHAEL MENDEZ: Thank you for having me.

How zoning can restrict, or even prevent, affordable housing

PBS NewsHour, 01 30, 2021

Video (11:29)

Description

In this next installment of our series, “Roads to Recovery,” Christopher Booker reports on efforts to reform Connecticut’s land use laws, and the complicated mix of history, politics, and racial dynamics that impact who gets to live where. Advocates say restrictive land-use laws have led to inequality and a lack of affordable housing, while some local officials worry about losing a say over what can be built and where. This segment is part of the initiative, Chasing the Dream: Poverty and Opportunity in America.

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Transcript

In ‘The Future of Cities,’ innovative responses to urban issues

PBS NewsHour, 03 04, 2017

Video (7:37)

Description

More than 31 cities around the globe with populations of more than 10 million people are considered megacities. As the number of city dwellers increases, so do problems like overcrowding, pollution, housing and aging infrastructure. The online mini-documentary, “The Future of Cities,” explores the ways citizens are mobilizing to address these issues. NewsHour Weekend’s Ivette Feliciano reports.

Transcript

Inside NYC’s hidden RV communities

The News Movement, 09 09, 2026

Video (8:40)

Description

New York City is the most expensive place to rent in the United States, and some working class residents have come up with their own creative solution to the housing crunch: living out of RVs in quiet, industrial corners of the city.

The News Movement’s Dan Ming drove around the five boroughs, knocking on motorhome doors and meeting the people who make up NYC’s hidden network of RV dwellers.

0:00 - Who is living in RVs in NYC?

0:41 - NYC’s housing & homelessness crisis

2:02 - Legal risks of living in RVs

2:56 - Rent-free living for NYC’s working class

3:44 - An alternative to unaffordable rent

4:27 - NYC’s homeless shelters vs. RVs

5:16 - Why asylum seekers are living in RVs

7:09 - Accessing affordable housing

Transcript

Who is living in RVs in NYC?

0:00 · Three people live in here? Yes.

0:01 · Wow. Can you talk a little bit about the rising cost of living in New York City?

0:05 · Oh, forget about it.

0:06 · The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

0:08 · I had to come to the RV because I couldn’t afford to pay rent.

0:11 · So I was driving in an industrial zone in the Bronx one day, and I noticed this whole row of RVs that looked like they had people living in them.

0:21 · It was this little RV community right in the middle of New York City, one of the most expensive cities in the world.

0:32 · Who were the people living in these RVs?

0:34 · What do their lives look like? And why do they do it?

0:36 · A lot of people did want to talk to me about their lives, and some even agreed to go on camera.

NYC’s housing & homelessness crisis

0:42 · Hey, Nate.

0:43 · Hey, Dan, how are you?

0:45 · Good to see you.

0:46 · Good to see you, too.

0:47 · Nate Wilson is a 58 year old Bronx native.

0:50 · He and his wife split their time between a city run homeless shelter and this RV parked alongside an interstate.

0:57 · So we use battery operated fans to stay cool.

1:02 · The bathroom area is here.

1:03 · We don’t use that because we don’t have the hose in order to dump from the toilet.

1:07 · So what we use is we use a bucket and then turn the pump on.

1:11 · Unfortunately, I can’t use my radio, the refrigerator, the microwave, and the TV because somebody stole my battery.

1:20 · I’ve been living in an RV now, I would say, for maybe six months.

1:25 · I lost my job, unfortunately, after 19 years.

1:28 · Me and my wife made the decision after we tried to get employment and couldn’t find employment, that the best thing to do would be to have a roof over our head was to get the RV.

1:37 · I go around the RV and make sure that all of the jacks are tight and stable, because with the cars that come by here, you can feel a nice wobble.

1:46 · The challenge is finding a place where you could have your RV and not have to worry about law enforcement coming at you, but I see that being by interstates and being around where tractor trailer drivers usually park to rest, you have no problems.

Legal risks of living in RVs

2:02 · RV living in New York City comes with risks though.

2:05 · The city limits how long motorhomes can be parked on the street.

2:09 · Just 24 hours in some cases.

2:11 · And while enforcement is limited, the NYPD occasionally cracks down, towing away entire RV encampments.

2:20 · It’s just heartbreaking.

2:21 · You know what I’m saying?

2:22 · That you have people that have worked here, building New York City to make it a great place to live, being priced out.

2:28 · Being told that they have to go and find somewhere else to live is just terrible.

2:32 · The rich are getting richer and the poor is getting poorer.

2:35 · In New York City, the median rent for a one bedroom apartment has soared to $4,500 a month, making it the most expensive rental market in the United States.

2:47 · And New York’s working class— rideshare drivers, delivery workers and mechanics— who keep the city running are finding themselves increasingly priced out.

Rent-free living for NYC’s working class

2:57 · For some, RVs offer an alternative to street homelessness or the city’s overburdened shelter system.

3:16 · Three people live in here?

3:18 · Wow. That’s tight.

3:37 · The city tells you you’re homeless?

An alternative to unaffordable rent

NYC’s homeless shelters vs. RVs

4:29 · Most of the people I met live full time in their mobile homes, but others, like Nate, go between their RVs and homeless shelters in the city.

4:36 · The environment of being in a shelter is like almost like you’re in prison.

4:40 · You’re stuck in one room looking at the four walls.

4:42 · There’s a bug going around.

4:43 · Like when one person gets it, it’s spread around.

4:47 · So to get to the RV from Far Rockaway, the shelter, is about a two hour journey.

4:52 · In order to qualify for an affordable housing voucher from the city, Nate and his wife must maintain their spot in the shelter, though they are allowed to leave for up to 48 hours at a time.

5:03 · That’s what the RV enables: a getaway, a sense of serenity.

5:07 · And then hopefully, you know, with the shelter system and getting through with that, we’ll have somewhere that we can really call home.

Why asylum seekers are living in RVs

5:17 · One thing that struck me while driving around and meeting people in RVs, is how many of them are asylum seekers from Venezuela.

5:24 · Since 2022, more than 240,000 asylum seekers have passed through the intake system for New York City’s shelters.

5:35 · Like Felix Tarazona, who came to the U.S.

5:37 · four years ago after spending months in prison for protesting against the Venezuelan government.

5:42 · This is a big TV for an RV.

5:49 · I have no idea what I’m doing.

5:50 · No FIFA?

5:52 · No FIFA.

5:52 · Anything I’m doing well is by mistake.

5:56 · Oh, congratulations.

6:01 · What’s the hardest part about living in an RV in the city?

6:28 · How long do you think you’ll live here?

6:29 · What’s your plan for the future?

6:44 · As an asylum seeker, do you feel safer in New York than you would in another part of the country?

Accessing affordable housing

7:11 · Each one, I believe, is going to be like 300 units. Wow.

7:15 · So like 900 affordable units?

7:18 · After we first filmed with Nate, he and his wife got some good news.

7:22 · They’re one step closer to landing an apartment.

7:25 · My wife was picked out of a lottery from the Department of Homeless Services, and they sent us here to view a beautiful apartment that we actually told them that we wanted.

7:34 · Hopefully everything will go through. I hope you get it.

7:37 · Fingers crossed.

7:37 · Fingers crossed. The RV meant to me stability.

7:40 · I’m not actually in the street, but that’s a recreational vehicle.

7:43 · This is what we can make our home.

8:06 · I hope for my future to get back stable.

8:08 · Get back employed because I love to work.

8:11 · And just get my life back to where I feel as though it should be at this point.

8:14 · You know, I’m 58 years old.

8:16 · I’m not no spring chicken, and being able to sustain the rest of my years here comfortably, that’s all.

8:22 · If I hit the lotto, I hit the lotto.

8:26 · Hi everyone it’s Dan Ming, thanks for watching.

8:28 · I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on our reporting and what you think we should cover.

8:33 · And if you like this video, subscribe to the news movement’s YouTube channel for more in-depth on the ground reporting.

Mexico’s Caribbean beaches overwhelmed by record sargassum influx I Inside Latin America

Al Jazeera English, 09 05, 2026

Video (10:02)

Description

The Caribbean is facing a growing sargassum seaweed crisis, with huge quantities washing onto beaches across the region and threatening tourism, ecosystems and public health.

Mexico’s Riviera Maya has been particularly affected, with the influx reaching thousands of tonnes of seaweed each day.

As the algae decomposes on beaches, it can release toxic gases, raising health concerns for residents and tourists. Scientists also warn that the accumulation of sargassum can damage seagrass ecosystems and affect beach stability.

The crisis is putting pressure on Mexico’s tourism industry, while the Mexican Navy has stepped up efforts to collect the seaweed before it reaches the shore.

But some businesses are looking at sargassum differently.

Companies including Carbonwave and Sargablock are developing ways to transform the invasive algae into products such as bio-fertilizers, footwear and construction materials.

Could an environmental crisis become a new source of sustainable materials?

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Transcript

0:04 · [music] Welcome to Inside Latin America and to Mexico’s Riviera Maya. For the last decade, growing amounts of algae called sargassum have been washing up on beaches across the Caribbean, transforming once pristine coastlines and threatening the communities that depend on them.

0:25 · From the beaches of Puerto Rico to the fishing villages of the Dominican Republic, this phenomenon is taking a toll. And 2026 brought record quantities with more than 12 million tons detected across the region. But where is it all coming from and why now?

0:42 · This is the Sargasso Sea. Scientists say around 2010, changing currents began moving seaweed from here into warmer waters, forming the Great Atlantic Sargasso Belt, a vast band of floating algae stretching from West Africa across the Atlantic. Then, nutrient pollution, including fertilizer runoff carried by rivers, helped fuel its explosive growth.

1:06 · Experts agree the regional response still doesn’t match the scale of the problem. But with so much sargassum arriving, governments are being forced to act while private citizens are looking to upcycle this seaweed in an effort to turn this new reality into an opportunity.

1:25 · 9,000 tons a day. That’s how much sargassum washed up on Mexico’s Caribbean coast at the height of this year’s season.

1:34 · With its main tourist beaches under threat, the Mexican government has invested resources in tackling the problem.

1:41 · It enlisted the Navy in a process that starts with sea monitoring.

1:45 · Once blooms are located, especially designed vessels collect as much as they can.

1:51 · Barriers redirect what the ships miss, and divers work daily setting up additional nets and anchoring them beneath the surface.

2:00 · Every part of this process is extremely labor-intensive. If this ship has to be continuously repositioning itself so it can drag in all that sargassum. Once it’s full, it will go back to land and it will have to all be unloaded again before being taken to a processing plant.

2:17 · The goal is to keep the sargassum from reaching the beaches where growing evidence shows prolonged exposure to the decomposing seaweed can be toxic.

2:26 · And if you were to like hang around it for a long time, it would probably cause like respiratory distress and some other issues, but um in some places in the Caribbean, like it’s it’s very strong and it persists for weeks at a time and they are actually seeing adverse human health effects from the hydrogen sulfide.

2:41 · But removing sargassum is also expensive.

2:44 · Putting this option out of reach for many island nations in the Caribbean. The result is beaches that look like this. And when beaches become unusable, people whose livelihoods depend on tourism and fishing suffer, too.

2:59 · People come here, see this, and turn right around and leave.

3:05 · From Guadeloupe to Puerto Rico, more than 70% of people in the Caribbean live along the coast and depend on it to survive. And experts agree, without a joint international approach to sargassum and soon, the human and economic toll will only grow.

3:22 · This phenomenon can fundamentally change how people interact with the beach. For more on that, we spoke to Brigitta van Tussenbroek, a biologist with Mexico’s National Autonomous University, who’s been researching how sargassum is affecting communities along the coasts.

3:38 · Well, if you just think of the village community, of course, their connection with the sea is getting less because you don’t want to go to the beach on the Sunday afternoon with your family when you’ve got the what the amounts of sargassum there. If it’s a fishing community, um it’s more difficult for the boats to go out. Of course, for the tourist industry, it’s a disaster. And a lot of them, the tourist complex which have money, they can attend it to a certain degree. They can put up barriers.

4:08 · They can put small boats which collect the sargassum. They can try to replenish the beach which is eroded.

4:15 · You just mentioned erosion. Can you tell me a little bit about how sargassum is having an effect on what’s already a problem?

4:23 · Sargassum just being there causes erosion. Then sometimes bad practices. So, they remove the sargassum from the beach, but they take a lot of sand with it, which is another problem. And the other problem the major, I think, which I think was one of the major problem because it’s my area of research, it kills the sea grasses in the nearshore. And sea grasses are very important to maintain stable beaches.

4:49 · Do you think of sargassum as a plague?

4:51 · It’s a marvelous seaweed. I I’m still amazed by it. It’s a a seaweed which spends its whole life floating in the ocean. It forms these enormous rafts in the open sea. And the open sea is a desert, basically, for a lot of organisms. And then in the middle of the desert, you have this really biodiverse a raft with small critters, with a lot of bacteria, with epibionts which which grow on the sargassum. It’s beautiful.

5:23 · But having these huge masses of biomass decaying, getting on the beach, and then getting into the sea, it it causes a enormous disequilibrium of of whole life here in these systems.

5:36 · We’ve spent the last few days looking at all the efforts on various different scales of trying to get rid of the sargassum, take it out of the sea, uh clean it from the beaches. It feels like a titanic effort.

5:49 · I think at least the people who make the decisions I I think they still don’t understand the scale they have to work at. But we should do 100 times more or 1,000 times more. So, it should be so much more and I think this should be a really, uh, coherent strategy of managing the sargassum.

6:09 · Are you concerned?

6:10 · Well, I think it’s very difficult to be positive in the in the scenario, isn’t that?

6:16 · Because, as I say, most likely, um, this is not going to stop. This ecosystem is already damaged, uh, beyond the level I won’t ever see it recovering.

6:29 · So, I think we we have to be realistic in this this scenario and I think it it’s very difficult to be realistic, of course, because it it doesn’t look very nice. But, either really scale up a lot and invert a lot and and I really try to diminish the quantity of sargassum getting to the shore or adapt.

6:50 · But what does adapting look like? For a series of entrepreneurs in this region, the answer lies in turning this sargassum into products that can have life beyond the sea. Today’s sargassum harvest in Puerto Morelos, on Mexico’s Caribbean coast, ready to be processed and turned into bio-fertilizer. It’s a time-sensitive operation. Tons of seaweed must be weighed, cleaned, and pressed before it starts to decompose.

7:21 · Carbonwave is a company specializing in upcycling sargassum, filtering it in multiple steps to extract nutrients that boost crop yields and reduce the need for chemical fertilizer. After years of development, its creators say they have finally secured export agreements with the US, Colombia, and Ecuador.

7:40 · We already prove that sargassum can be turned into something that is reliable financially that can create incomes, right? That can create economy along the communities here.

7:54 · In fact, the process sargassum that Carbonwave doesn’t use for agricultural products ends up on people’s feet. Sargasso Sandals mixes sargassum powder with EVA foam, the same material Nike and Adidas use in sneakers to make its soles. Each pair is between 10 and 15% sargassum.

8:14 · This is the fiber that I need.

8:16 · And not far from Carbonwave’s plant, Omar Vasquez is using sargassum to make building blocks.

8:22 · Sargablock is an artisanal process. Each block contains 40% sargassum. The rest is other organic materials. They can make up to 6,500 blocks per day [music] using some 40 tons of sargassum. Sargablock says they’ve already donated 21 small homes made of this material to poor families in this community. And they say interest in this product is growing, certainly locally. This truck is going to a local business around here that’s just starting a construction project.

8:54 · But Omar dreams of taking this product far beyond Mexico’s coasts.

8:59 · And I went to Africa, I went to Ghana, and the problem that they have with sargassum it’s major. Nobody talks about those countries because they don’t have the money that we have in Mexico because tourism they don’t go there as here. So, where I see myself bringing Sargablock all over the world and donating houses to all over the people.

9:17 · In Mexico alone, at least 200 projects are now looking for ways to turn a growing environmental problem into an economic opportunity. And while none of these solutions can single-handedly absorb the millions of tons of sargassum washing ashore each year, they are showing that this unwanted seaweed may have value beyond the beach.

9:40 · Governments and citizens alike are rushing to adapt the best they can to a phenomenon that is no longer just a seasonal nuisance, but rather an increasingly permanent fixture of coastal communities along the Caribbean. Thanks for watching Inside Latin America. Now back to Doha with more news.

9:58 · Still ahead on Al Jazeera, from buried underpants. Yes, you heard that

Neighborhood Walkability, Weight, and Diabetes

TheJAMAReport, 05 24, 2016

Video (1:50)

Description

This study uses Canadian national health care and census data to estimate changes in overweight/obesity and diabetes prevalence by neighborhood walkability index between 2001 and 2012. Read the article at: http://bit.ly/1WM9Hk.

Transcript

0:03 · neighborhoods that are more walkable tend to be more densely populated and they tend to be zone so that there’s retail and other services within the neighborhood so there’s more places people can reach on foot unless walkable suburban neighborhood stores and services are harder to reach on foot people usually have to drive to get places it seems that neighborhoods that are more walkable and are designed to make it easier to walk may actually help people to be more physically active dr.

0:31 · Gillian booth from st. Michael’s Hospital and co-authors studied almost 9,000 neighborhoods in southern Ontario looking at walk ability scores along with government health data and survey results during a 12 year period they examined whether rates of overweight obesity and new cases of diabetes were rising more slowly in neighborhoods that were easier to walk in rates of overweight and obesity were much lower in the most walkable neighborhoods compared to less walkable ones and we’re actually stable over time in the most walkable neighborhoods whereas they were

1:02 · continuing to increase in less walkable areas the study appears in JAMA Journal of the American Medical Association rates of diabetes were actually going down and then least in terms of the number new cases in the most walkable areas where as rates were not falling in

1:19 · less walkable areas neighborhoods with lower rates of obesity and diabetes also had higher rates of walking biking and mass transit use it doesn’t mean that if we build neighborhoods differently that rates of overweight and obesity will fall but it’s certainly hopeful and it gives us more information and some potential solutions that we can test in the future Catherine Dolf the Jama report

New affordable housing community features gym, food mart, even cooking classes

News 5 Cleveland, 11 13, 2023

Video (2:31)

Description

Grand opening celebrations were held Monday at The Davis, an affordable housing community in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood that includes the latest University Hospitals Community Wellness Center

Transcript

0:00 · INTRODUCTION AT TONIGHT CITY COUNCIL MEETING. IT’S APPROVED, THE AMENDMENT WOULD BECOME EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.

0:04 · WHERE YOU LIVE CAN AFFECT HOW LONG YOU LIVE. SOMETHING WE’VE TOLD YOU ABOUT FOR SEVERAL YEARS. HERE IS 5. BUT DID YOU KNOW THERE’S A 23 YEAR LIFE EXPECTANCY GAP BETWEEN PEOPLE LIVING IN CLEVELAND’S HALF GLENNVILLE OR FAIRFAX NEIGHBORHOODS COMPARED TO SOMEONE LIVING IN A SUBURB LIKE LYNDHURST. THAT’S ACCORDING TO UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS IN TODAY. SO FIRST HAND, HOW THEY’RE WORKING TO CHANGE THAT STATISTIC.

0:27 · THIS IS A VERY HARD IN NORMAN OF CLEVELAND WAS LOOKING FOR A NEW PLACE TO LIVE. SHE COULDN’T PASS UP THE DAVIS APARTMENTS NOT ONLY FOR THE NEW CONSTRUCTION, THE PROJECT AFFORDS THE RESIDENTS, BUT FOR THE AMENITIES THAT COME WITH THE 52 1, 2, 3 BEDROOM APARTMENTS HERE, A LOT AT STAKE. IS THAT IT COULDN’T CLASS.

0:43 · I’VE BEEN TRYING TO GET MY TENNIS. WE WITH RECREATION SO WE CAN LOSE THE WEIGHT AND EVERYTHING ELSE THAT LIKE THAT. YOU RIGHT, JIM. AND YESTERDAY, CASE IS GOING ADD A LOT OF RICHNESS COOKING CLASSES. SO I’M A LITTLE EXTRA SEE, THAT’S DAVIS IS A PARTNERSHIP THAT BRINGS HOUSING. YES, BUT ALSO HEALTH CARE IN THE FORM OF THE UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS, COMMUNITY OUTREACH CENTER AS PART OF THE BUILDING.

1:07 · THAT INCLUDES A FOOD FOR LIFE MARKET WHERE MEMBERS OF THE ENTIRE GLENNVILLE COMMUNITY CAN NOT ONLY LEARN ABOUT MAKING HEALTHY MEALS THROUGH A COLLABORATION WITH THE GREATER CLEVELAND FOOD BANK FIND THE FOODS NEEDED TO MAKE THEM.

1:19 · THIS IS HELPING TO KIND OF BRIDGE THAT GAP FOR OUR CLIENTS ARE COMMUNITY MEMBERS TO IMPROVE TO HAVE ACCESS TO FOOD OR FOOD, INSECURE, TO MAKE SURE THAT THEY HAVE HEALTHY OPTIONS AND THE EDUCATION AND RESOURCES AND KNOWLEDGE TO PREPARE HEALTHY FOODS AND THEIR OWN HOMES. THE COMPLEX IS LOCATED ON THE SITE OF THE OLD HARRY DAVIS MIDDLE SCHOOL IN GLENNVILLE AND OPEN TO RESIDENTS WHO MAKE UP TO 60% OF THE AREA’S MEDIAN INCOME. THE DAVIS IS ALREADY FULLY THE EAST AT ABOUT 50% OCCUPY WITH MOST OF THE REMAINING TENANTS MOVING IN OVER THE NEXT MONTH OR SO. I THINK THAT JUST GOES TO SHOW THAT.

1:48 · GREATER CLEVELAND, THE DEMAND FOR NEW HIGH QUALITY, RELIABLE AFFORDABLE HOUSING IS JUST REALLY, REALLY STRONG. AND IT’S REALLY IMPORTANT TO CONTINUE TO DEVELOP THIS KIND OF PRODUCT FOR THE IN A AND THAT IS WHY DEVELOPERS AND UH OF LEFT THE DOOR OPEN FOR POSSIBLE EXPANSION.

2:05 · THAT IS A REALLY COOL HOLISTIC APPROACH, SO WHAT ELSE IS BEING DONE POVERTY?

2:11 · SUCH BEING SUCH A KEY THING HERE IN CLEVELAND, CLEVELAND, AMONG THE MOST IMPOVERISHED CITIES IN THE NATION, ACCORDING TO THE U.S. CENSUS BUREAU, THE CITY CREATED AN ENTIRE DIVISION WITHIN THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH TO ADDRESS THE PROBLEMS THAT LEAD TO SUCH DISPARITIES. SO JUST ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE. AND IN AUGUST, WE TOLD YOU ABOUT THE CITY’S FOOD SYSTEM. STRATEGIES COORDINATOR WHO PLAN TO HELP NEIGHBORHOODS TACKLE

North Omaha Legacies & More

North Omaha Legacies North Omaha Legacies & More Nebraska Stories Nebraska Public Media

Nebraska Public Media, 04 11, 2023

Video (8:03)

Description

Launched in January of 2022, Preston Love, Jr. guides us on a tour of his beloved North Omaha that celebrates the past and embraces the future. Come along and learn about this historic neighborhood, including a visit to “The Street of Dreams.”

Transcript

0:00 · (light jazz music) (light jazz music) (light jazz music) (light jazz music) [Preston] Well, the truth of

the matter is I’m passionate about my beloved

community, North Omaha, and that passion has taken

on the form of me wanting everyone who comes in

contact or who does not to learn more about

our community, its history and its culture.

0:31 · (mellow jazz music) [Narrator] Writer, activist

and native Nebraskan Preston Love Jr., is

on a mission to change people’s perspectives on

the North Omaha community and he’s found an innovative

way to do it by bringing them to the historically African

American neighborhood.

0:49 · it’s[Preston] That’s why I’m

doing the tour for the purpose of educating

and hopefully waking up people and making them more

aware of this wonderful, my beloved, but wonderful,

glorious community.

1:04 · [Narrator] Called the

North Omaha Legacy Tour it focuses on the

rich heritage, legacy and historical contributions

of the community.

1:13 · It begins with a short

orientation to provide context for the tour, followed

by a drive through areas that are culturally significant.

1:23 · (light jazz music) [Preston] The Omaha Star

is historic in so many ways but it tells a story

about a community, like communities

all over this nation who grew their own things because of racism and

discrimination and bigotry.

1:42 · The Omaha Star was

founded in 1938 by a very eccentric woman by the name of Mildred Brown.

1:51 · Mildred Brown was a

unique lady in her day because she was an African

American business woman in a day where

there weren’t a lot and she was a go-getter,

she started that business.

2:04 · It is still going, but The

Star has quite a history.

2:08 · It was started with the idea

that it would only write the good news about the

residents of North Omaha and it has stayed

with that all along.

2:20 · You have the most

current edition in your pack that I gave you.

2:24 · (light jazz music) [Preston] The Great Plains

Black History Museum is a chronicle in itself.

2:30 · It’s a tour within four

walls, if you will.

2:34 · And so, it has great, great

value for people to learn about the past and how it

connects with the future.

2:42 · Many things I’m going

to turn you over to the executive director of the Great Plains Museum, Eric Ewing.

2:54 · [Eric] As you look around

the exhibit that you’ll find in this space is the

history of historically Black colleges and universities.

3:01 · This is a year long

exhibit, so actually, even what you see right now

by the end of this week, it will be 10 to

eight new institutions because there’s so many schools we couldn’t feature

’em all at once, so what we decided to do was

make it a year long exhibit and each month we change

out the institutions that are on display.

3:23 · [Narrator] But this

tour isn’t just about North Omaha’s past, it’s about revitalizing this

once thriving community.

3:31 · [Preston] We visit some

of our community gardens which are propping up.

3:36 · We visit and comment on

the amount of vacant lots that are unutilized

property in the community.

3:45 · We visit the many wonderful

new and exciting murals in the community and then we visit the

significant residuals of this long-term

community disinvestment, the community’s

economic devastation.

4:02 · All of that is caught up and is mentioned and

part of the tour as well.

4:08 · [Narrator] It also

includes a stop at the site that was once home to

the first Black honoree in the Nebraska Hall of Fame.

4:16 · [Preston] The Malcolm X

Center speaks for itself in my mind because people

are interested and some are just learning that the

iconic Malcolm X was born in this community and so

we go to his birth site.

4:33 · It’s a natural and

it is significant.

4:36 · [Schmeeka] Thank you everyone

for being on this great tour for stopping to visit us here at the Malcolm X

Memorial Foundation.

4:45 · We want everyone to come and

learn the truth of who he was as a man, as a child, as

a husband, as a father, and learn and help

support our mission in uplifting this community.

4:57 · [Narrator] Opening minds

and changing opinions is what Preston Love Jr. hopes

to achieve through the tour, and it seems to be working.

5:05 · Well, the things with

the Malcolm X thing at the end of the tour

was interesting to me.

5:11 · I mean, the things that we

heard about Malcolm X years ago were not very nice

to say the least, and so to see what’s happened and how the people here

have taken an interest in showing what he really did and things that have happened

and are trying to make changes in this whole area based

on his foundation here.

5:35 · So, I think that’s fantastic.

5:37 · Probably one of the

most exciting things that I can mention

about the tour, which was expected,

but underestimated was the economic impact

that we’re having on this poverty

stricken community.

5:54 · Since we’ve started,

our estimate is that we have impacted financially over

$50,000 of money that has come into the community

that would not have come if it weren’t for the tour.

6:07 · That’s the tours, buying from

our retail since they’re here, having meals here

since they’re here returning after the tour.

6:18 · (upbeat jazz music) [Gladys] What being a part

of the Legacy tour has done for Big Mama’s is, you know,

continue my mom’s vision of bringing people

together over great food.

6:31 · The tours bring folks

from all over the state, from all walks of life

and in these crazy times that we live in, we need

things to bring people together and my mother always felt that

you could change the world if you prepared

somebody a great meal.

6:45 · (upbeat jazz music) [Preston] I think the tour

is serving a great purpose.

6:50 · I want people to come

and take this tour because they will

learn about a community when they come from

outside the community that they don’t know.

7:00 · Several times I said,

I didn’t know that.

7:04 · The red line delineating

white neighborhoods from black neighborhoods,

I found very interesting.

7:11 · It never occurred to me

that there was an exact dividing line between

neighborhoods.

7:16 · I didn’t know that.

7:18 · You know, one of the

things I’m really proud of, somewhat unexpected but

it is that we really are really making a difference as

it relates to bridging the gap between communities and

culture within the city.

7:34 · We are really making the

difference and I’m proud that as people learn

about our community then they have a tendency to

wanna learn more, number one and reach out and

develop new relationship.

7:46 · (upbeat jazz music) (upbeat jazz music) (upbeat jazz music)

Omaha Explained Redlining

Cameron Logsdon, 10 09, 2020

Video (11:00)

Description

This (long-ass) video explores the history of redlining in Omaha, NE, the effects of which have lead to Omaha being one of the most segregated cities in the United States. The long-lasting impact of racist redlining practices in Omaha parallel many cities across the country. Learn about your city’s history, find out if there are people trying to improve your community, and donate or get active. Find out more about Omaha in the links below.

Great Plains Black History Museum

https://gpblackhistorymuseum.org

The Union for Contemporary Art

https://www.u-ca.org

Culxr House

https://www.culxr.house

Purpose Built Communities

https://purposebuiltcommunities.org

Seventy Five North

http://www.seventyfivenorth.org

Southside Redevelopment Corporation

https://www.southsideomaha.org

(And hey, Go Vote)

https://www.vote.org

Transcript

Redlining and the Hidden History of White-Only Suburbs

TIME, 11 03, 2022

Video (10:31)

Description

Race-based federal lending rules from New Deal programs in the 1930s kept Black families locked out of suburban neighborhoods, a policy that continues to slow economic mobility. Video by TIME & Retro Report

Read more History You Didn’t Learn: https://ti.me/3gYspaQ

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0:13 Racist Housing Covenants in California Suburbs

1:23 How New Deal Housing Policies Fueled Segregation

2:11 Redlining and the Federal Government’s Role

2:51 How Ladera Became a White-Only Community

4:08 Hidden Housing Discrimination in Silicon Valley

5:15 East Palo Alto and the “Wrong Side of the Freeway”

6:29 The Lasting Economic Divide Between Suburbs

7:01 Homeownership and America’s Racial Wealth Gap

9:00 Can the Legacy of Housing Segregation Be Reversed?

9:38 Removing White-Only Language From Ladera’s Deeds

Transcript

Racist Housing Covenants in California Suburbs

0:13 · thank you when Sanu sadani is Rani bought a house in this neighborhood in California’s Silicon Valley she found something disturbing in the fine print of her home deed the language that I read basically said the only people allowed to live in this community in these homes are white

0:35 · unless you’re a servant the subdivision is called Ladera and the racist covenants were attached to the Deeds of all 500 some homes here the rules are no longer enforceable or even legal but they’ve been on the books since the neighborhood was laid out 70 years ago and they help illustrate how so many of America’s suburbs ended up segregated it hurts it hurts to be told you’re not welcome forget welcome you’re not allowed it so

1:05 · offended me I thought well this has to be offending everyone who buys property here [Music]

How New Deal Housing Policies Fueled Segregation

1:23 · some of ladera’s residents set out to understand how this happened and it turned out these relics of segregation grew out of a historical moment more often remembered for progressivism and inclusion to a new deal for the American people

1:41 · the New Deal programs launched between 1933 and the end of the second world war transformed Society but black Americans reaped far fewer benefits from these programs than white Americans the New Deal expanded government capacities in a

1:56 · way that provided economic rights for people the right to Capital the right to a job the right to Health Care the right to old age pension what was problematic is that that right was not inclusive one of the clearest examples of this came when New Deal agencies began ensuring affordable home loans before backing the loans agencies mapped communities across the country dividing them into zones judged to be higher or lower risk for banks records show a key

Redlining and the Federal Government’s Role

2:27 · factor Federal map makers used to determine this perceived risk was race this practice called redlining largely cut people of color off from affordable borrowing it’s not a case that you just had these bigoted bankers and these bigoted homeowners the federal government was culpable black people by Design were excluded from this benefit

How Ladera Became a White-Only Community

2:51 · it’s exactly what happened in Ladera in the late 1940s a mixed race group of about a hundred families banded together to build cheap homes near Stanford University workers teachers and professors including the novelist Wallace stegner formed a Cooperative to buy and transform attractive hilly Ranch Land into an affordable suburb named Ladera but the project soon stalled no bank would give them the loan to build these

3:22 · homes the banks wouldn’t do it because the federal housing Administration wouldn’t insure their loans because of these hundred members of The Cooperative three were African Americans at the time the federal housing Administration explicitly recommended that race restrictions be used in new Suburban developments its lending manual even included instructions for Banning buyers who weren’t the race for which new homes were intended the segregation that this program alone created is

3:52 · responsible for much of the racial inequality we have in this country today unable to find financing the Ladera Cooperative disbanded and sold the land to a private developer who built Ladera as a whites only community by the 1950s this mix of federal policy

Hidden Housing Discrimination in Silicon Valley

4:11 · and private discrimination left few options for black Americans seeking homes in this part of California my dad got involved with the palette of Stanford branch of the NAACP they were proving that there was housing discrimination and it was Notorious here very subtle but it was Notorious my dad could easily

4:33 · pass for white my mom was was brown skinned you knew who she was it was actually something that that was very painful for my mother because my dad would go to rent an apartment or to buy property they’d say wonderful he’d say let me bring my wife and as soon as she came back with him they would say no this is no longer available when my parents came here from Alabama they figured okay this is a nice area we

5:02 · don’t have to worry about our kids getting lynched there’s not open racism but they didn’t factor in that there was a slew of hidden racism about nine miles from Ladera Elwyn raynor’s family opened up this service station in one of the only areas open to Black American Property buyers now known as East Palo Alto the African-Americans were guided to this area any houses on

East Palo Alto and the “Wrong Side of the Freeway”

5:31 · the other side of the freeway were considered to be out of their price range or the interest rate alone would kill that dream of them owning a house because they couldn’t afford it it’s like they say you’re on the wrong side of the tracks for us it was the wrong side of the freeway for decades East

5:50 · Palo Alto and neighboring Belhaven were unincorporated communities without a city government where housing shared space with heavy industry and residents enjoyed few of the amenities available to the majority white suburbs like Palo Alto Menlo Park or Ladera we had roads

6:07 · that were that were you know badly paved we had many many a neighborhood that did not have sidewalks we had a school district that was grossly underfunded you know we were walking in the middle of the street instead of walking on sidewalks we were had bad lighting we had bad water we didn’t even have a city we didn’t have a place where we could go and complain even today East Palo Alto is 70 black and

The Lasting Economic Divide Between Suburbs

6:32 · Latino the median family income is eighty three thousand dollars half the households rent and more than 10 percent of families live in poverty compare this to Ladera 75 percent white the median family income stands just below 200 000 the poverty rate is one percent and nobody rents and it doesn’t

6:54 · take a rocket scientist to figure that one out you know what that’s really all about what’s it all about that well it’s about race what is critical to note is that a white asset-based middle class didn’t simply emerge it was structured and was structured largely through home ownership it was structured largely through policy that facilitated white people to acquire homes that appreciated over their lifetime that could be passed down to Future Generations as well

Homeownership and America’s Racial Wealth Gap

7:25 · the considerable Gap in education and income between America’s black families and white families has slowly narrowed since the Civil Rights era but the Gap in wealth what families own has been a different story throughout American history the racial wealth Gap has been dramatic for every dollar held by a typical white family at the median the typical black family has had about a dime so this asset-based wealth-based white middle class that was generated from New Deal and post-war policies was

7:59 · never extended to black people and economists say one of the most significant factors creating the wealth gap between white and black Americans is home ownership much of a middle-class family’s net worth is determined by the value of their home and whether you or your ancestors could buy one in the first place a home also facilitates your ability to generate wealth to do other

8:23 · things you can finance an expensive college degree with wealth if you want to change jobs you can pursue Your Dreams a home provides access to Neighborhood resources a home provides access to in the American context with public schooling good schools my father’s family was a group of seven that lived in one room so when I look at the opportunities my children had by living in this neighborhood function of purely geography

8:54 · that zip code it’s a huge amount of privilege to have grown up in this neighborhood there’s no quick fix for the inequality that’s grown out of residential segregation but researchers say it’s worth considering what history can teach us [Music] the problems that exist today what it’s important to note they’re not insurmountable the New Deal was about jobs it was about income it was about pension it was about health there are certain enabling goods and services that

Can the Legacy of Housing Segregation Be Reversed?

9:24 · people need in order to thrive that’s a reality and just like government facilitated it in the past they can facilitate it today only this time they can do it in a way that is inclusive in the meantime a group of Volunteers in Ladera gathered enough signatures to formally strike the whites only language from all 534 deeds in the subdivision we

Removing White-Only Language From Ladera’s Deeds

9:49 · didn’t have a statue of Robert E Lee in our neighborhood but we did have this and we had the power to get rid of it and I would say that if the pendulum had to go from you are not allowed to taking them down we now need to say you are welcome

Residential streets are too wide. Here’s why

City Beautiful, 09 12, 2017

Video (5:34)

Description

In many places in the United States, residential streets were as wide as busy city streets. I understand why urban streets might need to be wide — parking, buses, traffic, and bike lanes all need the room. But why do quiet residential streets need to be so wide? Why do they need parking when all of the houses on the streets have garages and driveways? Why do they need wide lanes when most of the traffic is just cars and minivans? Why are we building residential streets as wide as big city streets?

Resources on this topic:

I based this video on my Master’s thesis, which my advisor and I turned into a book chapter. You can buy the book, Retrofitting Sprawl, on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820345458/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0820345458&linkCode=as2&tag=cityb-20&linkId=fd656b3efd3b9143ed3a413a9e2ea148

Video sources: - Videoblocks.com

Photo sources: - AASHTO - Blake Wheeler (via Unsplash.com) - Drew DeVitis https://psudelft2015drewdevitis.wordpress.com/2015/07/12/the-woonerf-living-streets-for-people/ - Google Maps - NASA - Wikimedia Commons

Filmed in sunny Sacramento, California.

Transcript

Superblocks How Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars

Vox, 09 27, 2016

Video (5:30)

Description

Modern cities are designed for cars. But the city of Barcelona is testing out an urban design trick that can give cities back to pedestrians.

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Read more: http://www.vox.com/2016/8/4/12342806/barcelona-superblocks

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Transcript

0:01 · If you imagine a typical American city street, and you take away the space that’s dedicated to cars, you aren’t left with very much.

0:09 · There are some narrow walkways on the side, and some bridges in between them, but not much else.

0:13 · Cars dominate cities.

0:16 · Spend some time walking around most cities and you’ll find yourself pushed to narrow sidewalks, waiting for crosswalk lights.

0:20 · You’ll find cyclists navigating really narrow strips of space.

0:23 · Americans are used to cars the way that fish are used to water.

0:28 · That’s so ubiquitous in the U.S. that I think for most people, it just never occurred to them that it could be otherwise.

0:35 · But what if there were a way to change that?

0:36 · To give space back to pedestrians and bicyclists, and to make cities more friendly to life outside of a car?

0:43 · It turns out Barcelona might have a solution.

0:48 · In 2014, the city was faced with serious air pollution problems.

0:51 · Barcelona and its 35 surrounding municipalities consistently failed to meet the EU’s air quality targets.

0:57 · Studies were showing that air pollution in the region causes 3,500 premature deaths every year.

1:03 · Traffic in the city also causes severe noise pollution.

1:05 · So the city developed an extensive Urban Mobility Plan with the hope of reducing traffic by 21 percent.

1:11 · The coolest part of the plan were these things: They call them “superilles”.

1:17 · Superilles?

1:18 · “Si, superilles.”

1:19 · That translates to “superblocks”.

1:21 · It’s this urban design concept intended to minimize the presence of cars in city centers.

1:26 · The word “superblock” has been used before to describe huge city blocks without any passageways for cars.

1:31 · But that’s not what’s happening here.

1:33 · So here’s how Barcelona’s plan works.

1:35 · You take nine square city blocks and close off the inside to through traffic.

1:39 · So buses, big freight trucks — or any vehicles that are trying to get from one part of town to the next — have to drive around the perimeter.

1:47 · Inside the superblock, the speed limit is kept to 10 kilometers per hour — that translates to just over 6 miles per hour — and curbside parking is replaced by underground parking.

1:55 · That means you wind up with street space for markets, outdoor games, and events.

2:00 · Within this nine square block perimeter you’re gonna have kind of a pleasant streetscape where people can walk around and mingle and do things without this kind of constant fear of cars around.

2:13 · The concept is going to be tested out in five neighborhoods, but the city has identified 120 possible intersections throughout the region where it could be implemented.

2:22 · So how do we know what the results of this kind of plan would look like?

2:24 · Well, northwest of Barcelona is a city called Vitoria-Gasteiz, which has implemented superblock designs since 2008.

2:30 · In the main superblock at the city center, pedestrian space increased from 45 percent of the total surface area to 74 percent.

2:37 · With so much less traffic, noise levels dropped from 66.5 dBA to 61 dBA.

2:43 · Most impressive of all, there was a 42% reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions and a 38% reduction in particle pollution in the area.

2:51 · On top of that, business is up.

2:52 · What you consistently see when people change their streetscapes to prioritize human beings over cars is you don’t see any decline in economic activity, you see the opposite.

3:03 · You get more people walking and cycling around more slowly, stopping more often patronizing businesses more, and that … center of social activity will tend to build on itself.

3:15 · So here’s the question: could something like this work in an American city?

3:20 · Barcelona has some unique advantages getting started on this plan, in that a lot of it was built before cars, and a lot of it was built on a simple grid.

3:32 · The district of Eixample — where the superblock plan is based — was designed in 1859 in this repetitive grid structure by this guy, Ildefons Cerdá.

3:41 · He basically invented the word for (and the study of) “urbanization” when he laid out this grid plan for Barcelona that evenly distributed resources like schools and hospitals.

3:51 · But superblock designers insist that cities don’t need a simple grid structure to implement this kind of plan.

3:56 · It can work anywhere.

3:58 · Now, cities in the US have have attempted some car-minimizing projects like this.

4:01 · The problem is, they’re usually done in wealthier areas with lots of existing businesses.

4:07 · Zoning policies often require separation of residential and commercial areas — but an ideal walkable area would be a mix of the two.

4:14 · On top of that, zoning minimums on parking availability encourage the presence of cars and parking lots, and minimums on street width make for wide, unwalkable streets.

4:24 · Because of that, walkable districts are basically isolated luxury items in the US.

4:29 · What makes the Barcelona plan different is that they aren’t setting aside one fancy neighborhood or town square to make pedestrian-friendly — instead, by proposing superblocks throughout the entire city, they’ve declared car-free spaces a right for everybody, no matter what part of town they’re in.

4:44 · Maybe — this might be overly optimistic — but I think it has sunk in in the U. S. that the model whereby every city resident comes with a car — and drives a car everywhere – is just inherently limited.

4:57 · It limits the growth of your city, it limits the health of your city and the growth of your city.

5:01 · So one way or another we have to find ways of having a lot of people live close to one another without all of them having cars.

5:11 · You know, being able to get around and work and play in live and have enjoyable lives without cars.

The Dutch Solution for Safer Sidewalks - Continuous Sidewalks

Not Just Bikes, 12 02, 2019

Video (3:44)

Description

Watch this video ad-free on Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/not-just-bikes-the-dutch-solution-for-safer-sidewalks-continuous-sidewalks

Time to get excited about SIDEWALKS! The Netherlands does a lot to ensure a safe environment for pedestrians and cyclists, but the one that stands out the most for me is continuous sidewalks.

This video explores the basic concept of these safer sidewalks that are used everywhere in the Netherlands, but extremely rare (or poorly implemented) in other countries. This is an important part of the sustainable safety / vision zero efforts of the Netherlands to make streets safer for vulnerable road users.

Patreon: https://patreon.com/notjustbikes

Twitter: https://twitter.com/notjustbikes

Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/notjustbikes

One-time donations: https://notjustbikes.com/donate

NJB Live (my bicycle livestream channel):

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9v57F4xz46KaDsvWfCv8yw

Transcript

North American design

0:00 · 如果你把鏡頭帶到美、加的十字路口看起來大約會像是這樣人行道在路緣中斷然後降到車道的高度你會明顯感覺到自己穿過一段給車走的路車上的駕駛經過也會覺得看起來跟其他車道相差無幾劃出行人穿越範圍的只有跟慢車道一樣單薄的那條「神奇白線」但它對減緩車速似乎沒有多大的效果即使加掛一塊「停車再開」也差不多嘿！老兄！這裡要「停車再開」！

0:29 · 唉…… 再看看阿姆斯特丹的路口行人經過路口時，人行道是沒有中斷的高度也不會下降這個設計的內在語言就是說「這裡是給人走的」駕駛經過時這裡的路面鋪設和坡度都能清楚告訴駕駛該要減速連續型人行道不是荷蘭的專利

The Dutch approach

0:57 · 但沒有哪個國家做得跟荷蘭一樣完善這是英國倫敦的案例如你所見，路口跟人行道一樣被抬高但是有兩條黃色線而且穿越道的顏色和其他車道一致而不是和人行道一致這表示它仍然屬於車道的一部份雖然它還是有減速丘的功能但從其他的設計上，它還是給車走的

London’s design

Copenhagen’s crossings

1:28 · 接著來看看丹麥哥本哈根這個方案肯定比較優越它看起來更像是人行道而不是車道當有自行車道時車輛經過路口會有二階段的下降但如果我是駕駛的話還是很有可能會直接衝過路口

1:45 · 卻完全沒有注意到這個行人穿越道而且還有更多路口根本沒有這種設計回到荷蘭看看穿越道的顏色與人行道一致車輛駕駛可以很明確感受到自己即將經過一段「給人走的路」坡道的抬升也會從離路口遠一點的地方開始車輛在經過時就可以更早知道要減速

Principles of Dutch design

2:04 · 車道的轉彎處有時候還是扇形的但是曲率半徑會做得很小路緣會截止得很急促，讓路口呈90度角車輛必須幾乎停止才能轉得過去減速一來可以讓駕駛比較不容易撞上別人一來是即使撞上了也不會造成太嚴重的傷害

2:27 · 除此之外還有一個優點是經過無中斷人行道進入巷子的車輛會感覺跨過界線進入一個不同的區域這個區域速限較低，也會有更多行人在活動當然，這種方式只適用於支道和幹道交會的路口

Application and context

2:43 · 幹道路口會使用不同的設計也會有行人專用號誌當街道與街道交會時整個路口會像是一個巨大的減速丘這我會在後續的影片中詳細介紹如果有自行車專用道它會跟人行道一樣抬高它會與人行道高度相同自行車騎士就不需要先下坡再上坡也不太需要減速這也還蠻合理的，因為自行車騎士還是騎在主要道路上不應該在行經巷口時還得減速

3:10 · 你很難用言語描述在這種環境下步行有多舒適就好像人才是城市的主角而車輛只是過客不會像以往那樣喧賓奪主在荷蘭道路的許多優秀設計中我認為這點是全世界的城市都該馬上執行來改善道路環境的這不只讓行人更安全也讓步行這個選項更加的怡人人們會因此更常選擇步行

The Problem of New York City Trash

The New York Times, 08 13, 2024

Video (2:19)

Description

Is this how one of the world’s greatest cities still deals with garbage? Larry Buchanan, one of the New York Times reporters who walked miles around the city pondering trash for this story, explains what will be required to take New York’s trash bags off the street.

Video by Larry Buchanan, Karen Hanley and Ruru Kuo

Read the story here: https://nyti.ms/4dCL3Nw

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Transcript

Intro

0:00 · what you see when you look at the street in New York closely is trash there’s trash um all over the place when you watch sanitation workers pick up trash you realize how many things they’re dealing with all the time like the cars are parked very tight so they have to like drag bags between cars often times they can’t roll bins between cars or they’re dragging trash kind of through tree pits part of the you know problem

The Problem

0:23 · here is that like if you’ve ever been driving in New York City and you’re stuck behind a trash truck you just got to sit and you sit and you wait and then people start to get impatient and then they honk and the car’s back up in 1968 there was a sanitation workers strike this strike uh went from on for more than a week and while this was happening

The History

0:39 · the Plastics industry dropped a whole bunch of plastic bags on the city it was like a new invention at the time you used to have to put your trash in a can in a kind of metal loud Oscar the Grouch trash can um but after the strike sanitation workers thought the bags were easier to sling uh you know they could drag them between cars easier they weren’t loud and so you know we are

0:58 · stuck with these plastic bags the hope now with this new plan is to use the street if you’re a big building you get an on Street container that’s dedicated to your building the super of the building has the key they unlock it they put the trash in these kind of like you know Street on Street containers the trash truck is fitted with this little arm that you drive down the street it kind of like picks up the bin it like

The New Plan

1:19 · dumps it in and it’s very nice and cute and they do it in Barcelona and you know other European cities except in New York City when you you know uh want to put something somewhere you have to take something away from somebody else so this will essentially take away street parking um on the order of you know tens of thousands of parking spots all across the city the other parts of the plan are for small buildings and mediumsized buildings small buildings will use kind of like wheeled bins which maybe sounds

1:44 · fine uh except in some cases again it’s just very tough to find places to kind of put these things uh and then the mediumsized buildings will have a choice between kind of these wheeled bins or between um an on Street container they put out a proposal to get companies to bid on the design of what the container looks like they have like finished the a prototype of this like new trash truck they debuted it you know um like concrete jungles where dreams are made it was like playing and then like the trash and but anyway so they’re starting this pilot program in West Harlem um and

2:13 · they’ll see how it works and try to work out any issues gradually I would say you know roll it out to the rest of the city

The traffic solution most cities haven’t tried

Vox, 05 03, 2019

Video (5:33)

Description

Congestion pricing works – just look at London.

Become a Video Lab member! http://bit.ly/video-lab

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently announced a plan to bring congestion pricing to New York City. The goal is to raise money for the city’s crumbling public transit system and reclaim the dangerously busy city streets. But what is congestion pricing, and can it actually solve all our transit woes?

We took a look at London, a city that enacted a congestion charge in 2003, to see some of the benefits. Check out the video above to learn more.

For further reading look to our sister site, Curbed: https://www.curbed.com/

https://www.curbed.com/search?q=congestion+pricing

For information on New York’s potential earnings and benefits:

http://www.hntb.com/HNTB/media/HNTBMediaLibrary/Home/Fix-NYC-Panel-Report.pdf

And a closer look at how much money is wasted sitting in traffic:

http://pfnyc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/2018-01-Congestion-Pricing.pdf

Finally – Check out this article by Nicole Badstuber on how London congestion pricing has started to level out and the plans the city has in place to bring revenue back up:

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/04/londons-congestion-charge-needs-updating/557699/

Note: The headline for this video has been updated since publishing.

Previous headline: How London is fighting its nightmare traffic

Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what’s really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com.

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Or Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H

Transcript

The problem with urban traffic

0:00 · So, it’s 5 o’clock in New York City and I’m about to catch a cab about 5 miles uptown.

0:07 · Let’s see how this goes.

0:24 · So it just took me 40 minutes to go about 4.5 miles which is pretty typical for New York City rush hour.

0:32 · Despite a speed limit of 25 miles per hour, the average car moving through NYC is driving at just 7.1 MPH, down from 9.1 MPH in 2010.

0:42 · And if you’re in midtown it’s even worse, with cars moving around 5 MPH.

0:47 · But it’s not just New York City – traffic in cities like LA is so bad drivers could be locked in gridlock for hours.

0:54 · Of course this sucks for drivers, but it also makes activities like biking or walking less safe because cyclists and pedestrians have to weave through an obstacle course of cars.

1:04 · Not to mention the estimated 20 billion dollars in lost revenue due to wasted time sitting in traffic.

1:10 · Now, there might be a solution, but if you commute by car, you are probably not gonna like it.

Introducing congestion pricing

1:17 · It’s called congestion pricing. And it means charging drivers for using the roads.

1:21 · “Congestion pricing is an idea whose time has come. And I believe this is the year to actually get it done.”

1:31 · New York’s plan is still in the works, and it probably won’t be enacted until 2020.

1:36 · But the end game is to reduce congestion by discouraging people from driving if they have other options like biking, or taking a train, or walking.

1:44 · And to fund public transit at the same time.

1:48 · It’s not a groundbreaking idea: congestion pricing is already old news in cities around the world.

The London model

1:53 · London enacted a similar policy in 2003.

1:56 · This is a necessary step for us to reclaim some of the space that is currently given to a motorized vehicles without ending up with gridlock.

2:04 · Nicole Badstuber researches urban infrastructure and policy at the University of Cambridge and according to her, the system’s pretty simple.

2:12 · When drivers enter the Central London congestion zone between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., they’re charged 11 pounds 50 pence – about 15 US dollars.

2:21 · New York City’s plan will be similar.

2:22 · When drivers enter Midtown or Lower Manhattan, they’ll face a fee.

2:26 · There’s cameras all around the roads at the edges of the congestion charging area.

2:31 · They automatically recognize the name plate of the car or the vehicle entering the zone.

2:36 · London has a few exemptions in place, like for people who live inside the congestion zone or vehicles with 9 or more seats and New York City will likely do that, too. And the system works.

2:47 · So since it was introduced, we’ve seen that private vehicles entering the zone have gone down by 40 percent.

2:54 · Overall vehicle traffic has gone down by 25 percent.

Results and public space

2:57 · Cycling overall has increased 66% since the charge was instituted and bus ridership reached a 50-year high in 2011.

3:04 · And wait times for buses decreased 25%, due to increased service both on buses and on the London Underground.

3:10 · So we now, in comparison, still have much higher frequencies of London Underground services.

3:15 · We can get more people, more capacity, more people into our trains because we have newer trains.

3:20 · And like Nicole said, congestion pricing isn’t just about removing cars from specific zones, it’s about reclaiming a space for the public.

3:28 · Picture Trafalgar Square, but designed for cars – an idea that was very much a reality before congestion pricing.

3:35 · You would basically have a bus driving right past your nose as you come out of the National Gallery Reclaiming that section of road made the square safer and opened it to more public events.

3:44 · No one could imagine going back to what it was before, and having these cars and buses zoom past you.

Resistance and future goals

3:52 · London’s plan is widely embraced today, but it was met with resistance at first, with opponents arguing that congestion pricing could cut people off from health care, shopping, and schools.

4:02 · Plus, people had to trust that the government would work efficiently and make significant improvements to their public transit system.

4:09 · But within a year, London’s congestion charging had majority support.

4:13 · As New York’s plan is being finalized, some similar resistance is cropping up, which isn’t too surprising.

4:19 · After all, it’s the first US city to implement this type of congestion pricing and no one wants to pay for something they’ve gotten for free for so long.

4:27 · But the plan could generate up to a billion dollars for public transit, a system that most agree desperately needs repair.

4:33 · And the city estimates it will reduce congestion by 8 to 13 percent and increase speeds by up to 9 percent, making a ride through midtown a lot easier.

4:43 · So, like other cities where congestion pricing has been successful, it’s likely that people will end up accepting it.

Reimagining public roads

4:49 · When we think of our roads, in particular in cities, as a sort of public good, as a public space, then if you’re taking up more of it you should probably be paying for that privilege.

5:01 · If you start to think about how everyone gets around the city, charging cars begins to make a lot more sense: You pay for parking, pay for the subway, pay to take a train or a bus, so why wouldn’t we pay for a city road?

5:16 · Thanks for watching. If you haven’t already heard, we’ve launched a paid membership program called the Vox Video Lab, right here on YouTube.

5:22 · For a monthly fee, subscribers get access to tons of exclusive content and becoming a member is the best way to support our journalism.

5:29 · So if you want to join, head over to vox.com/join and we’ll see you there.

Urban Designer Answers City Planning Questions From Twitter Tech Support WIRED

WIRED, 08 27, 2024

Video (11:35)

Description

Former Chief Urban Designer of The City of New York Alexandros Washburn joins WIRED to answer the internet’s burning questions about city planning. How does the New York City Subway compare to others worldwide? What are the pros and cons of rent control initiatives? Which city can lay claim to being “smartest” in the world? Or has the best airport? What challenges will the urban designers of tomorrow need to meet? Alexandros Washburn answers these questions and many more on City Planning Support.

0:00 Urban Planning Support

0:15 Safer bike lanes

0:37 How does the NYC Subway compare to others worldwide?

1:26 The pros and cons of rent control policy

2:33 Sorry, Boston drivers

2:56 Green Singapore

3:43 …featuring the best airport in the world

4:29 P A R I S

5:09 Smart cities

5:39 Car go vroom

6:24 Converting empty offices into housing

7:30 The challenges facing urban planners of tomorrow

8:17 Library Late Nites

8:50 Why pay tolls?

9:49 How to survive summer Dubai heat

10:49 “Fixing” Los Angeles traffic?

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Transcript

Urban Planning Support

0:00 · I’m Alexandros Washburn, former Chief Urban Designer of New York City, and I’m here to answer your questions from the internet. This is “City Planning Support.”

0:08 · [upbeat music] @UrbanistOrg asks, “How can cities make bike lanes safer?”

Safer bike lanes

0:18 · The answer might surprise you.

0:19 · You know what we found out in New York?

0:20 · The best way to make a bike lane safer on say Sixth Avenue, park cars next to it. We moved the parking lane away from the curb and put the bike lane on the sidewalk side of the cars. Now those parked cars act like a buffer.

0:35 · @erwnn asks, “Is the New York City subway really that bad compared to other world city metro systems?”

How does the NYC Subway compare to others worldwide?

0:42 · Short answer is yes. It’s a great system in the way it’s been laid out and how many miles it is. It’s one of the world’s largest systems. It hasn’t been maintained very well. And one of the reasons is that the city that never sleeps, we never shut down the subways at night to fix ’em. The cumulative effects of lack of maintenance or sleep for our subways have really caught up with us.

1:03 · And things are not good right now. It’s also interesting if you go to another city with a major metro system, say like Moscow, you will be amazed at how fast the trains run and how fast the escalators go. There’s just kind of a sense of pace that we seem to have lost. We have neglected our subways and we have a long way to go to make ’em halfway as good as many cities around the world.

1:24 · @_deep_yearning asks, “Guys, can anyone help me understand something?

The pros and cons of rent control policy

1:28 · Is rent control bad or good?

1:30 · Like what are the pros and cons of it?”

1:32 · Rent control is a tool to make cities more affordable. It should be a good thing. Some places in the world where rent control is actually a national policy, say Germany, has a pretty stable, solid housing market. It seems to work. But then again, rent control in other places has different effects. Sometimes people don’t wanna build a building if they know it’s gonna be rent controlled in the future.

1:56 · Sometimes banks don’t wanna give a loan on a building that will be rent controlled in the future because nobody knows what the future will bring. And development starts drying up.

2:05 · Why can rent control be workable in one place and then have a chilling effect on another?

2:11 · And, you know, I think the answer is actually societal. You know, places where it works best are relatively homogeneous societies. It becomes a policy tool, not a discrimination tool. Keep rent control in your toolkit. But there are other tools like rent support vouchers, or simply increase your supply. @infosec_Taylor, “Okay, Boston folk, you win. This is the worst city I have driven in. You get the gold medal.

Sorry, Boston drivers

2:38 · Why would you let your city planners do this to you?”

2:40 · As we all know, Boston was planned by cows. Essentially, the streets of Boston follow 17th century cow paths that crisscrossed it. It’s as simple as that. Sometimes even the planners aren’t at fault.

2:53 · @PKC5G asks, “Why So green, Singapore?”

Green Singapore

2:58 · Singapore, one of my favorite cities, a green city because it made a decision at its very start to be a city in a park. Everything about it is geared towards bringing the nature into the city and using nature like infrastructure. Part of their main issues is of course the very hot climate. So nature becomes a way of creating a microclimate. So the plants have a cooling effect on the city. In fact, they’re little solar panels.

3:21 · They take solar energy and they turn it into biomass. And that biomass pulls the energy out of the microclimate system and beyond that turns it into shade, which then protects the pavement itself from getting over hot, and it creates oxygen to boot. It’s a win win win. Singaporeans are pretty smart.

3:40 · DaemonPrinceOfCorn, “What airports are perfect, close to perfect or otherwise great?”

featuring the best airport in the world

3:47 · So Singapore is the best because anytime they have to figure out how many square feet do we need for say security, they double it, triple it, quadruple it. They know that everything is growing, so they look ahead.

3:59 · Then they ask, are people bored in between flights?

4:02 · The answer was yes. So they built the most incredible nature park inside of an airport with hundreds foot tall waterfall, incredible jungle trails you can take, shopping, dining. It becomes a place. It’ll be good for us in the United States to start thinking about it that way. Let’s make an airport you actually will be delighted to visit.

4:24 · All right, @energyper250mlserve asks, “Are there any cities that are really doing everything or almost everything right in regards to urban planning?”

P A R I S

4:35 · The answer is yes. And that city is Paris. They do everything right, and it’s very annoying. Bike share, they did it first. New York, we love our city bikes, but we stole the idea. The high line, they did it first. It was called the Promenade plantee; we stole it. The next one that I’d like to steal from them is that they’ve made a network of streets that are meant to get to schools.

4:58 · So they’re like super safe streets. Streets where you’d be happy for your kids to walk on their own or bike on their own to school. What a great idea. Let’s steal that one too.

5:07 · @Endava asks, “What makes a smart city smart?”

Smart cities

5:11 · A smart city is a city that makes the right decisions. Now, the best cities right now for smart are the ones that have great databases because the data helps you make the right decision. An example of data a smart city would use are traffic flows.

5:24 · Where are all the cars right now?

5:26 · Where are they gonna be?

5:27 · What are the impediments?

5:28 · How do we open up?

5:29 · How do we change the patterns?

5:31 · It’s the ability to respond in real time that makes a really good smart city really smart.

5:37 · REEDIT_SUB_ADMIN, “What is the biggest reason America is so car-dependent?”

Car go vroom

5:41 · The one thing that says it all is a phrase from the 1950s, “What’s good for General Motors is good for America.” The United States, right at the beginning of its largest growth spurt decided that cars were the answer. Everything in American city planning was dimension to a car. How far it turns, how many parking spaces you have to have, how wide the streets are, et cetera. Once you make those decisions, you can’t change ’em.

6:07 · It’s called path dependency. To change that requires a lot of ingenuity. We talked earlier about how you put bike lanes and parking lanes together, but it’s gonna require thinking outside the box, thinking outside the car. @LeannanSaoirse, “Not sure why they aren’t turning the current empty office blocks into small apartments.

Converting empty offices into housing

6:28 · Don’t we need housing more than offices?”

6:30 · Indeed, we do.

6:31 · And it’s totally doable except that we stand in our own way. We’ve created an incredible framework of rules that a building has a specific use and only one use.

6:42 · What are some of these rules that stand in the way?

6:45 · There’s light and air. It’s the first one. If you’re an apartment, you need to be able to open the window. And for some reason, somebody in the sixties or seventies came up with this idea that if you’re an office, you don’t need to open a window. Now, that’s not the way it is in Germany, but in America it’s that way.

6:59 · So you’ve got all these hermetically sealed buildings, and now we gotta get past that, open the window. And then people say, well, you’re gonna be too far away from a window if you fill an office building with apartments. You don’t have to have the apartment go all the way back to the elevator.

7:13 · What if it stops 30 feet back?

7:15 · Which is the current rule for how far away you can be from an opening window.

7:19 · And after that, why not make some space where we can perhaps have some vertical farming?

7:23 · Sure, you can put storage or bill of storage, but why not grow some vegetables?

7:26 · Ok-Status6738 asks, “What do you think are the current and future challenges that affect urban planning?

The challenges facing urban planners of tomorrow

7:34 · It’s declining population.

7:36 · We’re not there yet. Certainly not in America. Certain places are like Bulgaria, for instance, where there are a million more apartments than there are people. The movement from the countryside to cities is starting to slow down and we’ve been in this frenzy of city building, and we haven’t done a very good job with it.

7:55 · The biggest challenge for urban planning, looking into the 50-year future, I’m not talking about next year, is what are we gonna do when population starts to plateau and then decline and then all the pressure on building more and new and better is not there and we have to deal with what we have?

8:15 · @erinroseglass, “What if public libraries were open late every night and we could engage in public life there instead of having to choose between drinking at the bar and domestic isolation?”

Library Late Nites

8:26 · Great suggestion, but I wouldn’t limit it just to public libraries. Every city’s gotta have public space. If you don’t exclude people, everyone comes together. Whether it’s your library or your park or in the ideal world, every street that you can walk down should be a place where you can respectfully interact with your fellow citizens. And that interaction is what builds up sociability. @wildflowermilk, “Whoever made tolls the thing, I just want to talk.

Why pay tolls?

8:52 · Like, why do I have to pay to around the city I live in?

8:57 · What the [beeps]?”

8:58 · Who pays?

8:59 · Who pays for the road bed?

9:00 · Who pays for maintaining the streets?

9:02 · Can you pay a toll?

9:04 · Can you pay the full cost of driving around your city?

9:07 · Well, we’ve never done that in America. We’ve always hidden the true cost of driving in other budgets and not pass them on to cars. There’s always been one toll in America, and that is the highway gas tax. But that is an absurdly small percentage of every gallon of gas you buy.

9:24 · Congestion pricing, tolling cars in certain areas of the city, that’s a way to try to recover some of the costs of maintaining a road network in the city and pass them on to the people who actually are using them, the drivers, and not to bury them into the municipal tax budget, which otherwise could go to schools or daycare.

9:46 · @Eddy345 asks, “How to survive in 51 degrees Celsius Summer heat in Dubai?”

How to survive summer Dubai heat

9:53 · As someone who has been in 51 degrees Celsius summer heat in Dubai, I know what you’re feeling. The three things you’ve gotta do. Number one, you can adjust your clothing. There are certain standards of kind of international dress, you know, suits and shoes and stuff like that. Forget about those in the 51 degrees. Open toe shoes are fine. Two, adapt your hours. Don’t go out in the middle of the day.

10:15 · Dubai at nighttime can also be pretty hot and humid. So that gets me to the third one, and that is humidity control. You know, we’ve been so focused on air conditioning and bringing the temperature down, but you’ll find that a lot of what makes you comfortable is a certain level of humidity relative to a certain temperature. Dehumidification takes less energy than air conditioning. And guess what it makes? It makes water.

10:36 · And who needs water?

10:37 · Oh, the Gulf States need water. As you pull that humidity out of the atmosphere, you make yourself more comfortable and you create for yourself some potable water.

10:46 · Cee Sosa asks, “How do you fix LA traffic?”

“Fixing” Los Angeles traffic?

10:50 · My answer is, maybe you don’t. LA is a much more progressive city than we understand from urban planning tour because it is what’s called a polycentric city. Yes, LA has huge traffic problems. But over time, different neighborhoods have started growing into places. Now LA is becoming a city of cities. Once you do that, you can start not needing a car as much.

11:14 · LA everybody loves to hate it for the traffic, but it may have a thing on the future where if it succeeds in connecting its nodes through things other than cars, then it’s gonna thrive. And we might be looking to LA in the future as an example, not a punchline. That’s it. That’s all the questions. Hope you learned something.

11:32 · Till next time.

11:33 · [upbeat music]

Urban planners aim to eliminate slums—with a mathematical approach

Science Magazine, 08 29, 2018

Video (2:49)

Description

Researchers are testing a tool based on a “topological view” of cities and slums to improve the design of growing urban areas

Read the story: https://scim.ag/2Nv8Gw1

Read the paper (free): http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/8/eaar4644

CREDITS

producer

Meagan Cantwell

citation

C. Brelsford et al.

Science Advances 2018

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1700362

photos and video

Pond5

UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design

Slum Dwellers International

Anni Rosalen and Carmen Schlatter

Luis Bettencourt and Christa Brelsford

Meagan Cantwell and Jessica Hubbard

script by

Meagan Cantwell

Sarah Crespi

Catherine Matacic

music

Nguyên Khoi Nguyên

Transcript

The role of city roads

0:00 · What makes a city? People? Buildings?

0:04 · Horrific traffic jams? That’s not too far off.

0:08 · It turns out that roads are what connect all the parts of a city.

0:12 · We need easy paths to travel from place to place and for moving materials, supplies, and services.

0:18 · And in some parts of cities—slums— that’s not happening.

Infrastructure issues

0:23 · The world’s slums lack not only large, easy to travel roads, but they’re also missing a lot of the infrastructure that goes along with them: street signs, building numbers, and vehicle access to building exteriors.

0:35 · That lack of connectivity means that the billion people living in slums can’t reliably get their mail, get to work, or even get to the hospital in an emergency.

0:45 · Trash removal and sanitation are difficult at best.

0:49 · Now, scientists are trying to transform slums with a mathematical approach to urban design called “topology”.

Using topology for design

0:56 · Slums can be broken down into two components: infrastructure, like homes and stores, and the access network that links them.

1:05 · Nodes and connections.

1:07 · With this framework, connections –in effect access– can be optimized.

1:13 · This new approaches already been used in two slums within Cape Town, South Africa.

Case study in Cape Town

1:19 · In one of the two neighborhoods, most essential services provided by the city— water, toilets, electricity, trash removal— are on the outskirts where road access exists, but the inner portions of the settlement— where temples are—are completely cut off.

Mapping and optimization

1:37 · In this study scientists used satellite data and detailed maps handmade by locals to diagram all the nodes and connections of the settlement.

1:45 · They then used their topological algorithm to figure out which areas were inaccessible by roads, then generated the most cost effective ways to build roads and connect them to outside services.

1:57 · In topology since one block of buildings surrounded by roads is considered equivalent, settlements with a wide range of shapes and sizes, from the suburbs of Las Vegas to the slums of Mumbai, can be analyzed in the same way.

Empowering local communities

2:13 · The scientists who designed the program hope to come up with a user-friendly interface that can be used by communities around the world.

2:19 · That, they say, would put the decision-making power into the hands of locals who can determine if proposed access roads will accommodate their priorities, then reroute them accordingly.

US Streets Are Dangerous. We Can Fix Them! (feat. @CityBeautiful) Overview

PBS Terra, 07 15, 2021

Video (8:19)

Description

Check out Otherwords! https://youtu.be/d2UccTPnl4w

The @CityBeautiful episode can be found here! https://youtu.be/8mh-GTlvf0w. Please watch! We’re so grateful for their collaboration on this story.

Cars dominate US city streets, and there’s no better example than Atlanta, GA. Streets in Atlanta are designed for getting cars around as fast as possible. The result? Pedestrian deaths in ATL are twice the national average. But the city is trying to change that, starting with Peachtree Street.

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Transcript

The danger of U.S. streets

0:01 · [host Joe Hanson] Think about the last time you drove down a street in the US. You probably didn’t have this nice of a view. At best, American streets are forgettable. At worst, they’re deadly. But surprisingly, some Americans are at higher risk than others. In the US, black pedestrians are struck and killed by drivers at an 82% higher rate than white pedestrians. And here in Atlanta, Georgia, the number of pedestrian fatalities is twice the national average.

0:33 · Living in poorer neighborhoods without sidewalks, bike lanes and crosswalks increases your chances of getting hit. That’s why the city of Atlanta is trying to make one street a little more livable, so people have an example of what streets could be like, if we prioritized safety over cars. In many US cities, cars are a nearly essential part of life. And there is no better example than Atlanta, Georgia. Streets in Atlanta are made for automobiles.

Atlanta’s car-centric history

1:11 · In a sprawling city like this, it’s hard to get around without one. But Nedra is a cycling advocate, and she still manages to get around by bike.

1:21 · [Nedra] It’s more pleasant.

1:23 · I feel like I’m a part of a place. I understand it, versus if I was in a vehicle.

1:29 · [Joe] For most Atlantans though, the car remains king. But it wasn’t always that way.

1:37 · [Nedra] I am from here, so I’m well aware of all the neighborhoods that are bisected, and have been destroyed either by highways or stadiums. That really has destroyed communities. It destroyed the social cohesion, the fabric of culture, the continuity of even what your eye looks at.

1:58 · [Joe] In the 50s and 60s, the connector between I-75 and I-85 gutted dense, mostly black neighborhoods in Atlanta’s urban core. And the construction of I-20 deliberately separated black and white communities. But highways also encouraged sprawl by making it easier for people to move to the suburbs. It’s a story in cities across America. And it’s also one of the reasons Atlanta is one of the 10 most populated regions in the US, but the 316th in density.

Design principles of danger

2:31 · Highways also changed the city’s streets, because their design started to shape how streets looked. And our friend from the YouTube channel, City Beautiful, is the perfect one to explain that.

2:43 · Thanks City Beautiful.

2:46 · [Man] This is Northside Drive.

2:48 · It runs through neighborhoods and shopping areas. There are four lanes, two going both directions, no bike lane, and some spotty sidewalk coverage. And here’s Buford Highway. Three lanes in each direction, no bike lanes and really lame and dangerous bus stops. These are classic, car-first streets. They were designed according to The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials book, “The Geometric Design of Highways and Streets.” Mercifully, it’s referred to simply as “The Green Book.”

3:18 · This book details how roadways should be designed, recommending characteristics like lane widths, curb radii and intersection geometry. “The Green Book” gets updated fairly regularly. And for a long time, this was a manual about how to apply highway design principles to city streets. It’s right there in the title, “Highways” come first.

3:36 · For example, in the 2001 edition, “The Green Book” recommends lane widths of 11 feet as the standard, with no discussion of the relationship between lane width and speeding. Wide lanes make it comfortable for drivers to go fast. Faster speeds mean more deaths. Most pedestrians can survive a collision with a car going 20 miles per hour. But if a car is going 40 miles an hour, the chances of survival for cyclists and pedestrians are low.

4:02 · This is just one example of the influence “The Green Book” has had on city streets. These policies have resulted in rural highway thinking applied to urban areas. Pedestrians are seen as obstacles to the free flow of traffic, the primary goal of traffic engineers in the past, and not so distant past. Any accommodations for pedestrians are seen as an exception, not the rule.

4:22 · That’s why streets like Northside Drive and Buford Highway have incomplete sidewalk networks, missing crosswalks and dangerous right turn slip lanes.

4:31 · [Nedra] It’s designed for speed, It’s not designed for a neighborhood. So the design fails the people who live there.

Missing community connections

4:39 · [Joe] For example, let’s say you lived here and worked here. The closest crosswalk is 0.3 miles down the road, making your total commute more than half a mile. Unless you’re some kind of huge rule follower, you’re gonna cross here. But the speed limit is 35 miles per hour, making your short walk, potentially deadly. Car-first streets also have a more subtle impact. They don’t build community.

5:06 · Fast speeds with no places to interact, doesn’t create pleasant places to chat with your neighbors.

5:13 · [Sonia] And something really, that has stuck out to me in this job, is streets are actually our biggest resource of public space. Anything that is owned by the city and owned by its citizens, those are your streets.

5:27 · [Joe] Sonia works for the city on re-imagining what public streets could be, if we designed them for more than just cars.

5:35 · [Sonia] Our tagline is, designing an Atlanta that Atlantans can fall in love with. It is experiencing the city, its identity, its history. Whatever walk of life you’re in, in Atlanta, that public space should be for you.

5:49 · [Joe] Atlanta’s highways and streets aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. But Atlanta city planners are hoping to claw back at least one street from the dictatorship of cars.

Re-imagining urban spaces

6:01 · [Sonia] So this is a demonstration project on Peachtree Street, and it’s really to test what it looks like to have a public space in Atlanta designed for people. Peachtree, in the past, has only really been about moving cars, and so we are looking at this concept of what if we increased the sidewalk space, just had more room for people.

6:23 · Recognizing some of our past mistakes, especially how highways have come through and erased entire communities, I think a lot of our projects are acknowledging that, and trying to correct for them, but it’s a long path.

6:37 · [Joe] Volunteers with the city made a few alterations to Peachtree to make it safer for all users. The biggest alteration, taking a lane on either side of the road, and giving that space back to pedestrians and bikers. They created a buffer out of planters, and extended the curbs on the streets so pedestrians had more space, and added another crosswalk. Restaurants along the street can also install outdoor dining on parking spaces.

7:04 · [Nedra] Really Atlanta is a blank slate to try a lot of new things, from neighborhood streets, safer streets.

7:12 · But even just inviting spaces where people can connect to each other, connect to place, and figuring out how do we, you know, heal some of our history?

7:22 · We have a great opportunity right now. ♪ {Joe] One more thing before you go.

Conclusion and promotions

7:30 · Have you ever wondered, what makes words, well, words?

7:34 · Other Words, PBS’ newest show about language and linguistics has you covered. From determining the origins of language, to whether or not computers can actually talk, Other Words dives into languages around the world to uncover the fascinating, unexpected, and sometimes weird stories behind the human trait we all take for granted. Check it out on Storied and make sure to let them know that Overview sent you. ♪

Voices on Accessibility Challenges in Cities

ITDP, 11 26, 2024

Video (10:12)

Description

This video compilation captures the lived experiences of people with disabilities navigating cities. Through personal stories, it highlights the hidden barriers in urban design and advocates for inclusive, accessible infrastructure.

Cities featured:

Jakarta, Indonesia
Mexico City, Mexico
Bangalore, India
Nairobi, Kenya

Produced by ITDP and TUMI

Transcript

The challenge of accessibility

0:11 · d [Music]

0:50 · I was not born with a disability uh about 27 years now I was involved in a road crash a

1:23 · [Music] ES

2:10 · whe

Barriers in transit systems

2:32 · uh usually um I like to Uber most of the time for reasons that public transport is still not accessible for me uh occasionally I drive before I go to any building I call and I find out and people will say we accessible but you get to the doorway and there’s a step just one step is enough to make me not go in for

3:34 · sometimes there’s a semblance of a walkway it’s rough you can’t navigate with the wheelchair it has Port holes uh sometimes they are vendors that use the walkways for selling their goods so you still can’t access to all passengers please check your belongings and step carefully thank you

4:15 · bassi

4:37 · Google Maps life Maps

Principles of urban design

5:15 · the

5:58 · or for

6:16 · [Music]

Advocacy and implementation

6:33 · I’ve been a wheelchair user since the past 10 years a bad fall in an under construction building and I was introduced uh to my new life the life after a spinal cord injury a life of no motor movement a complete paralysis below the waist a life where I became wheelchair dependent in a country which had accessibility issues so the whole idea of rasi U came to me in 201 18 when

7:00 · I started to go out as a wheelchair user in order to make use of these public places I realized I could not go anywhere because this huge problem of inaccessibility that India has and it started right from my home the the tower

7:15 · that I stain is not accessible then the public transport is not accessible then if you want to go to a school a college a bank a park uh nothing in India is really accessible and I think uh that really pushed me to think that isn’t there any law uh which is governing this

7:36 · um uh isn’t the government doing anything about it um that is when I came to know there is a law called rights of person with Disabilities Act rpwd act 2016 as per which all public buildings should follow uh certain guidelines in order to be accessible for everybody but all of this was very idealistic in nature if there were some activist some NGO some organization working it was very superficial at surface level even the government did not have too much clue as as a country as a developing country we are still learning how to be accessible and I think that is

8:07 · where I found a gap between the policy and the implementation and I thought why not start something which is very professional in its nature uh which really hits the target which directly does the implementation on ground rather than making complaints at the policy level and that is when the idea of ramma City came in where we thought we are going to be the organization that is going to provide the infrastructural interventions to make public places disable friendly and that is where it all started

Empowerment through mobility

8:57 · [Music] AB [Music]

9:37 · transport yeah yeah yeah [Music]

What happens to traffic when you tear down a freeway

Grist, 04 09, 2019

Video (6:10)

Description

The compelling case for removing urban freeways.

Transcript

The Seattle viaduct closure

0:01 · This is the view from my office window. It’s Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct.

0:06 · A few months ago, this double-decker freeway carried 90,000 cars over the city’s downtown waterfront every day.

0:13 · Now, it carries zero cars, because they’re tearing it down and replacing it with a tunnel.

0:20 · But for three weeks, we got a glance into what it’s like to go without a big downtown freeway.

0:25 · But … could you do that … forever? Just get rid of a freeway?

0:29 · To answer that, we’re gonna take a road trip … through history.

History of induced demand

0:37 · U.S. freeway mania really kicked off during the 1950s when President Eisenhower created the interstate highway system.

0:44 · But even he was shocked when he saw construction crews building the Capital Beltway in D.C.

0:50 · “Even he recognized how destructive freeways would be in cities.”

0:56 · Before long, people were using the freeways to drive everywhere.

1:00 · They were crowded, expensive, and bad for the environment.

1:03 · They cut through urban communities and fueled neighborhood segregation.

1:07 · And making them wider wasn’t helping congestion.

1:10 · See, roads don’t really follow the normal rules of the universe.

1:14 · Take this freeway: It has a traffic problem.

1:17 · And so the seemingly obvious solution would be to widen the road.

1:22 · But that original traffic was also acting as a kind of driving deterrent.

1:27 · New space would give people a reason to get back in their cars.

1:32 · This is real phenomenon. It’s called induced demand, a law of economics since 1962!

1:39 · So more lanes attract more drivers, and soon you wind up with the same traffic you started with.

1:45 · Which brings us to our first stop in our dead freeway tour: Portland, Oregon.

Portland’s freeway removal

1:51 · The freeway carried traffic along Portland’s downtown riverfront.

1:54 · And the highway department had plans to expand it.

1:58 · “Some highway engineers have a mentality, engineeringly speaking, that would run an 8-lane freeway through the Taj Mahal.”

2:08 · That’s Tom McCall. He was Oregon’s Republican governor.

2:10 · He came up with a kind of crazy idea for the time: What if they tore down the freeway, and replaced it with … a park?

2:19 · This was the nation’s first big freeway removal.

2:25 · Oregon was building two interstates in the area, so this downtown freeway just wasn’t that necessary anymore.

2:32 · And it didn’t end up creating the traffic nightmare that some had predicted.

2:36 · It was basically the 1960s version of this: Ugh, cars, man. Why?!

San Francisco’s rebirth

2:42 · Next stop: San Francisco; The ’90s.

2:49 · From the beginning, activists fought this freeway, which blocked off the city’s iconic waterfront views.

2:55 · There was even this 1955 editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle that roasted Seattle’s viaduct as a warning against the proposed freeway.

3:04 · “Ugly structure dominates architectural features in its vicinity.”

3:10 · … Yeah, that’s fair.

3:11 · The thing that finally sealed the freeway’s fate was the big 1989 earthquake.

3:17 · It damaged the Embarcadero, and several other freeways in the area.

3:21 · Suddenly, San Francisco was faced with a choice: If you want to keep the freeway, you’ll have to pay to fix it.

3:28 · And that did the trick!

3:31 · In 1991, the Embarcadero Freeway came down.

3:34 · In its place: a surface boulevard with big, walkable sidewalks.

3:39 · The traffic impacts were pretty minimal: City streets absorbed some traffic, and without the freeway, some traffic just disappeared.

3:48 · The area around the Embarcadero became a waterfront destination.

3:52 · It saw higher property values, more economic activity, and more jobs.

3:57 · Some say the freeway removal added to the Bay Area’s rapid gentrification.

4:02 · And while that area was expensive to start, housing prices did go up.

4:07 · For other places, there’s a real lesson there: How to remove a freeway and make sure the people who live there can stick around for the benefit.

4:16 · And so here we are. Seattle, 2019.

Seattle’s lessons learned

4:20 · Here’s a little background: A 2001 earthquake damaged the viaduct.

4:24 · Eighteen years later, the city’s tearing it down and replacing it with tunnel – but not before the final challenge!

4:30 · Before the new tunnel could open, they had to close the old viaduct for three weeks.

4:35 · It was officially called the Period of Maximum Constraint.

4:40 · Also: “Viadoom, carmageddon… there was a few other ones I probably shouldn’t mention.”

4:45 · So, best case: People change their habits.

4:48 · Everyone who doesn’t have to drive doesn’t drive.

4:52 · Worst case: “Unreasonable congestion that nobody would tolerate.

4:55 · It would take you hours to get into downtown.”

4:57 · So what happened?

4:58 · For the most part, people found other ways to get around.

5:02 · “We had about a 10 percent decrease in vehicles coming into downtown” Here’s a typical bike count in Seattle this time of year.

5:11 · And here’s what happened during the viaduct closure.

5:14 · “I never would’ve predicted it, because January is generally not just cold, but rainy!”

5:20 · Transit ridership spiked too. And the Light Rail and commuter trains added more than 15,000 new riders.

5:27 · And finally: some of the trips just didn’t happen.

5:31 · “And everybody goes: what happened to the trips? Well it’s not a finite amount of trips. People have brains, and people make choices.”

5:37 · And then… the tunnel opened. And things started to go back to normal.

5:41 · But those three weeks gave us a small window into how a city might respond to losing a freeway.

5:48 · Now could Seattle have kept this up? It’s hard to say, but history suggests that cities can lose a little freeway and not lose their minds.

5:58 · Thanks for watching.There’s a lot of history out there that we didn’t get to cover.

6:02 · We’re going to leave some links in the description below if you want to learn more.

Where is the world’s most liveable city

The Economist, 08 14, 2018

Video (2:55)

Description

Where is the world’s most liveable city? The Economist Intelligence Unit has ranked 140 cities based on their liveability. Melbourne, Australia, has been ranked the world’s most liveable city for the past seven years but it has lost the top spot to Vienna. See the full report: eiu.com/liveability

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Transcript

0:05 · Melbourne has been the most livable city in the world for the past seven years.

0:09 · But this year it lost the top spot to Vienna.

0:14 · Home to Strauss and Schubert and famous for its coffee houses, Vienna scored an almost perfect 99.1%.

0:26 · But what makes a city livable?

0:29 · The Economist intelligence unit has been analyzing this.

0:33 · It has ranked 140 cities according to stability, education, healthcare, infrastructure, and culture and environment.

0:43 · Most livable cities tend to be mid sized in wealthy countries and with low population densities.

0:53 · Copenhagen is the only other European city in the top 10.

0:57 · Australia and Canada each have three cities and Japan two.

1:03 · Western Europe and North America are the most livable regions in the world.

1:07 · The Middle East and Africa the least.

1:10 · While asia and Australasia are home to some of the world’s most livable and unlivable cities.

ASIA AND AUSTRALASIA

LIVEABILITY FACTORS

1:20 · Many factors impact how livable a city is like natural disasters.

1:25 · Hurricanes Irma and Maria destroyed much of Puerto Rico this year.

PUERTO RICO

1:30 · The capital San Juan fell further in rank than any other city.

1:35 · The ending of Ivory Coast’s 13 year UN peacekeeping mission demonstrated a step toward stability and a steady increase in its livability.

1:46 · The rankings of cities like Damascus, Lagos, Karachi, and Tripoli show the extent to which conflict contributes to low livability scores.

1:56 · And Caracas, the least livable city in Latin America, is only set to get worse owing to the deepening economic crisis and rising authoritarianism in Venezuela.

2:08 · Mega cities like London, Paris, and New York have high levels of crime, congestion, and public transport problems which keep them out of the top spots.

2:19 · This year the world overall has become a better place to live.

LIVEABILITY UP 0.9%

2:23 · This is because of the decrease in terrorism threats, specifically in western Europe.

2:29 · Vienna’s increased stability is what has given it the edge this year.

WHO Preventing disease through healthy environments

World Health Organization (WHO), 04 20, 2016

Video (2:00)

Description

An estimated 12.6 million people died as a result of living or working in an unhealthy environment in 2012 – nearly 1 in 4 of total global deaths, according to the World Health Organization. Environmental risk factors, such as air, water and soil pollution, chemical exposures, climate change, and ultraviolet radiation, contribute to more than 100 diseases and injuries. However, we can take actions to reverse the upward trend of environment-related diseases and improve our environments where we live and work.

For more information visit: http://who.int/quantifying_ehimpacts/publications/preventing-disease/en/

Transcript

Environmental health impacts

0:03 · wherever you live your health is impacted by the environment around the world more than 50 million people die every year from disease and nearly one quarter of those deaths are directly caused by environmental factors can you imagine that’s 1,400 deaths every hour

0:23 · of every day from an unhealthy environment the hardest hit are those in low and middle income countries especially in Africa Southeast Asia and the western Pacific and the young and old are most severely affected more than half the world live in urban areas and can face heavy traffic air pollution who are housing and limited access to clean water and sanitation many work in the informal

0:51 · sector under dangerous dirty and demeaning conditions we all face the impact of chemicals and poisons radiation and poor farming practices and climate change means our very uncertain future so now we are at a crossroads

The critical crossroads

1:09 · things can continue getting worse or we can work together to improve our world simple measures can be taken immediately to protect our health and the environment we can reduce our consumption and clean our air by using sustainable fuels and walking or cycling more we can safely store toxic substances in

Call to action for health

1:32 · our homes and workplaces we can protect our water resources by disposing of waste appropriately and introduce clean energy technologies we can bring multiple government sectors together to ensure all policies actively support health let us all work together to improve our health and well-being

Why are so many big-city condos sitting empty About That

CBC News, 06 20, 2024

Video (12:18)

Description

In the midst of a housing supply crisis, thousands of condos in Canada’s largest cities are sitting empty. Most, experts say, are less than 500 square feet. Andrew Chang explains why there’s been an explosion of these so-called ‘shoebox’ condos, and why they’re suddenly struggling to sell.

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Transcript

0:00 · want to show you something cute little condo in Toronto’s Harbor front neighborhood bustling part of the city it goes on the market in the summer of 2022 the sellers put it up for $480,000 it didn’t sell early 2023 it’s back on the market for 460k no luck later that year posted again at 450k still nothing and a few months ago the sellers tried again at

0:26 · $430,000 no takers this condo was sitting on the market for more than 400 days without a sale right now in Canada’s biggest cities there’s a ton of condos like this struggling to sell condo sales in Toronto for example haven’t been this low since the financial crisis in 2009 condo flippers are getting absolutely slaughtered right now in majority of these towers they are half empty nobody wants

0:56 · these condos folks and here we are in the middle of a housing crisis it’s never been harder to get into the market and so many of these condos spend so much time sitting empty

1:11 · why that studio we just showed you we’re pretty sure an investor bought it because just a month after it did finally sell for 80k under its original asking price it was listed for rent I think the number one problem is that most of the condos that are listed on the market are investors units investors

1:31 · have really thrown the market out a whack and when I say investor I don’t want you to think of some you know faceless Corporation or ultra wealthy Real Estate Mogul according to stats Canada the typical condo landlord here is actually a quote middle-aged middleclass couple and for these people the intention is usually to cover their monthly mortgage payments by renting it out for decades this was considered a pretty smart move were cheap relative to

2:01 · every other kind of property but their value was rising and the average rent that landlords could charge tenants was Rising steadily too but now it’s changed quite drastically I mean anecdotally with my own investors um I shy away from

2:16 · New condos uh just because of the the numbers just don’t really make any sense yes the numbers don’t make sense which has led to an insane number of condos being put up for sale flooding the market in a way we haven’t really seen before I’ll show you what I mean let’s compare what a condo investment in Toronto looked like in 2016 to today so

2:39 · according to the Toronto real estate board the average price of a one-bedroom condo back then in 2016 was about $300,000 and with 2016 interest rates about 2.7% that worked out to a mortgage payment of about $1,100 a month rent for

2:57 · the average one-bedroom apartment at that time was about $1,660 not bad from an investor point of view even with you know maintenance fees uh property taxes that condo is essentially paying for itself while you build equity now what if you were to buy

3:19 · a one-bedroom condo today in Toronto that could cost you about 550 Grand so prices have very clearly gone up but so have interest rates the carrying cost on a property are far higher than they ever used to be well not ever but in recent memory at current rates 6.8% maybe now you’re paying more than $3,000 a month for your mortgage payment alone then you’ve got you know property taxes uh maintenance fees and the average rent for unit like that about

3:54 · $2400 a month you’re now paying out of pocket the average investor is going to be short about around a th000 bucks a month now right um and that’s a tough pill to swallow so jack up the rent right well it’s not that easy paying more than $33,000 a month for a one-bedroom just isn’t possible for most people the market can only bear so much no one will pay the rent that would allow you not to

4:23 · go broke owning that property an analyst we spoke to say they’re seeing more and more people leaving the rental market in Toronto because things are already too expensive so they move back in with family or they couch surf now

4:40 · historically the average investor might try to stick this kind of thing out because the Assumption has always been even if you’re losing money in the short term in the long run you’ll still come out on top a lot of investors would have had no problem being short a th bucks a month if their units going up by 10 grand a month you know what I mean or seven Grand a month in terms of appreciation um but that’s not happening over the past couple of years condo prices in many big cities have more or less stalled and in some cases depending

5:11 · on when these people bought their Investments might already have lost value condo prices in Toronto for example skyrocketed between 2017 and 2022 this was great for investors but many wondered if they were actually becoming overvalued if there were to too many of these condos being built to sustain these prices at the end of 2022

5:35 · those prices started to drop which is especially bad news for investors who’ve bought since then now the renewal has come in and you’re losing a lot of money but you’ve actually come to realize in the last 12 months the price of that condo has probably dropped about $440,000 so you’re starting to enter into a state of actual fear so no wonder

5:56 · you have so many mom and popop landlords now saying saying enough is enough I’m going to try to sell before I lose any more money but there’s also another group of investors the preconstruction buyers and for a lot of them things are even more dire there’s some buildings where up to as many as 12 or 15% of the

6:16 · buyers are saying no I’m not going to close okay I’m I’m walking away from my deposit in the past in a city like Toronto you could pretty reliably put money down on a pre-construction condo wait two to 5 years to was built and then sell that unit before anyone ever moved in in most cases the value of that investment would go up 20 30 even 40%

6:40 · without you having to do much at all from the year 2000 through to you know right about to 2020 that was true but now it’s not true that’s absolutely not true so these units are completing and they’re not worth what the investors paid for them right so they paid 1,500 bucks a square foot but they’re only worth 13 00 bucks a square foot so some investors are trying to bail on a bad investment some can’t afford the carrying costs and lots of them are all in this situation at the same time so

7:11 · you end up with a flood of condos on the market but isn’t that the very definition of a buyer market like isn’t this great news for people who want to jump in well it would be if these condos had actually been built for the people looking to

7:34 · buy according to Stats can the average size of a new condo in Toronto has shrunk significantly over time from 1981 to 1990 New condos were on average about 1,000 square ft from 2016 to 2020 they were around 650 Square ft or about 40% smaller and if you ask anyone who lives in the downtown core right now 650 ft

8:01 · actually feels pretty big this is what a 275 ft condominium looks like in downtown Toronto look how small this bedroom is in this Toronto condo for sale that I was showing this is the den this little cutout in the wall is the den okay doesn’t even fit an entire table and yes Toronto is definitely an

8:26 · extreme example here but the analysts we spoke to say these tiny units have become more and more common since the early 2000s right across the country and developing these smaller condos targeted specifically at investors who then turned them around for rent that was a

8:44 · real business opportunity we needed rental housing so basically what happened is like that was filled by Mom and Pop investors buying Condominiums and converting them to rentals they only had one single thing in mind that they would be purchased by people who would be landlord investors want small units uh the yield

9:02 · is better the price is lower it’s easier to qualify according to Realtors it’s these teeny tiny investment condos that are currently flooding the market in places like the greater Toronto area broadly in the GTA we’re looking over 13,000 majority of these Suites are investor units that are are listed for sale and if you think about it if those condos were built for investors just renting them out or or flipping them the focus probably wasn’t on quality or

9:31 · functionality or families some of these places don’t even have closets according to the Realtors we spoke to investors aren’t generally very choosy about whether the floor plan works whether the finishes are First Rate or what the view looks like because they have no intention of moving in they just want the best value for their money but if

9:54 · someone’s taking their entire life savings and putting it into a home that they plan to live in for years that’s a pretty different story there was absolutely no thought given to the idea that anyone would buy that place that sub 500 foot condo as a place to

10:10 · permanently live right now for example in Toronto and Vancouver three quarters of larger condos the ones you know maybe more suitable for a family built decades ago those are being lived in by the people who own them but for those much smaller condos built after 2016 with investors in mind only about half are being lived in by owners remember that cute little Studio that we showed you at the start that took 400 some days to sell it was 330 ft

10:41 · here’s a two-bedroom 700t unit in that same building it sold earlier this month on the first try in just 13 days if we look at the large cohort of buyers right now they’re predominantly Millennials that are looking to enter the market if you’re looking to start a family it’s really tough to start a family in a one vom condo or even if you don’t have a family if you are a millennial and you’re a couple let’s say you have a dog or if you work from home you need that additional space to be able to either work or raise a family or even just have

11:11 · a guest bedroom um so when we look at the amount of inventory that’s available there’s just really nothing there there aren’t a lot of options out there what ended up happening is we only Built one kind of product for the last 5 years and

11:28 · it’s possible when you only build one product that it can become mispriced and that’s what we’re faced with right now this one’s asking price is $420,000 for that price would you live in this bunk bed the analysts we spoke to all said they do expect the price of

11:49 · these smaller units to come down over the next six months or so that doesn’t make them any more ideal a place to start a family but if the price made more sense that takes some of the sting off right either way seems both sides of the housing equation are stuck sellers driven to sell can’t and buyers don’t like their options

Why cities are full of uncomfortable benches

Vox, 11 29, 2017

Video (3:59)

Description

That bench won’t be yours forever.

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When designing urban spaces, city planners have many competing interests to balance. After all, cities are some of the most diverse places on the planet. They need to be built for a variety of needs.

In recent years, these competing interests have surfaced conflict over an unlikely interest: purposefully uncomfortable benches.

Enter the New York City MTA. They’ve installed ’leaning bars’ to supplement traditional benches & save platform space. But designs like this carry an often invisible cost: they rob citizens of hospitable public space. And the people who experience this cost most directly are those experiencing homelessness.

A few notes of thanks:

First to Historian A. Roger Ekirch who kindly got me up to speed on the expansion of streetlights in historic western city districts.

Another thanks goes to author Veronica Harnish, who outlined some of the pitfalls that people experiencing homelessness face when choosing between sleeping rough or utilizing emergency shelters. You can read her blog here: http://car-living.blogspot.com/

A third thank you goes to the staff at the Unites States Interagency Council on Homelessness — they supplied the map in this video, as well as some aggregate statistics of the United States homeless population. Those numbers come from a variety of annual ‘Point-In-Time’ counts. The 2018 event will take place in late January, and the process depends on volunteers — so if you’d like to participate, you can find your local organizer here: https://www.hudexchange.info/grantees/find-a-grantee/?state=&program=on&coc=on¶ms=%7B%22limit%22%3A20%2C%22sort%22%3A%22%22%2C%22years%22%3A%5B%5D%2C%22searchTerm%22%3A%22%22%2C%22dir%22%3A%22%22%2C%22grantees%22%3A%5B%5D%2C%22state%22%3A%22%22%2C%22programs%22%3A%5B3%5D%2C%22coc%22%3Atrue%7D##granteeSearch

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Transcript

The problem with benches

0:00 · Why are cities full of uncomfortable benches?

0:06 · This one has armrests to prevent you from dozing off.

0:09 · to prevent you from taking a nap.

0:11 · Here’s another — again with the arms, the stiff metal.

0:16 · And this one — it’s brand new.

0:18 · The MTA in New York began installing them as part of a subway enhancement plan.

0:23 · And they don’t call it a bench.

0:25 · They prefer the term “leaning bars.”

0:28 · So what if i told you it was designed with discomfort in mind?

Defining defensive design

0:34 · New York City is filled with some of the most innovative architecture and urban planning in the world.

0:39 · Today, nearly every kind of public space here is has been developed with close attention to detail.

0:45 · So these benches are no mistake.

0:47 · They are designed to allow you to sit but not get too cozy.

0:51 · And that is intentional.

0:53 · The concept stems from a school of thought that goes by many names, but today we’ll use “defensive design.”

1:00 · Defensive design is about moderating behavior.

1:03 · The goal is to limit the ways an object can be misused.

1:07 · These benches have armrests because that will prevent anyone from laying down.

1:11 · Their short back is another nod to say, “This bench isn’t yours forever.”

Examples of hostile design

1:16 · This trend is worldwide.

1:17 · And it’s not just in the benches.

1:20 · When you start looking for defensive designs in New York City, you’ll find examples everywhere.

1:25 · It’s the presence of security cameras in subway turnstiles or Times Square.

1:31 · It’s these spikes on this column, meant to deter birds.

1:34 · It’s the knobs on these ledges, to discourage skateboarders.

1:38 · And there were once sprinklers underneath the awning of this bookstore, to prevent people from sleeping there.

1:44 · It’s sidewalk barriers.

1:45 · It’s even these regular streetlights.

1:48 · Streetlights are probably some of the most recognizable defensive designs.

1:52 · When they surfaced in the 19th-century Western cities, the dynamic of urban life changed.

1:58 · More people spent time outside at night, which drove economic development and a reduction in crime.

Controversy and impact

2:04 · Most hostile architecture tries to influence behavior in a similar way.

2:08 · The designs attempt to make public space a bit more hospitable, more ideal.

2:13 · Defensive designs can deter crime.

2:15 · It can prevent the destruction of public property.

2:19 · And it can prevent loitering.

2:21 · But there is a reason why defensive design is characterized as “hostile.”

2:25 · Take the example of the bench again.

2:30 · Disability advocates have a problem with that appearing in the MTA.

2:33 · One advocate pointed out that “People who travel who have disabilities or just get tired sometimes need a bench to sit on, not a wall to lean against.”

Targeting homelessness

2:41 · And while no one likes an uncomfortable bench, these additions mean something more for people who are experiencing homelessness.

2:49 · The United States is currently experiencing a decline in the overall homeless population.

2:57 · But in New York, the homeless population is growing.

3:01 · About 1800 people were found to have been sleeping in the subway.

3:06 · That’s because emergency shelter isn’t always a viable option.

3:13 · There are several examples of hostile architecture that target people who are homeless.

3:18 · These designs imply that public space is not where homeless people should be.

3:22 · As it goes, city planners have a dilemma — how do they design inclusive cities?

Designing inclusive cities

3:29 · As for the enhanced subway initiative, the MTA’s mock designs highlight new USB ports and electronic signage in stations.

3:36 · But you won’t find any press materials highlighting this uncomfortable bench.

3:40 · Excuse me, the “leaning bar.”

3:42 · That’s because it makes for an uncomfortable discussion about who we design public space for — and who gets left out.

Why Cities Don’t Build Basketball Courts

About Here, 09 29, 2026

Video (18:25)

Description

Basketball is one of the most popular sports in Canada, but cities often struggle to build and maintain outdoor facilities for it, especially compared to other sports such as soccer, baseball, and tennis. We investigate the political and systemic forces that shape our recreational spaces - and why some sports struggle to find room in our cities.

This film was made possible by funding from the TELUS Originals Digital Series Pilot. A huge thank you to TELUS Originals for supporting Canadian creators like us!

Transcript

0:02 · In the city of Vancouver, there are 98 soccer fields, 108 tennis courts, 41 baseball diamonds, [music] 67 65 volleyball courts, and just 28 full-size basketball courts.

0:16 · So, why is that? How do we decide how much space and investment each sport gets in our cities? Well, I looked into this question, and it turns out there is a messy story here, one that involves neighborhood politics, lobby groups, and a fascinating history behind park design philosophy. But underneath it all, there’s one uncomfortable truth. When it comes to how much space each sport [music] gets in our cities, it’s not exactly a level playing field.

0:47 · [music] [singing] [music] Every story needs a protagonist. So, to unpack the messy politics of sports spaces, I want to focus on one sport. In the city of Vancouver, basketball courts are by far the least common recreational space for major sports. And it’s not just Vancouver. Take Toronto.

1:17 · As the home of the Raptors, it is arguably the center of basketball in Canada, but even here, the city’s basketball courts are far outnumbered with three times as many soccer fields and baseball fields, and six times as many tennis courts as basketball courts.

1:31 · And the numbers are only half the picture. Outdoor basketball courts in Canada are notorious for poor quality and maintenance, [music] with players reporting crumbling curbs, sunken asphalt, or sewer grates at center court. Not only that, the courts themselves are often subject to strict rules and curfews, with some outdoor basketball hoops being dismantled as early as 3:00 p.m., even while kids are still playing.

1:55 · Isn’t this terrible?

1:56 · No, I can still have just as much fun out here.

2:00 · [laughter] You find the same issue across Canada. Outdoor basketball courts in our cities leave much to be desired in both quantity and quality.

2:09 · [music] For me, that’s a real shame. And it’s not because I’m a huge fan of basketball or something. It’s because I actually think there’s a really good case for why cities should build more basketball courts. Specifically, for starters, basketball is one of the most affordable and accessible sports out there. [music] You don’t need skates, pads, rackets, gear, or sticks to play, just a ball.

2:32 · Basketball is also an incredibly popular sport among newcomers and indigenous youth, two of the country’s fastest-growing demographics. The demand is there and increasing. But on top of that, basketball is also great for urban planning. You knew I had to connect this to urbanism somehow.

2:49 · In dense cities where there isn’t a ton of open space available, one of basketball’s advantages is its space efficiency. It takes up less space than a tennis court while supporting way more players. And compared to the vast, grassy fields required for soccer or baseball, it’s basically a little postage stamp. If you’re trying to fit the most recreation per square meter, the answer probably looks something like a basketball court.

3:15 · Now, of course, space efficiency isn’t the only criterion for how cities decide what sports fields to build. This isn’t a game of Tetris. So, what is that criteria? How do cities decide what sports to invest in?

3:29 · Well, it often starts with a Well, it often starts with a document like this. Here in Vancouver, we have VanPlay, a plan that spells out the future of sports spaces in the city. It goes through each major sport and offers an assessment of how many more spaces, if any, are needed. For example, pickleball needs way more space.

3:49 · Basketball does not. So on and so forth and so on and [music] so forth. So, how did they come up with this assessment?

3:56 · Well, the authors write that “The asset targets and recommendations were determined through consideration of trends, benchmarking against other cities, population projections, and service needs identified by the community, partners, and staff.” Which, uh, sounds pretty good in theory, but in practice, this process can be much messier and, frankly, a bit uncomfortable to write down in an official report. So, for the rest of this video, I want to talk about what you don’t see in these sorts of reports.

4:21 · The less visible, often unwritten rules that influence the playing field for how we build playing fields. And, from what I’ve learned, it basically boils down to three factors.

4:34 · First, the NIMBYs. I mean, the neighbors. Sports fields are usually located near people’s homes, and for certain sports, those neighbors can be an exceptionally tough crowd. In Vancouver, a proposal to build a basketball court at the University of British Columbia was shut down after attracting opposition from a handful of residents. Their concern, never-ending noise. Yes, that’s the actual name of their website. They warned that these courts would lower property values and threaten the child-friendly nature of the neighborhood.

5:02 · And, [music] in Mississauga, a basketball court was embroiled in controversy for 6 years because neighbors warned the court would attract drugs, violence, and disrespect of older people. The evidence for these claims is, of course, spotty.

5:20 · First off, concerns about noise might just be noise. At UBC, the university hired a third-party consultant to conduct a noise study and found that its proposed basketball courts would generate only 45 decibels of sound to neighboring buildings, the equivalent of an old refrigerator.

5:36 · What’s really embedded in these sorts of concerns are often just stereotypes about basketball and its players. A study from Rice University puts it this way. “Hoops are often linked with crime despite a lack of evidence in what critics recognize as often racist efforts to remove basketball courts from public parks.

5:55 · The reality is that some sports face more stigma than others. People might have different opinions about a tennis court versus a pickleball court or a water park versus a skate park.

6:05 · Or an ice rink versus a curling rink. Or a baseball field versus a cricket field.

6:08 · Let’s move on to the next factor.

6:10 · The history.

6:13 · Most of the outdoor courts and sports fields we have today are in city parks and the vast majority of those parks were created over a century ago. In fact, in Vancouver, 65% of the city’s park space was established before the Second World War.

6:28 · [music] And that makes sense. As cities grow denser, it becomes harder and harder to find new spaces for parks.

6:34 · But because of that, most of the parks we have today reflect the ideas of park planners from a very specific moment in history. And that [music] moment? The late 1800s. A period that’s sometimes referred to as the reform park era. This was a time where cities were grimy places reeling from the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. Think pollution, disease, and people living in cramped, overcrowded, and expensive apartments.

7:01 · Well, you know, maybe that’s not that different from today. It also was a time of social unrest. People were unhappy. Labor conditions were awful and some guy published a book in 1848 called the Communist Manifesto. This made aristocrats of the day deeply nervous.

7:18 · A solution was desperately needed. And in these trying times, one profession stepped up to the plate to help. You guessed it. Landscape architects.

7:28 · Yes, around this time, landscape architects like Frederick Law Olmsted began to pitch a solution to address the anxieties of urban life. [music] The urban park. Places where residents could escape the noise and chaos of city life.

7:41 · Places filled with trees, [music] gardens, fresh air, and recreation. But, also places designed to civilize the masses. Sociologist Dorceta Taylor describes the first North American parks as important [music] instruments of social control. Park designers believe that the design of these spaces could help with moral upliftment, improved civility, and induce better attitudes towards work, and produce more efficient workers.

8:07 · Olmsted himself believed that parks could inspire communal feelings amongst all working classes, muting [music] resentments over disparities of wealth and fashion.

8:19 · Uh, yeah. It turns out a big motivator for our first parks was to give poor workers green spaces to chill out, get some fresh air, and play sports instead of fighting for workers’ rights or something annoying like that. And because of that, the park planners of that era thought very carefully about what kind of activities would be appropriate for those parks. Taylor writes, “Correct park behavior was deemed as quiet, orderly, peaceful, and inoffensive.”

8:45 · And for the people designing these parks, certain sports fit that definition more than others, like tennis. It had long been associated with the upper classes in Europe, and the etiquette of the sport supposedly showed good manners, self-control, and restraint of actions.

9:03 · So, in the coming decades, tennis became one of the most popular sports to be included in North America’s first urban parks. At the same time, other sports were deemed as inappropriate and not included in parks, which according to Dorceta Taylor included working-class folk games such as horseshoe pitching, tomato hawk twirling, and wrestling.

9:24 · [music] Those ideas really shaped the first generation of urban parks. Big, wide-open spaces with orderly activities designed to civilize the masses. Now, park design philosophy has clearly evolved since then. Today, parks are less about preventing a class revolution and more about leisure, ecology, and dogs.

9:46 · But, I do think there’s one thing that has lingered from the reform park era, a kind of anxiety around what is and isn’t appropriate in our parks. And the sports that we’ve grown used to seeing in our parks over the decades enjoy a real advantage here, while newer sports tend to face a bit more scrutiny.

10:05 · Basketball really exploded into popularity in the 1980s [music] during the Michael Jordan era. By then, most parks had already been built out in North America. And I think that’s partially why basketball sometimes feels like an outsider in our parks. It kind of missed the big park building era of North America, and we’re just not used to seeing it as a central feature of our parks, at least compared to the usual classics like tennis and grass. But, I think it’s worth noting that not every city followed the same playbook when it came to parks.

10:36 · In the 1930s, New York City built hundreds of basketball courts thanks to uh Robert Moses. Yeah, turns out the guy didn’t just build freeways, he also built hundreds of playgrounds, many of which included basketball courts. Around 300 of them were built under his leadership, and today the city has 541 outdoor basketball courts and a vibrant street ball culture.

11:00 · Okay, that was a fun fact, but this video is getting so long and we still need to get to the last factor. The players.

11:07 · Some sports and their players are just more vocal and organized when it comes to asking for what they want. Case in point, soccer. Soccer is the most popular sport in Canada, and a big reason why is because of how organized it is. Here in Metro Vancouver, there are 14 soccer associations and leagues supporting 45 registered clubs, all operating under a central governing body, [music] BC Soccer, and that governing body is a key to their success.

11:35 · BC Soccer organizes competition, holds annual general meetings and conferences, plans, trains coaches, identifies talent, gives out insurance, Lobbies politicians. Okay, you get the idea. When it comes to organization, soccer is like a well-oiled machine. And when it comes to lobbying for their sport, that same organization gives soccer a major advantage.

11:54 · When cities are deciding how to spend their recreation funding, soccer can show up with a coordinated network of clubs, leagues, coaches, and players that can speak with a unified voice for the sport. And they have the data to back them up, too. They keep detailed records on the fields they’re booking and keep track of all the people registered in their clubs, about 150,000 players across the province. But organization is just half the picture. Other sports are more assertive, let’s say.

12:26 · Enter pickleball.

12:29 · Pickleball is popping off.

12:31 · of the fastest growing sports in North America.

12:33 · Pickleball players in West Vancouver want more courts.

12:37 · We would love our own permanent space.

12:39 · Eight courts by 2035? We need eight courts.

12:42 · Why do we Pickleball players are some of the most vocal groups in recreational politics. Politicians, park departments, and community centers often report being inundated with emails and phone calls from pickleball players asking for more spaces to play. In fact, a lot of this advocacy is actively encouraged by the National Pickleball Association, which has an ambassador program as well as informational resources to assist Pickleball Canada members in advocating for the construction of pickleball facilities within their communities.

13:15 · And it also helps that the demographics of pickleball players are generally much older. In America, seniors over 65 make up one of the largest age groups for pickleball. These are people that have the free time and political know-how to lobby decision-makers. And at the end of the day, all that advocacy creates real results. More time slots in community centers, more spaces being built, and more priority given to pickleball when it comes to planning new recreational facilities.

13:44 · [music] Soccer and pickleball are a master class in how you get your sport prioritized by the government. You either have a highly organized league that creates one big unified voice for your sport, or you mobilize your players into an army of lobbyists. So, how does basketball stack up to all this?

14:05 · Well, [music] as a sport, basketball is highly organized at the professional NBA level, but often loosely organized at the local community level. Here in British Columbia, the main league is run through the public school system, which is fine if you’re one of the 14 kids that makes your school’s team. But, outside of school, the basketball community looks like a fragmented patchwork of different clubs, camps, and leagues. If you want to find out all the soccer associations in Metro Vancouver, all you have to do is go to BC Soccer’s website. They’re all there.

14:37 · But, if you’re looking for a basketball club, that information is spread out across multiple different sites and social media pages. We did the research and found that there were at least 110 [music] different groups for basketball across Metro Vancouver. There is clearly demand for this sport. But, unlike soccer, these groups [music] don’t really coordinate with each other. In fact, about half of them aren’t formally registered under any association at all.

15:04 · Basketball itself is often a much more casual sport. A lot of players don’t really go to organized matches. They just show up at a court with their friends and see who else is playing. Maybe you’ll make a new friend, or maybe you’ll meet Adam Sandler.

15:19 · That’s sort of the beauty of basketball.

15:21 · It’s [music] a much more social sport that often feels more like hanging out with your friends rather than being part of a official league or team. But that also makes it very difficult to measure the demand for it. No organization is keeping track of every time you and your friends hang out to shoot some hoops. There is no official data set for how many games of pick up basketball are played in a city.

15:44 · And that lack of data is often used as yet another excuse to not build more courts. In VanPlay, the city acknowledges that there isn’t good data on the demand for outdoor basketball courts and partially sites that as its reason for not building any more. So, those are the three factors and when taken together, I think they demonstrate how a sport like basketball might be at a serious disadvantage when it comes to finding space in our parks.

16:10 · [music] It’s a sport that often faces scrutiny from neighbors. It’s a relative newcomer compared to many of the sports [music] we’re used to seeing in our parks and the sport itself doesn’t have a highly organized league [music] or an army of politically savvy retirees that can lobby the government to prioritize [music] it. And these issues stretch much further than just basketball courts. It impacts uh cricket fields, skateboard parks, [music] and many other sports.

16:34 · The reality is that the messy politics around recreational [music] spaces often results in many sports being overlooked and under [music] prioritized in our cities. Now, this is the part of the video where I could spout off a bunch of different ideas and solutions. [music] I could talk about better data collection and survey techniques. I could talk about places like Hong Kong where government policy transparently lays [music] out how many sports fields and courts should be built per person.

17:01 · And finally, I could point to the work being done by many organizations on the [music] ground to grow the profile of basketball and build broader acceptance for it in our neighborhoods. [music] But that would be a very safe, very predictable conclusion. And frankly, I’ve got a more fun idea. In my opinion, I don’t think this needs to be a zero-sum game. We don’t need to pit all our sports against each other. We just need to pit all our sports against golf.

17:27 · That’s right. In the city of Vancouver, there are three enormous parcels of publicly owned land that are used exclusively for golf courses, approximately 450 acres. On that much land, you could double our existing sports fields, quadruple our existing basketball courts, while building 400 new pickleball courts, and still have one golf course left over.

17:52 · So, let me leave you with this conclusion instead. When it comes to making space for sports in our cities, I actually don’t think we’re limited by the amount of land we have, just our imagination.

18:04 · Ooh la ooh la la daddy wah, gonna ring [music] it on down down down. Ooh la ooh la la daddy wah, gonna ring it on down down ooh la ooh la la daddy wah, gonna ring it on down down down. Ooh la ooh [music] la la daddy wah, gonna ring it on down down.

Why decades-old, toxic PFAS foam is still contaminating northern Michigan waterways

PBS NewsHour, 11 23, 2024

Video (8:20)

Description

The Defense Department missed a deadline this fall to stop using a toxic firefighting foam that has caused widespread contamination across the country. In the small town of Oscoda, Michigan, a group of citizens has been fighting to hold the Air Force accountable for polluting their waterways. Special correspondent Megan Thompson reports in the first of a two-part series.

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Transcript

Intro

0:00 · home of the pbs news hour weeknights on pbs.

0:07 · Earlier this fall, the defense department missed a deadline to stop using a firefighting foam that caused widespread contamination across the country. While the military continues its transition away from the toxic foam, it is also beginning a massive cleanup which will take decades and billions of dollars. In the small town of Estrada, Michigan a group of citizens has been fighting to hold the air force accountable for contaminating their waterways.

0:34 · In the first of a two part series, special correspondent Megan Thompson brings us their story.

0:39 · Tony and his family have been coming to their vacation home on a van in lake for decades, a relaxing getaway in northern Michigan but in 2016 he received a troubling letter from the estate.

1:02 · From the department of health and human services saying, don’t drink your water.

1:04 · One year later they began to notice something strange on the lake.

1:06 · It was December and my wife woke up and said I think it snowed last night. There was foam piled up all along the shoreline. You could see it for miles.

1:18 · He learned his tapwater, the lake, and the bright, white foam were all contaminated with toxic man-made chemicals.

1:30 · It is sensitive to a different place.

1:32 · It’s shocking.

1:34 · The base is across the lake. You can see the buildings.

1:36 · It turned out the chemicals were coming from the old air force base.

1:41 · It was a training area.

1:44 · Mark Henry is a retired environmental engineer for the state of Michigan that worked at the base after it closed in 1993.

1:50 · There used to be a big concree ball out here with simulated aircraft on it and they would bring the fire trucks in and let people practice.

What is PFAS

2:03 · Practice putting out jet fuel fire is dowsing the burning planes with a special military foam used in the military since the 1970’s made from a chemical called p-fas. Courtney Carrigan is an environmental epidemiologist at Michigan state university who studies human exposure to chemicals.

2:22 · Characterized by a chain of carbons with fluorine bond and a functional group. One and likes water and the other does not, it repels it.

2:31 · The useful properties mean they are contained in all kinds of common products like nonstick pans, stain resistant carpet, and food packaging. There are about 15,000 types of p-fas and increasing the research shows they can cause health problems from liver damage to heart disease and cancer.

2:49 · They are often called forever chemicals because they are so persistent in the environment. They do not break down naturally. They move easily into water and groundwater and end up in fish and drinking water.

The scale of the problem

3:04 · Today about 50% of the nation’s drinking water supply has p-fas in it and nearly every American has some level of p-fas in their blood. The military is one of the biggest p-fas polluters in the U.S. But the problem is only now becoming known. In 2000 a colleague of mark Henry’s made the discovery and it sounded the alarm. Today the Pentagon confirms or suspects pfas concomitant – contamination at almost 700 other sites.

3:40 · There is almost no place you can dig a hole on the base and not find pfas in the groundwater even to this day 50 years after the release.

3:51 · The groundwater does not stay on the base.

3:55 · These plumes are flowing from the former base.

3:57 · Seeping for years into nearby streams, Lakes, and the tapwater of some homeowners like Tony.

4:03 · Right there.

4:04 · A politically connected attorney, he was so alarmed he teamed up to launch “Need our water” and call attention to the environmental Carla – calamity. They gave pbs a tour of the areas most affected by the pfas.

The plume

4:30 · This is a ymca camp owned by Detroit.

4:33 · The water is coming off the base from the storm sewers flowing uninterrupted into the saddle river.

4:39 · Tests found pfas levels more than 50 times higher than allowed by Michigan law. Today we visited dozens were swimming and boating nearby. About one mile away is a wildlife area called Clarks marsh where birds have been found with some of the highest levels of pfas contamination ever documented. There are five health advisory for the area warning to not eat any fish you catch or animals you hunt.

5:08 · This lake is highly contaminated on the surface. When the wind agitates the surface of the water the foam can build up.

5:18 · Tests by the state foundpfas levels in the phone as – in the foam as high as 200,000 parts per trillion. The EPA standards for drinking water allow for four parts per trillion. This lake and the other contaminated streams drain into lake Huron, a source of drinking water for 10 million people in the U.S. And Canada. Contaminated foam has been found on its shores too.

5:45 · We can’t afford to allow this land, this natural resource to be poisonous for years and years and years to come. It has to stop.

5:58 · They spent the last seven years lobbying congress and the Pentagon to clean up the mess. > They can stop the flow of all the plumes of the property now.

Air Force delays

6:12 · Fort Smith is one of the first places and in a country where that pfas of the pollution is treated. At air force recently announced delays in cleaning the rest. Some systems won’t be operating for another four or five years.

6:32 · It is a slow motion.

6:35 · It’s molasses on a cold winter day.

6:38 · A citizens advisory board meets with the air force every three months to provide input. The meetings have become increasingly contentious.

6:47 · We feel abandoned.

6:48 · It is like you are >> Cooking the books. At a meeting in August board members invented frustration about the delays and said the cleanup was mismanaged accusing the military of not conducting enough testing before it started building the latest treatment system this summer.

7:05 · The air force did an extremely minimal amount of work to demonstrate the wells that were planning on putting in are actually in the right place.

7:16 · They are only treating 25% of the known problem. They have no idea, really, what exists beyond.

7:23 · Under pressure, the air force released the results of an independent review at the latest community meeting this week confirming concerns about the new system saying more testing is needed to make sure that all pfas will be captured. Air force official pressure announced a shakeup in the management of the clean up and said new leadership will do better.

7:46 · Argument we will increase transparency.

7:48 · – I commit we will increase transparency and work hard accelerating the timeline.

7:55 · Tony appreciates the new direction but does not plan to let up the pressure. He says Fort Smith needs to set the example for the rest of the nation.

8:06 · Is our government doesn’t do it right what does that say to other communities impacted?

8:13 · It is a critical battle we are fighting here.

8:16 · For pbs news weekend.

Why did Kids Stop Walking to School

About Here, 05 04, 2023

Video (12:38)

Description

Thank you so much to @TransLink for partnering with me on this video. Check out their new TravelSmart for Kids Strategy at TransLink.ca/TravelSmartforKids

Transcript

The decline of walking

0:00 · [Music] this traffic isn’t the result of a car accident or lane closure it’s not the lineup to go see Coachella or head out of town for a long weekend no this is the traffic every morning to drop off students at a school and to me this is a great example of why we need to widen our roads add more Lanes of traffic make more room for cars and just kidding to

0:22 · me this traffic is an example of a problem all over North America if you look at the numbers much more children are being driven to school and much fewer of them are walking or cycling so for this video I just want to understand why is this [Music]

0:49 · [Music] happening all right let’s start with some numbers the decline in children walking or Cy to school is frankly astonishing this change happened in most Western countries and it happened fast in 1969 about 48% of students walked or cycled to school in the United States today that figure is about 11% and this

Impacts of driving to school

1:15 · decline wasn’t just in the US you can find the same Trend in Australia England and Canada today the majority of students are driven to school in a car one of the larger studies we have on this issue in BC found that 58% of fourth graders and 50% of seventh graders were driven to school by their parents so why should we care well it’s

1:37 · about building character and back in my day we used to walk 50 m to school through the rain the snow no this is actually a problem and a lot of people who aren’t your grandpa have done research on it Studies have found that children who don’t use active Transportation are missing out on improving their health building Independence and even doing better academically and all students are impacted by the worse air quality caused by car exhaust around their schools even

2:04 · if you don’t have kids you’re still impacted by the extra pollution climate change the general loss of social capital in a neighborhood and congestion yes School traffic is actually a huge contributor to overall traffic in Metro Vancouver School drop offs are responsible for up to a fifth of traffic in the morning but ultimately there’s a bigger picture here as a society we are generally trying to get more people to walk and cycle for a lot of reasons and

Sprawl and distance factors

2:33 · if that’s what we really want shouldn’t we be concerned that the majority of children today are learning to commute on SUVs and minivans so how do we change that so at first I thought the answer was obvious children are just living too far away from their schools and you can blame that on suburban sprawl you know

2:54 · the story in the 20th century most North American cities saw the growth of the suburbs sprawling falling C theck fied neighborhoods where you have to drive to get anywhere and spal is part of the story children are on average living further away from their schools a pretty standard walking distance for children is about 1,600 M or 1 mile well in the 1960s nearly 35% of children lived within 1 mile from their school in the US but by the year 2000 this had declined to just under 20% but what I was surprised to discover

3:27 · is that distance actually isn’t the main issue here in fact there are plenty of children today who live within walking distance of their schools but still take a car to class take the city of Vancouver for example known for its cyclists and walkable neighborhoods its school catchment areas are designed so that every Elementary student is within walking distance to their local public school but nearly 40% of those students

3:51 · are still driven to school and this is the trend you see right across the country according to the health behavior and school age children study only about half of students who live less than 5 minutes from their school walk or cycle to get there so the good news is that there are plenty of children who could theoretically walk and cycle to school but they don’t and the reason why is a

4:14 · bit more complicated so we have to start with safety Road Safety is perhaps the most common concern that’s brought up around children walking or cycling to school and those concerns do have some validity a study in Montreal found that children who walked to school were 4.5 times more likely to be injured than children being driven for children who biked they were 22 times more likely to be injured now it’s important to mention here that the vast majority of these injuries are minor however severe accidents can

Safety concerns and reality

4:44 · happen as well but walking and cycling aren’t inherently dangerous the reason they’re unsafe is because of cars here in North America the vast majority of serious pedestrian and cyclist collisions involve a vehicle okay I got

4:59 · to get out of here you’ll find a completely different picture in cities that are designed to prioritize active transportation in the Netherlands after major improvements to the country’s cycling and pedestrian networks fatality rates for all modes of transportation have fallen to near zero levels meanwhile in the United States pedestrian and cycling fatalities are consistently higher than vehicles around schools this can create a vicious cycle when more and more students are driven to school it makes the roads less safe for others to walk and cycle with only

5:30 · compels more parents to drive so this is a huge argument for building better infrastructure for active Transportation such as generous sidewalks crosswalks separated bike lanes and traffic calming measures like bananas no these bananas but of course Road Safety isn’t the only concern here there are also concerns about people strangers bullies

5:53 · kidnappers and other characters you hear about on the news growing man all contribute to the feeling toap walking to school is less safe the suspect considered extremely dangerous now child abductions and Other Extreme incidents are exceedingly rare but nevertheless it’s understandable that people feel more protected from these threats when they’re inside a vehicle and with the right vehicle you might even feel like your ego’s protected as well but with all that being said I’m not sure that safety is

6:23 · actually the main issue here either because none of those concerns whether it’s kidnappings or car accident are new as terrible as they are the statistics behind those risks haven’t changed significantly over the decades so there’s something else at play here that’s causing fewer kids to walk in cycle in 2011 sociologist marel

Changing parent norms

6:45 · Rutherford published one of the most comprehensive studies on how parenting expectations have changed over the past Century analyzing literally hundreds of Articles and guides on parenting over the decades she found that since the 1970s children have increasing ly been losing their independence for example

7:02 · this parenting guide from the 80s recommends letting children as young as 6 years old walk by themselves to school local corner stores or a friend’s home but today it’s not uncommon for parents to face scrutiny for simply letting their children be unsupervised such as walking home from school taking the bus and even playing in their own backyard the reasons behind this trend are complex new parenting Norms less trust within communities media narratives and countless other factors but the result of all that is very clear

7:33 · parents increasingly do not want their children to leave their home unsupervised and this brings up another really important factor parents commuting schedules unlike past decades today a majority of households have two working parents who commute to their own jobs in the morning and if the expectation is that children need their parents supervision wherever they go well then their school commutes have to revolve around their parents’ work commutes and it’s often just most convenient to pile everyone into a car in the morning so rigid work schedules

8:05 · are a huge Factor here in fact a study in Toronto found that flexible work hours could play a more significant role than even addressing safety concerns in convincing more parents to walk their kids to school the influence of work commutes is so strong that it actually creates an interesting effect in BC significantly more students arrive at school by car than leaving school by car but there’s another more unsettled Factor here a lot of this has to do with

Equity and financial issues

8:33 · money driving isn’t cheap and for parents who don’t have the means to drive a car to work they often have to let their children walk to school by themselves not because they care any less about safety they just don’t have a choice a study from Quebec found that children with lower income parents were two to three times more likely to walk or cycle to school when you couple this with the fact that lower inome neighborhoods are less likely to have pedestrian infrastructure and more likely to contain high-speed arterial roads you quickly realize that this is a

9:03 · huge Equity issue and the statistics show that a report from the CBC in Toronto found that lower inome neighborhoods had 50% more fatal or serious pedestrian collisions compared to more affluent areas to me this is the real tragedy behind this issue more children being driven to school makes their roads less safe for others to walk in cycle and it’s the students who don’t have the luxury of choice who disproportionately suffer the

9:30 · consequences now the purpose of this video isn’t to shame people about their commuting habits to a large extent the decline in active Transportation among kids is rooted in broader issues that aren’t the fault of anyone individual or parent but what has become apparent to me is that changing this pattern seems a

Solutions and new programs

9:48 · lot more doable than I thought before making this video I assume that reversing this trend could only be done through significant structural changes to the layout and density of our cities and don’t get me wrong that is still very important to do but what I’ve learned is that this issue is just as cultural as it is structural there are many children right now who live within walking and cycling distance of their schools but don’t and I think that’s

10:16 · something we can change we can start by simply addressing traffic safety concerns around schools improving certain crosswalks roads and intersection along school walking routes can help parents feel confident that kids on foot are just as safe as kid kids and cars and the other thing we can do is to create programs that encourage a culture of active Transportation among

10:35 · students I partnered with TransLink to put this video together and in the process I learned about a variety of programs they support to do just that for example TransLink has partnered with the BC Ministry of Transportation and hub cycling to offer cycling classes in public schools which teach thousands of students how to ride a bike each year then there’s TransLink and the transportation Ministries get on board program to let children ear 12 and underride transit for free which has given out over 3 million free trips since it’s launch in 2021 but one of my

11:06 · favorite initiatives is the walking School Bus how it works is that an adult or older student coordinates with families to pick up their children and walk as a group to their school and that’s just the tip of the Ice Break for Solutions there are many many other programs out there that encourage active travel to and from schools and I’d like to highlight just a couple more first the school streets program which closes down streets in front of schools to car traffic during drop off and pickup times to create a welcoming space for children while reducing car fumes outside the school entrance and second drive to five

11:38 · a program that asks parents to drop their kids off at designated locations that are a 5minute walk away from their school what I love about this idea is that it makes it possible for children who live further away from their schools to still participate in active travel if you want to learn more about these sorts of initiatives I’d recommend checking out translink’s new travel smart for kids strategy which creates a comprehensive plan plan to encourage more active Transportation among kids 12 and under you can find that and other resources on their website at the end of the day students

12:08 · are the next generation of citizens and commuters in our cities and I think encouraging them to bike or walk to school could help them get started on the right foot we criss cross baby when you’re all the things I need you’re song somewhere here CR baby CR

Why did we build high-rise public housing projects

City Beautiful, 10 17, 2017

Video (6:48)

Description

Watch this video ad-free on Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/city-beautiful-why-did-we-build-high-rise-public-housing-projects

In the spring of 2007, the Chicago Housing Authority demolished the last of the 28 buildings in the Robert Taylor Homes housing project. Robert Taylor Homes is one of several high profile housing project demolitions, from St. Louis’s Pruitt-Igoe to fellow Chicago project Cabrini Green. The demolitions serve as an admission that high-rise public housing wasn’t a good idea. The housing that replaced them are all low rise projects better integrated within existing neighborhoods. So why did anyone back then think it was a good idea? Why did housing authorities build these high rise projects in the first place?

Resources on this topic:

Hunt, D. B. (2001). What Went Wrong with Public Housing in Chicago? A History of the Robert Taylor Homes. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 94(1), 96–123.

“Demolished: The End of Chicago’s Public Housing” by David Eads and Helga Salinas. https://apps.npr.org/lookatthis/posts/publichousing/

“When Public Housing Was Paradise” by Joy Connelly https://openingthewindow.com/2011/06/13/when-public-housing-was-paradise-2/

“Elizabeth Wood, 93, Innovator In Early Days of Public Housing” by Bruce Lambert http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/17/us/elizabeth-wood-93-innovator-in-early-days-of-public-housing.html

“A Brief History of Public Housing” by Jennifer Amy Stoloff https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jennifer_Stoloff/publication/228789405_A_brief_history_of_public_housing/links/5643a68008ae9f9c13e05df6/A-brief-history-of-public-housing.pdf

Video sources: - Archive.org, Prelinger Archives

Photo sources: - Wikimedia Commons - Flickr user Samuel A. Love - Zahiri, N., Dezhdar, O., & Foroutan, M. (2016). Rethinking of Critical Regionalism in High-Rise Buildings. Buildings, 7(1), 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings7010004

Filmed in sunny Sacramento, California.

Transcript

The fall of public housing

0:00 · in the spring of 2007 the Chicago Housing Authority demolished the last of the 28 buildings in the Robert Taylor homes housing project Robert Taylor homes is one of several high profile housing project demolitions from st.

0:12 · Louis’s pruitt-igoe to the fellow Chicago project cabrini-green the demolitions serve as an admission that high-rise public housing wasn’t a good idea the housing that replaced them are all low-rise projects better integrated within existing neighborhoods so why did anyone back then think this was a good idea why didn’t housing authorities build these high-rise projects in the first place to understand why these high-rise

Roots of American housing

0:36 · projects were built we’re gonna have to go back in time all the way back to the Great Depression this is when the US government really began to get seriously involved with the construction of public housing prior to the Great Depression the private market was against the idea of government competing against them but the unprecedented economic climate subdued their protests now contrary to

0:55 · what you might think public housing in this era was not designed to house the poorest of the poor but instead help the middle class that was now struggling thanks to the depression activists and housing advocate Katherine Bowers shaped the nation’s vision for public housing in this era and literally wrote the 1937

1:10 · law that really kicked off public housing in the United States she envisioned large-scale projects on the edges of communities she favored modern architectural techniques but did not favor high-rise projects this general approach of housing workers in low-rise buildings lasted until the end of World War two housing not just public housing

Post-war urban renewal

1:28 · changed dramatically in the post-war years middle class white families moved to the suburbs enduros buying single-family homes they left behind black and immigrant families who could not leave the city either because they could not afford homes or because white neighborhoods would not tolerate black families moving in banks went loan to

1:45 · minority families and real estate agents wouldn’t show them homes in white communities white families were allowed to have a home an asset that increased in value and cemented their place in the middle class black families in the city became poorer and poorer and the federal government was about to make their lives even worse Harry Truman signed the Housing Act of 1949 which was intended to provide vast amounts of federal funding to cities to eradicate what he called slums where five million American

2:09 · families were living at the time and build new modern housing while upgrading the living conditions for millions of Americans may sound like a good idea in practice it was a disaster planners refer to this period of time as urban renewal but for many poor black urban residents it was known at the time as Negro removal as black neighborhoods

2:27 · were demolished but only some housing was rebuilt and much of that housing was actually intended for upper income white residents the full effects of urban renewal are far-reaching and will certainly be the subject of its own video Sunday but here’s this relevant to our discussion of housing projects urban and rural directed funding at the inner cities meaning the kind of projects Katherine Bauer advocated for nice developments in the suburbs just weren’t possible inner-city neighborhoods would be destroyed and replaced with completely new housing now nothing about

The rise of modernism

2:55 · that plan suggests that public housing authorities had to build high-rise buildings they could have replaced existing low-rise neighborhoods with low or medium rise buildings but the architectural style known as modernism was popular modern architects had already developed solutions for the slums and that solution was rows of bleak high-rise buildings lekar Busey a was the most famous of the modern architects who aimed to create a modern city his plan for Paris called for the demolition of the historic Central City in its place would be eighteen identical

3:23 · skyscrapers within super blocks of lawn and trees these towers in the park as the urban form came to be known were meant to serve as a cure for the ails of the city instead of enduring a dark dirty place with a confusing Street Network Parisians could enjoy plentiful light air and views in their Tower then take the elevator down to the park located right at the front door as the towers were identical and each floor was more or less identical they would be very efficient to build and be able to house many people that sounds pretty good right well when coreboot presented the idea back in 1925 Parisians hated it

3:56 · like really hated it it never came close to being built but 25 years later his ideas didn’t sound so crazy anymore two reasons for this first housing advocates wanted to replace old and dilapidated housing with something better and modern towers are pretty much the opposite of slum conditions at the time remember in the area Chicago where

Implementing high-rises

4:15 · Robert Taylor homes was built many did not have private baths and 1/3 of housing units were overcrowded some of these residents look forward to the new modern homes with private baths new appliances Envy in fact high-rise towers may have been a good place to live if local governments and housing authorities would have maintained and policed them well enough and second modern towers can be built relatively cheaply now in the case of the Robert Taylor homes Chicago Housing Authority officials strongly preferred low-rise designs like townhouses for

4:45 · their new housing Elizabeth would the progressive director of the CH a at the time had tried high-rise elevator buildings in the past she was influenced by the modern tower in a park model of lick her Busey a but after criticism from friend Katherine Bauer would admitted that she wasn’t comfortable putting people in high-rises they instead experimented with four-story buildings that were essentially two two-story townhouses stacked on top of each other unfortunately federal officials thought those plans were too costly and required Chicago to cut costs and build high-rise

Failure and new approaches

5:15 · buildings the marginal cost of adding floors to elevator buildings is relatively low so up those buildings went it’s worth noting that the federal government does not deserve all the blame one of the reasons Chicago’s plans were so expensive is because the Chicago City Council responding to the desires of their white constituents refused to

5:34 · allow any new public housing on the outskirts of Chicago where white families were moving in droves and land was cheaper the progressive Chicago Housing Authority had long advocated for sites in white neighborhoods but the racism of white residents halted those plans enforced the mostly black residents of Robert Taylor homes into cheaper and worse high-rise buildings and that brings us back to the wrecking ball the instincts of the Chicago Housing Authority were right the towers didn’t work when st.

5:59 · Louis tore down the pruitt-igoe project in 1972 an architectural historian called its destruction the day modern architecture died the federal government entirely rethought its approach to public housing at that point two new public housing projects were low-rise mixed income and integrated into communities the federal government also created a voucher program so families in need can rent homes on the private market I think it’s safe to say the air of the high-rise public housing project is over hey

6:28 · everyone thanks for watching just a personal side note Katherine Bower and her husband William Wurster co-founded the College of Environmental Design here at UC Berkeley it’s one of the first schools to put architecture Landscape Architecture and city finding under one roof it’s actually this roof right back here so thank you catherine bower for your humane vision for social housing and for my current educational institution

Why don’t we just burn our trash

DW Planet A, 08 13, 2021

Video (10:45)

Description

Waste to energy plants are seen as green innovations for countries where landfills dominate, as they reduce methane and generate renewable energy. But will these incinerators really make our trash problems go up in flames?

Transcript

Intro

0:01 · These skiers are all here because of trash.

0:05 · That’s because underneath this slope is a huge garbage incineration plant.

0:10 · It processes 400,000 metric tons of waste a year and turns it into energy and heat for Copenhagen.

0:18 · It also recycles 90% of the city’s metal waste.

0:22 · Some say such incineration plants could be key for solving our global trash problem.

0:28 · But is that true?

0:30 · Or are we going to end up just getting burned?

Why we need better waste management

0:39 · Globally, we produce over two billion tons of household waste annually, with high income countries generating an outsized amount compared to their populations.

0:50 · 37% of global waste ends up in landfills, polluting groundwater and producing methane.

0:57 · Less than 20% of the world’s trash is recycled or composted.

1:02 · In the Global South many people have no access to trash collection, and it often ends up in rivers — a primary source of ocean plastic.

1:12 · To get rid of as much trash as possible, as fast as possible, around one billion tons of waste are openly burned every year.

1:22 · “Open burning generates high levels of black carbon, which is soot, which has a really strong global warming effect.”

1:31 · Zoë Lenkiewicz is one of the founding members of Wasteaid, and has been a waste manager for over 20 years.

1:38 · “It also generates dioxins and furans, which are known to cause cancer.

1:41 · All of this is going into the local air, wherever people are burning waste.”

1:48 · Women are more directly impacted, as they are often responsible for disposing of household waste.

1:53 · Burning trash this way is a serious problem. But done differently, there are advantages to it.

Waste to energy

2:01 · Here’s where controlled burning, aka incineration, comes in.

2:04 · Incinerators first appeared where it was hard to landfill, in London in 1874, then in New York City, in 1885.

2:12 · “The incineration process itself, it reduces the volume of the waste [by] 90 percent.”

2:19 · Ella Stengler is the managing director of the umbrella organization for European waste to energy operators.

2:25 · “And it fulfills the kind of sanitary task because it destroys the pollutants which are embedded in the waste.”

2:32 · The generated heat can also be turned into energy. It’s called, unsurprisingly, waste to energy.

2:38 · In the US, where there’s a lot of space and cheap energy in the form of oil, waste to energy wasn’t so competitive, and many plants were closed.

2:46 · But more and more plants were built in the EU.

2:50 · Today they provide power to 18 million Europeans, and heat to 15 million.

2:56 · They’re a common waste management option for countries like Denmark and the Netherlands, which have almost completely eliminated landfilling.

3:05 · Environmental organizations see potential in waste to energy as a transition step toward a more circular economy, especially in countries without much space, that need more energy.

3:18 · Here’s how the plants work: The garbage is dumped into a big pit — from there it’s fed into the furnaces.

3:25 · They burn extremely hot, and the waste is reduced in a matter of minutes.

3:30 · The heat from the fires generates steam, which turns turbines to create electricity.

3:35 · The steam can also be used for heating.

3:38 · The 10% that doesn’t burn is called bottom ash, and metals can be recovered from it.

3:44 · The rest can then be used as construction material.

3:50 · So the process reduces the volume of waste, creates energy, and part of the residue can even be recycled.

3:58 · What’s not to love?

4:01 · Well, there are a few reasons why the world isn’t full of waste to energy plants with ski slopes on top.

4:07 · One of those reasons is fly ash, which is everything caught by the filters.

4:11 · It needs to be disposed of in a hazardous waste facility.

4:15 · Another reason is cost.

4:16 · “If there would be a waste to energy plant built, it should be equipped with a state-of-the-art technology, which is expensive.

4:27 · And you need to train the staff to properly operate it and also authorities to monitor it.”

4:33 · Even without ski slopes, waste to energy plants can cost over one billion US dollars to build.

4:39 · Without the latest technology and monitoring, pollution can reach unsafe levels, and impact people living nearby.

4:47 · And they also emit a lot of CO2: in the EU, around 52 million tonnes per year.

4:56 · That’s like 430,000 cars each driving a million kilometers.

5:02 · “Policymakers and industries put incineration in the same type of energy group as renewables, like wind or solar or even nuclear.”

5:15 · This is Tatiana Lujan.

5:16 · She leads the plastics team for ClientEarth, and is also working to implement the EU’s circular economy directive.

5:24 · “But when you look at the greenhouse gas emissions of incineration, they’re actually pretty close to coal and gas, and way far from wind, solar, nuclear.

5:36 · A study commissioned by ClientEarth found that controlled incineration generates between 59 and 73% of the emissions that coal would.

5:44 · Classifying this energy as renewable can divert funding from more sustainable waste management technologies like recycling.

5:51 · So, where it can be correctly built and managed, controlled incineration is better than a landfill – but it’s by far not the cleanest option to handle waste, no matter how much energy is won.

The Waste Hierarchy

6:04 · Have a look at this “waste hierarchy pyramid” – bear with me, it’s less complicated than it looks.

6:09 · At the very bottom of the pyramid is open burning or dumping, the worst possible way to get rid of trash.

6:15 · Disposal without energy recovery is next, so landfilling or incineration without energy generation.

6:22 · Then here’s where waste to energy, which is an umbrella term for a few different methods, comes in.

6:29 · Then comes recycling.

6:31 · Even better is to re-use things, often called upcycling, and at the top is prevention and reduction.

6:38 · Yeah, the whole world is pretty far from the top.

6:42 · That is why waste to energy is seen by some as a quick “solution” for countries struggling with their waste.

A waste solution for the Global South?

6:51 · Not surprisingly, plants are opening up around the world, like in China, Indonesia and India.

7:02 · Africa’s first waste to energy plant just opened, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

7:08 · But it has proven to be more complicated than just opening up plants and burning the problem away.

7:14 · One reason is that the composition of waste varies widely throughout the world.

7:22 · “You can’t take one model that works in a wealthy country like a cookie cutter and expect it to work in a low-income country because it’s a completely different market.”

7:34 · In India, household waste is around 50 percent organic matter, like food scraps, which are too wet to burn.

7:41 · And because of the lack of centralized waste collection, trash there is often mixed together.

7:48 · “I don’t think segregation is happening at all in majority of the Indian cities.

7:55 · So that’s a major, major problem.”

7:57 · Pritpal Randhawa has been conducting long-term studies on waste management in India for the past 10 years.

8:02 · “The waste has to be segregated and the undesirable material should be separated from that waste, and only the waste with high calorific value should be burned.

8:14 · But that is not something which is happening actually.”

8:18 · Calorific value is a measure of a substance’s heating power — in other words, how easily it burns.

8:24 · Crude oil and mixed plastics come in at around 40 megajoules per kilogram.

8:29 · Food is about 16.

8:31 · Without waste separation, lots of food scraps find their way to the furnaces, forcing the plants to add additional fuel.

8:39 · This makes the whole facility extremely inefficient.

8:42 · Countries also need to have a place to store the hazardous waste.

8:46 · So if incineration isn’t a silver bullet for the Global South, what are other options?

8:52 · “It’s not very complicated at all – the ideal situation would be management of waste at the decentralized level.”

9:01 · And not only decentral, but diversified: specifically suited to the environment and economy of an area.

9:10 · In many cities in India, for example, waste pickers collect recyclables, which are processed informally.

9:15 · Biogas generated from organic waste can be a source of fuel from Benin to Mumbai.

9:20 · And plastic can be made into building material.

9:25 · “With waste management, absolutely one size does not fit all.

9:28 · And you really need to look at what’s most appropriate for that local area.”

When incineration makes sense

9:34 · Waste to energy plants can work, but a trash collection system and a strong environmental regulator are both necessary.

9:41 · These can be really hard to come by.

9:44 · Even with them, countries need to do some careful reflection before building new plants.

9:48 · “When you create incineration, you’re making huge investments and locking yourself in a system that you’re going to have to continue feeding and feeding and feeding.

10:00 · And that creates a disincentive for transitioning to a real circular economy.”

10:08 · So before more trash burning facilities join the global system, policymakers should look at funding more sustainable methods of waste disposal – like recycling, reusing and most importantly, reducing our waste in the first place.

10:22 · So what do you think?

10:24 · To burn, or not to burn?

10:28 · If this video made you think at all…

10:30 · If this video make you think at all, come back every Friday for new ones.

10:33 · And don’t forget to subscribe.

Why don’t we just turn empty offices into housing

DW Planet A, 12 01, 2023

Video (12:13)

Description

Many offices are sitting empty following the rise of working from home, while cities around the world face housing crises. Building new housing is extremely carbon intensive. Could converting unused offices into housing help solve both problems?

Credits:

Reporter: Dave Braneck

Camera: Henning Goll

Video Editor: Frederik Willmann

Supervising Editor: Joanna Gottschalk

Factcheck: Jeannette Cwienk

Thumbnail: Em Chabridon

Interviewees:

Steven Paynter, Principal Architect, Gensler

Lily Langois, City Planner, San Francisco Planning Dept.

Pernilla Hagbert, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Benjamin Albrecht, Director of Development, International Campus

Marcus Gwechenberger, Head of Planning, Frankfurt

For important background information, thanks to also:

Stefan Bürger, GWH Housing Association

Darwn Gafori, International Campus

US federal government incentivizing office to housing conversions: https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2023/10/27/commercial-to-residential-conversion-addressing-office-vacancies/

Some of the physical challenges of converting offices into housing: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office-conversions.html

Chapters:

0:00 Intro

0:51 The Vacancy Problem

2:31 Housing’s environmental Impact

4:12 Adaptive Reuse

6:55 Improving City Planning

8:53 Cutting Red Tape

10:38 Potential

Transcript

Intro

0:00 · If you live in a city, there’s a pretty good chance you’re living through a housing crisis.

0:05 · Rents in major cities are skyrocketing…

0:10 · And this is happening all around the world.

0:15 · At the same time housing has grown scarce, some buildings stand empty.

0:22 · Downtown Frankfurt looks like just about any other big city’s central business district.

0:26 · But the gleaming high-rises do hide an alarming fact — nearly 10% of the city’s offices are vacant.

0:35 · Other major cities around the globe have vacancy rates that high…

0:38 · or even higher.

0:41 · So why don’t we just convert empty offices into housing for people worldwide?

The Vacancy Problem

0:52 · While many of us are back in the office, working from home is here to stay.

0:56 · For instance, 35% of US workers who can work from home still do.

1:01 · And plenty only come into the office on occasion.

1:04 · But vacant workspaces aren’t a new problem.

1:07 · Long before the pandemic, aging offices were already becoming less desirable.

1:11 · “There’s been for about the last 10 years a trend that we called ‘flight to quality.’”

1:17 · Steven Paynter, an architect at one of the world’s biggest firms, focuses on adaptive reuse.

1:22 · “People weren’t renewing their leases in older buildings, they were going to the new ones that were being built, because they offered the kind of amenities and kind of locations people wanted.”

1:32 · All these empty offices aren’t just a waste of space: they mean less rent for owners, lower tax revenue for cities, and the decline of entire neighborhoods.

1:42 · “We have beautiful buildings, we have the wonderful plazas, we have sort of all of the physical assets – we just have vacant buildings.

1:49 · And so you don’t see that vibrancy.

1:51 · You used to, you know, kind of look down these key corridors, and you would see just streams of people, you know, coming down the street, and you don’t see that as much anymore.”

2:00 · Lily Langlois is a planner in San Francisco, another city addressing high vacancies.

2:06 · “Almost 95% of our tax revenue comes from business tax, from downtown.

2:12 · About 80% of our GDP came from downtown companies in 2021.

2:17 · It is our economic engine.

2:19 · And so, it needs to thrive so the city can thrive.”

2:24 · Roughly 1/3rd of offices are vacant in San Francisco – the third-most expensive housing market in the US.

Housing’s environmental Impact

2:31 · At the same time, the ongoing construction of new housing is causing a whole different host of problems.

2:37 · Construction accounts for 13% of global energy-related carbon emissions, more than five times that of the aviation industry.

2:44 · “In order to meet climate targets, but also other sustainability targets, we will need to actually stick with what’s already built.”

2:53 · Pernilla Hagbert researches urban sustainability at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology.

2:59 · “Even if this new production of housing and buildings is done with very energy efficient and optimized technologies, this won’t be enough.

3:10 · We will also need to reduce the total amount of new production.”

3:16 · And this is what brings us to Frankfurt.

3:18 · I checked out an ongoing conversion project – an office tower built in the 90s will soon be reborn as around 150 furnished apartments.

3:28 · Benjamin Albrecht, the developer’s regional European head, is excited about adaptive reuse.

3:50 · But it doesn’t only save on emissions.

3:53 · Revamping an office building can be up to 30 percent cheaper and construction can be done in half the time…

3:59 · Though that depends on the project.

4:00 · This one wasn’t much cheaper than a new build, but speed played a big part.

Adaptive Reuse

4:13 · Repurposing an old building to serve a new function is called adaptive reuse, and can extend a structure’s life.

4:19 · Think of turning old factories into artists’ lofts, or warehouses into ubiquitous street food halls.

4:25 · There are plenty of empty offices, tons of people need housing – it seems like a pretty simple solution.

4:32 · Plus it’s environmentally friendly.

4:33 · So why isn’t this constantly happening?

4:37 · Retrofitting an existing structure is a lot more complicated than planning everything from scratch.

4:43 · As developers have found out, apartments and offices aren’t always a 1-1 fit – it depends on when and where they were built.

4:52 · Modern open-plan offices weren’t built for living in.

4:54 · First, you must divide up large areas while ensuring rooms get enough sunlight.

4:59 · And you can’t just have one big bathroom for a whole floor.

5:03 · Each room needs ventilation, heating and power, too.

5:08 · And for all you know the old building is full of asbestos – not every challenge is clear before renovations start.

5:26 · Steven Paynter, the adaptive reuse specialist, has even developed an algorithm to measure whether offices are good candidates to be reincarnated as housing.

5:36 · “So it looks at say, over 100 different aspects.

5:38 · Some of the key ones are things like the distance between the elevators and the windows.

5:44 · You want your one-bedroom apartment to have a nice bedroom with a window and a nice living space with a window, and then have maybe the kitchen and the bathroom at the back.

5:54 · That’s great.

5:55 · A lot of office buildings actually have way too much space between the elevators and the glazing to make that happen.”

6:02 · This means to end up with shiny new apartments, many conversions essentially rebuild everything except existing foundations and facades.

6:10 · Turns out its just slightly more complicated than just clearing out some cubicles and throwing up a bit of sheetrock – especially if you like luxury amenities like bathrooms in every apartment and windows in every bedroom.

6:23 · These constraints make many offices just too much work to convert.

6:27 · According to Paynter’s research, roughly 30% of offices are ideal candidates.

6:33 · And while not every office building is ripe for conversion, adding up all of those that would be a good fit would still make a massive difference.

6:40 · “If you look at the US market where we’re doing a lot of this work, there’s about 100 billion square feet of office space.

6:47 · And if you’ve converted just the vacancy, or about seven precent of that, you could create between six and seven million new homes.”

Improving City Planning

6:55 · But just turning offices into apartments isn’t going to be enough.

7:00 · Neighborhoods that are just office blocks can be a bit inhospitable – crawling with finance bros by day, morphing into ghost towns outside of business hours.

7:08 · Ensuring people live, not just work there could change that.

7:14 · As we saw for ourselves…

7:18 · This neighborhood of Frankfurt, Niederrad, was a sprawling set of offices in the 60s and 70s with the wildly creative nickname of the ‘Bürostadt’ or office city.

7:28 · But by the mid-2000s, nearly one in three of the offices was sitting empty.

7:43 · In 2006, the city began converting the empty office towers into housing, creating true mixed-use development.

7:50 · Now it’s filled with places to live, shop, eat and go to school, instead of just places to work.

7:58 · Frankfurt rezoned the area, and turned parking lots into green spaces and kindergartens.

8:02 · It brought in developers to build apartments and shops.

8:06 · When they’re done, there’ll be 6,000 apartments here.

8:19 · We took a tour of one of the converted office buildings, a 20-story tower turned into 150 apartments in 2020.

8:26 · Its former life made for some quirks.

8:28 · Every room has sprinklers and architects built around load-bearing beams.

8:32 · But they boasts high ceilings and great views, too.

8:36 · As you can see, many conversions end up as relatively upscale housing.

8:41 · That might take a bit of pressure off the housing market, but it’s not going to bring relief to the masses.

8:45 · If we want this to be more than just some kind of luxury niche we don’t need anything crazy – just a bit of political will.

Cutting Red Tape

8:53 · The Canadian city of Calgary, which started working with Paynter to revitalize its downtown in 2021, is a case in point.

9:01 · “Calgary had about a 38% vacancy in their office market.

9:04 · And that was at the time one of the worst in the world.

9:07 · They very quickly put a program together, which gives you $75 a square foot to convert the building, and moved all of the red tape out of the way to make these projects move more quickly.

9:17 · The first five projects are now under construction.

9:20 · That represents about 750 new homes, and they have 10 more approved.”

9:26 · Paynter says much of this housing will be affordable and built with families in mind, thanks to the financial incentives provided by the city.

9:35 · Adaptive reuse often has even more red tape than new builds – that will have to change if we’re going to use its potential to curb emissions.

9:42 · “If you take Toronto where I am, as an example, there’s a rule in all of downtown that you cannot remove office space: it’s protected as employment lands.

9:51 · That was created in the ’70s, and it just never got updated because there was no need to change it.

9:56 · But now there’s a desperate need to change it and it’s kind of holding up these projects happening.”

10:02 · Such arbitrary regulations are quite common.

10:04 · And approval for conversions often takes as long as it would for a new build, even though the structure’s already in place.

10:11 · Ideally, it’d be the other way around.

10:14 · “In both legislative and sort of from a governance perspective, we need to think of how to actually make it difficult to, for example, tear down a building and build a new building, through zoning and through harder legislation.

10:32 · But also through sort of soft legislation like taxation and financial incentives.”

Potential

10:41 · Frankfurt’s leading the way in Germany, converting offices to nearly 10,000 houses in the last decade.

10:47 · And according to recent studies, there’s room for plenty more in cities all over the map.

10:52 · Frankfurt did it with careful city planning, like in Niederrad.

10:56 · Plus, the more we learn implementing such projects, the greater the savings.

11:01 · Since their first office conversion projects have gone well, Benjamin Albrecht thinks his firm will focus more on adaptive reuse.

11:10 · Many developers have shown interest in these projects, and cities like San Francisco are supporting office conversions.

11:17 · “I don’t think that we’re naive in any way, thinking that we’re going to build hundreds of 1000s of units downtown.

11:23 · But I think it’s, you know, part of the solution.

11:26 · And it is an amazing opportunity, to take advantage of these existing assets.”

11:31 · The kind of support offered may determine the type of housing we get.

11:35 · Flipping offices into housing is clearly no quick fix, and it’s not going to solve the global housing crisis overnight.

11:42 · But Frankfurt and Calgary do show it can make cities vastly more livable and it can drastically reduce the environmental impact of relying solely on new builds.

11:51 · Let us know in the comments if your city has started converting offices to housing.

11:55 · And don’t forget to subscribe, we’ve got new videos for you every Friday.

Why free public transport doesn’t fix traffic (and what does)

DW Planet A, 11 08, 2024

Video (11:19)

Description

If cars are bad for the climate, and public transport good, what makes people switch? From Jakarta to Tallinn, cities are trying to motivate people by eliminating fares. Let’s check if that works.

We’re destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn’t need to be this way. Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we’ll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.

Follow Planet A on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dw_planeta?lang=en

Credits:

Reporter: Jonas Mayer

Video Editor: Neven Hillebrands

Supervising Editors: Malte Rohwer-Kahlmann, Joanna Gottschalk, Michael Trobridge

Factcheck: Kirsten Funck

Thumbnail: Em Chabridon

C40 guide for attractive public transport: https://www.c40knowledgehub.org/s/article/How-to-make-public-transport-an-attractive-option-in-your-city?language=en_US

The case of public transport for the climate: https://www.wri.org/insights/current-state-of-public-transport-climate-goals

EU case study on whether free public transport works: https://urban-mobility-observatory.transport.ec.europa.eu/resources/case-studies/free-passenger-transport-exploring-benefits-and-disadvantages_en

More on car traffic reduction strategies: https://itdp.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/ITDP_TamingTraffic_2021.pdf

How ‘induced traffic’ works: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191261510000226

More on Transit-Oriented Development (TOD): https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/transport/publication/transforming-the-urban-space-through-transit-oriented-development-the-3v-approach

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:01 Why we like driving car

04:29 Taking the bus in Jakarta

07:17 Making car use harder

09:34 What now?

Transcript

Intro

0:00 · In 2012, something remarkable happened in the Estonian capital, Tallinn.

0:06 · Cars were congesting the city’s streets - so the local government asked residents: “Do you want free public transport?”

0:13 · They said: “Jah”(Yes).

0:15 · So Tallinn made it free.

0:16 · Since 2013, every resident can just hop on and off trams and buses - without having to buy a ticket.

0:23 · Did this unclog the city?

0:25 · Well…

0:25 · buses were fuller than before.

0:27 · But at the same time, the share of public transit compared to other means of transport dropped.

0:34 · “Ridership has fallen dramatically, from 42% to now like 30%.

0:41 · And in the same time, car use has risen about 5%.”

0:47 · Despite free public transport, people used their cars more.

0:51 · If not money, what does it take to convince people to switch from cars to public transportation?

Why we like driving car

1:01 · “Try to imagine what this country would be like without automobiles.”

1:06 · This General Electric film is from 1948, but our sentiment towards cars hasn’t changed much since.

1:13 · “…there is nothing like a car.”

1:16 · “When people look at the psychological aspects of car ownership, they typically look at areas of status and of pride.”

1:23 · Pete Dyson is a behavioral scientist.

1:26 · He researches why people travel the way they do.

1:29 · “The nature of the tool that it plays in our life provides some freedom to go places and to do things that have some unique aspects.”

1:40 · Cars are about way more than just getting from A to B.

1:43 · They fulfill a lot of what we desire.

1:46 · Take a look at this “pyramid of needs”.

1:49 · It’s a concept from the world of psychology that ranks what we need from basic things like food and safety, to belonging and self-esteem up to self-actualization, so, becoming the best version of yourself.

2:02 · A car covers a whole lot of those needs.

2:05 · Not only does it take you wherever you want to go, whenever you want to go.

2:09 · It’s also relatively safe and comfortable.

2:11 · And friends and colleagues, who see your car as a sign of success, may admire you.

2:17 · Sure, a bus gets you from A to B as well.

2:19 · But forget about glamour or comfort, once you get off a subway, covered in sweat and super late for your business lunch.

2:28 · The thing is just…

2:29 · while driving might be great for those inside the car, it’s actually pretty bad for everyone else.

2:34 · Cars, vans and motorbikes kill around two million people each year - through air pollution or road accidents.

2:42 · Plus, they emit around 10% of global carbon emissions into the air, because most of them still run on fossil fuels.

2:51 · Yes, public transport also emits carbon, but per person it’s much less.

2:57 · Having many people share a vehicle makes the trip more efficient in this respect.

3:02 · That’s why governments want people to switch.

3:04 · After Tallinn, other cities and countries have also tried to bait them with the simplest thing - money - and made public transit free.

3:12 · Like Luxembourg, the island of Malta, Kansas City and Albuquerque.

3:16 · Their experience was largely the same as in Tallinn.

3:20 · “The people who were using public transport anyways, uh, are now using it more often, taking more rides.”

3:27 · Merlin Rehema is a sustainable city researcher based in Tallinn.

3:32 · “To some extent also like short walks and bicycle trips, that were taken before, became then bus trips.”

3:40 · But just very few give up their car.

3:42 · The cost is 40 euros per resident per year to make public transport free in Tallinn.

3:47 · But if buses are packed and not well connected, residents are reluctant to switch.

3:52 · You also need to make the public transport system better.

3:56 · “There are ways in which you can make journeys smoother, more punctual, more reliable by improving, say signaling, giving bus priority to public transport.

4:09 · A safer environment, a more comfortable environment.

4:12 · The access to a seat or a table, or the ability to do useful or meaningful things whilst travelling.”

4:20 · Some cities have understood this and are working hard to improve their public transport system.

4:25 · Like Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia.

Taking the bus in Jakarta

4:29 · There are almost 11 million people there, almost 4 million cars, 17 million motorbikes.

4:36 · People spend hours in traffic.

4:38 · Air pollution has gotten really unhealthy.

4:41 · But the city also has invested a lot in public transport.

4:45 · Here’s what a trip can look like.

4:47 · Within 500 meters of your home, you find a stop for a free minibus that’s part of the “MikroTrans” network.

4:54 · This takes you to a bus station.

4:56 · From there you catch a bus that drives on a separate lane, past all the cars stuck in traffic.

5:01 · The whole trip costs 3,500 Rupiah, as much as a small bottle of water.

5:07 · That’s affordable.

5:09 · The bus is air-conditioned, which is a nice relief.

5:13 · It has service staff on board, and a separate, supposedly safe area for women.

5:18 · These pink busses are women only.

5:22 · BRT, short for Bus Rapid Transit, has become popular in big cities in Latin America and Asia.

5:29 · Jakarta has the largest network, with 14 of these corridors spanning over more than 250 km.

5:36 · They call it “TransJakarta”.

5:38 · The concept of BRT is to give more space to public buses.

5:42 · This way they’re supposed to travel quickly and reliably - without building much new infrastructure.

5:48 · “And it is attractive because it is integrated with MicroTrans, it is integrated with the minibuses or medium buses.

5:57 · We call it first mile and last mile connectivity.”

5:59 · Gonggomtua Sitanggang is the Southeast Asia Director of a non-profit transport institute.

6:05 · He lives in Jakarta and advises the transit operators.

6:09 · The first and last mile connectivity he just spoke about is important to let people access public transport in the first place.

6:16 · That can work with bikes or e-scooters, in Jakarta it’s these minibuses.

6:21 · They used to be informal and privately operated but then got integrated into the public system.

6:28 · 20 years after the first bus corridor was built, Jakarta’s bus network now covers most of the city and is connected to the local train network.

6:39 · Overall about 10% of trips are made by public transport.

6:43 · That might not sound like a lot yet.

6:45 · But the government is thinking big.

6:47 · It wants to increase that number sixfold by 2030.

6:51 · Seems like Jakarta is taking user needs seriously.

6:55 · But they also haven’t found the secret formula yet.

6:58 · Because as public transit has been growing, so has car and motorcycle traffic.

7:04 · It seems that nudging people into public transport is one thing.

7:08 · But…

7:09 · “the major challenge here, or the major homework here, is that to push people to use public transport.”

Making car use harder

7:18 · For decades the solution to too much traffic has been to build more lanes, more roads, more flyovers, more free parking..

7:26 · And Jakarta has done just that.

7:29 · The thing is: that’s not how you unclog your streets.

7:33 · Today we know: More space for cars only attracts more cars.

7:38 · And after a few years, roads are congested again, with more vehicles than before.

7:43 · This is called “induced traffic”.

7:46 · If you want fewer cars, you’re better off doing the opposite: make it harder and more inconvenient to drive a car.

7:55 · Again, the most obvious tool is money.

7:58 · From 2025, car owners in Estonia will have to pay two kinds of taxes.

8:04 · One when they buy a car and one when they use it.

8:07 · They aren’t big fans of that new tax, of course.

8:11 · London has established a congestion charge zone.

8:14 · Everyone driving into it during the day has to pay 15 pounds.

8:19 · Car traffic dropped significantly, while bus and metro use went up.

8:25 · But simply making it expensive to drive might hit poorer people particularly hard.

8:30 · There are other options too.

8:32 · “They can also be like non-monetary measures, like really redesigning your cities in order to favor public transport use and, and active modes.”

8:45 · Paris for example has been removing tens of thousands of parking lots, closing entire roads to cars and tripling parking fees for big and polluting SUVs.

8:54 · Jakarta is starting to redesign as well in an area with tens of thousands of parking spaces.

9:01 · Gongomtua Sitangang is advising the pilot project.

9:06 · “We start by improving the connectivity, the pedestrian facilities and also cycling facilities, and then we also develop a strategy of how to reduce the parking space within the area.

9:22 · What is important here is that the neighborhood sits at a major public transport hub with bus and rail connections.

9:28 · You can only put pressure on car drivers if you have good public transport alternatives ready.

What now?

9:35 · Just like with cars, people have very different needs and expectations when it comes to good public transport.

9:41 · It must be…

9:42 · “easy and enjoyable” “in between affordable and accessible” “Reliable and comfortable” And just like that, each city starts from a different point.

9:54 · In terms of traffic, infrastructure, budget, mobility behavior, and so on.

10:00 · There’s no single formula for public transport that applies to everyone.

10:04 · Whether you’re “nudging” or “pushing” residents into transit, it still looks different in each place.

10:09 · But the goal is the same: to reduce traffic, carbon emissions and air pollution.

10:16 · The challenge is that new public transit has to be built within existing cities, in between houses, cars and people.

10:23 · Unless you want chaos and frustrated citizens, room for private vehicles can only be reduced step by step as well.

10:31 · And we haven’t even talked about rural areas yet, where routes are longer and buses scarcer.

10:36 · But a few quick fixes could make public transport more convenient almost immediately.

10:42 · Like an app that shows in real-time where the bus is and when it’ll arrive.

10:47 · Or a uniform, maybe cheap fare system that works for different types of transit.

10:52 · Little things that reduce stress and give a sense of control.

10:59 · What do you think about buses or trains where you are?

11:02 · Leave us a comment and subscribe, we post a new video every Friday.

Why It’s Usually Hotter In A City Let’s Talk NPR

NPR, 08 14, 2018

Video (2:29)

Description

The way cities are designed and inhabited can make actually make them hotter. So what’s the solution? We explore a few ideas for beating the urban heat.

Subscribe to NPR - http://bit.ly/NPRsubscribe

• NPR explores how to cope with a warming world: https://n.pr/2AdziQ3

• Phoenix tries to reverse its ‘silent storm’ of heat deaths. https://n.pr/2zmQ6nb

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this video used a map of Phoenix, New York, rather than Phoenix, Ariz. and misspelled the cities of Phoenix and Washington, D.C.

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ABOUT NPR

NPR connects to audiences on the air, on demand, online, and in person. More than 26 million radio listeners tune in to NPR stations each week and more than 36 million unique visitors access NPR.org each month making NPR one of the most trusted sources of news and insights on life and the arts. NPR is also the leading publisher of podcasts, with 36 original shows and an average of 4 million listeners per week. NPR shares compelling stories, audio and photos with millions of social media users on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and Snapchat; NPR News and NPR One apps, online streaming, podcasts, iTunes radio and connected car dashboards help meet audiences where they are. NPR’s live events bring to the stage two-way conversations between NPR hosts and the audience in collaboration with the public radio Member Station community. This robust access to public service journalism makes NPR an indispensable resource in the media landscape.

Transcript

0:04 · There’s a reason that summers in the city are so hot, and it’s probably easiest to explain why with thermal vision.

0:11 · It shows the heat all around me and also the coldness of this ice cream cone.

0:16 · Cities are often hotter than their suburbs due to a phenomenon known as “the heat island effect.”

The Heat Island Effect

0:24 · All of that asphalt, concrete, dark rooftops and tall buildings— they absorb and store heat.

0:31 · And there are a lot of people using a lot of energy— driving cars, riding subways, running the AC.

0:38 · All of these materials and activities either create or retain heat.

0:44 · And all that stored heat causes steeper nighttime highs … when people would otherwise have a chance to cool down.

0:52 · The way all these heat-storing elements are laid out matters quite a bit.

0:57 · In cities laid out in grids, like Phoenix, Chicago, or Washington, D.C., the buildings are closer together, like closely packed coals in a fire, keeping heat in.

1:07 · More space between buildings creates more circulation.

1:11 · Another way to combat this heat island effect is through green space.

1:15 · Parks, trees, plants— they don’t absorb as much heat … they actually send water back in the atmosphere.

1:21 · Between all those hot buildings, that cools things off.

1:25 · Another solution is color.

Color Light

1:27 · Light colors reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere instead of storing it as heat.

1:31 · It’s easiest to see in crosswalks, and it’s true for the color of buildings and other urban surfaces, too.

1:39 · And one long-game way to combat the heat island effect is to avoid using air conditioning when you don’t need it.

Avoid Using Air Conditioning

1:45 · AC uses a ton of electricity and creates a feedback loop.

1:49 · When we get that electricity from coal or natural gas, that puts more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere … which warms the planet … making cities even hotter.

2:00 · But this isn’t just about comfort.

2:02 · Today, heat waves kill more people than any other extreme weather event.

2:07 · More than tornadoes, hurricanes and even floods.

2:11 · City populations keep growing, and those cities are only getting hotter.

2:17 · This is Let’s Talk, NPR’s news explainer show.

2:20 · Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel and check out other shows.

2:25 · I’m Christopher Joyce, and this is NPR.

Why managing chronic health conditions begins at home

PBS NewsHour, 12 07, 2018

Video (7:26)

Description

The recognition that health care extends beyond the walls of hospitals and doctor’s offices is growing. In Greensboro, North Carolina, advocacy groups, sociologists and medical practitioners are taking a creative approach to uncovering the root causes of disease, with a particular focus on poor housing conditions that can lead to chronic illness. John Yang reports.

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Transcript

0:00 · JUDY WOODRUFF: Let’s take a look now at an innovative approach to health care.

0:04 · John Yang tells us about an effort in North Carolina that tries to treat the housing conditions that contribute to chronic illnesses like asthma before they become health emergencies.

0:15 · KRISHNAVENI BALAKRISHNAN, Greensboro Housing Coalition: You can see mold growth all along the wall here.

0:21 · JOHN YANG: There is so much mold in the Greensboro, North Carolina, rental property that inspectors Krishnaveni Balakrishnan And Ken Cook are examining that the residents moved out after only a few weeks.

0:33 · KRISHNAVENI BALAKRISHNAN: There’s mold on the children’s pillows.

0:36 · The family that lives here, they have five children.

0:38 · One of them is asthmatic, and the mold in the home is causing not only that child, but also the rest of the family to become sick.

0:45 · There’s a lot of moisture issues, a lot of mold on the ceiling, on the family’s belongings.

0:51 · The home is not habitable.

0:52 · JOHN YANG: The residents say the landlord’s suggestions for getting rid of the mold didn’t work.

0:58 · They had to pay for a hotel while still paying rent here.

1:00 · KRISHNAVENI BALAKRISHNAN: You can tell where it’s been wiped.

1:02 · JOHN YANG: Balakrishnan and Cook don’t work for the city.

1:05 · They work for an advocacy group called the Greensboro Housing Coalition.

1:10 · They’re part of an innovative approach aimed at improving the health of low-income residents.

1:14 · KRISHNAVENI BALAKRISHNAN: There’s some mold in the doorsill.

1:17 · JOHN YANG: Doctors, housing advocates, and community activists say taking care of houses like this can be a form of preventive medicine.

1:25 · By getting rid of unhealthy environments, they can keep people out of the emergency room.

1:34 · Researchers say asthma accounts for 93 percent of the respiratory illnesses in Greensboro emergency rooms and clinics.

1:42 · On this day, one of them is Alveno Stanford’s 14-year-old son, Jacob.

1:45 · ALVENO STANFORD, Parent: And I noticed how his chest would like come out more than usual.

1:50 · So, I could tell the chest was just, like, coming out more.

1:53 · JOHN YANG: It’s not the first time Jacob’s made a costly emergency room visit.

1:58 · ALVENO STANFORD: Three times a year.

1:59 · Like, this year, he may come three.

2:02 · Year before that, he may come like two or three.

2:04 · And it’s been at least 10 times with him.

2:08 · JOHN YANG: Greensboro’s efforts are part of a growing interdisciplinary approach, attacking the causes of conditions like asthma to try to improve health and reduce medical costs.

2:20 · Stephen Sills is a University of North Carolina-Greensboro sociologist.

2:29 · He looks for patterns in asthma cases using data from the Cone Health system, the city’s major hospital operator and a partner in the project.

2:37 · Then he uses Google Maps Street View to plot substandard housing.

2:41 · STEPHEN SILLS, University of North Carolina-Greensboro: We map that, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood.

2:45 · Where are more of these respiratory illnesses coming from?

2:49 · And we see that there’s three areas in Greensboro that really are the concentration of poor roofing, absent gutters, broken and cracked foundations, cracked windows, missing shingles and siding.

3:05 · JOHN YANG: And they’re the same areas where asthma cases are concentrated, underscoring the link between poor housing and poor health.

3:13 · All these conditions you just described would exacerbate or trigger asthma?

3:17 · STEPHEN SILLS: Exactly.

3:19 · Exacerbate is a good word there.

3:20 · If I’m living in a house where the roof is leaking, the pipes are leaking, there’s mold and mildew, the carpet hasn’t been replaced in years, all are triggers for someone who has a respiratory condition like asthma.

3:35 · JOHN YANG: Sills’ students use the data to make referrals to the Greensboro Housing Coalition.

3:41 · It turns the traditional approach to delivering health care on its head.

3:44 · STEPHEN SILLS: So often, the physician is thinking about the biology of the individual?

3:49 · What’s wrong with this person?

3:51 · How can I treat that problem that is a biological, medical problem?

3:55 · What drug can I give them, or what behavior can I ask them to change?

4:00 · In this case, the treatment is for the community.

4:04 · The problem isn’t the individual.

4:06 · The problem is the structure around the individual.

4:08 · JOHN YANG: Sills’ research provides hard data to support the coalition’s work at an apartment complex in the impoverished east Greensboro neighborhood of Cottage Grove.

4:18 · JOSIE WILLIAMS, Greensboro Housing Coalition: So, you can see the roofing and all the stuff up here, very old.

4:23 · JOHN YANG: Josie Williams of the Greensboro Housing Coalition documents conditions there.

4:28 · Sewage coming up through the drain.

4:29 · JOSIE WILLIAMS: Yes, sewage was coming up in the drain.

4:32 · That’s why the water is so dark.

4:34 · So, the way they were turning this on and off was by pliers.

4:37 · JOHN YANG: And the people are paying rent for this?

4:39 · JOSIE WILLIAMS: Yes.

4:41 · JOHN YANG: There were 177 apartments, and 100 cases of asthma.

4:45 · JOSIE WILLIAMS: We walked into an apartment one day, and the sewage from the bathroom had come out of the toilet onto the floor, into the living room.

4:54 · And the family had been living like that for three weeks.

4:56 · JOHN YANG: Three weeks?

4:57 · JOSIE WILLIAMS: Mm-hmm.

4:58 · We walked into another apartment complex where the ceiling was leaking, and it was raining, and the mother was catching the water with an inflatable pool in the middle of the floor.

5:09 · JOHN YANG: One of the asthma cases, 7-year-old Shah Mei (ph), whose family immigrated from Myanmar.

5:16 · Dr. Beth Mulberry is her pediatrician.

5:18 · DR.

5:19 · BETH MULBERRY, Mustard Seed Community Health: They were living without heat.

5:20 · It was below 20.

5:21 · They had a huge water problem.

5:25 · Their carpet was soaked.

5:26 · She was needing to be on maintenance medication, allergy medication, oral.

5:33 · And then she was on a rescue inhaler, which she was using fairly regularly at that point.

5:37 · JOHN YANG: The Housing Coalition helped the family find better housing, and Shah Mei quickly improved.

5:45 · DR.

5:46 · BETH MULBERRY: I think it was about two months.

5:47 · So, it’s pretty quick and pretty amazing change.

5:52 · She has not used her rescue inhaler since July.

5:56 · JOHN YANG: The complex has since been sold, and the coalition is working with the new owner to improve it.

6:04 · Led by Josie Williams, the Housing Coalition holds monthly neighborhood meetings to help residents press for other changes in the area.

6:11 · At their most recent session, they discussed a corner store.

6:14 · JOSIE WILLIAMS: Anything healthy in that little store?

6:17 · Alcohol, cigarettes?

6:18 · What else you see in that little store?

6:20 · Snacks?

6:21 · What else?

6:22 · You have the power to create those changes.

6:23 · JOHN YANG: The recognition that health care extends beyond the walls of hospitals and doctors offices is growing.

6:33 · In October, federal officials approved a five-year pilot program allowing North Carolina Medicaid to pay for such services as removing mold, controlling pests and repairing heating and air conditioning.

6:46 · DR.

6:47 · BETH MULBERRY: We really need to start making an investment in what are the root causes of these chronic illnesses.

6:54 · And a lot of this has to do with our people that are living in poverty, the inability to rent a place where they expect changes to be made if it’s an unhealthy environment for them.

7:08 · JOHN YANG: A prescription for good health that cannot be filled at a pharmacy.

7:12 · For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m John Yang in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Why safe playgrounds aren’t great for kids

Vox, 02 20, 2019

Video (5:43)

Description

There’s a case for making playgrounds riskier.

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The stereotypical modern playground — with its bright colors and rubberized flooring — is designed to be clean, safe, and lawsuit-proof. But that isn’t necessarily the best design for kids.

US playground designers spent decades figuring out how to minimize risk: reducing heights, softening surfaces, and limiting loose parts. But now, some are experimenting with creating risk. A growing body of research has found that risky outdoor play is a key part of children’s health, promoting social interactions, creativity, problem-solving, and resilience.

Some communities are even experimenting with “adventure playgrounds,” a format with origins in World War II Denmark, where bomb sites became impromptu playgrounds. Filled with props like nails, hammers, saws, paint, tires, and wood planks, these spaces look more like junkyards than play spaces — and parents are often kept outside of the playground while children are chaperoned by staff. Now, that question of keeping children safe versus keeping children engaged is at the heart of a big debate in playground design.

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Transcript

The adventure playground

0:00 · When you imagine a playground, chances are it looks something like this.

0:04 · There’s usually a slide, a bridge, and a high point with a domed roof.

0:09 · That’s what makes this a playground, and this, and this.

0:14 · But what about this?

0:15 · This isn’t a junkyard.

0:17 · It’s called an adventure playground.

Risky play benefits

0:19 · Here, there are no plastic play structures – just things like old tires, wood planks, hammers and nails.

0:25 · Places like this represent one of the most debated ideas in play architecture: that playgrounds should be designed to let kids take more risks.

0:33 · Now, this nightmare for helicopter parents is the hottest new thing in American playgrounds, because there’s growing evidence that play like this is a whole lot healthier — and safer — for kids.

0:50 · They can play with very dangerous tools, they can take really dangerous risks and overcome them.

0:56 · And this fills up a tremendous sense of self confidence in themselves, which is really quite fascinating to watch.

1:03 · That’s Marjory Allen.

History of junk parks

1:04 · She was a British landscape architect and children’s welfare advocate around the middle of the century.

1:09 · In 1945, she visited Copenhagen, where she met an architect named Carl Theodor Sorensen.

1:15 · Two years earlier, during the German occupation of Denmark, Sorensen noticed a problem: kids in his neighborhood weren’t using playgrounds.

1:22 · In fact, they were playing just about everywhere else — even in construction sites and bombed out buildings.

1:27 · So in a housing development in the suburbs of Copenhagen, Sorensen closed off an empty lot and filled it with building materials, discarded objects, and tools.

1:35 · Here, kids could dig, build, and invent on their own.

1:40 · The play structures were ultimately designed by the kids themselves.

1:45 · Sorensen called it a junk playground — and kids and parents loved it.

1:49 · When she returned to England, Marjory Allen started opening similar playgrounds across London.

1:54 · And she renamed them: from junk to adventure.

1:57 · From there, they became a global phenomenon.

Controlled risk design

2:00 · They spread to Minneapolis, Boston, Toronto, Tokyo, Houston, Berkeley, Berlin.

2:05 · And to create these playgrounds, designers had to introduce a critical element: Controlled risk.

2:11 · In this context, a risk isn’t the same thing as a hazard.

2:14 · When you’re climbing a tall tree, a rotten branch is a hazard: the threat is unexpected.

2:19 · But how high you climb is a risk: it’s manageable, and requires you to actively make a decision.

2:25 · You can break the elements of controlled risk down into six categories: heights, speed, tools, dangerous elements, rough and tumble play, and the ability to disappear, or become lost.

2:36 · And a good adventure playground includes a mix of these.

2:39 · Designers also focus on separation of space.

2:42 · To give kids the feeling of discovering things on their own, parents have to stay out.

2:47 · That can mean installing a physical barrier — or providing things like restrooms, cafés, and seating, so that parental experience isn’t an afterthought.

2:55 · Finally, designers fill it with loose parts.

2:58 · These are the manipulatable objects — the planks, barrels, bricks, and tools — that fuel risky play.

Risks versus safety

3:05 · The idea behind all these design elements is that kids respond well to being treated seriously: if they’re presented with risky items with a serious functional purpose, they’ll respond cautiously and conduct more experimentation.

3:17 · But if presented with an overly safe, static space, they often wind up seeking dangerous thrills that the built environment fails to provide, which can result in higher injury rates than risky play at adventure playgrounds.

3:28 · In the US, a culture of lawsuit-proof playscape design means that overly safe playgrounds are the norm.

3:34 · And design philosophy has focused on how to reduce height, movement, and hard materials.

3:38 · That hasn’t made playgrounds better.

3:40 · When Marjory Allen visited American playgrounds in 1965, she called them “an administrator’s heaven and a child’s hell.”

The case for risky play

3:47 · But adventure playgrounds have recently begun to catch on in the US — perhaps due to an effort to introduce more unstructured play.

3:54 · And their construction comes with a fair share of criticism.

3:57 · “They’re making kids play with hammers and nails — that’s not adventure, it’s just work.

4:03 · They’re tricking kids into building their own playground.

4:06 · Adventure playgrounds do have downsides: They’re pretty ugly, they require a lot of space, and they need resources to staff and maintain.

4:13 · And as with any playground, there is opportunity for injury.

4:16 · But the underlying philosophy of risky play can help kids live better lives.

4:21 · For one thing, riskier playgrounds encourage more activity.

4:24 · A study comparing playgrounds in London, where risky play spaces are popular, to those in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York found that children using London’s playgrounds were up to 18 percent more physically active.

4:36 · The London playgrounds were cheaper and boasted fewer injuries, too.

4:40 · And multiple studies have shown that children who engage in risky play have better risk detection, creativity, and self esteem.

Reimagining playgrounds

4:47 · The playground is one of the only kinds of architecture designed specifically for children.

4:52 · And if the standard model we’ve decided on is seen as boring by its users — that’s a problem.

4:58 · Better design can fix that — even if it’s a little risky.

5:04 · I had to look through so many pictures of playgrounds for this story that I decided to use Wix to create a website collecting all of the ugliest and saddest pictures of playgrounds that I could find.

5:15 · And now I have a perfectly curated arrangement of pictures of playgrounds next to graveyards and slides leading into dumpsters and whatever these kid-friendly statues are. If you’re looking for a simple way to share your passion about broken infrastructure or whatever it is that you’re into these days, you should absolutely head to Wix. To create your own website just like this, click the link below.

5:37 · Wix does not directly impact our editorial, but their support makes videos like this possible.

5:42 · So check them out.

Why The U.S. Gave Up On Public Transit

CNBC, 07 25, 2023

Video (12:33)

Description

Public transit in the U.S. is notorious for being infrequent and unreliable. Americans had to wait 17 minutes on average to get on public transit in 2022, while 45% of Americans have no access to public transportation at all. And while the U.S. spends billions in funding every year, transits across the nation like the MTA, RTA and SEPTA are finding themselves in a fiscal crisis. Ultimately it’s the riders who are paying for the deficit. So just how did public transit in the U.S. get so awful? And can it be improved?

Chapters:

00:00 — Introduction

01:25 — America loves cars

06:17 — Vicious cycle

09:25 — Significance and solutions

Produced & Edited by: Juhohn Lee

Animation: Jason Reginato

Supervising Producer: Lindsey Jacobson

Additional Footage: Getty Images

Additional Sources: TransitCenter, NBC News, SEPTA, RTA, LA Metro

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Why The U.S. Gave Up On Public Transit

Transcript

Introduction

0:02 · 17 minutes.

0:04 · That’s how long Americans had to wait on average to get on public transit in 2020.

0:09 · To transit in the U.S.

0:11 · is awful, with few exceptions and a few places it’s infrequent.

0:16 · It’s not all day.

0:17 · It’s unreliable.

0:19 · Meanwhile, 45% of Americans have no access to public transportation at all.

0:24 · The real problem in the U.S. is what I would call transit deserts.

0:28 · I mean, these are just places where it is just complete and total nightmare to try to get anywhere on transit, whether to work or to play, to pick up your kids. You just can’t depend on it.

0:39 · The U.S. spent $79 billion on public transit in 2019, yet most public transit across the nation is finding itself in a fiscal crisis.

0:49 · In 2021, the U.S.

0:50 · was $176 billion behind in updating the poor conditions of public transit.

0:56 · That backlog is expected to grow to $250 billion by the year 2029.

1:02 · Ultimately, it’s the riders who are paying for the deficit.

1:06 · The pandemic money is going to run out.

1:08 · And so there will be, I think there will be fare increases. But even more, I think because of the politics of it, there will be service reduction and many places have predicted that.

1:17 · So just how did public transit in the U.S.

1:19 · get so awful and can it be improved?

America loves cars

1:25 · The U.S. government has long favored cars over public transportation.

1:29 · When we talk about money for transit, we talk about funding. But when we talk about the same public money for roads, we often hear the word ‘investment.’

1:38 · We’re spending far more, hundreds of billions more on road improvement and infrastructure than we are on transit.

1:45 · For example. U.S.

1:47 · railways combining commuter heavy and light rail grew by 945 miles between 2010 and 2020.

1:54 · During the same period, highways were expanded by over 100,000 miles.

1:59 · In transportation, we very often have no choices.

2:02 · If we’re talking about local or area transportation, it’s very often only driving.

2:07 · History plays a big role in this discrepancy.

2:10 · There was a time when the U.S.

2:12 · boasted a public transit system that was the envy of the world.

2:16 · Prior to 1920s, we had a very good streetcar system in our cities.

2:24 · These were trams that were running typically in the middle of the street. You would board them at your convenience. They were often so frequent that you didn’t have to plan ahead.

2:35 · During its peak in the 1920s, Americans living in cities averaged more than 250 streetcar trips per year, but the electric streetcar business was far from profitable.

2:46 · Inflation drove up the operating costs, but businesses were unable to raise fares accordingly and services quickly began to deteriorate as a result.

2:55 · When the streetcar companies, which were private, went to the government and so forth and said, ‘Please help us,’ city governments, state governments and of course the federal government wasn’t involved at all in this period, basically turned a blind eye.

3:07 · By the end of World War I, a third of transit companies were already in bankruptcy, and America had found its newest obsession: cars.

3:16 · People who wanted to sell more cars reframed the car as an all-purpose transport necessity instead of a special purpose mobility tool.

3:27 · And when they turned it into that, they really convinced a lot of people that you need this to go everywhere and that you’re not living in a modern, progressive city until it’s a city that lets you drive everywhere.

3:40 · And with the influx of money and aid from policies, cities began to quickly transform around cars.

3:46 · They forced private transit companies, whenever possible, to strip out the streetcar lines. They they created all these one way streets to speed up automobiles.

3:54 · They built parkways, they built highways.

3:57 · And when people said, ‘Wait a minute, is this really the right way to do it?,’ the answer was, ’Oh, it’s just supply and demand.

4:04 · It’s a free market.

4:05 · Drivers are voting with their gas pedals and we need to build the roads and streets for the people who are paying for them.’

4:11 · There is a kind of a time lag between public investment in highway infrastructure versus transit infrastructure in our nation.

4:19 · There was at least 40 to 50 years of lag and the federal government did not get into public transportation funding programs until late 1960s.

4:34 · Today, that disparity is more evident through partizan differences.

4:38 · The ratio in which funding is distributed between highways and public transit became the main point of contention over the 2021 infrastructure bill.

4:47 · Democrats wanted just 20% of the budget to go towards mass transit, while Republicans pushed for less. Democrats eventually compromised to pass the bill through the Senate.

4:57 · We have identified the automobile with personal, individual liberty.

5:02 · We also associate driving, particularly, with suburban and rural America, while public transit, we associate with urban America.

5:11 · Those correlations then bleed into political correlations of similar kinds, where fostering more driving tends to be something that’s favored in more conservative, more Republican, more rural areas.

5:25 · A study from 2021 revealed that 77% of liberal respondents believe that transport policy should shift more trips towards public transit, walking and bicycling.

5:36 · While 53% of conservatives believe that transport policy should make it easier for most people to drive.

5:42 · The discrepancy was even higher with very liberal or conservative respondents.

5:47 · It’s very hard politically to get that kind of momentum. Cities are a little bit easier, but states, very hard to get that suburban voter who is very powerful in almost every state legislature, very hard to get federal officials behind this, because, again, the payoff politically, because it’s a relatively small number of users, very small. It can be 1%, 2%, 3% in most cities.

6:13 · That’s not the loud voices.

6:14 · The loud voices are going to be the drivers.

Vicious cycle

6:17 · Funding is one of the main reasons behind the poor state of public transit in the U.S.

6:23 · Right now, the federal money that goes to transit services is largely limited to the capital costs, that means building the infrastructure or buying the vehicles.

6:32 · But the operating costs are where the transit services are really pinched.

6:38 · Public transit relies heavily on subsidies because it’s still far from a profitable business. Take the MTA, the nation’s largest public transit, for example.

6:47 · In 2022, less than a quarter of the MTA’s revenue came from rider fares.

6:52 · By comparison, revenue from dedicated taxes and subsidies from local governments made up 40% of its total revenue.

6:59 · The cost of living, the cost of operations, the cost of construction, all of that over the last 40, 50 years has far exceeded what is collected in fares.

7:11 · Current subsidies simply aren’t enough to cover the costs. The MTA’s finances were hit hard by the pandemic, resulting in temporary aid from the federal government. Yet it still reported a budget deficit of $1.9 billion in 2022.

7:25 · This problem extends beyond New York City.

7:28 · Philadelphia’s SEPTA predicts it will see a deficit of almost $269 million by 2027.

7:35 · Chicago’s RTA predicts a budget gap of $730 million by 2026, while LA Metro’s budget gap expects to reach $1 billion by the end of 2026.

7:47 · These financial deficits lead directly to deteriorating services.

7:52 · If a transit system doesn’t have enough money, we can limit the hours of service, we can limit the frequency of service, we can limit the extent of the network. But all of those things also deter ridership and encourage people to depend on their car.

8:07 · In a 2022 survey on incentives around public transit, Americans chose accurate and reliable arrival times as the second biggest reason that would encourage them to use public transit more often, right behind lower fares.

8:20 · Public transportation is so expensive to run in the United States is because of the lack of usage.

8:25 · Mass transit needs mass to be successful.

8:29 · Ridership has continuously declined since 2015, and after seeing a steep drop during the pandemic, ridership has failed to recover to its previous levels.

8:39 · It’s a vicious cycle, right?

8:41 · If we have less users, less riders, it’s difficult to justify significant public investment in that system and therefore it’s become more difficult to provide quality service.

8:54 · And because you have a lack of quality of service, you will continue to have a lack of users and riders.

9:01 · If the riders are either insufficient in number and/or do not provide a fare that covers those costs, you have to make up that money in public subsidies. And in the United States, the structure of funding for public transit is insufficient to basically really make up for that missing enormous chunk of money to fund operations and capital.

Significance and solutions

9:25 · But a thriving public transit system is beneficial for all Americans.

9:30 · The American Public Transportation Association estimates that 87% of trips on transit directly benefit the local economy, with nearly $42 billion in transit spending going directly to the private sector.

9:44 · A dollar invested in public transit is believed to generate $5 in economic returns.

9:49 · I mean, look what happened with Amazon.

9:51 · Where did where did Amazon locate its new second headquarters?

9:55 · Right? Right where one of the better mass transit systems operate.

10:00 · Transit is really great for an employer because it gives them more options in terms of labor.

10:06 · We can connect people to employment opportunities, including people who can’t necessarily afford an automobile, which is a very expensive thing both to buy and to operate and maintain.

10:18 · When you don’t have transportation, everything else becomes a domino effect.

10:22 · You may end up with not able to connect with your family and friends, not able to go to a doctor appointments and not able to have a good income to sustain your house.

10:34 · And in the end, it can even benefit the drivers themselves.

10:38 · The more we attract people into rail or busses or other forms of public transit, the fewer people are driving on the roads.

10:48 · And that makes driving better for people who want to drive.

10:52 · Ultimately, the future of public transit relies on whether it can receive the proper investment needed to improve services.

10:58 · To break the vicious cycle, we need a significant investment from the federal government. I mean, I don’t think just waste of local innovation so we can solve this problem of this magnitude.

11:13 · We’d have to spend a lot of money upfront in order to get systems that cost a lot less to operate because you’d have more robust ridership.

11:24 · Cities can also be reimagined and redesigned to better serve public transit.

11:29 · The kind of density levels that most American suburbs have, very difficult to serve effectively by transit, even busses.

11:36 · You have to create more dense neighborhoods, and particularly, this is really important, you have to change the zoning and the density around transit.

11:46 · I conceptualize public transportation as a public space. If you think about in a city how much space we have really help people with different backgrounds come together.

11:59 · There is a diminishing number of places that we have in our city.

12:04 · If we have good public transportation system, it’s like the core spaces for people with different backgrounds, different class, different gender, race, ethnicity to interact and to encounter.

12:17 · And I think that’s very important for the future of our society.

Work in Progress How we’re tackling Sidewalk Sheds (with John Wilson)

NYC Mayor’s Office, 04 10, 2026

Video (5:29)

Description

Hey New York. Do you ever look up as you walk around through this city, only to find the sun blocked by scaffolding? Do you then turn a corner only to see even more of it? For years, New Yorkers have put up with an excess of scaffolding sheds - and they often stay up far, far longer than they’re supposed to. This doesn’t just look ugly, but it can be a real safety hazard itself, and it affects the quality of life for every New Yorker.

So we’re excited to announce: we’re taking big steps to cut back on the scaffolding you’ll see every day in New York, with new laws, programs, and enforcement to make it happen. But to help explain these, we wanted to bring in an expert: Documentary Filmmaker John Wilson, creator of HBO’s “How to With John Wilson.”

Memorably, the second episode of the series saw Wilson explore why there was so much scaffolding in New York, and wonder if anyone would ever do anything to fix it. Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re taking big steps to do it.

Produced by the Office of the Mayor of the City of New York

Interview with Mayor Mamdani filmed & conducted by John Wilson

Transcript

0:05 · I have never thought about scaffolding.

0:07 · I know that sometimes it’s magically here, then it magically goes away., you complain about it in between.

0:12 · And it does stay for a bit long.

0:14 · And then sometimes you have to go through these like, weird tunnels, and there’s just stuff dripping off it.

0:19 · Just like any of us, New York City is a work in progress.

0:22 · Construction is a part of our everyday life.

0:24 · As streets are paved and buildings of all sizes are getting fixed up and inspected.

0:28 · That requires sidewalk sheds, which you might know better as scaffolding.

0:32 · We’ve all walked under scaffolding.

0:33 · It’s there to protect us from the unexpected.

0:35 · And well…

0:36 · it does that, sure, but it kind of tends to hang around a little too long.

0:41 · But scaffolding takes away from the beauty of this city we all love.

0:45 · It makes living here feel cramped, claustrophobic, closed in.

0:49 · This scaffolding has been here about a year.

0:50 · We miss the light, you know.

0:53 · Certainly the scaffolding is never good for a retail store.

0:56 · One of my hobbies is I like to skate around, as you can see.

0:59 · You know, almost every block has this scaffolding around the corner.

1:03 · And I’ll pass by it, maybe jump over a little…

1:05 · …if I have to, you know.

1:07 · But what starts as a temporary fix has turned into a permanent fixture, something we’re told we just have to accept, like it’s a part of nature.

1:14 · You know, you almost accept the status quo, as bad as that may be.

1:18 · And we find ourselves just… living around it.

1:21 · On our way to work, heading home from a night out, and if you’re disabled, or a delivery worker, or just someone with a bit too much stuff to carry, it doesn’t just ruin your day, but it can actively make it dangerous.

1:33 · Because the longer you keep the scaffolding up, the more dangerous, you know, the building can become.

1:38 · Because, you know, are they fixing the buildings?

1:40 · Or are they just leaving up scaffolding?

1:43 · Well, I got the restaurant in 2012.

1:46 · The scaffolding has been [here] for so many years.

1:48 · [Customers] used to call us, “Hey, where are you guys located?”

1:51 · “I cannot see you under the scaffolding.”

1:54 · So the only good news is when it rains, I have coverage, I have coverage, to smoke my cigar.

1:57 · But aside from that, there’s nothing good about the scaffolding in the city.

2:01 · I really haven’t given myself the luxury of imagining a world without scaffolding, but wow, what a lovely world that would be.

2:08 · If you look at a map of the scaffolding that’s up right now, there are countless sidewalk sheds that have been up for more than 15 years.

2:14 · It doesn’t have to be this way.

2:16 · It’s not just about public safety, it’s about quality of life.

2:20 · So I made it a priority as part of my Mayoral platform to see what we can do about this.

2:24 · We don’t have to accept scaffolding everywhere as the norm.

2:27 · First, we don’t have to do invasive, disruptive, deep inspections as frequently as we do today, increasing inspections from every five years to every six.

2:35 · Newer buildings less than 40 years old can instead do visual inspections every three years, and intensive inspections every 12.

2:41 · For the scaffolding that stays up too long, we’re implementing two new laws that create new penalties for sheds that stay up past their welcome.

2:48 · Two years, or you’re getting fined.

2:50 · Finally, sidewalk sheds right now have to extend out on the sidewalk and street by half the height of the building.

2:55 · It’s a little excessive, so we’re reducing the requirement to a maximum of 40 feet.

3:00 · Still enough to keep you safe, but far less in the way.

3:03 · I’ve thought a lot about scaffolding, and I’m proud of the policy changes we’re announcing.

3:07 · But I know another New Yorker who’s thought a lot about what scaffolding has done to the city.

3:11 · So I wanted to talk to him.

3:13 · Should I be looking at you or the camera?

3:15 · That’s — that’s the eternal question.

3:18 · Whatever makes you feel comfortable, I’ll put this up a little higher so my eyes are gonna— Sounds good, I’ll look at you.

3:22 · Scaffolding is intended to be impermanent, but it has become seen as if it is a permanent fact of life in this city.

3:29 · It is almost understood as if it’s part of New York City’s natural landscape.

3:32 · That as if the city for hundreds of years has had scaffolds.

3:34 · That’s not actually the case.

3:36 · So much of what we love about our city is that it’s a walkable city, and what scaffolds do is they really detract from public life.

3:44 · They make you feel as if there are parts of our city where your point is just to get through them.

3:49 · Why was the scaffolding up for so long to begin with, in a way?

3:52 · The original intent was around safety.

3:54 · There was the intent of protecting New Yorkers as they were pedestrians walking by any facade repairs that were taking place.

4:00 · But when you look closer at the rules and regulations, they don’t actually have all that much to do with safety any longer.

4:04 · You know, there are sheds that are now basically known as “eternal sheds.”

4:07 · I was standing underneath a shed in October that had been up for 16 years, because scaffolds are incredibly expensive to put up, to maintain, and if you reduce the incentive for having to do so, you also reduce the cost that doesn’t just come with building housing, but frankly, with maintaining housing, which also then has an effect on the cost of living and housing here in New York City.

4:26 · Why hasn’t anyone done anything about this before?

4:28 · Well, I think there are a lot of parts of life in our city that we have just come to accept, as if it’s the cost of being a New Yorker or living in New York City, when in fact, these are political decisions.

4:39 · They’re political choices, and we can make different ones.

4:42 · Because a lot of this has no impact on safety.

4:45 · It’s just a blight on our city.

4:47 · Sorry, man.

4:48 · Are you saying sorry to the scaffold?

4:49 · I’m saying sorry to the scaffolding.

4:52 · It’s pretty interesting, like growing up, you’d see part of a street where there’s scaffolding and it’d be there for, like, two years, and then the scaffolding is gone and it’s like a whole new place.

5:02 · Scaffolding will never completely go away, but it doesn’t have to stick around forever.

5:06 · We can make these changes in our city that make life better for everyone, even if it’s something as simple as what you walk by every day.

5:12 · That’s what government is here for, after all: to make life in this city better every day, in every way.

5:19 · This is John Wilson, this is Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Thanks for watching.

Zoning Matters How Land-Use Policies Shape Our Lives

Urban Institute, 06 12, 2019

Video (2:28)

Description

Zoning is a way for communities to separate land by use or form. But from the start, zoning has separated more than just land uses. It has also separated people. As a result, we pay the cost in public health, racial and economic injustices, higher housing costs, and more. Learn more at http://www.urban.org/zoning

Transcript

0:00 · ♪♪♪ Zoning is a way for communities to separate land by use or form.

0:07 · For example, an area could be dedicated to commercial or industrial use, or there could be a restriction on how many housing units can be built.

0:16 · Zoning shapes the places where we live, but it also shapes our lives.

0:20 · Local zoning regulations determine where we can find housing, schools, and parks, and who gets to use them.

0:26 · Policymakers initially created zoning codes to protect public health- for example, to stop residents from getting sick from living too close to factories.

0:35 · But from the start, zoning has separated more than just land uses.

0:39 · It has also separated people.

0:41 · In the early 20th Century, many communities explicitly used zoning ordinances to racially segregate neighborhoods— effectively declaring that different skin colors were as incompatible as a family’s home and a smokestack.

0:54 · By the late 20th century, civil rights legislation outlawed overt housing discrimination.

1:00 · But those explicit racial barriers were quickly replaced by subtler methods.

1:04 · Even today, exclusionary zoning policies that restrict lower-cost or higher-density housing limit racial and economic diversity and raise housing costs.

1:14 · By driving up housing costs, restrictive zoning can exclude people from equal access to public resources, like schools and parks, and leave lower-income workers unable to afford housing close to available jobs.

1:27 · When regions are more economically and racially segregated, everyone loses.

1:32 · Local economies see slower growth and residents of all races are less upwardly mobile.

1:38 · And finally, despite being created to protect public health, zoning often pushes multifamily buildings closer to highways and areas with higher concentrations of air pollutants.

1:48 · As a result, low-income people and people of color are more likely to live in places that could make them sick.

1:55 · It doesn’t have to be this way.

1:57 · When done thoughtfully, zoning can connect people and places, not divide us.

2:02 · Communities across the US are beginning to reexamine the role of zoning and change their restrictive zoning rules— opening neighborhoods to multifamily housing, walkable densities, and more.

2:14 · For more information and resources, and to find out what other communities are doing to improve their zoning policies, go to urban.org/zoning.

Films

A New Inferno

Jonathan Pickett, 09-13-2026

Documentary Film (00:15:42)

Description

Filmed during the hottest days of Phoenix, Arizona’s summer heatwave, A NEW INFERNO follows paramedics as they race to save the lives of heatstroke victims using a radical new treatment: ice immersion therapy. As featured on the NY Times Op Docs — We Are Living in a New Inferno World Premiere SXSW Film Festival, 2026 Featuring Jason Smith, Jake West, Roy Lewis, & Colter Fosdick Directed & Produced by Nita Blum-Reddick & Jonathan Pickett Executive Producers Sam Osborn, Alejandra Vasquez, & Jesse Ray Sheps Cinematographer Ryan Dent Editor Jonathan Pickett Composer Jack Gillette Production Sound Mixer Daniel Reddick Grips Stephane Strande & Brian Osback Sound Design & Mix Hansdale Hsu Colorist Keyhan Bayegan Production Assistant Camden Smith Title & Poster Designer Jason Cryer Weather Consultant Jorge Torres Advisors Dr. Charles Finch, Medical Director, Phoenix Fire Department & Maki Lloyd, Deputy Chief, Phoenix Fire Department For The New York Times Op-Docs: Associate Producers Ingrid Homquist & Rebecca Shaid Producer Yvonne Ashley Kouadjo Senior Producer Andrew Blackwell Executive Producer Alexandra Garcia Please consider supporting the ongoing work of Circle the City: www.circlethecity.org Festivals: • Tribeca x NYT Op-Docs • Mountainfilm • Rooftop Films • Palm Springs International ShortFest • Indy Shorts Film Festival • HollyShorts Film Festival • Nashville Film Festival • Bend Film Festival • Mill Valley Film Festival • Sidewalk Film Festival • deadCenter Film Festival • Ouray International Film Festival • Cinema Columbus • AfterImage Film Festival • Coast Film Festival

Transcript

Contaminated - The Carpet Industry’s Toxic Legacy

FRONTLINE, 2026

Documentary Film (53 min)

Description

”

How carpet mills contaminated Southern communities with forever chemicals, known as PFAS. With The Associated Press, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Post and Courier, AL.com, investigating the industry, accountability, and the health impacts. From FRONTLINE.

5/5

IMDb 7.6/10 2026 53min

5/5

IMDb 7.6/10 2026 53min

”

Transcript

Inside the LA Firestorm

PBS Terra, 03-19-2025

Documentary Film (52:17)

Description

Check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/PBSWeathered?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink

It is WILD how often cities used to burn down. So when fires ripped through LA at the beginning of 2025, we wondered: are urban firestorms BACK?

In 1871, nearly a third of Chicago burned down. In 1889, 25 blocks of Seattle went up in flames. Modern buildings and firefighting solved the problem. So, how is this happening again? And why is it getting worse? To find out, we went to LA while the fires were still burning. Our crew was on the ground from day one. We interviewed top fire officials and leading scientists. And, we learned exactly what went wrong in LA - and the ONE THING that could stop these UNSTOPPABLE fires.

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateTerra *****

Subscribe to PBS Terra so you never miss an episode! https://bit.ly/3mOfd77

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Transcript

The new era of wildfires

0:11 · Beginning on January 7th, 2025, the world learned what far too many survivors already knew. Wildfires are changing, but the LA firestorm is just the latest in a string of fires causing unprecedented destruction in the modern era. These fires are suddenly unstoppable. And there’s one simple variable that explains the change - speed.

0:46 · I’m Maiya Mya, the host of Weathered, and I’m on a journey to understand where we are and where we’re going in this moment of extreme change and to learn how we can stop the next tragedy before it’s too late. Our film crew was on the ground from day one of the fires and we had inside access to top fire officials and cutting edge research.

1:08 · We learned what went wrong, why fires are moving so fast and the one thing that can stop this growing trend in fire destruction.

1:18 · Police Department.

1:19 · Firefighter down. Firefighter down. Alright dude. Yeah, let’s get outta here. We tried.

1:27 · We tried bro.

1:31 · Oh my God, man, this is, oh God.

1:37 · It’s all gone.

1:40 · The Palisades and the Eaton Fire have been a turning point. We’re experiencing things that we never experienced before and as a public official, I have to tell the truth even when the truth is difficult To unpack that truth, we’re going inside the LA firestorm. Here’s what we know about the lead up to the fires. After two unusually wet years, Los Angeles, California entered an extreme eight month dry spell with no rain accompanied by record breaking heat.

Fire triggers and triggers

2:33 · In these conditions, all you need is wind and an ignition to see extreme fire. And looking at urban fire disasters over the last century, we see a clear uptick in the last decade. With this surge in destructive fires, relying only on professional firefighters for protection is no longer enough.

2:54 · I grew up in Malibu. I knew several people over the years that lost houses. Fires happened at a pretty frequent pace every six, eight years, but it was never something that was really interesting at all. And then the Woolsey fire happened and a lot of my friends, including my family, lost their house and I just couldn’t let that go. And so I got oddly obsessed with what to do better for the next time.

3:20 · I remember at a community meeting where we had all the fire chiefs, I remember just saying, yelling at him.

3:26 · Everybody just wants to hear you say sorry.

3:28 · But Keegan, along with his friend Tyler, channeled that anger to help start the community brigade. A network of community members living in fire prone areas who wanted to play an active role in preventing destruction during the next fire.

3:41 · The brigade ultimately was born out of the Woolsey experience. We were just like, oh, we got this. We’re gonna, we’re gonna buy a truck and we’re gonna buy a bunch of hose and we’re gonna be, we’re gonna handle the business next time. Creating an ad hoc kind of cowboy group of firefighters. That’s what we thought then at least.

3:59 · Over the following years, the brigade grew and began collaborating with fire departments to prepare for the inevitable. In fall of 2024, 40 members received their fire certifications, but nothing could have prepared them for what was coming next.

4:16 · Tomorrow, Wednesday into a portion of Thursday, we are expecting some very strong potentially damaging Santa Ana winds.

4:21 · We’ll be looking at, you know, 50, 60 mile per hour winds, 80 mile per hour winds, Relative humidity values are going to drop to at least 10%.

4:28 · Any fire start could lead to rapid spread in these types of conditions.

4:32 · We just finished training in October.

4:35 · We’ve done a bunch of tabletops field drills, exercises, et cetera, but we’re tee ballers. This was the World Series of firefighting.

4:43 · In the past, I would’ve asked that they leave during the evacuation order. Now I’m asking that they stay because they’re gonna be able to help us.

The palisades fire strikes

5:10 · I noticed smoke in the background over the hills about 10:30.

5:15 · Oh fire on the other side of the hill looks pretty close and the wind started to get stronger By 10:50, air tankers are on site.

5:27 · It is pushing directly towards Palisades, got a wide path of travel already.

5:33 · This thing is gonna make a good run.

5:34 · This was still all blue sky right here and we were off off the flank of the fire. But that changed really fast.

5:39 · Then I started to see the firefighting planes dropping water.

5:47 · I could see flames starting to lick up over the ridge on the other side of the ridge. And then at that point I turned around, got back down to the guys, said, Hey, we’re gonna be impacted here. And then the wind shifted just a little bit and boom, this first street was impacted by fire almost immediately, just in a few short minutes afterwards. It was almost nighttime here from how thick the smoke was.

6:07 · Looks like the fire’s gonna hit the back of these houses in about five, 10 minutes.

6:10 · The first broad evacuation order comes at 12:07 PM.

6:15 · Emergency evacuation of this area is required.

6:19 · Dozens of homes ignite and firefighters are unable to contain the fire.

6:23 · Next thing you know, there’s sheriffs that are grabbing garden hoses and sheriffs grabbing fire hoses and helping put out spots. It was just pure mayhem honestly. And everybody’s getting their teeth kicked in By 1:08 PM streets are gridlocked and residents abandoned their cars to evacuate on foot.

6:46 · You’ve got gridlock on Palisades Drive, abandoned vehicles, Sunset, completely impassable. Affirmative. We need heavy equipment to move a lot of vehicles Abandoned, no keys. By 2:30 the fire is racing towards Pacific Coast Highway and firefighters are scrambling for resources.

7:04 · We’re gonna need emergency air.

7:06 · We’re running out of bottles as we’re trying to protect these houses and get people out.

7:12 · The plants in the front of the yard start catching on fire. The bush on the side of the house starts catching on fire.

7:18 · No I don’t.

7:21 · All the smoke alarms in the neighborhood are going off.

7:23 · Alright dude. Yeah, let’s get outta here. We tried.

7:28 · We tried bro.

7:29 · Sorry, we tried our best. Yeah, and when this tree falls, it’s over.

7:41 · Sorry bro. Get outta here.

7:48 · Incident from operation.

The eaten fire catastrophe

7:50 · Our mission right now is life safety, evac is our concern.

7:53 · And then, just after 6:00 PM, 30 miles away, the Eaton fire starts in the hills above Altadena.

8:04 · Holy — Response time from Fire Station 66 is probably two to three minutes. Upon arrival, they had large amount of fire pushing hard towards the, the nature center.

8:14 · By 6:36 PM helicopters arrive, but the nearly 100 mile per hour winds are so violent that aerial firefighting is quickly grounded.

8:24 · We’re gonna have to shut down water dropping operation At 7:00 PM Fire Chief Anthony Marrone begins his drive from Palisades to Altadena.

8:33 · When I saw it at, you know, 27, 30 miles away, my heart just sunk because I thought, how are we gonna respond to this Before evacuations have been ordered, residents near Eaton Canyon are already fleeing Up there that looked like a river of lava just flowing down the hill, like no stopping it.

9:05 · From 6:18 that night till 6:00 the next morning we had continuous 80 mile an hour gusts. There’s no stopping a fire that’s getting pushed by an 80 mile an hour gust.

9:16 · The first evacuation order goes out near 7:30 PM for Altadena east of Lake Avenue. Meanwhile, in Palisades, aerial efforts are grounded at 7:45 PM Based on the wind conditions. Right now we’re ineffective and we’re not gonna compromosise safety.

9:32 · Copy to traffic. We lost the aircraft.

9:34 · Both fires swell in size.

9:38 · Evacuation notices have been issued for East Altadena, but West Altadena is still waiting for word to leave.

9:45 · I thought, well I’ll sit here and listen to the radio in the car and see what’s happening. And I’m hearing that the fire is going east and I’m thinking that glow is not two or three miles away. It looks a lot closer. There’s still nothing telling me to evacuate. But the sheriff came up and he said, lady, get out, evacuate. The fire is coming.

10:16 · It was chaos in the streets.

10:17 · You had people trying to get out burning power poles, you had wires down, heavy smoke, which was limited visibility. So we went straight into rescue mode.

10:29 · Police department evacuate immediately.

10:32 · The smoke was so thick and it was, it was just raining embers everywhere.

10:38 · I don’t know how anybody got out of there at three, four o’clock in the morning because it, it was pitch black.

10:45 · Oh my god, oh my God.

10:48 · Look at these The smoke was so thick and black, it was horrible.

Assessing the devastation

10:53 · The fires burned through the next day and into the night, incinerating thousands of acres and entire neighborhoods.

11:04 · Pool house on fire.

11:08 · By late Wednesday, January 8th, the winds subside allowing firefighters to begin containing the fires. But the battle is far from over. The fires continue to burn for several more weeks as crews work to bring them under control.

11:45 · But I need to understand these fires. What happened?

11:48 · Why did it get so out of control?

11:50 · And maybe most importantly, how can we prevent this from happening in the future?

11:57 · So I met with Dr. Lori Moore-Merrill, who served as the top US fire administrator from 2021 to 2025. She was essentially the chief of all fire chiefs and the first person in her position to bring a national focus to the rise of large scale urban conflagrations, fires that wipe out entire communities. The Orange County Air Ops team flew Dr.

12:19 · Lori over the LA fire perimeters to survey the damage and witness the destruction in its full breath From the Eaton fire where you can see how it just came right down the mountain and swept through the community. The ember cast here was totally significant in this fire.

12:50 · Embers that had to have been massive to have ignited so quickly and just fed this fire on and on and on from structure to structure. When we have those kinds of variables with the drought, the wind, the close proximity structures, it was almost as if the variables have come together such that this was inevitable.

13:11 · I feel like you have such a unique perspective with your role. Does that make you angry?

13:16 · I know this could have been avoided.

13:17 · We’ve been saying for years in the fire service, warning that this is gonna happen. We watched the Marshall Fire in 2021 in Colorado. We watched Lahaina on Maui in 2023 and now this. These are all conflagrations that are not trees burning, not a wildfire. Not even an interface fire. These are urban suburban conflagrations. This is structure to structure fire spread, both radiant heat, ember cast that really show the power of what fire can do.

13:59 · But also it gives us true information about how we can stop this. How we can not waste this tragedy, use this information to prevent next.

14:13 · By the end of January, the Palisades fire and Eaton fire had together destroyed over 16,000 structures and killed 29 people and people are upset. Early analysis of what went wrong quickly uncovered fire department funding cuts, low water pressure in fire hydrants and lack of fire engines.

Limits of fire suppression

14:39 · There have been a a, a quite a bit of comments over social media about the local water supply.

14:44 · What is going on with the water situation.

14:46 · Why was there no water in the hydrants?

14:49 · They can’t fight a fire without water.

14:51 · Do you regret cutting the fire department budget by millions of dollars?

14:54 · Madam Mayor?

14:55 · Multimillion dollar cut.

14:57 · When you go through something traumatic, it’s a natural instinct to point and try to figure out who to blame.

15:02 · But could this much destruction be blamed on a lack of funding and aging infrastructure?

15:08 · Everyone I asked gave me the same answer.

15:11 · I mean, is that just a lack of resources?

15:13 · Because I mean, that’s something that I’ve been hearing just No, - You know, in the national media, Never there’s, you could not have had enough resources to prevent the destruction of this level.

15:24 · Is there any amount of resources to stop a fire of the scale?

15:29 · I could had every engine in LA County, I couldn’t have stopped this.

15:32 · I even asked LA County’s top fire chief, if he had enough resources, could he have put out the fires?

15:38 · Could we have used more engines and more firefighters?

15:42 · Certainly Would it have made a difference?

15:47 · I don’t believe so.

15:54 · So if more water, more trucks, more firefighters, couldn’t stop the LA fires, was this disaster preventable?

16:01 · And how is it possible that the biggest and best firefighting force in the world couldn’t put out the blaze?

16:07 · Well, let’s take a look at how firefighting works. First, we’ll look at how a wildfire is fought before it reaches a community. While it’s still in the wildlands.

How wildfires are fought

16:25 · Primary tactic is to corral fires by creating an unburnable line around them. You encircle the whole fire perimeter with a trail built to mineral soil, nothing burnable there. And then you start burning inside that line to kind of rob the, the, the wildfire of any fuel to burn. So you use hand tools, shovels and pulaski or rakes. You could use heavy equipment like bulldozers or plows.

16:50 · Then you add in the air show with helicopters and planes dropping water, retardant. And when you get those different crews and parts working together, that’s when it’s very effective. But you don’t really put out the fire. You put a fire line around the fire and over time the fire will just kind of burn out of any burnable fuel.

17:12 · The overwhelming majority of wildfires are extinguished quickly. And the LA County Fire Department is one of the most elite fire suppression organizations in the world. If anyone can put out a blaze before it reaches communities, it’s them.

17:27 · So the threat in Los Angeles County, you know I say that it’s probably one of the most dangerous places around because we get the kind of weather that very few places on the earth get coupled with the vegetation and the topography, the number of people that we have living here. And it makes for a a very threatening environment.

17:48 · Our air operation here is extremely demanding.

17:51 · We have a complex aircraft. We fly a single pilot, we fly it day night under night vision goggle, a very diverse and demanding environment that we operate on doing a very complex mission. So when you see a fire that is moving towards homes and it definitely puts an added sense of urgency with what you’re doing.

18:12 · There’s, you know, over a hundred cameras in the LA, Orange County areas and they’ve got a camera 365 days, 24 hours a day, they’ll be able to pick up a little bit of smoke in a location and and then get a response out really quick. The conditions we can fly in and how much water we can drop is unparalleled to any other era of firefighting.

18:32 · Since 1983, an average of nearly 70,000 fires burn each year in the us. Nearly 98% of them are controlled by firefighters before becoming large and destructive to human communities. But dry windy conditions change everything.

18:52 · If you haven’t been in a wind-driven fire day turns into night, there’s so much particle in the air that you have no idea that it’s daytime and you’ve got flame lengths 30, 40, 50 feet high and you’ve got so many embers being tossed at 50 miles an hour, spotting about a mile in front of you.

19:14 · And to think that you’re gonna stop it by putting a hand line or putting a dozer quickly around it, it’s not gonna happen.

19:23 · Strong winds blow embers over, even the largest fire line and air operations become far less effective.

19:31 · If it’s so windy that the water literally isn’t even really hitting the ground, then what are you doing other than accepting a large level of risk?

19:40 · During the Eaton fire pilots supported the initial attack, but were quickly grounded because of strong chaotic wind Due to wind conditions. You’re gonna be breaking off. All air resources are gonna be clearing the incident branch seven copies.

19:54 · Aircraft shut down.

19:56 · If firefighters can reach a fire before it begins growing exponentially, it can be put out even in windy conditions. But the window of opportunity is becoming smaller and smaller because fires across the US are moving faster. Over the last 20 years, fires in California have grown 400% faster. We’ll find out why later.

20:17 · But with traditional wildland firefighting tactics losing their effect, have we reached a tipping point for wildfire or is there still a way to change course?

The urban configration

20:32 · To answer that question, we have to understand another factor that makes these fires so destructive.

20:46 · Once the homes start to burn at scale, you’ve already lost fighting a structural fire, a first alarm, which is how firefighting resources are apportioned is at least 15 firefighters for one house, four engines, a truck and a BC is a general response. If one home is burning, any fire department anywhere can suppress that. At 10 homes, we now need 150 firefighters.

21:18 · If we’re going to effectively go in and no kidding, put that fire out, we need 150 firefighters and we need them right now because fire, the, the growth curve is exponential.

21:26 · Once the fire reaches homes, it changes into something else entirely.

21:31 · Once you have urban conflagration, structure to structure fire transmission, then all of the things we are talking about from a wild land setting are no longer effective. ’cause we are in a fundamentally different fire.

21:43 · The building itself, the structure can sustain a longer ignition compared to a tree. A tree can burn for, I dunno, a minute or two, a structure can burn for an hour.

21:53 · It’s the contents of those homes and businesses because that becomes fuel. And now we’re producing very large long burning embers that can fly with the wind to ignite.

22:05 · When we have dense neighborhoods, we have more cars, we have more fences, we have more sheds.

22:09 · Now we have two factors that combine to make fires unstoppable. Ember cast and structure to structure ignition. And under these conditions, the wildland firefighting playbook goes out the window. Air ops is grounded and embers jump the fire lines. So emergency response shifts from firefighting to an all-out race to save lives. And that’s exactly what happened in la.

22:37 · It was a wildland fire for probably about four to five minutes. So this fire burned straight, downhill into structures and then started burning structure to structure. The priority was rescue. So we’re gonna take care of life first and then save property as we can. The conditions were so bad that I couldn’t see the end of my hood. I had two hands come across my hood, put on my brakes.

23:01 · It was a a a, a middle aged lady and she says my dad is trapped in the, in the house. He can’t get out. So we immediately ran up to the house, grabbed him, got him out to my vehicle, and our fire personnel and our law enforcement personnel went on calls for service like that all through the night While assisting with evacuations. in Pacific Palisades was the first priority for Keegan and the community fire brigade.

23:35 · They also spent time doing last minute preparations on homes, clearing flammable items away from structures and extinguishing spot fires before they could ignite homes. But this was a decision that Keegan still grapples with.

23:50 · Somebody died on PCH, somebody died up Las Flores, somebody died in Big Rock.

23:54 · Did we help a couple structures survive?

23:56 · Maybe. How do you, how do you measure the importance of structures versus lives?

24:02 · I just keep going that over my mind is how much time am I willing to, to wager prepping and doing triage with time that I could be trying to convince another person to leave?

24:14 · In that moment where you’re trying to get people out, you’re seeing people’s homes get destroyed, I mean, what’s going through your mind?

24:20 · I live in the community. My kids go to school in the community and I’m the assistant chief here for the community. It’s heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking.

24:32 · Why didn’t we get to that one person’s house where that person died?

24:37 · And that’s like the, that’s the really heavy part.

24:43 · As I talk to first responders after these fires, it’s become clear that they were up against an impossible task filled with impossible choices. And what we need to prevent. The next tragedy is time. There may be a way to slow urban fire disasters down. But first I wanna find out why these fires are getting so much faster and more destructive.

25:05 · I’m a fire chief and I’m not a scientist, but when I look back over my career, I cannot deny that fire season is now longer. I cannot deny that fires are harder to extinguish. I’m not gonna argue what’s causing the climate to change. I’m here to tell you that I have a front row seat to the results of this changing climate.

Climate change impact

25:52 · To understand the changes we’re seeing today, we need to understand the past. In the early 1900s, a new organization called the Forest Service was formed and its mandate was to put out all fires as quickly as possible. The early 1900s were hot and dry and that didn’t just cause the dust bowl. There was also a lot of fire. In fact, many researchers believe that there was more fire then than there is now.

26:27 · By the 1940s, firefighting had become professional and efficient, but wildfire was still a huge problem in the West. Then ocean currents shifted, bringing cooler, wetter conditions to much of the Western US. It also made fires far easier to fight.

26:44 · We had these incremental wet periods during the summer. Incremental rains every week or two is just enough to tamp down fire behavior and support the fire managers to get out there and suppress those fires.

26:58 · And under these conditions, firefighting worked.

27:01 · Acres burned per year plummeted.

27:06 · That’s where we started in the Western United States, really interacting with the landscape and developing our expectations on what the landscape could provide for us. And that’s the period of that great expansion. We see communities expanding. We see the land utilization expanding. We’ve expanded our recreation resources, we’ve expanded our water infrastructure, we expanded our power infrastructure and we’ve expanded our timber bases under the expectation that that’s sustainable into the future.

27:35 · And most importantly, we expanded where we lived. But then things changed again. By the 1980s, the western US had left that cool wet period, the number of acres burned per year began to rise. But now there are whole towns, cities, farms, and infrastructure filling in our fire prone areas. And now we layer on top of that expansion, the warmest year in human history. On our current trajectory.

28:07 · The warming we’ve seen could double by the end of the century. And this really matters when it comes to fire because as temperatures increase, the ability for the atmosphere to hold water vapor also increases and it’s exponential. You can basically think of the atmosphere as a giant sponge that can absorb and then release water. The warmer the atmosphere, the bigger the sponge. And this has two effects.

28:32 · First, when that moisture is released, it leads to more extreme precipitation. But when conditions are dry, a thirstier atmosphere does the opposite. It pulls moisture from the land, sucking water from plants and soil, creating the perfect conditions for fire to spread faster and burn hotter. This dramatic shift between extremes is what some scientists call weather whiplash. And that whiplash had a big role in the LA firestorm.

The perfect storm of variables

29:04 · All right, so we’ve been hearing a lot about climate change and how it may have influenced these fires. So we’re actually gonna meet up with someone who can explain it to us. So let’s go. Oh wow. I’m back in school. How you doing? I’m Maiya.

29:18 · Hey Maiya. I’m Park. - Nice to meet you.

29:20 · You can think of wildfire as being a light that is either on or off, but with fire you can only turn on the light if you have four switches on at the same time.

29:29 · These switches include fuels, aridity, fire weather, like strong dry winds and ignition 2023 and 2024 was extraordinarily wet. Lots of new plants grew. This is just a record of the greenness in coastal southern California for the last 40 years. And this past spring was near record high meaning that probably we haven’t seen fuel loads like this more than once or twice in the last four decades.

29:54 · Wow. And that was due to all of those atmospheric rivers that we saw.

30:00 · That’s right. - Rolling through California.

30:01 · That’s right. - And that leads us to the next ingredient, which is aridity.

30:05 · This year has been an extraordinarily unlucky year so far. Usually we get our first rain by sometime in October or November. And here we are in mid to late January. We still haven’t had our first rain. The vegetation and structures are probably drier than we’ve seen anytime in the last 150 years at least. Another contributor to that is temperature. Heat works to dry out fuels because heat causes the atmosphere to be thirstier.

30:30 · Another factor is wind, right?

30:33 · That’s right.

30:34 · Now this though is the middle of Santa Ana wind season. Santa Ana’s are strongest and most common in December and January. Usually they can’t dry fire because usually everything’s all wet by then. What made this year extraordinary was the huge amount of fuel, the very, very dry conditions because of lack of precipitation, high temperatures. And then to cap it off, a really strong Santa Ana wind event.

30:58 · And there is one more factor, which is ignition.

31:01 · Yeah, that’s right. So in coastal Southern California, when we have these fires going in Santa Ana wind events, essentially all of the fires were caused by people. Lightning does not occur during these events. Unfortunately, when conditions are this extreme and perfect for fire, it’s almost inevitable that there is going to be an accidental spark somewhere. And those accidental sparks have a really easy time lighting, very destructive fires under these crazy weather conditions.

31:25 · It just seems like a perfect storm.

31:27 · It has been a perfect storm, but this type of event is the type of event we expect to see more of in the future.

31:32 · At this point, Parks research shows that only one of these factors has definitively changed due to global warming. Temperature. Record breaking heat removes moisture faster, priming vegetation, fences, hedges, and homes. And that explains why fires are moving so much faster. So we’re in Altadena today and we are gonna meet up with survivors of the Eaton fire and just driving through the, the impact of this fire feels different.

Survivors and rebuilding

32:16 · The whole community is gone and it’s really been difficult for me to take everything in. But I’m very interested to hear from survivors and hear where their head space is.

32:27 · Hello Lynelle.

32:29 · Hi. How are you?

32:29 · How are you? I’m good, I’m good.

32:31 · I’m Maiya Maiya. Charles Bryant, glad to meet you.

32:34 · Nice to meet you. So tell me where we are right now.

32:38 · Altadena, post-Eaton fire.

32:42 · And you’re at our home.

32:44 · This is where your home used to be.

32:45 · Right.

32:49 · You guys are gonna rebuild on this property.

32:53 · I’ve got the rendering already.

32:54 · I got my drawings done. Yeah. - Oh my goodness.

32:56 · You are ready to go Yeah. We can submit tomorrow if we want to.

33:01 · The level of despair is something that fortunately we haven’t felt, but it’s, it’s so real. And I Think for this community, I think that despair goes beyond the, you know, I’ve lost everything. I didn’t realize 80% of black families own their homes here. And I think that’s amazing and, and I think just not knowing how the community is gonna look moving forward is also playing into that feeling of despair.

33:32 · It really is because you take the fact that the homeowners are multi-generational. So you’ve got somebody whose parents might have bought their home in the fifties and the sixties and then they’ve lived in the house, or they have, since there’s people at our church who might be seven family members all lost their homes. So it’s not just losing your house, it’s losing your sense of who you are. And it’s also losing your community.

34:01 · Even before the fire Altadena had been gentrifying rapidly, Altadena’s black population had dropped from 43% in 1980 to 17% in 2020. And the future is uncertain.

34:14 · And the fear is losing that sense of community.

34:17 · The silver lining of the fire is that it’s brought a spotlight back to the, the fact that this was and still is a black community and how important it is that we had owners, property owners, business owners and so forth. And I think it’s, it is adding, adding a light to the fact that there’s something here that’s worth investing in. So many innovations that have come out of disaster.

34:43 · You know? And why can’t the, the rebuilding of Altadena be one of those things? I mean, yeah, why not?

34:50 · Disasters like this threaten the very fabric of communities, dismantling decades of generational wealth in minutes. But many other residents I met said they wanted to rebuild an Altadena.

35:02 · My main concern is to preserve the community as it was before the fire has even happened.

35:08 · And right now I’m worried and my neighbors are worried that even if we rebuild, is it even insurable?

35:14 · And is that insurance gonna be affordable or are we gonna be priced out?

35:17 · The process of rebuilding is hard to get some perspective on just how long it takes. I ask Keegan about his community’s progress after the 2018 Woolsey fire.

35:28 · Can you tell me about the Woolsey rebuild?

35:32 · Like how many, ’cause that was six years ago.

35:35 · Yep. - Is that community completely rebuilt?

35:39 · No. So I mean, just in the city of Malibu, for example, about 450 homes burned down. And of those 450, I think less than 200 even even have their certificate of occupancy today.

35:50 · Wow.

35:52 · We can’t control where wildfires ignite or the weather that makes them so fast and so destructive. But we can control how we rebuild and how prepared we are for future fires. So you’ve been through quite the transformation since the Woolsey fire.

The science of home hardening

36:09 · Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

36:11 · Yeah, I mean, during the Woolsey fire and directly after I was that uninformed resident that was frustrated, angry, and I was the one that was out there yelling at the fire chief saying that he, they should have done something different or better. A lot of that anger I had and frustration was just based off of poor understanding. And then I stumbled on Jack Cohen. That was the like aha shift for me.

36:38 · There goes Jack. Get some good video?

36:43 · Got Jack running into the smoke.

36:47 · I became a research scientist, a fire scientist in 1976. I’ve been doing fire since as long as I can remember. From my standpoint, one of the major contributions to the research that I’ve done is to redefine this problem. The main point here is that it’s a home ignition problem, not a wildfire control problem.

37:24 · The, the big problem with us defining wildland urban fire disasters as a wildfire problem is that we focus on and put all of our energy into attempting to eliminate the wildfire to begin with. Instead of taking the opportunity to be more practically effective with regard to changing the ignitability of the thing that gets destroyed, which are the structures.

37:58 · What Jack discovered is that the way a wildfire enters a community isn’t through a wall of flames, but something much smaller.

38:08 · Well as it turns out, we’re talking about a burning ember landing on the structure and the debris that maybe is in the, in the rain gutters and igniting that debris that then puts flame on the eaves that then spreads into the attic of the house and and totally consumes the house.

38:27 · And with that, Jack created the modern understanding of how fire enters communities. He found the mechanism that burns houses and how wind creates so many ignitions.

38:38 · We have large ember production, Thousands of embers.

38:41 · Embers the size of golf balls, So many embers spotting, you know, in advance of the fire.

38:48 · So we had to do experiments where we could generate a blizzard of burning embers on a full scale house and then begin to experiment with where the ignitions occur and see if a specific design was vulnerable to ignition from burning embers.

Effective mitigation tactics

39:18 · And a few years ago I visited the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety to see one of these ember experiments in person.

39:26 · So we’re in the main chamber, right?

39:28 · Yeah. - What makes this place so cool?

39:30 · This is the only place on this planet that we can test full scale buildings and then add fire to it.

39:37 · And this is how you generate the wind.

39:40 · Correct. We have 105 fans here.

39:43 · Wow. - And we have the capability to generate a real hurricane.

39:48 · Just how fast can these winds blow?

39:51 · So we can go up to a hundred twenty, a hundred twenty five miles an hour wind. Yeah. You don’t wanna be in the chamber when the fans are on.

39:58 · What we have here is a mock test building. Half of it is wildfire resistant and the other half of it is more traditional building structure. And here in the wind chamber we’re gonna shoot embers at it. And when they come and impact the building, we’re gonna see the difference in wildfire resistant building and non wildfire resistant building and how they perform to that ember exposure.

40:21 · Fans are on. We’re about to start generator starter procedure Control room ready?

40:26 · Copy, test starts in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 generators on.

40:34 · All right.

41:09 · These experiments identified the most important steps to hardening homes and stop wildfires from becoming urban conflagrations.

41:17 · Stats show that the majority of the loss maybe up to 90% in wildfire prone areas are because of embers. Basically when embers accumulate around the buildings, it ignites the recipient fuel and well the recipient fuels becomes flames and the flame near the structure is the recipe for disaster.

41:37 · Right. And the wind is like blowing these embers.

41:39 · Exactly.

41:39 · We are not talking about hundred or 200 embers. We are literally talking about thousands of embers hitting the wall, falling at the base of the wall. And then if there is any combustible in that area, that’s fair game.

41:51 · In order to protect your home from embers, there’s a lot that you can and should do. But there’s a few very simple, very effective steps that you can start with.

42:01 · You have to have a class A, non-combustible roof. That’s non-negotiable. That said, there are very few non-class A roofs left. Number two is you have to have ember resistant vents. If the vents are not ember resistant, either 1/8th or finer mesh, embers will find the void spaces and it won’t matter how many other mitigations are in placed. And the third thing is you have to have zone zero. Five foot of non-combustible inclusive of wooden fences.

42:23 · If you have those three, I think that’s the, that’s the baseline.

42:27 · Zone zero includes removing things like bark chips, vegetation, lawn, and furniture and fences. Decks are also vulnerable to embers, especially the area underneath the deck. The first six inches of vertical wall at the bottom of your home should also be non-combustible so that any embers that fall around your home can’t ignite the structure.

42:47 · Those three things done across a community could likely slow a fire from igniting the first houses long enough to give first responders a fighting chance. Roof, vents and zone zero. Embers cause most of the destruction we see in these urban conflagrations, but they aren’t the only thing we’re worried about.

43:07 · In addition to that, we, we need to harden the home against flames.

43:11 · This includes installing non-combustible siding and closing your eaves and installing multi pane tempered glass windows and fire rated doors. And then extending out from your home to a 30 foot perimeter sheds and outbuildings can act as a fire bridge to your home. So harden those as well.

43:31 · But do these home hardening measures still apply in extreme fire events like we saw in LA?

43:37 · So when the first building ignites, and when we add wind to this, the flame stretches and tilts down when the distance between the structures is shorter than the flame length. Basically we are holding a blowtorch on our homes.

43:53 · And the heat, the flux put off by a burning home far exceeds anything you see in a wildland setting, both in the peak temperatures and the time. A home burns for a long time.

44:04 · When a wildfire becomes an urban conflagration, our houses, our businesses, our belongings become the fuel and those fuels are supercharged. But even in these conditions, the experts we’ve talked to all say that home hardening is still our number one defense because it limits the number of homes that will catch on fire and buys us time to deal with the ones that do.

Long-term community strategy

44:29 · So it takes longer for the fire to make its way through the, the labyrinth of treatments we’ve imposed. Well then firefighters don’t have as much fire to fight and that fire that they do have to fight will be moving more slowly.

44:40 · We can’t stop wildfires. That’s correct.

44:42 · We cannot do that. But we can stop configuration. We can bend down the risk curves by using these mitigation strategies that we don’t see Altadena completely wipe out. That’s something that I am sure we can do To slow a fire down enough to prevent a conflagration will take a strategic community-wide approach to home hardening One or two homes being hardened is irrelevant.

45:07 · It, it needs to be a critical mass at the critical location in order to be effective.

45:12 · But what if your neighbors haven’t prepared their homes?

45:15 · Does preparing yours on its own make any difference at all?

45:21 · One of our big goals, Tyler, and I’s big goal after Woolsey very early on after meeting Jack and learning about his science and research was what if we could get out there, assess and mitigate a bunch of houses in an area that is going to burn at some point to document it and then for a fire to come through and for those houses to survive on their own accord.

45:50 · And we have several stories of places that we went to a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, did assessments with homeowners that were willing to do the work, that did the work. And sure enough, the houses survived on their own accord.

46:04 · Keegan took me to one of the houses that he helped prepare.

46:08 · Yeah. So the first house is right up here on this driveway. Oh, okay. Cool. And we’ll go walk up there, Right literally right next to it.

46:15 · Yeah. - I’m assuming this was a house that looks like it was a house that could completely burned down.

46:20 · There’s yeah.

46:21 · So there was actually three houses in this driveway.

46:23 · Oh wow. - That burned down.

46:24 · And then this is the fourth and it’s on slope. About 30 years of fuel coming off the back of this. And it saw extreme fire behavior. No doubt. This home is kind of the perfect quintessential example of somebody going and doing the work and the house surviving on its own accord.

46:45 · This is crazy. So this is a house that’s still standing. You said there were three other homes on this lot and in in this driveway that completely burned down. These homeowners didn’t implement all of the home hardening measures recommended by IBHS, but they did take the three most critical steps, roof, vents and zone zero.

47:14 · Doing home hardening is not sexy.

47:16 · It’s not like a cool thing that people are posting on their Instagram and talking about to their friends, oh, check this out. I put on this 16th inch mesh over my vent. Right. Big events like this, there is nothing you can do. There’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing the best resources in the world can do.

47:36 · Yeah, sure. They can save a few structures here and there, but the only way to scale is to do that long-term preparation through home mitigation full stock.

47:58 · If we fail to prepare our homes and communities, it will not only cost lives. Faced with increasing losses, insurance companies will leave risky regions and no insurance means no mortgage, which means a dramatic decrease in home values. One of the most significant sources of wealth for middle class families. Here’s what Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said about it in a Senate hearing.

48:20 · How do you think we should be thinking about the challenges that these events are gonna pose to insurance markets and to the overall financial stability of the economy?

48:32 · Both banks and insurance companies are pulling out of areas, coastal areas or areas where there are a lot of fires?

48:38 · So what that is gonna mean is that, you know, if you fast forward 10 or 15 years are gonna be regions of the country where you can’t get a mortgage, there won’t be ATMs, there won’t, you know, the banks won’t have branches and things like that.

Lessons from history

48:57 · It feels like we’re facing an unprecedented crisis. But actually we faced and solved the problem of urban firestorms before. For centuries, massive fires devastated cities around the world. In 1666, the great fire of London destroyed over 13,000 homes and left almost 85% of the city homeless. And in some ways it wasn’t so different from today’s wildfire driven disasters. The fire started during a period of drought and spread rapidly through tightly packed wooden buildings and narrow streets.

49:29 · The city burned for four days and in the 1871 Great Chicago fire, we saw something similar.

49:38 · The reason that Chicago burnt down, I think it was twice, was because the buildings were catching each other on fire. Well, that’s what we have now. We have urban conflagration now. And the reason that that’s stopped happening other than wildfire was that insurers pulled out of Chicago and and said, we’re not going to insure this kind of city unless you start implementing building codes.

50:03 · But cities adapted, fire codes became stricter.

50:06 · Streets were widened to slow fire, spread wood gave way to non-combustible materials like brick, stone, and steel. And by 1920, the age of city destroying fires is over. And a similar transformation could happen in California.

50:23 · I am a engineer and scientist at heart, and so I take this as a challenge and opportunity to look for great materials that are more fire resistant and to build and design a house that is gonna be a lot more resilient if and when another fire threatens our area.

50:42 · What happened in LA is a tragedy, but it seems clear that fire doesn’t have to destroy communities in this way. The Palisades and Eaton Fire can happen anywhere, but we have the science to protect people and homes. The biggest takeaway for me is that large scale home hardening is the key to keeping our community safe from fire. It’s gonna take a lot of work, but I met incredible people in LA who are already making it happen.

51:09 · So I know progress is possible. We can build more resilient communities and reverse the trend of fire disasters. The solutions exist, the challenge now is acting on them before the next firestorm.

Waking Up to Wildfires

Waking Up to Wildfires (Emmy-Nominated documentary, KVIE, PBS)

Paige Bierma, 02-21-2021

Documentary Film (26:48)

Description

In Waking Up to Wildfires, Emmy-winning filmmaker Paige Bierma uses her camera to tell the stories of people most affected by the 2017 North Bay wildfires. We hear from survivors, firefighters, public health officials, community groups and scientists trying to make sense of it all while people struggle to recover and new fires erupt.

The UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center produced Waking Up to Wildfires with a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to help shed light on the plight communities face after these types of disasters.

You’re watching a condensed version (26 minutes long) that’s currently airing on PBS stations across the country. To find out more or get a copy, visit our website at environmentalhealth.ucdavis.edu.

Transcript

The Tubbs fire outbreak

0:00 · [Music] it was the most apocalyptic thing i’ve ever seen never before in sonoma county had we experienced a wind-driven fire that burned 11 miles in five hours one of our neighbors came banging on the door the field next to our house was on fire i’m going okay

0:28 · i’ll just get the water to get the water hose or fire extinguisher and we’ll take care of this but it was too it was already too late you could see the fire coming starting to come across across the trees and everything the speed of the tubbs fire was absolutely horrific i would try to outflank the fire to get ahead of it into neighborhoods to try to evacuate people but it seemed like within minutes embers were falling and time’s up and it’s time to go

1:16 · [Music] i’m irva hertz pichoto i’m the director of the uc davis environmental health sciences center and as i was watching the images of the wildfires in october of 2017

Climate change and wildfires

1:35 · it just stunned me and dawn on me that our center could actually conduct some research and learn about these wildfires and contribute to understanding what the consequences of climate change are [Music] so in california we have a perfect storm of conditions which is making fire more widespread and more intense those conditions are human suppression

1:58 · of fire for decades which means that the trees are more dense than before climate change which is making these ecosystems hotter and drier which kills the trees makes them more flammable and finally the nail in the coffin the pine beetle in california which can come in and kill

2:14 · the trees and this is why we have about 130 million dead trees in california now which makes him very vulnerable and susceptible to fire the climate change is induced through greenhouse gas emissions from human activities and that is causing ecosystems to become hotter and drier and more flammable so climate change is

2:35 · contributing to the spread in the incidence of wildfire in many ecosystems on the planet now this is concerning for a number of reasons it affects human health it’s hard to breathe the air when it’s very smoky and we’re seeing that happen in california and elsewhere and then finally it can give rise to what’s called a positive feedback cycle so this is a self-reinforcing effect in

2:57 · which climate drives out these ecosystems and kills the trees fire becomes more prevalent which releases the carbon back to the atmosphere as co2 and that co2 further contributes to additional climate warming

3:13 · the changing climate is absolutely having an impact on how fires are burning how they’re spreading california historically has experienced large devastating fires what’s really changing is the intensity of the fires the duration of the fires and certainly the frequency the tubs fire when it reached santa rosa literally crossed the six lane 101 freeway this tells us that we have to be looking at threats that we didn’t necessarily consider before

Survival and rescue stories

3:42 · i was the first battalion chief to arrive at the tubbs fire when i arrived the fire was already very well established we had no chance of putting it out i got a phone call from one of my friends it was probably around 10 o’clock at night and she said you know i think there’s a fire and it’s coming towards you and i’m worried so we started packing up once the power went out that’s when we left we ended up getting gridlock i thought maybe there was a roadblock or something we turned back and i was just

4:14 · driving like a bat out of hell and i was just thinking we got to jump in the pool it was almost like a blow torch everything was incinerated power poles were across the road wires were hanging oak trees were across the road cars were burned out on the way down i ran into two santa

4:32 · rosa police officers that were making their way up mark west and i remember stopping them concerned for their safety and asking them where they were going it was then that i met officer chance and officer nick with the santa rosa police department they told me that they were on the phone with two people that had survived the fire that needed to be rescued

4:55 · we got in the pool and we hugged each other a couple times and we said our goodbyes i can remember holding max and he was panicking trying to jump out and i just had to yank him underneath and i can remember a few times coming up for air you know barely barely able to get a breath of air you know you’re just in survival mode a report of people trapped at 1404

5:22 · i had taken my siren and would chirp it a little bit in the spirit of if someone had survived maybe they would hear the siren and emerge from whatever cover they were behind i heard the whale a little whale of a siren and i kind of hear i hear a siren

5:41 · and damn if that thing didn’t come around and come up here nick and chance jumped out of their patrol cars and were able to find the folks that they had been on the phone with um and make the rescue they put those folks into their car and it was only a few seconds later that chance uh thought he heard something and realized that we had two additional folks that had survived the fire and were huddled near a cement

6:10 · wall near their swimming pool given what they had been through i knew immediately that they had most certainly inhaled all sorts of toxic and hot gases they drove us and it was like a war zone i mean you you were driving it off the road a few times to get us down to the hospital and the last thing i remember was christina’s in a gurney i’m in a gurney and the nurse takes max and says okay we’re going to take max to a vet and we’re going to evacuate you and that

6:40 · was it that’s the last thing i remember that night [Music]

7:05 · [Music] we decided to launch an online survey to collect a lot of information about people’s experiences and also we collected some ash samples we collected air samples and we also initiated a study to look at women who were pregnant during the wildfires or shortly thereafter with the data that we collected we’re hoping to provide information that can be useful for non-profits and local and county

Researching urban fires

7:39 · health agencies other agencies to be better able to meet needs in the future and really to continue to provide services for people who are still going through recovery

7:59 · what was so striking about this particular fire was how much of that fuel for the fire now came from residential areas and all of the products that are in residential areas anything from homes to consumer products to cars to the infrastructure so that’s what really piqued the interest is what happens when you start to burn consumer products anything as simple as cleaners or leaded paints or gas pipelines now all of this becomes

8:29 · a very large part of what is also in the fire from the biomass that we know about the samples that we got from the bay area site have been brought back to the lab and we have started the chemical analysis looking at metals elemental carbon and organic carbon and we’ve also started some toxicity testing so i can confirm that the emissions are

9:00 · strikingly different than your typical wildfire in an isolated wilderness area they’re different chemically and there are things in the emissions that we don’t even know what they are yet we still have a lot to learn about what the risks are from suburban and urban wildfires but i think we can expect there to be some very toxic and reactive chemicals that we will be breathing um as a result of those fires

Health impacts on residents

9:31 · tammy scott is a patient i’ve known for about five to ten years she was outstanding roller derby player i remember and she had to stop roller derby because of her asthma which was getting worse in the sacramento area she had a lot of environmental triggers to her asthma we recommended that she look to move elsewhere and she made a decision to move to the bay area specifically because she knew that she was breathing better there and i know she moved on to a houseboat and was doing terrific

10:01 · uh up until the the wildfires in 2017 from the sonoma napa area and that causes significant worsening of her symptoms and that’s when she came back to see me before the fires i i had my life back i

10:17 · could be active i could do what i wanted to do i was starting to skate i was starting to work out a little bit i did a lot of walking with my dogs enjoying life you know and the air here is beautiful there’s usually a good breeze sometimes like today there’s a real strong breeze but it’s fresh

10:40 · last october when they had the wildfires sunday night i went to bed but in the middle of the night i woke up because i couldn’t breathe too well on monday morning i called in sick and the smoke was all around by thursday i’d called the doctor and i said i need different medicine i just i can’t breathe here

11:02 · we had to increase her medications uh to help her get through that and and while she’s improved she states that she you know has not recovered to the baseline um before that exposure i’ve had asthma all my life so i’ve learned how to cope with it but then when there’s something environmental and you can’t breathe it’s scary

11:28 · i moved here to breathe and this has been my sanctuary and suddenly my sanctuary was gone after the terrible wildfires in santa rosa we really wanted to figure out be able to measure the air pollution from these kind of terrible disasters but there was no power out there because you know when there’s a big wildfire going on in the city you don’t you turn you turn the electric grid off so we had no way of

Developing rapid response

12:00 · running our sampling equipment out there to measure the air pollution and we weren’t ready and we didn’t want to have that happen again that we weren’t ready we were uh thinking it would be really nice to get out there immediately and start sampling and get an idea of what these emissions look like chemically while the fire’s going on so keith and i

12:21 · made a proposal to environmental health sciences center here at uc davis to develop a system the a portable battery-powered system so that the next time something like this happens we’ll be ready to measure the air pollution from it

12:43 · so we have a red wire we have a black wire and the red wire is the hot positive current voltage if they were touching each other or metal and we hooked this up there’d be sparks we don’t want we don’t want sparks now there’s the sparks flying create our own wildfire we’ll create our own emergency we don’t have to go anywhere right here we’d be ready no trailer needed we just

13:06 · so we’re gonna get a trailer we’re gonna put both these two things on the trailer and then take a truck and take it to wherever this air pollution situation is happening and then use them as power sources you know i started off in air pollution because i was living in los angeles and it was terrible there and it was something that i could feel could really help society nice okay so let’s review the wiring to make sure we don’t blow anything up then this guy goes to the red

13:36 · and everything should work sweet now we plug in via this extension cord our sampler flip the power and we are collecting air pollution

13:58 · so we can actually run this we tested it you can actually run this for 18 hours on just one car this is all very good and i can go check out see what kind of currents drawing zero is it really something’s wrong power’s not there current’s not there but the voltage is there yep something is wrong

14:21 · and this is the fun stuff you actually get to come out and you do the real work and you do the hands-on you put it together you turn it on and it works that’s gratifying that’s works the second time not the first time after you make the mistake the first time it works on the second time that’s amazing okay let’s give it attempt number two inverter off car off sweet 600 700 watts all right

14:50 · [Music] when we got to the tubbs fire it was clear right away that this fire wasn’t going to be contained quickly it was like a raging monster

Firefighter trauma and rescue

15:10 · we pulled into this neighborhood a lot of chaos there were cars fleeing i see this woman standing outside her car with her phone to her ear in a panic i tell her you know ma’am it’s time to go you got to go and she says my mom and dad my mom and dad i said okay um you know what’s the address she told me the address and i said i’ll go up there and take a look and um i said but you you really gotta go

15:41 · [Music] we have fire on both sides of the road there’s trees that are basically just torching off right next to us we’re running over power poles trees that are down in the roadway we’re pushing at all costs here to get to these two people that are unaccounted for i look off to the side and the heat’s so intense that my mirror on the fire engine is starting to melt and i’m watching it

16:09 · start to warp and [Music] i had to call it that we couldn’t get back there and that was really tough [Music]

16:29 · and as we come around the corner we see this man on the side of the road it’s like armando where’s your where’s your wife and he just looked at me and he shook his head and this man has

16:46 · burned pretty well to the top of his head and his hands and um he’s now my my main concern so when he gets into the engine um the two guys in the back seat start caring for him and he said i just lost my best friend we loved each other since we were kids

17:15 · and everything all the emotions throughout that whole night are starting to really compound on our crew and he is telling us how he held his wife until her last breath in a swimming pool because that’s the place that he thought would be safe he said i have to live

17:42 · i remember when he said i have to live i thought i was thinking just yep you know you have to live your right but he had to live he had to live because he needed to see his daughter his granddaughter that’s why he had to live

Mental health and recovery

18:27 · there is a culture that needs to change in the fire service i grew up in a culture that uh said suck it up son you’ll be all right it’s very important with what we’re seeing and what we’re dealing with to reach out and to um

18:50 · to say hey so it’s okay it’s okay to talk about it ptsd is one of the most common types of mental illness following disasters it’s been estimated that among people who are direct victims of a disaster 30 to 40 percent of them will go on to experience ptsd about 10 to 20 percent of rescue workers and 5 to 10 percent of people among the general population

19:23 · to this day i keep going where there must have been something else i could have done all i could do was just sit there and watch it but all i could see was the house just going up and the winds just kept carrying it right on over

19:46 · and now when i hear a lot of howling winds i still i start having memories of the night the ptsd is it hits you or it hits me at just the oddest times when i had my collapse in i said january and february

20:17 · i couldn’t complete a sentence i would start a sentence and i’d kind of wander off halfway through and forget what i was saying i couldn’t concentrate i couldn’t sleep and it was really really a mess and even with counseling and stuff it took a while before it got better

20:43 · some of the experiences that people are reporting to us still today are physical things like headaches stomach aches people aren’t sleeping they’re exhausted physically emotionally people are feeling sad anxious and there’s growing anger as the process

21:02 · takes longer than expected more and more we’re seeing people are feeling isolation and that’s one that we really watch and really try to do a lot of outreach and help people connect because isolation can turn into depression and so a lot of the work that we’re doing in this program is helping people connect to those that they really feel truly support them because connection is the most protective factor around uh traumatic outcomes one of the largest

21:26 · challenges for the survivors is feeling like the world moves on and gets back to normal when your whole life is in upheaval and it’s going to be for such a long time and i go drive past the lot now where the house was now they’ve cleared everything away and you go and just look at it and you go everything’s gone i mean it’s and it’s not coming back

21:58 · and even if we build something else it’s not going to be the home that we had and our life is never going to be exactly the same as it was one of the most important determinants of mental health following disasters is what kind of response there is to the disaster so for example investing in shelter investing in food electricity helping a community

22:27 · stay together and work together those kinds of interventions will really be predictive of long-term mental health [Music] [Music]

Inequality in fire recovery

23:20 · a

23:48 · sacrificies [Music] in the 2017 fires the spanish-speaking population in sonoma county was disproportionately harmed

24:09 · by not only the fire but by the response to the fire we like to say the fire was an equal opportunity harm but the recuperation the recovery and the support was much worse for the spanish-speaking residents of this county before the fires there was a one percent vacancy rate we lost five percent of our housing stock in santa rosa so if you do the math it’s really clear that renters are out

25:26 · foreign park my

26:09 · generational justice you know it’s the same as like social justice environmental justice but you know we have responsibility to hand off but we inherited it at least as good as shape as we got it so yeah i look at our kids and i think about what they’re going to be faced with and all of the uh the fallout that’s going to come with climate change and rising sea and you know that’s my motivation

26:41 · [Music] you

We Gonna Ride It Out Like We Always Do

Episode 1 of Katrina: Come Hell and High Water Duration: 01:01:59 More details on netflix.com

video A Brief History of Environmental Justice
slide Introduction to Environmental Justice