Urban Infrastructure & Housing
Human Health & the Environment
Class Meetings
Dates: 2026-10-06T16:00:00, 2026-10-08T16:00:00, 2026-10-13T16:00:00
Urban Infrastructure, Housing, & Public Health Printable PDF
Videos or Films Watched
‘Nutty’ situation in Lincoln Park WGN Investigates
WGN News, 09 29, 2026
Video (4:23)
Description
The piles of nuts first began appearing outside a Lincoln Park home a few years ago, attracting a swarm of squirrels. Since then, workers carrying matching shoulder bags have been spotted dumping piles of nuts a few blocks away in the park, and no one can figure out why. WGN’s Ben Bradley has the full story.
Transcript
0:07 · MICAH MATERRE: WGN INVESTIGATES SOMETHING IS HAPPENING IN LINCOLN PARK. RESIDENTS REACH OUT TO INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER BEN BRADLEY FOR HELP AFTER CITY FINDS FAILED TO SOLVE A SQUIRRELLY SITUATION.
0:22 · I WAS WALKING AROUND THE PARK AND I KNOW DOZENS OF POLLS AROUND TREES AND THEN I STARTED SEEING MORE AND MORE HOLES AROUND DIFFERENT TREES.
0:28 · WHEN HERE THERE’S A DOZEN HOLES AROUND THE STREET HERE.
0:31 · AND THEN A FEW MONTHS AGO, I WENT FOR A WALK AT DUSK AND WITHIN 15 MINUTES I COUNTED 42 RATS RUNNING AROUND.
0:41 · YEAH, AS YOU CAN SEE, I MEAN, THERE’S A TON OF RAT BURROWS HERE THAT EVEN PIKE WAS SO STUNNED BY THE SWARM OF RATS IN LINCOLN PARK. HE TOOK THIS VIDEO. OTHER NEIGHBORS NOTICED YOU KNOW, YOU SEE SOME RATS IN THE ALLEY AND STUFF RIGHT NEAR THE TRASH. AND THAT’S AGAIN, COME TO BE EXPECTED. BUT THIS WAS DIFFERENT. CAN SEE HERE IS A RAT TRAIL. IT WASN’T UNTIL RECENTLY THAT THEY REALIZED HOW DIFFERENT THIS ALI IS.
1:07 · BUT I JUST GRABBED THE PEOPLE OF THIS GETS INTO THE STRANGER THAN FICTION ASPECT OF IT. IT’S LIKE A A LOT OF NICE KNOTS. I’M TALKING BRAZIL, NOT AND I WAS LOOKING AND I KNOW, YOU KNOW, ARBORIST, BUT THESE DO NOT COME FROM THE STREET. THESE ARE NOT ACORNS. YOU CAN SEE ALL THE SCATTERED KNOTS AROUND.
1:28 · YOU SEE THOSE NUTS AREN’T FALLING FROM TREES. THEY APPEAR TO BE IMPORTED.
1:34 · JI SUK YI: AND WHILE THEIR PILES BIZARRE, EXPENSIVE, NOT EVERYWHERE IN OUR PARK.
1:39 · NO ONE COULD CRACK THE NUT OF AN EXPLANATION UNTIL ONE MORNING THIS YEAR WHEN CAROLINE NOVAK WAS OUT FOR A WALK.
1:45 · AND I ACTUALLY SAW A HANDFUL OF THEM. I THINK IT WAS 5 WALKING EARLY IN THE MORNING OF THE SAME SHOULDER BAG. AND SO I JUST SAID, HEY, WHAT ARE YOU GUYS DOING?
1:52 · BECAUSE THEY WERE THROWING THE KNOT.
1:53 · SHE’S NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO WITNESSED IT. I NOTICE SOMEONE WITH A SATCHEL AND JUST THOUGHT IT WAS SOMEONE OUT THERE FEEDING SQUIRRELS.
2:04 · JI SUK YI: SO I WALKED UP AND I, YOU KNOW, JUST HAD HAND. I WAS JUST CURIOUS WHAT YOU GUYS ARE DOING WIRE 3 AND HE’S NOT GOING TO THESE TREES. AND SHE SAID WERE ALLOWED TO DO THIS. AND I SAID, OH, YEAH, I WAS JUST CURIOUS WHY YOU WERE DOING IT. SHE SAID WE’RE NOT FEELING THE WRATH UNPROMPTED. I DIDN’T EVEN BRING UP. SHE SAID WE’RE NOT PAYING HULL, OK? WELL. I THINK YOU INADVERTENTLY ARE.
2:26 · THEY AND OTHER NEIGHBORS COMPLAINED TO THE CITY WHICH DETERMINE TO A NEARBY HOMEOWNER WAS LEAVING NOTTS OUTSIDE THEIR OWN HOUSE ATTRACTING NOT ONLY SQUIRRELS, BUT THEY’RE RODENT COUSINS, RATS. THE NEIGHBORS SUSPECTED THE CREW LEAVING THE NUTS A FEW BLOCKS AWAY IN THE PARK ARE DOING SO AT THE DIRECTION OF THE HOMEOWNER.
2:45 · JOSH FRYDMAN: EVEN DOUBT WITH IT. BUT WE’VE NEVER DEALT WITH A SITUATION WHERE IT’S LIKE FEED FOR HIRE FOR BETTER OR LACK OF THE TERM WHERE SOMEONE’S PAYING SEVERAL EMPLOYEES TO FEED THE ANIMALS IN THE SURROUNDING AREA.
2:59 · BEN BRADLEY: THE ALDERMAN SAID THE CITY CONTACTED THE HOMEOWNER AND EVEN ISSUED MULTIPLE VIOLATIONS, WHICH HE SAYS HAVE BEEN PAID AND NOT CONTESTED.
3:06 · TYPICALLY WHEN YOU TICKET SOMEBODY, IT STOPS THEIR BAD BEHAVIOR. THIS IS NOT STOPPED IT. IF ANYTHING, THE BEHAVIOR IS INCREASE, THE FEEDING INCREASED SINCE WE’VE TICKETING THAT.
3:20 · LAST MONTH THE ALDERMAN’S OFFICE SENT THIS LETTER WARNING THAT MORE FINES COULD BE COMING IF THEY DON’T KNOCK IT OFF WITH A KNOTS. WE DON’T WANT TO THROW ANYONE UNDER THE BUS. WE JUST WANT TO STOP THIS FEEDING THAT’S CAUSING PROBLEMS IN A DENSE NEIGHBORHOOD.
3:34 · BEN BRADLEY: ALDERMAN KNUDTSON SAID HE ISN’T SURE HOW THIS WILL END OR EVEN WHY IT STARTED. WE WANTED TO KNOW OURSELVES. SO WE PAID THE HOME OF VISIT AND ENCOUNTERED A WOMAN WHO WOULD NOT GIVE HER NAME.
3:45 · I’M JUST TRYING BETTER UNDERSTAND LIKE WHY ARE ALL THESE KNOTS BEEN GATHERED UP?
3:47 · WHY ARE THEY BEING DISTRIBUTED IN LINCOLN PARK? I REALLY HAVE NO COMMENT FOR HIM. SORRY.
3:50 · I’D SAY MY GOAL IS TO GET RID OF THE RATS. I MEAN, I WANT TO FEEL COMFORTABLE HAVING MY KIDS PLAY IN THE PARK TOGETHER RIGHT NOW. IT’S AN ALL YOU CAN EAT BUFFET FOR THE RATS AND SQUIRRELS. MY BEN BRADLEY: NEIGHBORS SAY THEY HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THE PROVERBIAL OLD MAN FEEDS PIGEONS IN THE PARK. BUT THEY SAY THIS. HE’S GOTTEN SO STRANGE.
4:10 · THEY’D LAUGH IF IT WEREN’T FOR ALL THE RATS AND DAMAGE IN THE PARK AFTER THE CITY ISSUED A FINAL WARNING LATE LAST MONTH, WE DID SEE A WORKER’S SWEEPING UP OUTSIDE THE PA RK THE HOU
5 Tiny Pests That Could Be In Your Home Right Now Deep Look
Deep Look, 04 01, 2025
Video (17:59)
Description
We hope your spring cleaning doesn’t uncover bed bugs, dust mites, termites, drain flies or cockroaches.
00:14 Dust mites
03:24 Bed bugs
07:19 Termites
10:42 Drain flies
14:26 Cockroaches
👉 SIGN UP for Deep Look’s newsletter, Nature Unseen: https://bit.ly/NatureUnseenSignUp
JOIN our community on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/deeplook
SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/kqeddeeplook?sub_confirmation=1
DEEP LOOK is an ultra-HD (4K) short video series created by KQED in San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios. See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world. Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small.
—+ Find a transcript on KQED Science:
https://www.kqed.org/science/1996508/5-of-the-grossest-house-pests-weve-ever-filmed
—+ More great Deep Look episodes:
These 5 Bees Are Waaay More Than Honey and Stingers
https://youtu.be/WPT4IRrcBiw?feature=shared
5 of the Worst Tiny Bloodsuckers That Have Ever Bitten Us
https://youtu.be/RQTi1GWv_lg?feature=shared
4 of the Deadliest Tiny Hunters We’ve Ever Filmed
https://youtu.be/HLr0Xleaxb8?feature=shared
4 Tiny Romances That Are Almost Too Freaky to Share
https://youtu.be/4qKbI2NR_XE?feature=shared
—+ Shoutout!
🏆Congratulations🏆 to the following fans on our Deep Look community tab for correctly answering our GIF challenge! Protists in termites’ guts break down wood.
@Formula_Zero_EX
@portalfan267
@Maxmumspida
—+ Thank you to our top Patreon supporters ($10+ per month)!
Darby Sullivan
Rachel Fenichel
Edgar Betancourt
Susan Fuhs
Hank Poppe
Walter Tschinkel
Marco Narajos
H.M. Andrew
Joan Klivans
Stephanie Dole
J Schumacher
Lily, Vinny, Izzy Altschuler
Eric Marsh
Jamie Edwards
Elia Gourguechon-Buot
Kristy Folsom
Laurel Przybylski
吳怡彰
Kevin William Walker
Oliver Wakeling
Jessica Hiraoka
Laurel Przybylski
Jeremiah Sullivan
Mehdi Salarkia
Mark Jobes
Carrie Mukaida
Cristen Rasmussen
Wade Tregaskis
Burt Humburg
Noreen Herrington
Roberta K Wright
Brigitte Xia
Louis O’Neill
Jellyman
Titania Juang
El Samuels
Laurel Przybylski
Companion Cube
Chris B Emrick
Kristine Wee
Karen Reynolds
Sue Ellen McCann
David Deshpande
Daisuke Goto
Elizabeth Ann Ditz
Levi Cai
—+ Follow Deep Look and KQED Science on social:
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@deeplookofficial
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/deeplook
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kqedscience/
Twitter/X: https://www.twitter.com/kqedscience
—+ About KQED KQED, an NPR and PBS member station in San Francisco, serves Northern California and beyond with a public-supported alternative to commercial TV, radio and web media.
Funding for Deep Look is provided in part by PBS Digital Studios and the members of KQED.
Transcript
0:00 · Dread them.
0:01 · Run from them.
0:02 · [hitting wood] But that won’t stop these unwelcome house guests from coming to visit you anyway.
0:08 · In fact, you’ve probably got them in your home right now making themselves comfortable.
Dust mites
0:14 · Let’s start with the tiny dust mite.
0:16 · It might seem harmless but in large numbers they can cause serious problems.
0:28 · Long ago – around the time we started growing our own food – humans settled down.
0:34 · We went home, inside.
0:37 · We built permanent shelters to protect us from the elements …
0:40 · and keep the wild animals at bay.
0:43 · Or so we thought.
0:46 · Surprise!
0:47 · The animals were right there with us.
0:50 · They still are.
0:53 · This is dust.
0:55 · Zoom in and you find an ecosystem almost as elaborate as the one we left outside.
1:01 · But small enough for us to forget it exists.
1:06 · Dust is pretty much anything small.
1:10 · But the most important ingredient of dust – at least for the purposes of this story – is skin.
1:16 · Her skin.
1:17 · His skin.
1:19 · Tiny flakes that fall off our bodies all day long.
1:24 · Researchers at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco collect and study house dust to find out what exactly makes up this micro-universe.
1:33 · [vacuuming] Even the cleanest homes are teeming with tiny, almost invisible roommates.
1:41 · And even more so if you have pets or kids or live on the ground floor.
1:48 · Most homes have over 100 species … no matter how often you vacuum.
1:54 · Not just these guys.
1:56 · But these.
1:58 · And these.
2:01 · And these.
2:04 · Most of these microscopic roommates are harmless.
2:07 · Just freeloaders, basically.
2:10 · But one can cause real trouble.
2:13 · The house dust mite.
2:15 · This is like the roommate who leaves his crap around and makes you sick.
2:19 · Dust mites don’t bite people. They don’t need to.
2:22 · We feed them constantly.
2:25 · Skin flakes are hard to digest.
2:28 · It’s like eating hair …
2:29 · or feathers.
2:31 · So dust mites have powerful digestive enzymes to break the skin down.
2:36 · Those enzymes turn up in dust mite poop.
2:39 · And let’s just say you really don’t want to know how much dust mite poop is in your house.
2:44 · When people breathe dust, they breathe in the poop – and the enzymes, too … which irritate the lungs and can aggravate asthma, especially in kids.
2:54 · Like us humans, dust mites haven’t always lived inside either.
2:59 · These tiny relatives of spiders and scorpions once lived in birds’ nests.
3:04 · But then, some intrepid dust mites made the jump …
3:08 · from birds’ homes to ours.
3:10 · And as our society thrived and grew, so did theirs.
3:16 · If you like this video, please hit the like and subscribe buttons.
3:19 · It really helps us reach more people, and we truly appreciate your support!
Bed bugs
3:24 · These bed bugs are after your blood and they go for it while you’re sleeping.
3:29 · Keep watching to see how researchers stop them dead in their tracks.
3:35 · Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the … OK, you know where this is going.
3:41 · [ominous music] Lured in by our breath, bed bugs come for us when we’re most vulnerable.
3:51 · In dreamland, we’re oblivious …
3:54 · … to bed bug chow time.
3:58 · You won’t even feel it.
4:00 · It’s a quick meal. Just a few minutes.
4:03 · But it’s a filling one.
4:10 · Stuffed with blood, it scurries to a nearby cranny.
4:14 · The seam of your mattress … … or behind a baseboard.
4:22 · There, they get to work growing their families.
4:28 · Until you get … You can recognize them by their signature work of art.
4:47 · These tiny splotches.
4:50 · It’s the digested blood they leave behind.
4:54 · In the 1950s, we made bed bugs retreat with DDT.
5:00 · But some became resistant and now they’re back.
5:08 · We help them spread – in our clothes or luggage – when we travel around.
5:15 · You can kill them with other insecticides or heat, but their game of hide-and-seek makes it tricky.
5:22 · Turns out, there might be another way to stop them in their tracks.
5:27 · Watch this.
5:29 · It’s just taking a stroll and … Gotcha!
5:34 · Its foot is stuck.
5:36 · This bean leaf can incapacitate the bloodsuckers.
5:42 · People in the Balkans discovered that years ago and would spread the leaves around their beds as a trap.
5:48 · The leaf’s surface is covered in these tiny hooked hairs called trichomes.
6:02 · They pierce right through the bed bug’s feet, impaling their soft joints.
6:16 · Many bean plants – like kidney and green beans – developed the hooks to defend against aphids and other plant-eating pests.
6:25 · But it just so happens to work on our bloodthirsty pest too.
6:35 · Biologist and engineer Catherine Loudon is trying to copy the plant at the University of California, Irvine.
6:43 · She’s creating a synthetic material that can pierce bed bug feet just like bean leaves do.
6:52 · It’s not quite as effective as a real bean leaf, but she’s working on it.
7:05 · In the meantime, bed bugs are still a step ahead. So keep an eye out.
7:12 · Spot them early and maybe you can get them before they get you.
Termites
7:19 · Termites can infiltrate your home without being seen, and the results can be catastrophic.
7:25 · But these tiny homewreckers wouldn’t be able to do so much damage without the help of special microorganisms hidden in their gut.
7:36 · That lump on the side of this tree in the Amazon?
7:39 · It’s packed with termites. In the rainforest, that’s a good thing.
7:45 · They break down wood into stuff other creatures can eat.
7:48 · But inside our homes, termites are pests. They cost us billions of dollars of damage every year.
7:55 · Take these dampwood termites that live on the cool California coast.
7:59 · They eat wood that’s wet or decayed, maybe from a leak in your house.
8:05 · Slowly, but surely, they gnaw and scrape away.
8:10 · What comes out the other end isn’t waste.
8:16 · It serves as a kind of mortar.
8:20 · And dried poop pellets make perfect building blocks for their nests.
8:25 · In other words, they’re turning your house into theirs.
8:29 · What’s amazing is that they can digest wood, which is so hard, and get nutrients out of it.
8:35 · We certainly can’t do that.
8:37 · Termites are one of the only animals that can.
8:40 · It turns out they don’t do this alone.
8:43 · Researchers are looking inside termites to figure out who’s actually responsible for this feat.
8:49 · At the Exploratorium, in San Francisco, museum biologists give the insect a little puff of carbon dioxide.
8:57 · When it’s nice and relaxed, the termite poops itself.
9:03 · Under the microscope, multitudes appear.
9:07 · Hundreds of species of microbes live packed inside a termite’s gut, about one one-thousandth of a teaspoon.
9:14 · This big one is called Trichonympha.
9:17 · It’s not an animal, plant or fungus. It’s a protist.
9:21 · Watch it move with the help of its flagella.
9:26 · Protists like Trichonympha are essential for termites to turn the wood into a source of energy.
9:31 · They do this by fermenting the wood, much the same way a brewer turns grain into beer.
9:38 · Something else is hidden deep in the termite’s gut.
9:41 · A powerful bacterium that combines nitrogen from the air and calories from the wood to make protein.
9:48 · That’s like turning a potato into a steak.
9:51 · Termites can’t live without their microbes.
9:53 · And many of these microbes can’t live outside the termite.
9:57 · So what if we used the microbes against their hosts?
10:01 · Right now, when we want to get rid of termites, we fumigate our houses with poison.
10:08 · But maybe we could just kill the protists instead.
10:11 · Louisiana State University entomologists are engineering a gut bacterium to kill gut protists.
10:18 · They’d sneak the bacteria into the termite colony on something the termites would eat.
10:24 · The bacteria would kill the protists that help the termites digest wood, leaving them surrounded by food but starving.
10:34 · If you love learning about wildlife, subscribe to our weekly newsletter. It’s free!
10:39 · Link in the description.
Drain flies
10:42 · These cuties are experts in making their way into your house through some secret and slimy passageways.
10:50 · Check it out.
10:54 · Ever wonder where those little insects crawling around your bathroom came from?
11:00 · Bad news: your drain.
11:05 · With all that fluffy hair, it looks like a tiny moth.
11:12 · And some do call it a moth fly.
11:15 · But a fly it is.
11:18 · A drain fly.
11:20 · It’s called Clogmia – how appropriate.
11:24 · It grew up over several weeks, out of sight, among things you thought you’d washed away.
11:33 · Drain flies sneak in from the outside, through a crack in an old pipe, for example, to sip some water they sensed with this long mustache – their maxillary palps.
11:47 · And here, on the plentiful gunk in your pipes, they’ll grow a family.
11:52 · Welcome, little one!
11:54 · The larva is the length of an eyelash.
11:58 · That gunk it lives in? Those are bits of you: hair, saliva and food.
12:04 · They make a nice meal for bacteria and fungi, which form this dark, living slime called a biofilm.
12:13 · This is what the larvae feed on.
12:17 · It also keeps them well moisturized.
12:21 · If the larva ends up submerged, it can still chow down.
12:27 · It sweeps slime particles out of the water with a hairy mouthpart called the labrum.
12:37 · And rakes them in with its mandibles.
12:44 · Underwater, it breathes with a bubble on its backside that it collected at the surface.
12:52 · This allows it to venture through deep pools in your pipes.
12:56 · When larvae, or the more grown-up pupae, like this guy here, end up in a toilet bowl, it can be a shock.
13:06 · You might think the squigglers came out of you!
13:10 · Ew!
13:11 · Don’t worry – they can’t live inside us.
13:15 · And even though the drain flies in your bathroom muck around in bacteria, they don’t really spread it to humans.
13:23 · They’re not interested in landing on us. Or even leaving the bathroom.
13:27 · They’re in their happy place.
13:30 · When you wash your hands?
13:32 · They protect themselves from the water with their hairy wings.
13:37 · Each hair has ridges that trap air so the drops roll right off.
13:47 · And if they’re caught off-guard by a sudden surge, the flies skate across.
13:56 · But they’re not invincible.
13:59 · When they get trapped underwater long enough, they can drown.
14:06 · If you find you really need to get rid of them, drain cleaner helps, but it won’t keep them away forever.
14:13 · There will always be some slime left behind, deep in your pipes, that could attract the flies again.
14:21 · So, if they want it, why not let ‘em have it?
Cockroaches
14:26 · Are cockroaches – those disgusting disease-spreading roommates – good for anything at all?
14:32 · [hitting wood] [hitting floor] Scientists think their super-strength might teach us some tricks that could someday save lives.
14:41 · The American cockroach is one of the fastest insects on the planet.
14:47 · It can run up to 3.4 miles per hour.
14:51 · That’d be like a human knocking out eight marathons over their lunch break.
14:58 · It uses hooks, called tarsal claws, to flip over ledges.
15:02 · [cymbal ta-da] [cymbal ta-da] And not even a wall can stop it.
15:21 · Better to keep up the momentum and figure it out as you go.
15:28 · The roach is both tough and flexible.
15:32 · Its exoskeleton isn’t one large piece of armor, but many shield-like plates made of a tough material called chitin.
15:42 · They’re held together by lots of pliable joints.
15:46 · And they use all those bendy joints to fold up, origami-style, and push through impossibly small cracks … … like that gap you never knew existed in your kitchen cupboard.
16:02 · The cockroach can army-crawl through a space a quarter of its normal standing height.
16:09 · That’s one reason it’s so good at surviving your thwack.
16:15 · So how much pressure can the cockroach take?
16:19 · Scientists at UC Berkeley found it can withstand a thwack …
16:24 · … equivalent to 900 times its body weight … … and walk away unscathed.
16:32 · Why are researchers so interested in all this?
16:35 · They think the roach, despite its ability to make us sick, can teach us to save lives.
16:43 · One of those researchers is now building robots the size of insects to squeeze into places you and I cannot.
16:52 · Like piles of rubble left by major earthquakes or hurricanes.
17:00 · And maybe down the line, much smaller versions of these robots could even enter our bodies to perform life-saving tasks.
17:11 · On the one hand, we want to keep these creatures out …
17:14 · by sealing cracks, caulking windows and storing food in airtight containers.
17:20 · But we also want to learn from them.
17:24 · The cockroach teaches us that the key to overcoming adversity isn’t just toughness.
17:30 · It’s also flexibility.
17:34 · If you liked this video, please consider supporting us by becoming a Deep Look Patreon member.
17:39 · You’ll get exclusive show updates, behind-the-scenes footage, merch, and more.
17:43 · Click the link on screen or in the description below!
17:46 · Now, keep your streak going with these five buzzworthy bees.
17:50 · Or see if you can survive these five bloodsuckers.
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.
Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG
Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Follow us:
Facebook: http://www.pbs.org/newshour
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/newshour
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/newshour
Snapchat: @pbsnews
Subscribe:
PBS NewsHour podcasts: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/podcasts
Newsletters: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/subscribe
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.
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
Trash containers making a difference in NYC’s war on rats
CBS New York, 08 06, 2026
Video (1:56)
Description
There have been fewer complaints about rats to 311, which appears to show trash container efforts are working. CBS News New York’s Dave Carlin reports.
For video licensing inquiries, contact: licensing@veritone.com
Transcript
0:04 · CALL IT A TRASHY TRIUMPH FOR CITY LEADERS IN THEIR WAR AGAINST RATS. AS DAVE CARLIN REPORTS, FEWER COMPLAINTS ABOUT RATS TO 311 APPEAR TO SHOW THOSE CONTAINER EFFORTS ARE WORKING.
0:17 · HIS EAST VILLAGE APARTMENT IS ON A STREET WHERE RATS SEEM TO HIDE DURING THE DAY. BUT AFTER THE SUN GOES DOWN, THEY’RE OUT FOR BUFFET TIME, SAYS JOHN HENNIGAN.
0:26 · AT NIGHT, THEY’RE VERY ACTIVE.
0:30 · ACTIVE ALSO DESCRIBES CITY SANITATION WORKERS DEPLOYING EMPIRE BINS. THE JOB IS DESCRIBED AS DONE IN PARTS OF HARLEM AND MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, WHERE WE SEE THE NEW BINS FOR BUILDINGS, NEW RAT RESISTANT CORNER LITTER BASKETS AND APPROVED SECURE BINS FOR BUSINESSES. FELIX MOLINA SITS IN A PARK HE ONCE AVOIDED FOR BEING RAT INFESTED.
0:50 · NOW IT’S NO PROBLEM AT ALL.
0:51 · MY WIFE ACTUALLY HAD A A FLOWER BED IN OUR FRONT WINDOW THAT WE COULDN’T KEEP FLOWERS IN BECAUSE THE RATS WOULD JUST COME IN AND DIG IT ALL UP AND TEAR IT ALL TO PIECES.
1:02 · AND WHAT ABOUT NOW?
1:04 · NOT NOT A PROBLEM.
1:06 · GREGORY ANDERSON IS COMMISSIONER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF SANITATION, AND WE ASKED HIM WHAT’S GOING ON WITH RAT SIGHTINGS CITYWIDE.
1:14 · AND YOU HAVE SUCCESS.
1:14 · SO IT’S ROUGHLY 22% DECLINE IN RAT COMPLAINTS IN THE FIRST SEVEN MONTHS OF THIS CALENDAR YEAR COMPARED TO THE SAME TIME LAST YEAR. CONTAINERIZATION IS THE REASON.
1:24 · HELP WITH RATS ROLLING.
1:25 · OUT NEIGHBORHOOD BY NEIGHBORHOOD. AND IT’S GOING TO TAKE TIME. ACCORDING TO THE CITY, THE CITY MUST BUY HUNDREDS MORE OF THESE AUTOMATED SIDE LOADING COLLECTION TRUCKS TO GO WITH THE EMPIRE BINS.
1:35 · EVEN THOUGH WE’VE TAKEN TWO 3% OF PARKING SPACES, IT’S REALLY MADE A BIG IMPACT ON JUST HOW THE NEIGHBORHOOD LOOKS AND FEELS.
1:45 · THE FOCUS NOW PARTS OF BROOKLYN, INCLUDING DUMBO, THAN THE REST OF THE CITY.
1:48 · WE WILL BE CITYWIDE BY 2031.
1:50 · SO WE’RE ESTIMATING AROUND 60,000 BINS.
1:53 · LOOK FOR THE PARTS OF BROOKLYN TO BE COMPLETELY CONTAINE
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
Make sure you never miss behind the scenes content in the Vox Video newsletter, sign up here: http://vox.com/video-newsletter
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
Support Vox’s reporting with a one-time or recurring contribution: http://vox.com/contribute-now
Shop the Vox merch store: http://vox.com/store
Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on Facebook: http://facebook.com/vox
Follow Vox on Twitter: http://twitter.com/voxdotcom
Follow Vox on TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@voxdotcom
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.
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.
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
» Sign up for our newsletter KnowThis to get the biggest stories of the day delivered straight to your inbox: https://go.nowth.is/knowthis_youtube
» Subscribe to NowThis Earth: https://go.nowth.is/Earth_Subscribe
Connect with NowThis
» Subscribe to NowThis News: http://go.nowth.is/News_Subscribe
» Like us on Facebook: http://go.nowth.is/News_Facebook
» Tweet us on Twitter: http://go.nowth.is/News_Twitter
» Follow us on Instagram: http://go.nowth.is/News_Instagram
» Find us on Snapchat Discover: http://go.nowth.is/News_Snapchat
NowThis Earth is daily news coverage of climate, sustainability, biodiversity, species extinction, environmental justice, and other planetary concerns.
NowThis is your premier news outlet providing you with all the videos you need to stay up to date on all the latest in trending news. From entertainment to politics, to viral videos and breaking news stories, we’re delivering all you need to know straight to your social feeds. We live where you live.
http://www.youtube.com/nowthisearth
@NowThisEarth
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]
The Urban Jungle
Human Footprint The Urban Jungle Season 1
Episode 5 of Human Footprint (Season 1) - Released: 2023-08-02 - Duration: 00:54:41
<iframe width=“560” height=“315” title=Human Footprint The Urban Jungle Season 1 allow=“autoplay; encrypted-media; fullscreen” allowfullscreen=“” src=https://player.pbs.org/portalplayer/the-urban-jungle-7grk9d/?uid=2486c076-d951-436d-bf82-bac59b0b60f5&userPassportStatus=yes&callsign=KUON&station_id=b107784d-680c-48d5-8d48-ccb870cbb9dc&unsafeDisableUpsellHref=true&autoplay=true&unsafeDisableContinuousPlay=true>
Description
Shane explores three thriving urban species and envisions a wilder future for our cities.
Transcript
Shane, voice-over: Once upon a time, the Lenape called this place “Manahatta.”
A land of densely forested hills and slow-flowing streams… …it was, as Henry Hudson wrote in 1609, “as pleasant a land as one need tread upon.”
Today, all that remains of that place is the ground I’m standing on.
Rakim: If you was born in New York City Let me year you say, “You know that” Crowd: You know that!
In just a few hundred years, we cut down the forests, rerouted the streams, and leveled the hills.
In their place, we constructed a labyrinth of tunnels and pipes beneath a grid of asphalt streets lined with towers of concrete, glass, and steel.
In the blink of an eye, “Manahatta” became Manhattan.
Nas: Yeah, yeah Nas: Yo, black it’s time word?
Today, half of all humans– more than 4 billion people– live in cities.
But they’re not just a place to live.
Cities are a new ecosystem spreading across our planet.
One made by us, for us.
So how is this purpose-built human habitat treating us?
And what will it take to keep these urban jungles wild?
Nas: To the New York state of mind [Horns honking] Welcome to the Age of Humans… where one species can change everything and what we do reveals who we truly are.
This is “Human Footprint.”
The idyllic Manhattan of yesteryear was shaped by beavers, hydrological engineers whose vast earthworks transformed the entire ecosystem.
We humans alter the landscape, too.
We just do it bigger.
Humans have been called the ultimate ecosystem engineers.
And here in New York City, our talents are on full display.
Chorus: In Napoli where love is king When boy meets girl Simmering beneath this iconic skyline is a melting pot of more than 8 million people who speak 200 different languages and eat at over 1,400 pizzerias.
Man: As a New Yorker, I always lean towards pepperoni.
Shane: I can respect that.
Shane, voice-over: Bobby Corrigan is one of those 8 million New Yorkers.
He loves everything about this place: a good slice of pepperoni, the city lights, and, oh, yeah…rats.
In college, I had to save money, so I took a job as an exterminator.
They put me in the sewers right away… and I thought, “Oh, this is cool.”
Literally working your way from the bottom up.
Exactly.
Shane, voice-over: Bobby spends his free time writing poetry on the street, but by day, he’s a world-renowned urban rodentologist.
Are rats the scourge that people make them out to be?
I admire them.
I respect them.
However, they live in dirty areas.
Shane, voice-over: And, uh, that dirt got cooties.
It’s viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoans.
55 different diseases.
55?
Wow.
OK. And think of the plague, Shane.
You know, I mean, 25 million people go down with the black rat and their fleas.
Yeah.
Shane, voice-over: No place needs Bobby’s expertise more than New York, where it seems like rats are pretty much everywhere.
Here we are, sitting at a restaurant.
If that door over there is not pest proof into the pizza shop, across the kitchen counter, and urinates and defecates and leaves a film, and then someone touches the film the next morning, and then, you know, boom.
This pizza’s tasting a little less good now.
Ha!
Yeah.
Shane, voice-over: It was time to walk off that pizza on what Bobby calls a rat safari.
We’re gonna cross over here, Shane.
There’s a park here.
Here we are, almost at the end of June.
You know, their breeding season is in full swing.
Love is in the air.
Love is totally in the air, and families are growing.
Narrator: We know that rats are the most prolific of all mammals.
A single pair of rats would become 360 million in the short space of 3 years.
As the sidewalks begin to deteriorate, the rats will move below the sidewalks for their burrows.
You’re literally sometimes walking right over the tops of the heads of rats.
Sometimes, rats will go right up the tree if there’s a bird nest up there.
They’re predacious on those birds.
Is the reason why you’re wearing the hard hat because a rat might jump out of the tree onto you, and is that something I need to worry about?
Actually, that would be cool if they would jump onto me.
I’d like that a lot.
[Laughs] Shane, voice-over: The longer rats live in our cities, the better they get at it… and the harder we try to keep them out.
Here we have something that’s very common: the bait box.
The rats will go inside that box and find the poison bait.
And 8, 9, 10 days later, they die.
Shane, voice-over: But no matter how much poison we throw at the problem, we’re also throwing rats a lifeline.
Bobby: The rats are gonna be where the food is easy to get to.
All they have to do– 50 feet away, right there.
Shane, voice-over: New York City has 25,000 restaurants– not counting the pizzerias– and millions of home chefs.
3 nights a week, every one of them puts their trash not in a dumpster, not in a can with a lid, but right on the curb.
Bobby: Food in a big city of high-density humans?
Extremely reliable.
So this becomes, like, basically the rat buffet.
It does.
Shane, voice-over: They say if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
And rats…well, they made it.
But how did they get here in the first place?
[Squeaking] Man: If we want to know the story of rats in New York City, we have to know what were they doing before they got here.
Shane, voice-over: This is Jason Munshi-South.
He’s a biologist who loves New York City almost as much as he loves rats.
[Ships’ horns blare] When the brown rat made it here, it sort of hit the jackpot.
Shane, voice-over: The brown rat, or Rattus norvegicus, probably originated in East Asia, where it was first drawn to human settlements by agriculture.
But as people around the world moved into dense cities full of trash, human waste, and safe hiding places, rat populations soared.
Without meaning to, we built a rat paradise.
Narrator: Rats don’t have to go to much trouble to find homes because we provide these for them, made to order, everything but the welcome mat.
It’s like, “Oh.
There’s this massive free food here now, and all I gotta do is hang around these people.”
Shane, voice-over: At the height of European imperialism, rats were already entrenched in cities and ports across the Old World.
So when European explorers sailed west into the unknown, rats did what they’ve always done and came along.
Where we are now is where the Dutch bought the island or stole the island.
I put my money on stole, but go ahead.
But the original… Shane, voice-over: By the early 1900s, it wasn’t just white human settlers who’d colonized all of North America.
It was also rats.
But not all rat habitat is created equal.
I’m gonna show you some different pressures in different parts of the city.
OK. We’re gonna go get that New York City tour.
Yeah, let’s do it.
All right, awesome.
[Engine revving] [Woman singing indistinctly] Jason: Yeah, as you’re driving from Battery Park, where the rats first came in, up to here, you know, this is one of the great rat neighborhoods of the world.
[Shane laughs] Shane, voice-over: But if you keep rolling north, the whole vibe changes.
And Jason’s got the data to prove it.
Jason: We got basically about 70,000 points where rats have been identified.
And this is the outcome of the map, where the green areas are really good rat neighborhoods, like where we are right now, right about there, near Tompkins Square.
But then see this red area here south of Central Park?
-Uh-huh.
-That’s Midtown, where there isn’t a lot of residential.
The companies pay extra money to have the streets cleaned up.
And it seems to create this almost, like, dead zone for rats.
Shane, voice-over: Jason can predict the size of rat populations in different neighborhoods by looking at data on humans.
Jason: Areas that are highly residential and mixed commercial that have a lot of restaurants, super predictive of rats, not surprisingly.
And older neighborhoods with older buildings, they really like that.
Shane, voice-over: The places where rats have food to eat and places to hide are the places they thrive.
On the flip side, take those things away and the rats disappear, too.
It seems so simple.
And yet, somehow… Bobby: Go to any city around the world and it’s plagued with rats.
We are not winning this war.
Shane, voice-over: Rodenticides, or rat poisons, have become a go-to weapon in the war on rats.
But rats are becoming resistant, pushing people to switch up the formula and apply even more rodenticides to keep rat populations in check.
And it’s not just poisons.
Our campaign against rats has grown into a $3 billion-a-year effort, involving legions of people around the world.
We’ve even conscripted other species into the war effort.
[Indistinct chatter] All right.
So this is our service center.
Shane: It’s like the gym, playhouse, sauna, exercise room, all together.
OK. All together, all together.
Shane, voice-over: When Scott Mullaney and his wife Angie aren’t cruising down a scenic highway… [Revving] …they’re training little dogs to do a big job.
[Engine revs, tires squeal] Instead of poison or traps, their company uses dogs to kill rats.
It’s actually nothing new.
As cities grew bigger and denser in the 19th century, rat populations exploded, and people created whole new dog breeds just to kill them.
We’ve worked them on top of 12-story buildings.
We’ve worked them in supermarkets.
We’ve worked them on airplanes.
We’ve worked them on trains, on trains, planes, and automobiles.
I mean, really, any environment you can think of.
Shane, voice-over: Over the years, Scott and Angie’s small team has killed more than 30,000 rats.
Scott: All right, you’re gonna leash up.
Here ya go, kid.
There ya go.
Dogs always give 100%.
They just love what they do.
We’re just gonna finish up so we can close up and go.
Last but not least.
[Engine starts, revs] [Distant siren] [Squeaking] OK, guys, so what we’re gonna do is, we’re just gonna take the leashes off the dogs.
I want to start right over here.
And you can see his kinetic energy.
He just– he’s on point right now.
He knows what the deal is.
Take the leash off and unleash them now.
Shane: It’s game time.
Scott: OK, we got something over here!
[Growling] Angie: Wooo!
Shane: Wow!
Scott: Good job.
This is bananas.
Shane, voice-over: It looks like chaos, but this is actually highly coordinated.
The dogs find the rats with their keen noses.
The handlers move dumpsters and pallets to expose them, and the dogs finish the job.
Yep.
Inside the bait box.
Shane, voice-over: Oh, and the hockey sticks?
Those are for cutting off escape routes.
Angie: Wooo!
Ohh!
Shane, voice-over: The dogs look like they’re having a blast.
The rats?
Well, not so much.
Scott: It’s still alive.
Hold on for a second.
Shane: Oh, my God!
Angie: Hey!
Scott: Yep.
Yeah, just make sure that nothing takes off the other way.
Angie: Good job, guys!
Scott: OK, we’ve got something over here, I think.
[Soft crunching] There are things that I have seen that I cannot unsee, and I will be having a whole different kind of nightmare from now on.
[Both laugh] What do you think our situation with rats says about us?
I think it’s pathetic.
As long as human beings continue with their sanita– poor sanitation habits, OK, and their lack of concern, we will never get rid of rats.
They’re here to stay.
Shane, voice-over: When people come together to live in cities, we create the perfect environment for rats.
They’ve been living with us for centuries.
When European settlers brought them to the New World, rats just had to keep doing what they were best at to thrive here, too.
But further south, in the Caribbean, another species is evolving before our very eyes to fit into an ever-more-urbanized world.
[Horn blares] Juan Ponce De Leon founded the settlement that became San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1508, making it one of the oldest colonial cities in the Americas.
500 years later, that tiny colony has grown into the third-largest city in the Caribbean Islands.
But amazingly, you can still see native wildlife here.
If you walk through the city, you’ll just see them on everything.
Shane, voice-over: Kristin Winchell is an expert in urban evolution.
She studies lizards called anoles, which live all over the American tropics.
For Kristin, anoles aren’t just a scientific inspiration.
They’re also her artistic muse.
[Foamer sputtering] So for you, I guess first of all, what is the greatest animal, and why is it anoles?
Ha ha!
I don’t know.
They’re just fantastic, little critters.
They’re so expressive and so charismatic.
And, I mean, they’re also great for scientific study.
Shane, voice-over: If you can’t tell, I’m a big anole fan, too.
I used to catch them as a kid in South Carolina and I’ve been studying them since grad school.
In fact, Kristin and I actually work together on anole research here in Puerto Rico.
So of all the places to study these lizards, why cities?
But I feel like most people, they’re like, “OK, I want to study them, like, in forests,” and things like that.
You decided to go study them in the city.
It was because I was looking for a species that might be adapting to urban environments.
I came across anoles and started reading about their rich evolutionary history and rapid change after you modify the environment.
Shane, voice-over: Anoles might seem like unlikely science heroes, but biologists have been studying them for decades and published literally thousands of papers on them.
There are more than 400 species of anoles that live throughout the Caribbean, Central and South America, and the Southeastern U.S. And I just had this moment where I was like, “If this is happening, it’s in these guys.”
Shane, voice-over: Once you know what you’re looking for, anole adaptations can be easy to spot.
You see, species that live in different habitats have different traits: big toe pads that help them stick to leaves in the treetops; long legs that allow them to run fast on the ground; short legs that help them climb without falling on the tiniest twigs; and so on.
Kristin’s question was, which of these traits, if any, would help anoles survive in the city?
Kristin: All right, let’s find some lizards.
Shane, voice-over: Kristin and I study the Puerto Rican crested anole.
Step one is to find out whether urban and forest anoles are different from one another.
Kristin: Say it, and the lizard gods will deliver.
Yeah, there’s a female right there.
Shane, voice-over: So we hit the streets to catch some lizards.
Kristin: Oh, she’s squirrely.
Shane: You’re too slow, K. Stop embarrassing yourself on TV.
I had one and then I let–yeah, OK.
Thanks, Shane.
Ha ha ha ha!
That’s real nice.
Invite me on your show and then make fun of me.
Shane: Ha ha ha ha!
Shane, voice-over: Catching anoles is a delicate scientific process involving a fishing pole and some string.
Luckily, I came prepared… maybe a little too prepared.
Who comes out catching anoles in flip-flops?
This is how you catch urban anoles!
You don’t need those big boots.
[Laughs] You go out in your hiking boots and your field clothes, well, you’re gonna get a lot of looks.
You dress casual like you’re going out on– for a little walk, even bring a little boom box with you.
That helps a lot, ’cause no one walks around doing sketchy stuff listening to reggaeton.
Kristin: Got him first.
Shane: Ha ha ha!
Hey, bud.
We measure with a digital X-ray the–all the bones in the body.
And you can see that they have these enlarged toe pads on the fore and the hind feet.
And so if you were to zoom way in on those, you’d be able to see these tiny scales, and those let the lizards cling to the smooth surfaces.
Shane: So for the Puerto Rican crested anole, what did you find?
One of my initial findings was that in the city, the lizards had longer limbs relative to their body length, larger toe pads with more of these specialized scales on the toe pads.
OK. Shane, voice-over: These are exactly the kinds of adaptations you might expect to see in cities, based on what we already know about anoles living elsewhere.
Kristin: They’re clinging to things like glass and metal and even painted concrete, which is a lot smoother than anything you find in the forest.
And so there’s kind of this combined selective pressure on toe pads, making them able to cling better, and limb length, making them able to navigate the structural environment better.
OK. Shane, voice-over: The urban lizards were different, but the real test was whether they could actually outperform their forest-dwelling counterparts when facing a uniquely urban challenge.
So I set up a lizard racetrack, and I fitted the racetrack with different surfaces.
One was tree bark, one was metal, like fence post metal, and then one was painted concrete.
And then I took high-speed video of these lizards racing up the racetracks.
And what I found was– or what I expected, rather, I should start there, is that the urban lizards would be able to run faster on the concrete and the metal and the urban substrates.
Those are the environments that they were living in.
Yeah, exactly.
And so they’d be better at doing that than the forest lizards.
What I found, though, was that the urban lizard’s just faster overall.
On anything.
On anything.
Even, like, bark and stuff that’s in forests.
Yeah, even bark, no matter what angle, no matter what structure we put on the track surface, they were faster.
They’re just hot rods.
Mm-hmm.
Shane, voice-over: In grad school, I studied how anoles in Texas– where the Polar Vortex causes rare but intense cold snaps– were adapting to the cold.
When I found out about Kristin’s work in cities, I realized her urban anoles could be facing a different kind of extreme.
Kristin: When I came down and tried out this big idea of “are anoles adapting to cities,” one of the things that I measured was body temperature and air temperature.
Shane, voice-over: Cities create what scientists call “urban heat islands,” areas with much hotter temperatures than the surrounding landscape.
So a few years ago, Kristin and I decided to find out how urban and forest anoles responded to extreme heat.
Sure enough, urban anoles could take the heat better than forest anoles, and we even found a few of the genes that affect heat tolerance.
These adaptations aren’t unique to any one city.
We found the same differences between urban and forest anoles again and again, all over Puerto Rico.
We can think of cities as the big Petri dishes that are replicated on a much larger scale.
Shane, voice-over: No two cities are exactly alike.
But for anoles, all cities have some things in common.
To survive on the streets, crested anoles evolved longer legs, bigger toe pads, and better heat tolerance than their forest relatives.
And it happened fast.
Some of our urban study locations have only been cities for 30 years.
That’s evolution in overdrive, even in lizard time.
So is this a feel-good story of animal adaptability?
Kristin: I think it’s a big mistake for us to think that all animals are gonna be able to adapt their way out of this.
We still are going to lose a lot of species as urbanization progresses.
OK. Shane, voice-over: Only two of Puerto Rico’s 10 anole species are found in cities, and just one, the crested anole, is really thriving.
So yes, some species can adapt, but the ones that don’t get squeezed out.
Kristin: I mean, that’s another reason why we should be studying the plants and animals that are doing well here, so that we can maybe engineer cities to be a little more favorable to wildlife.
Shane: So typically, when we think of ecosystems, right, we think of things like forests or deserts.
Should we consider cities as ecosystems as well?
Yes, absolutely.
And we should consider them as distinct ecosystems, just like we do all those others.
Shane, voice-over: Some folks aren’t as comfortable as Kristin with calling cities ecosystems.
But the more I learn about urban biology, the harder I find it to think of them as anything else.
Still, San Juan is no Serengeti.
For one thing, I don’t see any big predators in the streets.
But in major U.S. cities, that’s beginning to change.
With the second-highest population density in the U.S., right after New York City, San Francisco doesn’t seem like the ideal place for a large, wild predator.
But coyotes are full of surprises.
Just ask Officer Stephanie Pone.
One of the many things that I really love about this job is that every single day is a surprise.
Yeah.
It’s different.
There’s never a shortage of ways for animals to get themselves into conundrums.
OK. Nate Rose: Don’t you ever come up out the cracks And try to tell me how to get it Shane, voice-over: Stephanie’s sopapillas are the stuff of legend.
Rose: Spending any time just talking with me Shane: When she isn’t practicing her culinary craft, Stephanie patrols the streets for San Francisco’s Department of Animal Care and Control.
Rose: Tell me how to get it poppin’ really Stephanie: The most succinct way to describe it is that we are responsible for public safety as it relates to animals.
One time, I had a coyote call at Fisherman’s Wharf where the coyote was just chilling but being kind of a weirdo.
And I tried to approach to see if maybe there was something wrong, and the coyote got so scared that it jumped into the bay.
Oh, wow.
And then I had to do a boat rescue to rescue the coyote out of the bay.
And I was like, if I had just stayed out of it, the coyote would’ve been fine.
So it wasn’t like, “You’ll never get me, copper!”
And then he jumps into the– I mean, maybe.
I wouldn’t blame him.
[Laughter] Shane, voice-over: Stephanie’s department gets quite a few calls about coyotes.
I get it.
There’s something about seeing a predator walking down your sidewalk that would be very alarming.
Shane, voice-over: Coyote sightings are becoming increasingly common here, and not just in the city’s green spaces.
We see a lot of coyotes here.
We get a lot of reports in this area, but also in the neighborhood, which is part of the issue.
Shane, voice-over: It’s rare that a coyote actually harms a human or pet.
Still, public opinion of these predators is… let’s just say mixed.
Just like our beautiful city, the response is very diverse.
We get people that on one end, love animals, but they treat them like dogs, and that is terrible for the coyotes and it’s terrible for public safety.
And then we have the complete other end, where people think that they have no business being here and that they should all be killed.
Most people are somewhere in the middle.
Speaking as myself and not as a representative of the city, I’m quite fond of them.
I think it’s magical.
I never get tired of seeing them.
I also am a dog owner, and I have a teeny-tiny little dog who would be the perfect size for a coyote snack.
Shane, voice-over: For many people, it’s fear for their pets that tips the scales against coyotes.
It was 2015 when we started having coyote attacks.
Shane, voice-over: Karin Hu has lived in this neighborhood for 30 years.
I understand why people want coyotes in the city.
We love to look at wildlife, you know?
Maybe teaching people to appreciate the other types of, you know, things we have, like…
This last winter, I saw over 25 species of mushrooms.
I mean, that’s fascinating!
Shane, voice-over: When Karin isn’t teaching a course on psychoactive drugs at the local university, she’s out walking her dog.
And where coyotes are concerned, Karin’s vote is a “no.”
At least, not in her neighborhood.
Is your main concern the safety of your dog, or do you have other concerns as well?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, it’s– It’s all–OK.
If I didn’t have little dogs, I wouldn’t– this wouldn’t be my issue at all.
How do you go about deciding what belongs and what doesn’t belong?
It’s all values.
So my pets, the small dogs in this neighborhood, the cats in the neighborhood, are very high value.
And, yeah, there is value to having, you know, wildlife like coyotes around, but that’s a lower value, as soon as you start being a risk to our family members.
Some people feel uncomfortable and they try to, like, make a rationalization.
I just say, “No, that’s how we are.”
It just is what it is.
Yeah, we’re speciesists, you know?
We value some species more than others.
OK. Shane, voice-over: Historically, we’ve never valued coyotes much in the U.S. To this day, we kill almost half a million of them every year.
But it doesn’t seem to faze them.
Today, coyotes inhabit more of the continent than ever, including thriving populations in major cities.
So researchers want to know, what’s the secret sauce?
Why are coyotes so good at living in the habitat we’ve built for ourselves?
Woman: A big part of what I’ve done is walk around the city looking for coyote scat.
Scat, which is poop, just to be clear.
It is poop, yep.
OK. When I had you to myself Shane, voice-over: This is Tali Caspi.
If she isn’t playing one of my all-time favorite tunes on her upright bass, you might find her scouring the sidewalks for scientific treasure.
You ever have somebody walk by and just look at you like you’re an absolute maniac?
All the time, but actually, San Francisco is full of weird people.
So a lot of people just walk by and they’re just like– Makes sense.
Normal day, yeah.
Sometimes, you just gotta pick up some poop.
Totally, but when I do have those conversations with people, what’s really cool about it is everyone has something to share or contribute.
Yeah.
It’s pretty hard to be a resident of this city and not have had some kind of interaction or story with an urban coyote.
It’s so foggy.
Ha ha!
At this point, I’ve walked around 950 kilometers of urban trails in the city over the span of two years– Your Fitbit must be lighting up!
Tali: Oh yeah, it is.
Basically walking around, trying to find signs of coyote activity to help me find scat that I then pick up and bring into the lab.
And speaking of the devil… Shane: It’s coyote poop!
Tali: Fresh coyote scat right here.
Shane, voice-over: In the last two years, Tali has collected more than 1,300 scat samples.
In the scat are clues about the urban lifestyle of coyotes.
Everything they eat leaves trace evidence behind in the form of DNA.
It’s the DNA of the coyote, but then everything that the coyote ate as well.
Can you tell from the work that you’ve done, you know, like, how much cat DNA or, you know, Chihuahua DNA is in a coyote poop?
Yeah, so unfortunately, I can’t tell how much Chihuahua DNA is in a coyote poop, because coyotes and dogs are actually pretty similar, but I’ve definitely found some cat reads in the scat, but it is by no means the majority or most significant component of their diet.
OK.
The parts of their diet that have come out thus far as sort of the biggest contributors are pocket gophers, pigeons are pretty common, and then these livestock breeds.
so cow, chicken and turkey, pig.
And these are obviously not animals that the coyotes are hunting in San Francisco.
God, I hope not.
Yeah, these are either foods that people are giving to the coyotes or are sort of foraged from garbage bins, from trash, or from cat food and dog food that people leave out.
OK. Shane, voice-over: So coyotes are doing some hunting in the city, but like the rats I met in New York, they’re also making use of what we leave behind.
It may just be that city life is easy living if you’re a coyote.
From somebody who has been studying these animals, what is your take on coyotes in the city?
They’re here.
They’ve been here.
And they’re going to stay here.
Let’s say, tomorrow I could snap my fingers and take all of the coyotes out of the city.
They’d come back, because in all the surrounding areas, there are so many coyotes ready to just colonize an open territory.
The best thing we can do is think about coexistence with coyotes and how can we coexist with them as neighbors in our cities.
Shane, voice-over: That can be hard, because we build cities for ourselves.
These places are supposed to be for us, but coyotes shatter that illusion.
Maybe that’s why so many people have strong feelings about them, both negative and positive.
[Howling] Man: I love them to death.
I think they’re– they–yeah.
They are such a fantastic species.
Yeah.
They give us so many lessons.
Mm.
Shane, voice-over: Meet my friend Chris Schell.
This man can grill up a mouth-watering rack of ribs.
He’s also a professor at UC Berkeley, where he studies how coyotes and other animals live in cities.
How do you go about studying coyotes in this kind of environment?
We use techniques that we use in traditional ecological studies.
Everything from camera traps to fecal transects to GPS collars on the animals.
Shane, voice-over: This camera trap is one of dozens that Chris and his team have placed to observe wildlife in the city.
Chris: So we want to try and put the camera in places where we know wildlife are likely going to be, even though we know people are in the general area.
So let’s go ahead and just go out and view out and see, OK, did we get anything that is for us noteworthy?
Now, we’re super biased.
We’re always thinking about the carnivores.
OK. Chris: And here I already see we got a gray fox.
Shane: Oh, yeah!
Chris: If we continue to scroll, more skunks, another person, more deer.
Man, it’s a higher density of animals than I would expect.
Like, this is just over the course of a few days.
Right.
Wow.
Shane, voice-over: Here in the lush Berkeley Hills, carnivores like foxes and coyotes flourish.
But cities aren’t monoliths.
Just down the hill in Emeryville, the habitat– if you want to call it that– doesn’t look as inviting.
Chris: There’s a lot of concrete here.
Mm-hmm.
As we’re driving through, I’m seeing more built structures.
I’m seeing less vegetation.
I’m seeing less ways for animals to get from point A to point B. Shane, voice-over: But Chris’ team set up a camera anyway…just to see.
Shane: Are you getting coyotes in as dense a number here as you would elsewhere in the city?
So no, we’re not.
And the only species we’ve really caught on that camera have been ground squirrels or raccoons.
OK. OK. And that’s it.
So a good chunk of the wildlife that we saw up at some of the other sites up in the hills, gray foxes, for instance, they aren’t here.
Shane, voice-over: Animals know good habitat when they see it, and wealthy neighborhoods can be brimming with the things wild species need– trees, water, safe places to hide.
Chris: So property values can positively correlate with the likelihood that you’re going to see a coyote or other wildlife species in an area.
And that’s called the luxury effect.
Oh, OK.
So urban species trying to live bougie, too, is what you’re saying?
Oh, yeah!
Right, they’re trying to make it work, like, “Oh, but this neighborhood over here, though?”
So many of the historical processes that have happened in cities… think residential segregation via redlining, or urban renewal programs that then led to displacement, gentrification also, leading to socioeconomic disparities in and across this urban landscape, right?
This entire landscape is constructed, and when we understand how its construction leads to amenities and disamenities therein, we start to understand that we aren’t the only organisms that are being affected by this.
Mm.
That history, right, you’re talking about things, the discrimination, racism, redlining.
Basically, what you’re saying is, more than social, more than economic, they’re tangibly biological.
Right.
Simply put, the past is present.
Shane, voice-over: The noise, the air pollution, the heat, the toxic byproducts of industry, the impacts of urban living hit harder in some places than others.
Chris: Even cities as close as San Francisco and the East Bay or Berkeley and Oakland are so separate from each other.
And the animals, they give us these lessons through how they move, through what they do, through what they eat.
Some organisms, like raccoons, for instance, if they eat too many human foods, develop diabetes.
They develop diabetes!
Oh, wow.
Right?
Just ’cause they’re there doesn’t mean that they’re doing well.
Yeah.
So does the way that animals interact with their environment in a city teach us anything new about how we exist in a city as a species?
They serve as the beacons.
The “bioindicators” is the term we often use.
They are the conduits to allow us to better understand that many of these disparities that hit communities of color, low-income communities really hard are also the same things that are destroying the natural world.
The policies that separate us from us are also those same policies that separate us from the natural world.
Shane, voice-over: Many animals living in our cities don’t know anything else.
So they learn to survive against all odds, even if they can’t really thrive.
It kind of makes me wonder: What if we humans are the same way?
We are impoverishing ourselves, and that’s just the hard truth, that we are hurting ourselves and we don’t know it.
Shane, voice-over: This is Peter Kahn.
When he isn’t serenading the wild on his homemade flute, he studies our species’ shifting relationship with nature.
Peter’s interest in cities dates back to the nineties, when he asked kids in Houston, Texas a couple of simple questions.
We just asked this kind of preliminary question, “Do you know what air pollution is?”
And they said, “Yeah, yeah,” all of them.
Then we asked the second question, which was, “Does Houston have air pollution?”
And the significant number of children went from, “Yes.
Yeah, I understand what air pollution is,” to “No, Houston doesn’t have air pollution,” which completely blew us away.
Because, at the time, Houston was the most polluted city in the United States.
How could these kids growing up in the most polluted city in the United States, how could they not know about that their city was polluted?
And that’s the start, for me, some 30 years ago, in thinking about this issue, about environmental generational amnesia.
That the children are coming of age, and they’re constructing a baseline of what normal is.
Shane, voice-over: That mouthful of a phrase, “environmental generational amnesia,” refers to the way that each generation grows up thinking that their experience of the world is normal.
So in our urbanizing world, the less nature we experience, the less we think we need.
With each generation, nature becomes smaller.
Wilderness becomes a city park and then a row of trees in a median and then…nothing at all.
And thanks to this so-called amnesia, most of us never notice.
Peter: I think we’re building urban prisons.
I think we’re imprisoning ourselves.
Shane, voice-over: Peter’s concerns are rooted in real data.
Depression and anxiety are more common in cities than outside them.
And some studies show that exposure to nature can help, not just with mental health, but physical health, too.
It reduces stress, reduces obesity, helps eyesight, reduces depression.
I mean, the list is on and on.
Can modern cities be transformed into something that allows us to sort of reconnect in that ancestral way with our environment while still having all of the functional components of a city?
Yeah.
There’s some marvelous parts of cities, and I think we both appreciate them so much.
And it’s the coming together of different groups and different energies, different knowledge.
The creativity is so amazing in cities.
We can make them better and we should make them better.
Yeah.
Um… but here’s the thing.
They can get a lot worse, and unless we push back, try to make them better, they will get worse.
Shane, voice-over: We haven’t reached “peak city” yet, not even close.
By 2050, 2/3 of us will live in urban areas.
So as cities continue to grow, how can we create a less dystopian urban future?
Halfway around the world, architects and urban planners are pushing back and reimagining what city living can be, for us and the rest of nature.
In every city I’ve ever lived in, green spaces felt like an escape.
They were in the city but not of the city.
Singapore is different.
Here, nature is never more than a few blocks away.
Everywhere you look, buildings are exploding with life.
[Rooster crows] It feels like a miracle.
Woman: Is it your first time in Singapore?
Shane: It is.
Man, this place, it’s– I’ve never seen anything like it.
It’s incredible.
Shane, voice-over: If you ask Pearl Chee, she’ll tell you it’s no miracle.
It’s all part of the plan.
Pearl: We are challenging ourselves as architects whether we can design better.
We are creating a lot of concrete buildings, it’s like a concrete jungle, but we really want to bring the jungle in.
Shane, voice-over: Pearl is the architect who designed the Kampung Admiralty, the building we’re standing in now.
Pearl: Our design concept, it’s a very unique combination.
We actually have elderly housing, public housing, combined with healthcare, which is a medical center, commercial and some social programs, and a food court, yeah.
Shane: Oh, wow.
So that’s why it’s not gated.
It’s very open.
Anybody can actually come in and use the facilities here.
Shane, voice-over: Singapore is the third most densely populated city in the world.
The entire country is an island with only 281 square miles of land, but 5.5 million people live here.
In a city this dense, you wouldn’t expect much room for nature.
But it’s like they say: where there’s a will, there’s a way.
And by will, I mean law.
Legislation enables it to happen.
The building took the land.
So we need to do replacement.
The legislation actually requires a building to give back 100% landscape.
Oh!
100% of the site footprint has to be replaced into the building.
Every square inch of, like, green space that you take up, you have to put back in…
Put back in, yeah.
into the building somehow.
Into the building.
Shane, voice-over: A few years after completing the building, Pearl’s firm surveyed the animal life in Kampung Admiralty’s gardens.
50 different species had moved in.
Pearl: The species in this building is higher than the species on the ground park.
Oh, really?
Yeah, which is right nearby.
So…
Wait, so there’s more species within this construction than in, like, a natural space of the same amount of greenery?
Yeah, correct.
That’s incredible.
Thinking about an entire city built like this, basically, you’re talking about reforestation and urbanization as sort of one and the same.
Correct.
[Crows] Shane, voice-over: This development is a microcosm of what’s happening all over Singapore.
It’s not just one building or designer or architecture firm.
The whole city is teeming with life.
Narrator: It’s hard to believe that not so long ago, war surged around it and even in it.
Singapore, cosmopolis of the East.
Malays, Chinese, Indians, and British have taken time by the forelock, and the shops and market stalls dazzle the eye and make our mouths water.
As you sort of, like, move around the city now, you know, do you, you know, like, do you go to places and you’re like, “Oh, this is my baby”?
Yeah, yeah.
All the time.
[Laughter] Shane, voice-over: Professor Cheong Koon Hean is a music lover and life-long Singaporean.
She’s also a legendary urban planner.
A lot of folks credit her with shaping Singapore’s singular urban landscape.
BAER: Raise a toast to the GOAT, yeah Cheong: This is one of my favorite neighborhood centers in a public housing estate.
Because in Singapore, 80% of the people live in public housing in estates like this.
Oh, wow.
In highly affordable housing.
Shane, voice-over: Kampung Admiralty, the building Pearl Chee designed, is public housing, too.
And these places are cush.
The apartments are modern and clean, the amenities are incredible, and most developments are a 10-minute or less walk from public transportation.
And, of course, everything is draped in greenery, from the street level to the tops of the skyscrapers.
Where I come from, when we say “public housing,” basically, like, we call it “the projects.”
And I was actually raised a lot in public housing.
And that public housing and this public housing are not the same thing.
Well, you can’t believe it when you come to Singapore today, but, say, about 60, 70 years ago, actually, Singapore was a nation of slums and squatters.
It was also polluted and lots of traffic congestion.
Shane, voice-over: When Singapore gained its sovereignty from Britain in 1959, it was a city of 1.5 million people and massive, unplanned sprawl.
Tens of thousands of people had no place to live.
So the newly elected government created the HDB, or Housing and Development Board.
Cheong: And within 5 years, the HDB, they already built 51,000 units of flats.
It started from very basic housing, but now, of course, the quality is a lot better, as you can see around you.
Yeah.
Shane, voice-over: And public housing is just the beginning.
Singapore is a very small city-state.
It’s actually only half the size of metropolitan London.
Oh, wow.
But we are a country.
We’re not just a city.
So everything you need about a country, whether it’s for water, power generation, ports, airports, plus housing, shops, offices, industry, all has to be built within this tiny island city-state.
And so biodiversity and ecological balance became really quite an important concept.
Now, as we developed the land, of course we start to lose space for planting.
So what did we do?
We decided to move the greenery upwards into the sky.
And so, what you did is you just created new space.
And suddenly, you bring back all the biodiversity.
Back in the States, urban areas and wildlife are sort of like oil and water.
They don’t mix very well.
But what you’ve done here is something very, very different.
Over the years, we moved from being a garden city to a city in the garden because we started to plant so extensively.
And in the last decade or so, we moved from a city in a garden to city in nature.
In a place where you have limited space and you have this growing population that there are two very sort of competing needs.
Shane, absolutely, there’s always competing needs, right?
So it’s really this very important balancing act of allocating the right amount of land for different uses to create this type of an environment.
Shane, voice-over: And who orchestrates this balancing act?
It’s the Singaporean government, with their comprehensive “Master Plan” for managing the city-state’s ongoing growth.
By centralizing the control of urban development, Singapore paves the way– you see what I did there– for projects that fuse function and form.
Cheong: If you look behind us, the Punggol Waterway is actually a man-made river.
We dammed up two rivers to become freshwater reservoirs.
Now, the engineers wanted to connect the two reservoirs with a pipe– very functional.
But then the architects and the planners say, “Why do a pipe?
Why don’t we make a river?”
And so, this river connected the two reservoirs to balance and optimize the storage of water, but at the same time, it became a leisure facility.
So Punggol has a nickname.
It’s the Venice of Singapore.
Oh, that’s amazing.
Because we brought in water, right?
It has its aesthetics, but everything also serves… Function, yes, a function.
a very specific function.
Even the Punggol Waterway, there’s a family of otters that have come back.
Oh, that’s incredible.
They live on the Punggol Waterway.
Shane, voice-over: Singapore challenges a lot of what I thought I knew about cities.
No one’s saying that we should all be like Singapore, or even that we could be.
This place is unique.
90% of Singapore’s land is publicly owned.
The government determines what gets built and where.
And with everyone sharing the same tiny island, by definition, they’re all in this together.
Most places don’t have all that.
But I’m not sure we need it to re-imagine what cities can be.
I think the thing that stands out to me about Singapore is the intentionality.
I’m not sure if this specific model can be applied anywhere or everywhere, but I think they’re doing things that I think other cities can learn from.
We have to get our act together to make cities effective.
Creativity, innovation, and that will to survive and to want to do well are very, very strong drivers.
That’s human beings, right?
That’s what we are.
Shane, voice-over: Cities might just be humankind’s most remarkable invention.
Because we thought we were building ourselves a place to live, but we were really creating a new ecosystem, a place where nature has to adapt to live alongside us and some of our urban neighbors are more welcome than others.
City living brings challenges– for us and all the species that share our urban spaces.
But we shouldn’t forget that cities can also help us flourish.
In Oakland, Chris said something that stuck with me.
We are a communal species.
So for folks to think, “Well, if you just get outside the city, you’ll be OK,” nah, nah, nah, it doesn’t work like that.
We need to be able to have connection.
Shane, voice-over: That’s why cities aren’t going anywhere and why we need to make them better.
With a little creativity and vision, they can deliver that connection– to each other and maybe to the rest of our incredible planet, too.
Human Footprint is available with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video.
Assigned Background
Curbing Urban Sprawl - Why Better City Planning Could Mean Better Health
Duration: 00:15:16
Released: 2026
Series: Public Health On Call
About this episode: Recent research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health finds that living in a compact metropolitan setting could yield more health benefits than living in a more sprawling suburban area. In this episode: the report’s lead researcher, Shima Hamidi, explains why this is the case and how communities can reshape infrastructure to foster mobility and connection. Guest: Shima Hamidi, PhD, MSc, is a Bloomberg Associate Professor of American Health in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering and director of the Center for Smart Transportation. Host: Stephanie Desmon, MA, is a former journalist, author, and the director of public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs. Show links and related content: Sprawl Rankings Reveal Health Benefits and Cost Offsets in Compact, Connected U.S. County and Metro Areas—Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Mapping Urban Sprawl in the U.S.@bloombergamericanhealth via Instagram Associations between Urban Sprawl and Life Expectancy in the United States—International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Relationship between urban sprawl and physical activity, obesity, and morbidity - update and refinement—Health & Place 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.
Nsilo Berry on making buildings healthier
Duration: 00:45:57
Released: 2023
Series: Agents of Change in Environmental Justice
Nsilo Berry joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss hidden toxics lurking in buildings and what sustainable construction looks like.
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.
Optional Material (Dive Deeper)
Podcasts
A call for redesigning American streets
Duration: 00:21:09
Released: 2018
Series: Better Off
In this week’s podcast we’ll explore how America’s streets can be redesigned to benefit bicyclists and pedestrians—and we’ll explain why doing so may even help mitigate the effects of climate change. A new study from Anne Lusk, research scientist in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, analyzed how bicyclists and pedestrians responded to various placements of trees along cycle tracks—barrier-protected bicycle-exclusive paths between the road and the sidewalk. The research shows that the placement of these trees can play an important role in how people walking and biking perceive traffic, pollution, heat, and even safety. But the benefits extend beyond just those using the street—and could even be a factor in mitigating the effects of climate change. These trees may make it more likely that people will bike—helping to reduce pollution. And increased greenery can also help cool cities, which often suffer from a heat island effect, which means they’re significantly warmer than more rural areas. Lusk says all of this highlights the need to re-think how we’re designing streets to encourage more people to walk and bike instead of drive.
A More Walkable World: Ideas to get us moving
Duration: 00:50:34
Released: 2024
Series: TED Radio Hour
We know walking is good for our bodies, our communities, and our planet. But our car-centric cities and screen-filled lives keep us sitting. Can we change? This hour, ideas to get us moving. Guests include author Vybarr Cregan-Reid, computer historian Laine Nooney, exercise physiologist Keith Diaz, urban planner Jeff Speck, activists John Francis and Vanessa Garrison. TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at: plus.npr.org/ted 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
Are Rats Running This Podcast?
Duration: 00:14:05
Released: 2023
Series: Short Wave
This week, New York City crowned Kathleen Corradi its first rat czar. The new position is part of a multipronged approach from city officials. Reporter and New Yorker Anil Oza called up rodentologists to understand — does their approach withstand the test of scientific research? We love hearing your musings and questions about the science in your everyday life. Reach us by emailing shortwave@npr.org.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
Ashley James on protecting children from environmental exposures
Duration: 00:35:37
Released: 2022
Series: Agents of Change in Environmental Justice
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
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
Curbing Urban Sprawl - Why Better City Planning Could Mean Better Health
Duration: 00:15:16
Released: 2026
Series: Public Health On Call
About this episode: Recent research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health finds that living in a compact metropolitan setting could yield more health benefits than living in a more sprawling suburban area. In this episode: the report’s lead researcher, Shima Hamidi, explains why this is the case and how communities can reshape infrastructure to foster mobility and connection. Guest: Shima Hamidi, PhD, MSc, is a Bloomberg Associate Professor of American Health in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering and director of the Center for Smart Transportation. Host: Stephanie Desmon, MA, is a former journalist, author, and the director of public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs. Show links and related content: Sprawl Rankings Reveal Health Benefits and Cost Offsets in Compact, Connected U.S. County and Metro Areas—Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Mapping Urban Sprawl in the U.S.@bloombergamericanhealth via Instagram Associations between Urban Sprawl and Life Expectancy in the United States—International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Relationship between urban sprawl and physical activity, obesity, and morbidity - update and refinement—Health & Place 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.
Designing for climate change
Duration: 00:24:30
Released: 2018
Series: Better Off
A new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that students who lived in dormitories without air conditioning during a heat wave performed worse on a series of simple tests compared with students who lived in air-conditioned dorms. The findings show that the effects of extreme heat are not just felt by those typically thought of as vulnerable—such as the elderly. And with global temperatures on the rise, the research underscores the need for sustainable design solutions in mitigating the health impacts of extreme heat. In this week’s episode, we’ll speak with the authors of that study to learn how we can better design our buildings and cities to adapt to our changing climate. You’ll hear from Joe Allen, assistant professor of exposure assessment science and director of the Healthy Buildings Program at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment, and Jose Guillermo (Memo) Cedeño Laurent, associate director of the Healthy Buildings Program.
Diana Hernández on housing and health
Duration: 01:00:39
Released: 2022
Series: Agents of Change in Environmental Justice
Dr. Diana Hernández joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss how housing and energy impact our health and well-being.
Gas Stoves Are Worsening Breathing Issues, According to Canceled Study
Duration: 00:15:49
Released: 2026
Series: Public Health On Call
About this episode: Accumulating research has linked nitrogen dioxide emissions from gas stoves to exacerbated respiratory issues. A recent study from Case Western Reserve University set out to conduct a large analysis of whether switching to electric stoves could improve breathing conditions, but funding was halted just as early results came in showing significantly improved asthma symptoms. In this episode: what this truncated study can tell us about air quality inside our homes and what’s lost when public health research is canceled. Guest: Ana Rule, PhD, MHS, is an associate professor of Environmental Health and Engineering. Host: Stephanie Desmon, MA, is a former journalist, author, and the director of public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs. Show links and related content: Asthma Control Before and After Changing Gas Stoves to Electric Stoves—The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology The EPA halted a study on gas stoves and asthma. But even partial results were striking.—Washington Post Gas stoves might pose risks to both our planet and health—The Hub How States Can Better Regulate Indoor Air Quality—Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health 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.
How America Traded Its Walkable Cities for Parking Lots
How America Traded Its Walkable Cities for Parking Lots | Boring History for Sleep
Duration: 02:21:20
Released: 2026
Series: Boring History For Sleep By The Snoozetorian
American cities were once built around people on foot. Downtown streets were packed with shops, apartments, streetcars, theaters, restaurants, and neighborhoods where daily necessities could often be reached without getting into a car. Then, after World War II, America began rebuilding its cities around the automobile.This video explores how highways, suburban expansion, urban renewal, zoning, and massive parking requirements transformed the American landscape. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 accelerated construction of the Interstate Highway System with the federal government covering 90% of Interstate construction costs. Meanwhile, suburbanization surged: in 1950, 23.3% of Americans lived in suburbs, but by 2000 that figure had reached 50%.Entire urban neighborhoods were demolished or divided by freeways and redevelopment projects, while historic buildings and downtown blocks were increasingly replaced by roads, garages, and surface parking. Parking minimums later reinforced car-oriented development by requiring businesses and housing projects to dedicate substantial amounts of land to automobiles.Discover how America went from compact, walkable neighborhoods to sprawling suburbs and parking lots—and why many cities are now trying to reverse the transformation.ResourcesInterstate System – Federal Highway Administration – FHWA Interstate System History1950 Census Records: A Window to History – U.S. Census Bureau – U.S. Census BureauAmerican Place: The Historic American Buildings Survey at Seventy-Five Years – National Park Service – National Park ServiceUrban Renewal and the Post-War American City – U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development – HUD ArchivesParking Spaces/Community Places – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – U.S. EPA
How Congestion Pricing Can Impact Human Health
Duration: 00:17:50
Released: 2024
Series: Science Friday
In early June, New York Governor Kathy Hochul blocked a congestion pricing plan from going into effect in New York City. This plan would have charged a fee for cars to enter the central business district of Manhattan, and it would have been the first congestion pricing plan to be fully implemented in the United States.While congestion pricing can be costly for commuters, the fact that it keeps some cars off the road means it can have health benefits for surrounding communities. Successfully implemented congestion pricing plans in cities such as London, Singapore, and Stockholm have led to better air quality and health.SciFri’s John Dankosky sits down with Dr. Janet Currie, co-director of Princeton’s Center for Health and Wellbeing, and Dr. Andrea Titus, assistant professor of the Department of Population Health at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, to talk about the health impacts that congestion pricing has had around the world as well as the potential effects it could have in New York City and in other cities in the United States.Transcripts 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.
How Do Urban Landscapes Shape Our Health?
Duration: 00:37:04
Released: 2025
Series: Humans in Public Health
A special live Commencement & Reunion Weekend episode of Humans in Public Health brings experts from epidemiology together with the director of Urban Studies at Brown for a discussion on cities: How they collect public health problems and the ways they might help us to address those same issues.
How Housing Discrimination Works
Duration: 00:54:14
Released: 2021
Series: Stuff You Should Know
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
Older Episodes
Short Stuff: How California Got Its Name
February 9, 2021
•
12 min
California is a pretty cool name. And the story about where it came from is even cooler. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
February 8, 2021
•
47 min
Sacagawea was only 16 when she joined the Corps of Discovery. That is one seriously impressive teenager. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
February 5, 2021
•
36 min
Despite tons of people using cotton swabs each day to clean the earwax from their ears, cerumen (as earwax is clinically known) is actually quite beneficial to the health of your ears - and even kind of ingenious as your body’s defense goes. Learn more in this classic episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
How to build an equitable and just climate future
TED Climate: How to build an equitable and just climate future | Peggy Shepard
Duration: 00:13:40
Released: 2024
Series: Speed & Scale
Everyone has the right to a clean environment — but major disparities exist when it comes to who faces the consequences of pollution. Environmental justice leader Peggy Shepard points to the disproportionate impact that hazardous environmental conditions have on Black, brown and Indigenous communities and challenges us to build a truly equitable future that turns “sacrifice zones” — where community health is sacrificed for the sake of development — into “green zones” that redress the legacy of pollution and harmful policies.For the full text transcript, visit ted.com/podcasts/speed-and-scale-transcript Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
LED Lights Make You Sick? We Found Out What Causes It
Duration: 00:13:47
Released: 2023
Series: Short Wave
LED light bulbs are the future. They’re better for the environment and the pocket book. But for some people, certain LEDs lights — particularly holiday lights—are also a problem. They flicker in a way that causes headaches, nausea and other discomfort. Today, we visit the “Flicker Queen” to learn why LEDs flicker — and what you can do about it.Wondering about other quirks of lighting and engineering? Email us at shortwave@npr.org – we might cover it on a future episode! 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
Nsilo Berry on making buildings healthier
Duration: 00:45:57
Released: 2023
Series: Agents of Change in Environmental Justice
Nsilo Berry joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss hidden toxics lurking in buildings and what sustainable construction looks like.
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
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
Sabah Usmani joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss the role of urban planners in tackling environmental injustice.
What can design do for public health?
Duration: 00:45:36
Released: 2019
Series: Better Off
When many people think of design they’re probably picturing a product, like a new smartphone or car. But the design principles that lead to the creation of those products—such as the focus on human behavior or the use of prototyping—can also be harnessed to tackle complex public health challenges. In this week’s episode you’ll learn how one of the world’s top public health researchers, Ashish Jha, dean for global strategy at Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health and director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, and one of the world’s foremost design experts, Patrick Whitney, professor in residence in the Department of Health Policy and Management, have teamed up to think about how design methods can be used to address issues ranging from the opioid epidemic to the future of hospitals. Full Transcript: hsph.me/design-pod This episode is a collaboration with Harvard Global Health Institute.
Why are scientists planting tiny forests in big cities?
Duration: 00:12:12
Released: 2026
Series: Short Wave
Healthy forests help combat climate change, provide humans with drinking water and even improve mental and physical health. But it’s hard to imagine an entire forest in the middle of a big city. That’s where micro-forests come into play — public forests on a smaller scale, filled with native plants. They exist around the world, and producer Rachel Carlson went to visit the largest micro-forest in California in this encore episode. She joins host Emily Kwong to chat about what she saw. Interested in more of the science behind urban nature? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.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
Video Clips
‘Nutty’ situation in Lincoln Park WGN Investigates
WGN News, 09 29, 2026
Video (4:23)
Description
The piles of nuts first began appearing outside a Lincoln Park home a few years ago, attracting a swarm of squirrels. Since then, workers carrying matching shoulder bags have been spotted dumping piles of nuts a few blocks away in the park, and no one can figure out why. WGN’s Ben Bradley has the full story.
Transcript
0:07 · MICAH MATERRE: WGN INVESTIGATES SOMETHING IS HAPPENING IN LINCOLN PARK. RESIDENTS REACH OUT TO INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER BEN BRADLEY FOR HELP AFTER CITY FINDS FAILED TO SOLVE A SQUIRRELLY SITUATION.
0:22 · I WAS WALKING AROUND THE PARK AND I KNOW DOZENS OF POLLS AROUND TREES AND THEN I STARTED SEEING MORE AND MORE HOLES AROUND DIFFERENT TREES.
0:28 · WHEN HERE THERE’S A DOZEN HOLES AROUND THE STREET HERE.
0:31 · AND THEN A FEW MONTHS AGO, I WENT FOR A WALK AT DUSK AND WITHIN 15 MINUTES I COUNTED 42 RATS RUNNING AROUND.
0:41 · YEAH, AS YOU CAN SEE, I MEAN, THERE’S A TON OF RAT BURROWS HERE THAT EVEN PIKE WAS SO STUNNED BY THE SWARM OF RATS IN LINCOLN PARK. HE TOOK THIS VIDEO. OTHER NEIGHBORS NOTICED YOU KNOW, YOU SEE SOME RATS IN THE ALLEY AND STUFF RIGHT NEAR THE TRASH. AND THAT’S AGAIN, COME TO BE EXPECTED. BUT THIS WAS DIFFERENT. CAN SEE HERE IS A RAT TRAIL. IT WASN’T UNTIL RECENTLY THAT THEY REALIZED HOW DIFFERENT THIS ALI IS.
1:07 · BUT I JUST GRABBED THE PEOPLE OF THIS GETS INTO THE STRANGER THAN FICTION ASPECT OF IT. IT’S LIKE A A LOT OF NICE KNOTS. I’M TALKING BRAZIL, NOT AND I WAS LOOKING AND I KNOW, YOU KNOW, ARBORIST, BUT THESE DO NOT COME FROM THE STREET. THESE ARE NOT ACORNS. YOU CAN SEE ALL THE SCATTERED KNOTS AROUND.
1:28 · YOU SEE THOSE NUTS AREN’T FALLING FROM TREES. THEY APPEAR TO BE IMPORTED.
1:34 · JI SUK YI: AND WHILE THEIR PILES BIZARRE, EXPENSIVE, NOT EVERYWHERE IN OUR PARK.
1:39 · NO ONE COULD CRACK THE NUT OF AN EXPLANATION UNTIL ONE MORNING THIS YEAR WHEN CAROLINE NOVAK WAS OUT FOR A WALK.
1:45 · AND I ACTUALLY SAW A HANDFUL OF THEM. I THINK IT WAS 5 WALKING EARLY IN THE MORNING OF THE SAME SHOULDER BAG. AND SO I JUST SAID, HEY, WHAT ARE YOU GUYS DOING?
1:52 · BECAUSE THEY WERE THROWING THE KNOT.
1:53 · SHE’S NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO WITNESSED IT. I NOTICE SOMEONE WITH A SATCHEL AND JUST THOUGHT IT WAS SOMEONE OUT THERE FEEDING SQUIRRELS.
2:04 · JI SUK YI: SO I WALKED UP AND I, YOU KNOW, JUST HAD HAND. I WAS JUST CURIOUS WHAT YOU GUYS ARE DOING WIRE 3 AND HE’S NOT GOING TO THESE TREES. AND SHE SAID WERE ALLOWED TO DO THIS. AND I SAID, OH, YEAH, I WAS JUST CURIOUS WHY YOU WERE DOING IT. SHE SAID WE’RE NOT FEELING THE WRATH UNPROMPTED. I DIDN’T EVEN BRING UP. SHE SAID WE’RE NOT PAYING HULL, OK? WELL. I THINK YOU INADVERTENTLY ARE.
2:26 · THEY AND OTHER NEIGHBORS COMPLAINED TO THE CITY WHICH DETERMINE TO A NEARBY HOMEOWNER WAS LEAVING NOTTS OUTSIDE THEIR OWN HOUSE ATTRACTING NOT ONLY SQUIRRELS, BUT THEY’RE RODENT COUSINS, RATS. THE NEIGHBORS SUSPECTED THE CREW LEAVING THE NUTS A FEW BLOCKS AWAY IN THE PARK ARE DOING SO AT THE DIRECTION OF THE HOMEOWNER.
2:45 · JOSH FRYDMAN: EVEN DOUBT WITH IT. BUT WE’VE NEVER DEALT WITH A SITUATION WHERE IT’S LIKE FEED FOR HIRE FOR BETTER OR LACK OF THE TERM WHERE SOMEONE’S PAYING SEVERAL EMPLOYEES TO FEED THE ANIMALS IN THE SURROUNDING AREA.
2:59 · BEN BRADLEY: THE ALDERMAN SAID THE CITY CONTACTED THE HOMEOWNER AND EVEN ISSUED MULTIPLE VIOLATIONS, WHICH HE SAYS HAVE BEEN PAID AND NOT CONTESTED.
3:06 · TYPICALLY WHEN YOU TICKET SOMEBODY, IT STOPS THEIR BAD BEHAVIOR. THIS IS NOT STOPPED IT. IF ANYTHING, THE BEHAVIOR IS INCREASE, THE FEEDING INCREASED SINCE WE’VE TICKETING THAT.
3:20 · LAST MONTH THE ALDERMAN’S OFFICE SENT THIS LETTER WARNING THAT MORE FINES COULD BE COMING IF THEY DON’T KNOCK IT OFF WITH A KNOTS. WE DON’T WANT TO THROW ANYONE UNDER THE BUS. WE JUST WANT TO STOP THIS FEEDING THAT’S CAUSING PROBLEMS IN A DENSE NEIGHBORHOOD.
3:34 · BEN BRADLEY: ALDERMAN KNUDTSON SAID HE ISN’T SURE HOW THIS WILL END OR EVEN WHY IT STARTED. WE WANTED TO KNOW OURSELVES. SO WE PAID THE HOME OF VISIT AND ENCOUNTERED A WOMAN WHO WOULD NOT GIVE HER NAME.
3:45 · I’M JUST TRYING BETTER UNDERSTAND LIKE WHY ARE ALL THESE KNOTS BEEN GATHERED UP?
3:47 · WHY ARE THEY BEING DISTRIBUTED IN LINCOLN PARK? I REALLY HAVE NO COMMENT FOR HIM. SORRY.
3:50 · I’D SAY MY GOAL IS TO GET RID OF THE RATS. I MEAN, I WANT TO FEEL COMFORTABLE HAVING MY KIDS PLAY IN THE PARK TOGETHER RIGHT NOW. IT’S AN ALL YOU CAN EAT BUFFET FOR THE RATS AND SQUIRRELS. MY BEN BRADLEY: NEIGHBORS SAY THEY HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THE PROVERBIAL OLD MAN FEEDS PIGEONS IN THE PARK. BUT THEY SAY THIS. HE’S GOTTEN SO STRANGE.
4:10 · THEY’D LAUGH IF IT WEREN’T FOR ALL THE RATS AND DAMAGE IN THE PARK AFTER THE CITY ISSUED A FINAL WARNING LATE LAST MONTH, WE DID SEE A WORKER’S SWEEPING UP OUTSIDE THE PA RK THE HOU
5 Tiny Pests That Could Be In Your Home Right Now Deep Look
Deep Look, 04 01, 2025
Video (17:59)
Description
We hope your spring cleaning doesn’t uncover bed bugs, dust mites, termites, drain flies or cockroaches.
00:14 Dust mites
03:24 Bed bugs
07:19 Termites
10:42 Drain flies
14:26 Cockroaches
👉 SIGN UP for Deep Look’s newsletter, Nature Unseen: https://bit.ly/NatureUnseenSignUp
JOIN our community on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/deeplook
SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/kqeddeeplook?sub_confirmation=1
DEEP LOOK is an ultra-HD (4K) short video series created by KQED in San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios. See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world. Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small.
—+ Find a transcript on KQED Science:
https://www.kqed.org/science/1996508/5-of-the-grossest-house-pests-weve-ever-filmed
—+ More great Deep Look episodes:
These 5 Bees Are Waaay More Than Honey and Stingers
https://youtu.be/WPT4IRrcBiw?feature=shared
5 of the Worst Tiny Bloodsuckers That Have Ever Bitten Us
https://youtu.be/RQTi1GWv_lg?feature=shared
4 of the Deadliest Tiny Hunters We’ve Ever Filmed
https://youtu.be/HLr0Xleaxb8?feature=shared
4 Tiny Romances That Are Almost Too Freaky to Share
https://youtu.be/4qKbI2NR_XE?feature=shared
—+ Shoutout!
🏆Congratulations🏆 to the following fans on our Deep Look community tab for correctly answering our GIF challenge! Protists in termites’ guts break down wood.
@Formula_Zero_EX
@portalfan267
@Maxmumspida
—+ Thank you to our top Patreon supporters ($10+ per month)!
Darby Sullivan
Rachel Fenichel
Edgar Betancourt
Susan Fuhs
Hank Poppe
Walter Tschinkel
Marco Narajos
H.M. Andrew
Joan Klivans
Stephanie Dole
J Schumacher
Lily, Vinny, Izzy Altschuler
Eric Marsh
Jamie Edwards
Elia Gourguechon-Buot
Kristy Folsom
Laurel Przybylski
吳怡彰
Kevin William Walker
Oliver Wakeling
Jessica Hiraoka
Laurel Przybylski
Jeremiah Sullivan
Mehdi Salarkia
Mark Jobes
Carrie Mukaida
Cristen Rasmussen
Wade Tregaskis
Burt Humburg
Noreen Herrington
Roberta K Wright
Brigitte Xia
Louis O’Neill
Jellyman
Titania Juang
El Samuels
Laurel Przybylski
Companion Cube
Chris B Emrick
Kristine Wee
Karen Reynolds
Sue Ellen McCann
David Deshpande
Daisuke Goto
Elizabeth Ann Ditz
Levi Cai
—+ Follow Deep Look and KQED Science on social:
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@deeplookofficial
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/deeplook
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kqedscience/
Twitter/X: https://www.twitter.com/kqedscience
—+ About KQED KQED, an NPR and PBS member station in San Francisco, serves Northern California and beyond with a public-supported alternative to commercial TV, radio and web media.
Funding for Deep Look is provided in part by PBS Digital Studios and the members of KQED.
Transcript
0:00 · Dread them.
0:01 · Run from them.
0:02 · [hitting wood] But that won’t stop these unwelcome house guests from coming to visit you anyway.
0:08 · In fact, you’ve probably got them in your home right now making themselves comfortable.
Dust mites
0:14 · Let’s start with the tiny dust mite.
0:16 · It might seem harmless but in large numbers they can cause serious problems.
0:28 · Long ago – around the time we started growing our own food – humans settled down.
0:34 · We went home, inside.
0:37 · We built permanent shelters to protect us from the elements …
0:40 · and keep the wild animals at bay.
0:43 · Or so we thought.
0:46 · Surprise!
0:47 · The animals were right there with us.
0:50 · They still are.
0:53 · This is dust.
0:55 · Zoom in and you find an ecosystem almost as elaborate as the one we left outside.
1:01 · But small enough for us to forget it exists.
1:06 · Dust is pretty much anything small.
1:10 · But the most important ingredient of dust – at least for the purposes of this story – is skin.
1:16 · Her skin.
1:17 · His skin.
1:19 · Tiny flakes that fall off our bodies all day long.
1:24 · Researchers at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco collect and study house dust to find out what exactly makes up this micro-universe.
1:33 · [vacuuming] Even the cleanest homes are teeming with tiny, almost invisible roommates.
1:41 · And even more so if you have pets or kids or live on the ground floor.
1:48 · Most homes have over 100 species … no matter how often you vacuum.
1:54 · Not just these guys.
1:56 · But these.
1:58 · And these.
2:01 · And these.
2:04 · Most of these microscopic roommates are harmless.
2:07 · Just freeloaders, basically.
2:10 · But one can cause real trouble.
2:13 · The house dust mite.
2:15 · This is like the roommate who leaves his crap around and makes you sick.
2:19 · Dust mites don’t bite people. They don’t need to.
2:22 · We feed them constantly.
2:25 · Skin flakes are hard to digest.
2:28 · It’s like eating hair …
2:29 · or feathers.
2:31 · So dust mites have powerful digestive enzymes to break the skin down.
2:36 · Those enzymes turn up in dust mite poop.
2:39 · And let’s just say you really don’t want to know how much dust mite poop is in your house.
2:44 · When people breathe dust, they breathe in the poop – and the enzymes, too … which irritate the lungs and can aggravate asthma, especially in kids.
2:54 · Like us humans, dust mites haven’t always lived inside either.
2:59 · These tiny relatives of spiders and scorpions once lived in birds’ nests.
3:04 · But then, some intrepid dust mites made the jump …
3:08 · from birds’ homes to ours.
3:10 · And as our society thrived and grew, so did theirs.
3:16 · If you like this video, please hit the like and subscribe buttons.
3:19 · It really helps us reach more people, and we truly appreciate your support!
Bed bugs
3:24 · These bed bugs are after your blood and they go for it while you’re sleeping.
3:29 · Keep watching to see how researchers stop them dead in their tracks.
3:35 · Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the … OK, you know where this is going.
3:41 · [ominous music] Lured in by our breath, bed bugs come for us when we’re most vulnerable.
3:51 · In dreamland, we’re oblivious …
3:54 · … to bed bug chow time.
3:58 · You won’t even feel it.
4:00 · It’s a quick meal. Just a few minutes.
4:03 · But it’s a filling one.
4:10 · Stuffed with blood, it scurries to a nearby cranny.
4:14 · The seam of your mattress … … or behind a baseboard.
4:22 · There, they get to work growing their families.
4:28 · Until you get … You can recognize them by their signature work of art.
4:47 · These tiny splotches.
4:50 · It’s the digested blood they leave behind.
4:54 · In the 1950s, we made bed bugs retreat with DDT.
5:00 · But some became resistant and now they’re back.
5:08 · We help them spread – in our clothes or luggage – when we travel around.
5:15 · You can kill them with other insecticides or heat, but their game of hide-and-seek makes it tricky.
5:22 · Turns out, there might be another way to stop them in their tracks.
5:27 · Watch this.
5:29 · It’s just taking a stroll and … Gotcha!
5:34 · Its foot is stuck.
5:36 · This bean leaf can incapacitate the bloodsuckers.
5:42 · People in the Balkans discovered that years ago and would spread the leaves around their beds as a trap.
5:48 · The leaf’s surface is covered in these tiny hooked hairs called trichomes.
6:02 · They pierce right through the bed bug’s feet, impaling their soft joints.
6:16 · Many bean plants – like kidney and green beans – developed the hooks to defend against aphids and other plant-eating pests.
6:25 · But it just so happens to work on our bloodthirsty pest too.
6:35 · Biologist and engineer Catherine Loudon is trying to copy the plant at the University of California, Irvine.
6:43 · She’s creating a synthetic material that can pierce bed bug feet just like bean leaves do.
6:52 · It’s not quite as effective as a real bean leaf, but she’s working on it.
7:05 · In the meantime, bed bugs are still a step ahead. So keep an eye out.
7:12 · Spot them early and maybe you can get them before they get you.
Termites
7:19 · Termites can infiltrate your home without being seen, and the results can be catastrophic.
7:25 · But these tiny homewreckers wouldn’t be able to do so much damage without the help of special microorganisms hidden in their gut.
7:36 · That lump on the side of this tree in the Amazon?
7:39 · It’s packed with termites. In the rainforest, that’s a good thing.
7:45 · They break down wood into stuff other creatures can eat.
7:48 · But inside our homes, termites are pests. They cost us billions of dollars of damage every year.
7:55 · Take these dampwood termites that live on the cool California coast.
7:59 · They eat wood that’s wet or decayed, maybe from a leak in your house.
8:05 · Slowly, but surely, they gnaw and scrape away.
8:10 · What comes out the other end isn’t waste.
8:16 · It serves as a kind of mortar.
8:20 · And dried poop pellets make perfect building blocks for their nests.
8:25 · In other words, they’re turning your house into theirs.
8:29 · What’s amazing is that they can digest wood, which is so hard, and get nutrients out of it.
8:35 · We certainly can’t do that.
8:37 · Termites are one of the only animals that can.
8:40 · It turns out they don’t do this alone.
8:43 · Researchers are looking inside termites to figure out who’s actually responsible for this feat.
8:49 · At the Exploratorium, in San Francisco, museum biologists give the insect a little puff of carbon dioxide.
8:57 · When it’s nice and relaxed, the termite poops itself.
9:03 · Under the microscope, multitudes appear.
9:07 · Hundreds of species of microbes live packed inside a termite’s gut, about one one-thousandth of a teaspoon.
9:14 · This big one is called Trichonympha.
9:17 · It’s not an animal, plant or fungus. It’s a protist.
9:21 · Watch it move with the help of its flagella.
9:26 · Protists like Trichonympha are essential for termites to turn the wood into a source of energy.
9:31 · They do this by fermenting the wood, much the same way a brewer turns grain into beer.
9:38 · Something else is hidden deep in the termite’s gut.
9:41 · A powerful bacterium that combines nitrogen from the air and calories from the wood to make protein.
9:48 · That’s like turning a potato into a steak.
9:51 · Termites can’t live without their microbes.
9:53 · And many of these microbes can’t live outside the termite.
9:57 · So what if we used the microbes against their hosts?
10:01 · Right now, when we want to get rid of termites, we fumigate our houses with poison.
10:08 · But maybe we could just kill the protists instead.
10:11 · Louisiana State University entomologists are engineering a gut bacterium to kill gut protists.
10:18 · They’d sneak the bacteria into the termite colony on something the termites would eat.
10:24 · The bacteria would kill the protists that help the termites digest wood, leaving them surrounded by food but starving.
10:34 · If you love learning about wildlife, subscribe to our weekly newsletter. It’s free!
10:39 · Link in the description.
Drain flies
10:42 · These cuties are experts in making their way into your house through some secret and slimy passageways.
10:50 · Check it out.
10:54 · Ever wonder where those little insects crawling around your bathroom came from?
11:00 · Bad news: your drain.
11:05 · With all that fluffy hair, it looks like a tiny moth.
11:12 · And some do call it a moth fly.
11:15 · But a fly it is.
11:18 · A drain fly.
11:20 · It’s called Clogmia – how appropriate.
11:24 · It grew up over several weeks, out of sight, among things you thought you’d washed away.
11:33 · Drain flies sneak in from the outside, through a crack in an old pipe, for example, to sip some water they sensed with this long mustache – their maxillary palps.
11:47 · And here, on the plentiful gunk in your pipes, they’ll grow a family.
11:52 · Welcome, little one!
11:54 · The larva is the length of an eyelash.
11:58 · That gunk it lives in? Those are bits of you: hair, saliva and food.
12:04 · They make a nice meal for bacteria and fungi, which form this dark, living slime called a biofilm.
12:13 · This is what the larvae feed on.
12:17 · It also keeps them well moisturized.
12:21 · If the larva ends up submerged, it can still chow down.
12:27 · It sweeps slime particles out of the water with a hairy mouthpart called the labrum.
12:37 · And rakes them in with its mandibles.
12:44 · Underwater, it breathes with a bubble on its backside that it collected at the surface.
12:52 · This allows it to venture through deep pools in your pipes.
12:56 · When larvae, or the more grown-up pupae, like this guy here, end up in a toilet bowl, it can be a shock.
13:06 · You might think the squigglers came out of you!
13:10 · Ew!
13:11 · Don’t worry – they can’t live inside us.
13:15 · And even though the drain flies in your bathroom muck around in bacteria, they don’t really spread it to humans.
13:23 · They’re not interested in landing on us. Or even leaving the bathroom.
13:27 · They’re in their happy place.
13:30 · When you wash your hands?
13:32 · They protect themselves from the water with their hairy wings.
13:37 · Each hair has ridges that trap air so the drops roll right off.
13:47 · And if they’re caught off-guard by a sudden surge, the flies skate across.
13:56 · But they’re not invincible.
13:59 · When they get trapped underwater long enough, they can drown.
14:06 · If you find you really need to get rid of them, drain cleaner helps, but it won’t keep them away forever.
14:13 · There will always be some slime left behind, deep in your pipes, that could attract the flies again.
14:21 · So, if they want it, why not let ‘em have it?
Cockroaches
14:26 · Are cockroaches – those disgusting disease-spreading roommates – good for anything at all?
14:32 · [hitting wood] [hitting floor] Scientists think their super-strength might teach us some tricks that could someday save lives.
14:41 · The American cockroach is one of the fastest insects on the planet.
14:47 · It can run up to 3.4 miles per hour.
14:51 · That’d be like a human knocking out eight marathons over their lunch break.
14:58 · It uses hooks, called tarsal claws, to flip over ledges.
15:02 · [cymbal ta-da] [cymbal ta-da] And not even a wall can stop it.
15:21 · Better to keep up the momentum and figure it out as you go.
15:28 · The roach is both tough and flexible.
15:32 · Its exoskeleton isn’t one large piece of armor, but many shield-like plates made of a tough material called chitin.
15:42 · They’re held together by lots of pliable joints.
15:46 · And they use all those bendy joints to fold up, origami-style, and push through impossibly small cracks … … like that gap you never knew existed in your kitchen cupboard.
16:02 · The cockroach can army-crawl through a space a quarter of its normal standing height.
16:09 · That’s one reason it’s so good at surviving your thwack.
16:15 · So how much pressure can the cockroach take?
16:19 · Scientists at UC Berkeley found it can withstand a thwack …
16:24 · … equivalent to 900 times its body weight … … and walk away unscathed.
16:32 · Why are researchers so interested in all this?
16:35 · They think the roach, despite its ability to make us sick, can teach us to save lives.
16:43 · One of those researchers is now building robots the size of insects to squeeze into places you and I cannot.
16:52 · Like piles of rubble left by major earthquakes or hurricanes.
17:00 · And maybe down the line, much smaller versions of these robots could even enter our bodies to perform life-saving tasks.
17:11 · On the one hand, we want to keep these creatures out …
17:14 · by sealing cracks, caulking windows and storing food in airtight containers.
17:20 · But we also want to learn from them.
17:24 · The cockroach teaches us that the key to overcoming adversity isn’t just toughness.
17:30 · It’s also flexibility.
17:34 · If you liked this video, please consider supporting us by becoming a Deep Look Patreon member.
17:39 · You’ll get exclusive show updates, behind-the-scenes footage, merch, and more.
17:43 · Click the link on screen or in the description below!
17:46 · Now, keep your streak going with these five buzzworthy bees.
17:50 · Or see if you can survive these five bloodsuckers.
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.]
“CBS News Sunday Morning” features stories on the arts, music, nature, entertainment, sports, history, science and Americana, and highlights unique human accomplishments and achievements. Check local listings for “CBS News Sunday Morning” broadcast times.
Subscribe to the “CBS News Sunday Morning” YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/CBSSundayMorning
Get more of “CBS News Sunday Morning”: https://cbsnews.com/sunday-morning/
Follow “CBS News Sunday Morning” on Instagram: https://instagram.com/cbssundaymorning/
Like “CBS News Sunday Morning” on Facebook: https://facebook.com/CBSSundayMorning
Follow “CBS News Sunday Morning” on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CBSSunday
Subscribe to our newsletter: https://cbsnews.com/newsletters/
Download the CBS News app: https://www.cbsnews.com/mobile/
Try Paramount+ free: https://paramountplus.com/?ftag=PPM-05-10aeh8h
For video licensing inquiries, contact: licensing@veritone.com
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 NASA study explains how to purify air with house plants
Quartz, 12 01, 2017
Video (3:13)
Description
How do houseplants clean the air? A 1989 NASA study explains exactly how plants remove toxins from air by trapping them in their leaves, soil, and roots, and which houseplants clean air the best.
The study was designed to test air purification systems for the space station.
SUBSCRIBE: https://goo.gl/kdDpXu
If you’re interested in learning more about the NASA study or the plants involved, check out the original papers on the subject:
http://www.wolvertonenvironmental.com/MsAcad-93.pdf
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19930073077.pdf
And if you want to buy the last plant? It’s scientific name is Sansevieria laurentii, but common names are both snake plant and mother in law’s tongue.
FOLLOW QUARTZ:
Facebook: https://goo.gl/DsmLvx
Twitter: https://goo.gl/rY7pSX
Check out the rest of our videos: https://goo.gl/A8gZvx
Quartz is a digitally native news outlet dedicated to telling stories at the intersection of the important and the interesting. Visit us at https://qz.com/ to read more.
Transcript
The 1989 NASA study
0:00 · You’ve probably heard plants can improve your air quality.
0:02 · Just about every paper on the subject, [and I mean literally all of them,] are based on a 1989 NASA study and a follow up by the lead scientist.
NASA plant experiment
0:19 · The scientists collected plants and put them in chambers, then pumped in harmful chemicals like these: After 24 hours, they tested the air quality in each chamber.
0:33 · Some plants were able to remove up to 90% of the harmful chemicals.
0:37 · So which plants were the most effective?
0:40 · NASA scientists tested familiar ones.
0:42 · “All the plants they have in their list are just very common house plants.
0:46 · This is Dr Dennis Stevenson, Vice President for science at the New York Botanical Garden.
0:53 · “I think they picked them because they were looking at things that people would have in their environments.
0:58 · As opposed to some exotic, weird tropical plant that nobody knows anything about.”
1:04 · All of these plants are excellent at getting rid of harmful indoor carcinogens.
How plants filter air
1:15 · Here’s how it works: Plants take in the harmful gasses out of the atmosphere and sequester them in their roots and cells.
1:23 · Some of these chemicals are broken down by fungi in the soil and others are stored in the plant.
1:28 · So what about things like…smoke, that might be in your apartment via cigarettes.
1:33 · Or you know…other types of smoke.
1:37 · “Well I would say, they take up stuff in the atmosphere so theoretically they should take up any kind of smoke that’s in your apartment in a certain sense, right.
1:50 · I don’t really know, but I think if one did those tests that probably one would find a positive correlation with that.”
Best plants for cleaner air
2:01 · Of all of the plants NASA mentioned in its study these three have the best surface area to chemical removal ratio.
2:13 · But keep in mind that a gerbera daisy will never get as big as a lady palm, and the more plant you have, the more harmful chemicals that you can remove.
2:22 · “ A big leaf plant is probably, potentially able to exchange more things with the air you know than something with little needle leaves.”
2:32 · And for those lacking a green thumb?
2:35 · “I’ll tell you, the one in there that’s probably the hardest to kill is the sansevieria, the mother in law’s tongue.”
2:43 · It scores high on removing chemicals and only needs low light.
2:50 · Hello everyone, if you’d like to learn more about the plants or the experiments done by NASA, check out the description below.
2:57 · You’ll find a more detailed account of which plants are mentioned at the beginning of the video.
3:02 · If you’re looking to buy some of these plants or want to learn how to take care of them, don’t forget to check out your local nursery.
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’s Crumbling Infrastructure 60 Minutes Archive
60 Minutes, 03 11, 2022
Video (14:08)
Description
In 2014, 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft reported on America’s crumbling infrastructure and the struggle to fund urgently needed projects.
“60 Minutes” is the most successful television broadcast in history. Offering hard-hitting investigative reports, interviews, feature segments and profiles of people in the news, the broadcast began in 1968 and is still a hit, over 50 seasons later, regularly making Nielsen’s Top 10.
Subscribe to the “60 Minutes” YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/1S7CLRu
Watch full episodes: http://cbsn.ws/1Qkjo1F
Get more “60 Minutes” from “60 Minutes: Overtime”: http://cbsn.ws/1KG3sdr
Follow “60 Minutes” on Instagram: http://bit.ly/23Xv8Ry
Like “60 Minutes” on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1Xb1Dao
Follow “60 Minutes” on Twitter: http://bit.ly/1KxUsqX
Subscribe to our newsletter: http://cbsn.ws/1RqHw7T
Download the CBS News app: http://cbsn.ws/1Xb1WC8
Try Paramount+ free: https://bit.ly/2OiW1kZ
For video licensing inquiries, contact: licensing@veritone.com
Transcript
0:01 · 60 minutes rewind there are a lot of people in the united states right now who think the country is falling apart and at least in one respect they’re correct our roads and bridges are crumbling our airports are out of date and the vast majority of our seaports are in danger of becoming obsolete all the result of decades of neglect none of this is really in dispute business leaders labor unions governors
0:27 · mayors congressmen and presidents have complained about a lack of funding for years but aside from a one-time cash infusion from the stimulus program nothing much has changed there’s still no consensus on how to solve the problem or where to get the massive amounts of money needed to fix it just another example of political paralysis in washington
0:49 · tens of millions of americans cross over bridges every day without giving it much thought unless they hit a pothole but the infrastructure problem goes much deeper than pavement it goes to crumbling concrete and corroded steel and the fact that nearly seventy thousand bridges in america one out of every nine is now considered to be structurally deficient our infrastructure is on life support right now that’s what we’re on few people are more aware of the situation than ray lahood who was secretary of transportation during the first obama administration and before that a
1:24 · seven-term republican congressman from illinois he is currently co-chairman of building america’s future a bipartisan coalition of current and former elected officials that is urgently pushing for more spending on infrastructure according to the government there’s 70 000 bridges that have been deemed structurally deficient what does that mean it means that they’re bridges that need to be
1:49 · really either replaced or repaired in a very dramatic way they’re dangerous i i don’t want to say they’re unsafe but they’re dangerous i would agree with that if you were going to take me someplace any place in the country to illustrate the problem where would you take me there’s a lot of places we could go i mean you could go to any major city in america and see roads and bridges and infrastructure that need to be fixed today they need to be fixed today
2:20 · we decided to start in pittsburgh which may have the most serious problem in the country our guide was andy herman a past president of the american society of civil engineers from up here you can see why they call it the city of bridges between the highway and the railroad bridges there’s a many of them in most of the mold most of them all they’re nearing the end
2:43 · of their useful lives yeah there are more than four thousand bridges in metropolitan pittsburgh and 20 percent of them are structurally deficient including one of the city’s main arteries this is the liberty bridge ahead yes an important bridge for pittsburgh a very important bridge for pittsburgh a connection from the south to the city itself and then to the north it was built in 1928 when cars and trucks were much lighter it was designed to last 50 years that was 86 years ago
Liberty Bridge
3:13 · every day in pittsburgh five million people travel across bridges that either need to be replaced or undergo major repairs one of these arch bridges actually has a structure built under it to catch falling deck see that structure underneath it they actually built that to catch into the falling concrete so it wouldn’t have traffic underneath it that’s amazing it all comes down to funding
3:36 · right now they can’t keep up with it 300 bridges become structurally deficient each year in the state of pennsylvania that’s one percent added to the already 23 percent they already have they just can’t fix them fast enough pennsylvania is one of the worst states in the country when it comes to the condition of its infrastructure and philadelphia isn’t any better off than pittsburgh nine million people a day travel over 900 bridges classified as structurally deficient some of them on a heavily traveled section of i-95 ed randell is a former democratic governor of pennsylvania
4:10 · how critical is the stretch of i-95 to the country it’s the nation’s number one highway 22 miles of it goes through the city of philadelphia there are 15 structurally deficient bridges in that 22-mile stretch and to fix them would cost 7 billion dollars to fix all the roads and the structurally deficient bridges in that 22 mile stretch rendell says no one knows where the money is going to come from and this stretch of i-95 has already had one brush with disaster in 2008 two contractors from
4:43 · the pennsylvania department of transportation stopped to get a sausage sandwich and parked their cars under this bridge unfortunately they wanted that sausage sandwich because they saw one of these piers with an eight-foot gash in it about five inches wide and all they knew automatically
5:00 · that this bridge was in deep trouble the section of i-95 was immediately shut down and blocked off while construction crews buttressed the column with steel girders it was closed for three days creating havoc in philadelphia but the city was lucky i mean it was unbelievable it’s so fortuitous and if they hadn’t watered a sausage sandwich there’s a strong likelihood that bridge would have collapsed these all are tragedies waiting to happen the i-95 bridges were built in
I-95 Bridges
5:30 · the early 1960s and are now more than 50 years old the same vintage is the i-35 bridge that collapsed in minnesota back in 2007 killing 13 people and injuring 145. the antiquated skaget river bridge
5:46 · in washington state that collapsed last may after a truck hit one of the trusses was even older and it’s not just bridges according to the american society of civil engineers 32 percent of the major roads in america are now in poor condition and in need of major repairs yet the major source of revenue the federal highway trust fund which gets its money from the federal gas tax of 18 cents a gallon is almost insolvent former transportation secretary ray lahood says it will
6:18 · go broke by next spring unless something is done that was the the pot of money that over 50 years helped us create the best interstate system in the world which is now falling apart why how did it get this way it’s falling apart because we haven’t made the investments we haven’t got the money the last time we raised the gas tax which is how we built the interstate system was 1993. what is the resistance been politicians in washington don’t have the political courage to say
6:49 · this is what we have to do that’s what it takes they don’t want to spend the money they don’t want to raise the taxes that’s right they don’t want to spend the money they don’t want to raise the taxes they don’t really have a vision of america the way that other congresses have had a vision of america
7:06 · lahood says public spending on infrastructure has fallen to its lowest level since 1947 in the u.s which used to have the finest infrastructure in the world is now ranked 16th according to the world economic forum behind iceland spain portugal and the united arab emirates
7:25 · it’s a fact that’s not been lost on the most powerful economic and political lobbies in the country who believe the inaction threatens the country’s economic future big corporations like caterpillar and ge say it’s hurting their ability to compete abroad and at a senate hearing earlier this year tom donahue president of the generally conservative u.s chamber of commerce voiced strong business support for raising the gas tax for the first time in 20 years first let’s start by having some courage and the and showing some leadership for once let’s do what’s right
8:01 · not what’s politically expedient second let’s educate the public and your fellow lawmakers he was joined by richard trumka president of the afl-cio who said that every billion dollars spent on transportation infrastructure would create 35 000 well-paying jobs if business and labor can come before you united on this issue and we are united on this issue
8:28 · despite our sharp disagreements on a variety of other matters i think that should tell everybody something and tell them very loudly the story will continue after this but it was not heard during the midterm elections where there was virtually no public debate on infrastructure and that has barely changed in the weeks that have followed we wanted to talk to pennsylvania congressman bill shuster the chairman of the house transportation committee and made numerous requests over the last five months for an on-camera interview
9:03 · all of them were declined we did the same with michigan congressman dave camp chairman of the house waves and means committee which has to come up with the money to fund transportation projects we met with the same result but we did talk with one of the committee members earl blumenauer a nine-term oregon democrat he says the last time congress passed a major six-year transportation bill was in 1997. since then there have been 21 short-term extensions i’ve actually been trying
9:33 · now for 44 months to at least get a hearing on transportation finance on the highway trust fund that is slowly going bankrupt and we’ve not had a single one why can’t you get a hearing it has to this point not raised uh to the level of um priority for the republican leadership although
9:56 · in fairness when the democrats were in charge we had a few hearings but not not much action so you see this as a bipartisan failure absolutely the bush administration they had two blue ribbon commissions about infrastructure finance that recommended a lot more money and additionally the gas tax being increased we couldn’t get them to accept being able to move forward since president
10:28 · obama’s been in office there has been to be charitable a lack of enthusiasm for raising the gas tax and the problems with transportation infrastructure go well beyond roads and bridges and the gas tax there’s aviation a shortage of airport runways and gates along with outloaded air traffic control systems that made u.s air travel the most congested in the world and then there are seaports when a new generation of big cargo ships began going through an expanded panama canal in another year or so only two of the 14 major ports on the east coast
11:03 · will be dredged deep enough to accommodate them there are more than 14 000 miles of high-speed rail operating around the world but none in the united states in chicago it can take a freight train nearly as long to go across the city as it would for the same train to go from chicago to los angeles but perhaps the most glaring example of neglect
11:31 · in an action may be this sad little railroad bridge over the hackensack river in new jersey it was built 104 years ago and is according to amtrak president and ceo joe boardman critical to the us economy this is the achilles heel that we have on the northeast corridor how much traffic goes over it every day it’s almost 500 trains a day it’s the busiest
Railroad Bridge over the Hackensack River in New Jersey
11:56 · bridge in the western hemisphere for train traffic period and what kind of shape is it in it’s safe steve but it’s not reliable and it’s getting less reliable it’s old it’s systems are breaking down there’s an inability to make it work on a regular reliable basis
12:14 · boardman says the portal bridge is based on a design from the 1840s and was already obsolete shortly after it was completed in 1910. it’s a swing bridge that needs to be opened several times a week so barges can pass up and down the river it takes about a half an hour the problem
12:32 · is it fails to lock back into place on a regular basis and what kind of problems does that cause it causes trains to stack up on both sides and actually when a train stacks up here it can stack up all the way down to washington and all the way back up to boston this is a single port of failure
12:50 · that’s one of the biggest worries we have on this corridor is the single points of failure amtrak’s president says the bridge has to be replaced the design work has already been completed and the project which would cost just under a billion dollars is shovel ready if congress wants to do something now build this bridge it’s ready to be done it’s been ready for two years build it
13:14 · it’s tangible evidence that they can really get something done it’s less a case of wanting to get something done than coming up with the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to do it there’s no shortage of ideas from democrats or republicans who suggested everything from raising the gas tax to funding infrastructure through corporate tax reform but there is no consensus
13:36 · and not much political support for any of the alternatives as andy herman told us last summer when we were flying over pittsburgh you’re sitting there at these committee meetings they seem to agree with you yes we have to make investments in infrastructure yes we have to do these things but then they come around and say well where are we going to get the money and you sort of sit to yourself and say to yourself well we elected you to figure that out
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
Make sure you never miss behind the scenes content in the Vox Video newsletter, sign up here: http://vox.com/video-newsletter
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
Support Vox’s reporting with a one-time or recurring contribution: http://vox.com/contribute-now
Shop the Vox merch store: http://vox.com/store
Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on Facebook: http://facebook.com/vox
Follow Vox on Twitter: http://twitter.com/voxdotcom
Follow Vox on TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@voxdotcom
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.
Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG
Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Follow us:
Facebook: http://www.pbs.org/newshour
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/newshour
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/newshour
Subscribe:
PBS NewsHour podcasts: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/podcasts
Newsletters: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/subscribe
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.
Can Houseplants Improve Air Quality
SciShow, 03 26, 2019
Video (2:50)
Description
We all have that coworker who insists that the houseplants on their desks are improving the office air quality, but is there any truth to that?
Hosted by: Olivia Gordon
SciShow has a spinoff podcast! It’s called SciShow Tangents. Check it out at https://www.scishowtangents.org
Support SciShow by becoming a patron on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scishow
Huge thanks go to the following Patreon supporters for helping us keep SciShow free for everyone forever:
Bill & Katie Scholl, Adam Brainard, Greg, Alex Hackman, Andrew Finley Brenan, Sam Lutfi, D.A. Noe, الخليفي سلطان, Piya Shedden, KatieMarie Magnone, Scott Satovsky Jr, Charles Southerland, Patrick D. Ashmore, charles george, Kevin Bealer, Chris Peters
Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet?
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/scishow
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/scishow
Tumblr: http://scishow.tumblr.com
Instagram: http://instagram.com/thescishow
Sources:
https://www.lung.org/about-us/blog/2017/02/do-houseplants-really-improve-air-quality.html
http://time.com/5105027/indoor-plants-air-quality/
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19930072988
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19930073077.pdf
https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/000002IB.TXT?ZyActionD=ZyDocument&Client=EPA&Index=1991+Thru+1994&Docs=&Query=&Time=&EndTime=&SearchMethod=1&TocRestrict=n&Toc=&TocEntry=&QField=&QFieldYear=&QFieldMonth=&QFieldDay=&IntQFieldOp=0&ExtQFieldOp=0&XmlQuery=&File=D%3A%5Czyfiles%5CIndex%20Data%5C91thru94%5CTxt%5C00000002%5C000002IB.txt&User=ANONYMOUS&Password=anonymous&SortMethod=h%7C-&MaximumDocuments=1&FuzzyDegree=0&ImageQuality=r75g8/r75g8/x150y150g16/i425&Display=hpfr&DefSeekPage=x&SearchBack=ZyActionL&Back=ZyActionS&BackDesc=Results%20page&MaximumPages=1&ZyEntry=1&SeekPage=x&ZyPURL
https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/volatile-organic-compounds-impact-indoor-air-quality
https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/5/article-p1377.xml
https://news.uga.edu/some-plants-remove-indoor-pollutants/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25056742
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11356-014-3240-x
Transcript
0:00 · intro It seems like every workplace has that one person who swears that the potted spider plant sitting on their desk has an almost magical ability to purify the air in the office.
0:14 · Are they actually onto something?
0:15 · There is evidence to show that plants can remove pollutants from indoor air.
0:19 · But a single potted plant probably won’t go the distance.
0:22 · If you’ve heard that bringing plants into your home or office will improve your indoor air quality, you probably have a study conducted back in 1989 by NASA to thank for that meme.
0:31 · The goal was to test whether a variety of types of indoor plants could be used for air purification, both on Earth and in space.
0:38 · The plants were put into sealed containers, and the air pumped full of chemicals including benzene and formaldehyde.
0:44 · Those chemicals fall under the broader umbrella of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs.
0:50 · Some VOCs are known to cause health issues like headaches or liver and kidney damage.
0:53 · And they’re noteworthy as indoor pollutants because household products and building materials can give them off.
0:59 · The plants were kept under controlled conditions, with plenty of light and water and the air quality was measured over a 24 hour period.
1:06 · The study found the majority of the plants included in the experiment removed much of the benzene and formaldehyde from the containers.
1:11 · Plants are thought to remove pollutants from the surrounding air by absorbing the gases through their leaves and roots with some possible help from the microorganisms in the soil.
1:19 · So that’s it, right?
1:20 · Houseplants help clean the air?
1:21 · Well, not quite.
1:22 · Later studies doing similar experiments have yielded mixed results.
1:26 · A 2009 study tested 28 varieties of indoor plants and found four that were best at capturing every VOC the researchers threw at them.
1:33 · So plants definitely can remove some pollutants in a laboratory test chamber.
1:38 · But these idealized lab conditions don’t exactly represent the air in your office – stuff like the amounts of light, water, and air circulation are all going to be different.
1:47 · On top of that, the lab plants were purifying the air in a small area.
1:52 · Some of the chambers in the NASA study were less than a cubic meter in volume.
1:55 · That means for the same amount of purification to happen in your house, you would need an indoor rainforest.
2:01 · One critic of the NASA study suggested that to get the same effect in a typical home you’d need about 680 separate plants.
2:08 · There have been a handful of other studies investigating the effects of plants on indoor air quality, but at least one review, published in 2014, has attempted to take stock of the existing research.
2:18 · And it concluded that, while lab-based studies generally show some effect, not many have been performed in living spaces, and the ones that have been done haven’t yielded a consensus.
2:26 · So don’t count on your poor desk fern to fix all of your indoor air problems.
2:31 · Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow, and thanks to Emma Hulton for asking.
2:35 · To find out how to maybe get your questions answered, head over to patreon.com/scishow.
2:39 · [ outro ]
Chicago trials rat birth control in Lincoln Park alleys to curb rat population
WGN News, 09 09, 2026
Video (3:59)
Description
Chicago has spent decades trying to get rid of rats.
Traps, poison, you name it. None of it has changed our title as the rattiest city in America, but in the alleys of Lincoln Park, a new experiment is asking a very different question: What is, instead of trying to kill the rats, we get them to stop making more?
Transcript
0:05 · TRAFFIC UPDATE TO CHICAGO HAS SPENT DECADES TRYING TO GET RID OF RATS. THEY’VE USED WRAPS POISON. YOU NAME IT.
0:11 · NONE OF IT HAS CHANGED OUR TITLE AS THE READY. A CITY IN AMERICA.
0:18 · LOURDES DUARTE: WGN’S ERIN MCELROY IS HERE WITH THE STORY OF THE LATEST QUEST TO MAKE MAYBE FIGHT THIS PROBLEM, RIGHT? YOU’RE IN REPORT ON WE THAT TITLE, THOUGH, FOR LIKE 10 YEARS BREAKING WRITES, I YEARS ANYWAY TONIGHT, ALONG WITH THE WIND COME WITH ME TO THE ALLEYS OF LINCOLN PARK WHERE A NEW EXPERIMENT IS ASKING A VERY DIFFERENT QUESTION. WHAT IF INSTEAD OF TRYING TO KILL THE RATS, WE GET THEM TO STOP MAKING MORE.
0:50 · CHICAGO AND RATS HAVE BEEN SHARING ALLEYS FOR A VERY LONG TIME. NOT PARTICULARLY HAPPILY.
0:58 · JI SUK YI: THE CITY’S POLICE AND THEN TRAPPED IN COLLAPSED. THEIR BURROWS, EVEN PUMPED DRY ICE UNDERGROUND AND STILL.
1:01 · HERE WE ARE FOR 10 STRAIGHT YEARS. CHICAGO SENT A TOP ONE PEST CONTROL COMPANIES LIST OF AMERICA’S READY U.S. CITIES. WE FINALLY DROPPED TO NUMBER 2 LAST YEAR. NOT EXACTLY A SILVER MEDAL THAT ANYBODY WANTS. BUT TUCKED INTO 5 BLOCKS OF LINCOLN PARK, RESEARCHERS ARE TRYING SOMETHING NOVEL. THIS IS ALLY NUMBER ONE. JUST THREW TO THE TIME A JUDGE HERE AND WE HAVE.
1:29 · 3 BAIT STATIONS IN THIS ALLEY. THIS IS ONE OF GAYNOR HALL: 15 BAIT STATIONS. 5 ALLEYS MOTION ACTIVATED INSIDE THE BOXES OUR SAUSAGE IS YES, SAUSAGES THAT THESE GUYS COME WITH A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA BIRTH CONTROL. A LOT OF CARS AND A LOT OF SO IT’S VERY APPEALING TO THE ARREST, WHICH IS RELIABLE.
1:55 · THAT’S URBAN WILDLIFE ASSOCIATION LEAD RESEARCHER MAUREEN MURRAY, WHO SAYS THE CONTRACEPTIVE IS ACTUALLY COTTONSEED SINCE JUNE. A TEAM OF ROUGHLY 10 VOLUNTEERS HAS BEEN MONITORING THE BOXES AND CAMERAS.
2:07 · GAYNOR HALL: PART OF A COMMUNITY FUNDED PROJECT THAT’S RAISED MORE THAN $30,000 TO SEE WHETHER CONTROLLING REPRODUCTION MIGHT DO WHAT DECADES OF KILLING RATS HASN’T. EVERY FEW WEEKS RESEARCHER SARA JACOBSON COMES LOOKING FOR EVIDENCE IN KIND OF MEASURE. HOW THINGS ARE AT COME SOMETIMES THE RATS APPROACHED THE STATION AND NEVER GO IN.
2:26 · SOMETIMES THEY GO IN BUT SKIPPED DINNER AND EVERY ONCE IN AWHILE. OKAY. WE GOT SOME ACTION. ONE OF THESE SAUSAGES HAS RATS REPRODUCE. SO INCREDIBLY QUICKLY. THAT IS EXTREMELY HARD TO KILL FASTER THAN THEY CAN AGREE. THERE’S ANOTHER REASON THIS EXPERIMENT LANDED HERE. A FAMILY OF GREAT HORNED OWLS AND NORTH POND DIED AFTER EXPOSURE TO RAT POISON WAS MOTHER AND A FATHER AND JEW LIKE A BABY ALL AND ONE BY ONE.
2:55 · THEY ALL DIED OF RAT POISON. 70 1% OF THE RAT STRAPPED HAD VERDANT ASIDE IN THEIR BLOODSTREAM, BUT THEY WERE STILL RUNNING AROUND.
3:02 · JI SUK YI: SO THAT MEANS THAT, YOU KNOW, THEY WERE AVAILABLE TO BE PRAY FOR BIRDS.
3:11 · THEIR DEATHS HELPED GALVANIZE A PARTNERSHIP AMONG LINCOLN PARK ZOO CHICAGO BIRD ALLIANCE AND ALDERMAN TO MICAH KNUTSON. WE HAVE TO MOVE AWAY FROM RAT POISON BECAUSE IT’S KILLING OUR LOVE. LIKE WHICH IS WHY MOST OF VOLUNTEERS CHECKING THESE BIRTH CONTROL BAIT STATIONS ARE FROM THE CHICAGO BIRD ALLIANCE.
3:28 · THE REAL TEST FOR THE BIRTH CONTROL PROJECT COMES THIS SPRING WHEN RENT NUMBERS BEGAN CLIMBING AGAIN BECAUSE AFTER DECADES OF TRYING TO MAKE THREATS DISAPPEAR, THIS EXPERIMENT IS TRYING SOMETHING DECIDEDLY LESS DRAMATIC. IF YOU ARE RATS IN THE FIRST PLACE.
3:48 · AND RESEARCHERS WILL BE COMPARING THE FIVE-BLOCK AREA WITH THE CONTROL AREA WHERE CONTRACEPTIVE IS NOT BEING USED. THE LONG GAME IS NOT JUST THESE LOWER NUMBERS, BUT HERE WE GO FAR LESS
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/
Check out more Eyewitness News - http://abc7ny.com/
Find us on social media:
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/ABC7NY/
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/abc7ny/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/abc7ny
TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@abc7ny
We’re abc7NY, also known as Channel 7 and WABC-TV on TV, home to Eyewitness News, New York’s Number 1 news. We hope you love us on YouTube as much as you do on television!
NEW TIPS:
Online: http://abc7ny.com/submit-a-news-tip/2599968/
Email: abc7ny@abc.com
About WABC-TV: https://abc7ny.com/about/
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.
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.
Check out Kensington Market Community Land Trust and sign up for their community bond offering:
https://kmclt.ca/
Learn more about community bonds with Tapestry Community Capital:
https://tapestrycapital.ca/
Follow About Here on
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/abouthere/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/aboutherevideos
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aboutherevi…
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.
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.
LISTEN to more episodes of Code Switch on:
NPR One - https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/U3n6
Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2KPJ8tL
Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2Sp1wh9
FOLLOW Code Switch:
Twitter - CodeSwitch
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/nprcodeswitch
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/NPRCodeSwitch/
FOLLOW Code Switch hosts:
Gene Demby - https://twitter.com/GeeDee215
Shereen Marisol Meraji - https://twitter.com/RadioMirage
FOLLOW NPR ELSEWHERE
https://www.instagram.com/npr/
https://www.tiktok.com/@npr
https://www.facebook.com/NPR
https://www.npr.org/
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.
Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG
Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Follow us:
Facebook: http://www.pbs.org/newshour
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/newshour
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/newshour
Subscribe:
PBS NewsHour podcasts: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/podcasts
Newsletters: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/subscribe
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
If you’re enjoying CityDesign, like, subscribe, and share to help more people discover how we shape cities—and how cities shape us.
Hashtags:
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 an Architect Redesigns NYC Streets WIRED
WIRED, 04 22, 2022
Video (7:24)
Description
Claire Weisz, founder of W X Y + architecture + urban design, walks us through three different street redesigns that her team has done in New York City. Claire explains why they made the changes they made, and what ultimately makes for a “better” street.
Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►► http://wrd.cm/15fP7B7
Listen to the Get WIRED podcast ►► https://link.chtbl.com/wired-ytc-desc
Want more WIRED? Get the magazine ►► https://subscribe.wired.com/subscribe/splits/wired/WIR_YouTube?source=EDT_WIR_YouTube_0_Video_Description_ZZ
Follow WIRED:
Instagram ►►https://instagram.com/wired
Twitter ►►http://www.twitter.com/wired
Facebook ►►https://www.facebook.com/wired
Get more incredible stories on science and tech with our daily newsletter: https://wrd.cm/DailyYT
Also, check out the free WIRED channel on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV.
ABOUT WIRED
WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. Through thought-provoking stories and videos, WIRED explores the future of business, innovation, and culture.
Transcript
Intro
0:00 · [Claire] In 2016, this was a very confusing place to be. Designing streets is a little bit like being a detective. If you look hard enough, you can see the traces of all the decisions people made before.
0:12 · [Narrator] Claire is the principal in charge of WXY an architecture firm with a focus on urban design, planning and community based architecture.
0:21 · I’m gonna walk you through three street redesigns that WXY has done in New York city. [soft music] Sometimes you hear the term bad street. There’s no vegetation, there’s nothing to look at, there’s nothing to visit. Generally people will go, “Oh my God, that’s not a street I wanna walk down.” And therefore, it’s not a great street.
Bad Streets
0:44 · And the opportunity as an architect or landscape architect or urban designer, is to kind of see what’s happening really listen and observe because there needs to be design solutions to the problems that people are experiencing on their streets. Let’s, let’s talk about Cooper Union.
Cooper Union
1:03 · [Narrator] Cooper union is an intersection in New York where Bowery splits off into Cooper Square.
1:08 · [Claire] The original street only did this.
1:13 · [Narrator] The Bowery was widen, and there were too many lanes for cars and not enough crosswalks for pedestrians.
1:18 · It’s really interesting is that departments of transportation were actually departments of cars for a long time. And mostly they would describe streets by the number of lanes.
1:30 · [Narrator] The street ultimately expanded to four lanes of traffic which resulted in a very confusing intersection.
1:36 · [Claire] We’re seeing everything being two ways, two moving lanes in every direction, but confusion in the middle, and here’s our sidewalk.
1:44 · That is a lot of road bed, because if I was looking at just doting in, you know, what a street would be, right?
1:53 · I’m left with a kind of no-man zone here.
1:55 · [Narrator] For pedestrians, there’s no clear way to cross the intersection.
1:59 · So the way people have tried to deal with it is where you see all sorts of painted medians all over the place, to try and kind of tell people what they should be doing.
2:09 · [Narrator] And it was completely car focused which didn’t add much to the character of the street.
2:14 · [Claire] The bigger you make roads, the more it attracts traffic. But it doesn’t really attract things like business, more cyclists, more walking. In a lot of ways it’s an kind of a human behavior issue.
The Solution
2:25 · [Narrator] The solution, reduce the number of lanes, add pedestrian crosswalks, and limit the direction of traffic.
2:31 · Instead of a bunch of streets, you have a very straightforward way for cars even which they could not do before, to drive up this street which is now one way, and what’s that’s done, is it’s made more sidewalks and that’s really fundamentally what you’re seeing with street design, is a way to make streets still serve cars efficiently but also make it easier for people on buses, people biking, all of these kinds of lanes can kind of shift priorities and give new spaces.
Brooklyn
3:06 · [Narrator] Now let’s head to Brooklyn to take a look at Albee Square. Albee Square is an intersection in downtown Brooklyn where Fleet, Fulton Street, Albee Square West and Bond Street, all meet up.
3:18 · [Claire] But many of the subways are sort of off to the corner on very narrow sidewalks.
3:23 · [Narrator] This area has a lot of pedestrian traffic, but not a lot of space to maneuver especially since these are small historical streets.
3:31 · [Claire] When you have historic streets, they’re not always as wide as connector streets that got cleared out because people but wanted more lanes. So, a lot of the planning that’s happening around Albee Square in these remnants of different grids that make up downtown Brooklyn and all the new buildings, is to create more room.
Alby Square
3:53 · What do we see on the right hand side?
3:55 · Well, all of a sudden this street right here isn’t there anymore. But now this street meets, we have a much larger public space. Instead of an island surrounded by streets, we have an island that’s now attached to the sidewalk for a beautiful bank building and a new mall called Albee Square Mall, that’s full of activity.
Astor Place
4:23 · [Narrator] Next up is Astor Place.
4:25 · We’re at pretty well known destination in New York called Astor place.
4:30 · [Narrator] Astor place is an intersection where Lafayette, Eighth Street, Fourth Avenue and Cooper square, all converge.
4:37 · These are streets that are doing a lot of work. In 2016, this was a very confusing place to be. Wide streets, narrow streets, there’s a lot of buses hanging out waiting. So, people just walked in the street.
4:51 · That’s the subway.
4:52 · And there’s a number of kind of geometries of streets, all cutting through it. That is called the Alamo that people of nicknamed “The Cube.” You see people hang out underneath it. The cube is kind of sitting on also kind of a floating concrete median, and then we have a street here known as Lafayette Street that is going uptown.
Lafayette Street
5:18 · [Narrator] In addition to these main streets, Astor Place has a number of a historical streets, all feeding into the traffic flow.
5:24 · This where I’m drawing this dotted line is one of the oldest streets in New York. And it got renamed Stuyvesant Street. This street must have started as a dirt path. And in fact, a lot of streets in New York, Center Street, Lafayette, Broadway were actually just rails. And then they got widened, they got paved.
5:45 · [Narrator] These multifunctional streets, home to art installation, subway stops and historical remnants of old New York are prone to the wear and tear of high traffic areas.
5:55 · [Claire] This is not a low space, but there’s a lot of flooding that happens if rain comes really really quickly. What you see now today, not only is there more trees but there’s actually bioswales and green infrastructure, there’s more bike racks, there’s bigger sidewalks, you have a huge number of additional green spaces and trees. There’s something called the curb line.
Curb Line
6:22 · And the art I think of street making is figuring out where the curb goes so that all the buildings look and feel even better. If you put the curb too close to a building or in the wrong alignment, the whole street feels off. So it’s sort of like a great room or how clothes fit, where the curb is, is kind of like the tailoring of streets.
6:46 · We can start thinking about streets, kind of like air and water as the thing that we share.
6:55 · There are private streets, but in general successful important streets are shared by just a multiplicity of players, right?
7:04 · And even by walking. So streets in a sense are the design problem of today to accommodate getting more out of them and making them attractive to people, but they’re also the design problem of the near for future. [soft music]
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
» Sign up for our newsletter KnowThis to get the biggest stories of the day delivered straight to your inbox: https://go.nowth.is/knowthis_youtube
» Subscribe to NowThis Earth: https://go.nowth.is/Earth_Subscribe
Connect with NowThis
» Subscribe to NowThis News: http://go.nowth.is/News_Subscribe
» Like us on Facebook: http://go.nowth.is/News_Facebook
» Tweet us on Twitter: http://go.nowth.is/News_Twitter
» Follow us on Instagram: http://go.nowth.is/News_Instagram
» Find us on Snapchat Discover: http://go.nowth.is/News_Snapchat
NowThis Earth is daily news coverage of climate, sustainability, biodiversity, species extinction, environmental justice, and other planetary concerns.
NowThis is your premier news outlet providing you with all the videos you need to stay up to date on all the latest in trending news. From entertainment to politics, to viral videos and breaking news stories, we’re delivering all you need to know straight to your social feeds. We live where you live.
http://www.youtube.com/nowthisearth
@NowThisEarth
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 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
Celebrate Earth Day with our friends at PBS: https://bit.ly/3elpV1w
Head over to Reactions to find out more about how they’re celebrating Earth Day, and tell them Joe sent you! https://youtu.be/I1YLPfSuNXY
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.
Subscribe to PBS Terra! - https://bit.ly/3mOfd77
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 Green Roofs Can Help Cities NPR
NPR, 07 12, 2017
Video (3:49)
Description
We took a field trip to the largest green roof in New York City. Then we imagined what the city could be like if all of its roof space was green.
Note: A previous version of this video incorrectly thanked the Audubon Society. We meant to thank the NYC Audubon Society.
Subscribe to NPR on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/npr
Follow NPR elsewhere, too:
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/npr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NPR
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/npr/
• Tumblr: http://npr.tumblr.com/
• Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/add/npr
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
Intro
0:01 · This is the largest green roof in New York City.
0:04 · It’s in the middle of bustling Manhattan, on top of the Javits Convention Center— a behemoth of a building with a six-block footprint.
0:13 · But the roof hasn’t always been green.
0:16 · Before 2014, it was totally barren.
0:20 · Now, just a few years later, when people walk out onto the roof, they say things like: “Amazing,” “That’s great,” “I didn’t expect this,” “What a surprise.”
0:28 · But besides the great reactions, there are practical benefits.
0:31 · We have 300,000 bees.
0:34 · We’ve seen 25 different species of birds on the roof.
0:36 · We reduced the temperature up here by about six degrees Fahrenheit.
0:39 · And we also save about 7 million gallons of stormwater runoff that’s absorbed in the soil and the plants that are on our roof.
0:46 · We’ve been able to reduce our energy
consumption by about 26 percent, and that translated for us last year
into a saving of about 3 million dollars.
0:55 · That is impressive.
Green Roofs
0:58 · How does one green roof get so much done?
1:01 · And what are all of the NOT green roofs in New York City doing with their lives?
1:06 · First, let’s see how much roof space actually exists.
1:09 · You know, they are a major part of urban landscapes.
1:12 · The the round number that most of us think exists is about 1 billion square feet.
1:18 · One billion with a ‘b.’
1:20 · That’s like 22 times the size of Central Park, in roofs.
1:24 · And in most cities, what isn’t roof is another impermeable surface like road, sidewalk, or parking
lot.
1:31 · And these surfaces create a lot of problems for cities That green roofs can actually help solve.
stormwater runoff
1:38 · Let’s take a look at three of these issues. The first is
stormwater runoff.
1:42 · Rainwater goes in pipes. It combines
with what’s called sanitary water.
1:48 · When there’s too much rainwater, which happens hundreds of times a year around Manhattan, the wastewater treatment
systems shut down, and valves just let the water just, you know, shunt out into the rivers. You know, it’s got human sewage.
2:01 · It’s the biggest source of pathogens to
the Manhattan Island.
2:04 · With green roofs, that water instead of going into the
drain and polluting the environment, ends up just evaporating the atmosphere
through the leaves of these plants.
heat island effect
2:13 · And then, there’s what scientists call the “heat island effect,” which basically means that cities are significantly warmer than the surrounding areas.
2:20 · I’ve seen asphalt roofs get up easily 170, 180 degrees Fahrenheit in the strong sunlight.
2:26 · They absorb about 90 to 95 percent of the sunlight.
2:30 · Green roofs, by comparison are close to air temperatures.
habitat loss
2:34 · Another problem green roofs can help solve is habitat loss.
2:37 · Cities can shrink or destroy the green space that’s crucial for certain plants and
animals to survive.
2:43 · Currently a lot of species might occur in smaller parks throughout the city that are relatively unconnected, But having high densities of green roofs would allow those patches to be more connected.
2:53 · Letting, for example, butterflies travel from patch to patch with lots of stepping stones of green roofs in between.
2:59 · And these are just three of the problems that green roofs can help solve.
conclusion
3:03 · But to really put a dent in any of these issues cities would have to implement green roofs at a large scale.
3:09 · Stuart Gaffin, the research scientist
you heard from earlier, estimates that if all of New York City’s 1 billion square feet of roof space were greened, those green roofs could lower the city’s
temperature by nearly two degrees Fahrenheit and absorb over 10 billion
gallons of stormwater each year.
3:27 · As cities continue to grow, all that empty roof space starts to look more and more like an opportunity, an untapped resource, a future ecosystem of problem-solving meadows in the sky.
How Indoor Air Quality Impacts Your Lungs
American Lung Association, 07 26, 2022
Video (3:01)
Description
This three-minute video describes how indoor air quality impacts your lungs, as well as providing practical tips for improving the indoor air quality in your home.
Transcript
Intro
0:05 · the air we breathe is filled with lots of things including gases and particles most things in the air are too small to see with the naked eye everything we breathe in affects our health in different ways health effects from poor indoor air quality might include short-term symptoms like headaches eye nose and throat irritation coughing and painful breathing bronchitis and skin irritation
Health Effects
0:28 · extreme side effects can target the central nervous system cause respiratory diseases like asthma or emphysema and cause cancer and cardiovascular disease poor indoor air can also impact the blood spleen liver and reproductive system young children older adults and
How Our Lungs Work
0:45 · people with existing lung disease are most at risk of negative health effects from poor indoor air quality before we can understand how indoor air quality impacts our lungs we first need to understand how our lungs work when you breathe in through your nose or mouth air travels down your airways or trachea dividing into your right or left lung via the bronchi the bronchi then separate into small tubes called bronchioles like tree branches bronchioles divide into thousands of even smaller passages
How Your Lungs Work
1:15 · at the end of each bronchiole is a cluster of little air sacs called alveoli alveoli are wrapped in tiny blood vessels called capillaries the air you breathe in fills these air sacs with oxygen-rich air here is where oxygen is transported throughout the body not all the air you breathe in is clean
1:34 · indoor air contaminants can include small particles that are suspended in the air when those particles from the air travel deep into your body it can have a negative impact on your health these particles can include things like dust tobacco smoke diesel emissions pollen pet dander mold spores chemicals
Indoor Air Contamination
1:52 · gases and more particulate matter often written as pm are so small they go into the lungs all the way to the alveoli once there they can irritate and corrode the alveoli wall damaging the lungs and causing lung disease these pollutants at
2:09 · high levels have also been linked to an increased risk of stroke and heart attack the good news is that we can improve our indoor air quality simple things you can do to improve your indoor air quality include avoiding items that create particulate matter in the air like wood burning stoves air fresheners sprays and harsh
What You Can Do
2:27 · chemicals use an exhaust fan or open a kitchen window when cooking use a portable air cleaner with a hepa filter in rooms where you spend the most time reduce dust by vacuuming regularly and using a microfiber or damp cloth for dusting reduce humidity to avoid mold and mildew buildup and change appliance filters regularly and make sure to test your home for dangerous gases like radon doing so can help keep the air in your home safe learn more at long.org
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
Read more:
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 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
Subscribe to our channel! http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
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.
Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o
Or Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H
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
IG: https://www.instagram.com/aboutherevideos/?hl=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/abouthere
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 Improve Indoor Air Quality
Scientific American, 08 29, 2022
Video (5:48)
Description
Why do we pay attention to the quality of our drinking water, but not to our indoor air? Scientific American’s Senior Health Editor, Tanya Lewis, explains how and why this matters.
Transcript
Importance of air quality
0:00 · did you know that we spent about 90 percent of our time indoors so why aren’t we talking about indoor air quality especially when coveted is still spreading and people are being encouraged to return to offices let me explain we know that sars kobe 2 the virus that causes covet is transmitted by airborne droplets called aerosols that hang in the air and can travel over short and long distances and besides
0:21 · reducing covered transmission rates we know that fresh air is really important for health in general florence nightingale for example once highlighted the importance of bedroom ventilation for tuberculosis patients and nordic parents often let their babies nap outside in the freezing cold
0:36 · sars kobe 2 isn’t the only virus that spreads through the air indoors influenza and other respiratory viruses also spread this way studies have shown that poor ventilation leads to cognitive impairment and sick building syndrome so why aren’t we prioritizing clean indoor air the same way we prioritize say clean drinking water is there actually anyone regulating our indoor air quality it turns out there is
Air quality regulations
1:00 · that would be ashrae a u.s industry body that sets standards for what it calls acceptable indoor air quality ashrae standards aim to limit exposure to harmful substances with known exposure limits such as formaldehyde but not to pathogens and here’s the problem according to experts those air quality
1:16 · standards are far below what is needed to stop the spread of covid that’s because minimum ventilation rates don’t totally stop the spread of airborne pathogens and many buildings don’t even meet those standards changing these standards takes time but we’re going to break down the components of improving indoor air quality and exactly what you need to do number one source control in 1858 chemist max von pedenkopper one
Source control measures
1:39 · of the pioneers of the indoor air quality movement said that if space contains a pile of manure one should not try to remove the odor by ventilation but rather remove the manure for example one could remove cooking gas fumes by using an electric stove instead of a gas one so if you want to limit the amount of sars cov2 particles in the air you could theoretically mandate that people wear high quality masks and ensure that anyone who feels sick stays home instead of coming into the office of course such
2:06 · measures alone cannot prevent all pathogens or other pollutants from entering the air which is why other steps are needed number two ventilation a building’s ventilation level refers to how much fresh outdoor air is being brought in this fresh air dilutes the concentration of virus-lightened particles in the air imagine asar’s cov2 particle endures as a drop of food coloring in a cup of water outdoors it’s more like a drop of dye in the ocean it rapidly becomes so diluted that it’s largely undetectable ventilation makes
Ventilation strategies
2:35 · the indoor cup a lot more like the outdoor ocean the simplest and cheapest option is to open a window but that’s not always viable especially if the air outside is more polluted than that inside experts say this can become a major equity issue people of color for example
2:50 · are more likely to live and work in areas where they’re exposed to harmful pollution aside from windows another source of indoor ventilation is an hvac system most of these systems allow a building manager to vary the amount of fresh air intake it should generally be set to maximum experts say provided the outdoor air quality is safe yet before
3:08 · the pandemic many buildings have their hvac systems set to recirculate old stale air a good rule of thumb is to aim for having at least six air exchanges per hour through ventilation or the equivalent amount of fresh air through filtration one way we can indirectly measure the amount of ventilation in the space is by using a carbon dioxide monitor humans exhale carbon dioxide when we breathe so levels of this gas provide a good proxy for how diluted the air is
3:34 · values below about 800 parts per million are potentially well ventilated number three filtration filtration basically just means removing particles and other pollutants from the air a standard called mirv offers a way of comparing different filters the gold standard filter hepa can remove 99.97
Filtration solutions
3:51 · percent of airborne particles that are 0.3 micron in size and an even greater percentage of larger or smaller particles hepa is equivalent to a rating of mirv 17 or higher a best practice is to upgrade filters to at least merv 13 for most indoor settings many hvac systems can be upgraded to this standard but some older ones may have trouble with high efficiency filters and may cause air to leak around the filters
4:15 · you can also buy a freestanding device called a portable air cleaner but these devices aren’t cheap fortunately researchers have come up with a more affordable solution called a corsey rosenbaum box basically it’s a diy air cleaner made up of a box fan and four or five mirv filters duct taped together you can even find the instructions online it’s also pretty effective a corsey rosenthal box in a 200 square foot dorm room achieved the equivalent of about 24 air exchanges per hour on par with a typical u.s hospital and better than many similarly
4:46 · sized portable air cleaners number four air disinfection finally there’s a method called air disinfection which is basically inactivating viruses using ultraviolet light some systems work by shining a uv light across the top of a room which neutralizes airborne pathogens as they circulate through that space some wavelengths of uv light are harmful to humans although there is a wavelength called far uvc which appears to be safer for people this method is best for places such as hospitals or school cafeterias rather than homes or small offices number five investing in better air the
Air disinfection methods
Investing in better air
5:18 · biden administration recently called on building managers in schools universities and other settings to improve indoor air quality upgrading it can be expensive but there are federal funds to support such efforts indoor air quality is important not just for reducing the rate of covert transmission but for our health in general [Music]
5:48 · you
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/
JOIN THIS CHANNEL to get access to uncut video content and live Q & A sessions:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgb_TbreMgfDdLKkr4yYJHw/join
SIGN UP FOR ANDREW’S FREE EMAIL NEWSLETTER:
https://share.hsforms.com/1X79TznHYRCWc-8xE3hty7Q9opt
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 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.
Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG
Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Follow us:
Facebook: http://www.pbs.org/newshour
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/newshour
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/newshour
Subscribe:
PBS NewsHour podcasts: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/podcasts
Newsletters: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/subscribe
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
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)
<iframe width=“560” height=“315” src= title=“YouTube video player” frameborder=“0” allow=“accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=“strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen>
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
Nonprofit turns vacant lots into urban farms
WBAL-TV 11 Baltimore, 09 30, 2026
Video (2:42)
Description
A Baltimore nonprofit founded by military veterans is revitalizing vacant lots into green spaces and urban farms, transforming communities and addressing food access challenges. The 6th Branch, established in 2010, has converted more than 23 acres of vacant lots into thriving green spaces and urban farms. The 6th Branch continues to bring hope to Baltimore neighborhoods, one seed at a time.
WBAL-TV is your home for Baltimore breaking news and weather. For your latest Baltimore news and weather visit: https://www.wbaltv.com/
For licensing inquiries: https://www.wbaltv.com/licensing
Transcript
0:00 · HOW THE SIXTH BRANCH IS MAKING A DIFFERENCE.
0:05 · FROM FLOWERS TO TREES, VEGETABLES AND HONEY AND MORE, THESE URBAN FARMS ARE TRANSFORMING AREAS ACROSS THE CITY.
0:13 · I THINK IT’S REALLY HARD TO GIVE PE HOPE WHENHERE’S TRASH ALL AROUND YOU.
0:19 · THE SIXTH BRANCH IS CHANGING THAT.
0:22 · SO FAR, THEY’VE TRANSFORMED MORE THAN 23 ACRES VACANT LOTS GREEN SPACES AND URBAN FARMS.
0:27 · WE DON’T GO INTO A SPACE UNLESS RE INVITED AND ASKED TO, AND THEN WE’RE SITTING AND LISTENING SO TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE COMMUNITY WANTS.
0:37 · THEN WE HELP MAKE THAT VISION A REALITY WITH THE COMMUNITY.
0:41 · THE NONPROFIT, FOUNDED I 2010 BY RETURNING VETERANS, HAS A MISSION TO BUILD TRUST WITHIN COMMUNITIES IN JOHNSTON SQUARE, BLOCKS OF HOMES WERE DEMOLISHED.
0:53 · NOW IT’S BRIMMING WFE.
0:55 · EVERY THURSDAY, YOU CAN GET A BAG OF, YOU KNOW, COLLARDS AND SQUASH AND G PEPPERS AND RED PEPPERS AND HOT PEPPERS, WHICH ARE MY FAVORITE.
1:05 · AND THEY’RE STR RIGHT FROM THE GROUND.
1:08 · GRACE CHAMPION MANAGES THE T URBAN FARMS,HICH ALLOWS THEM TO DISTRIBUTE THOUSANDS OF POUNDS OF FRESH PRODUCE PER YEAR.
1:15 · IN ADDITION TO LIKE KALE COLLARDS, WE DO SWISS CHARD.
1:20 · WE ALSO DO A LOT OF R VEGETABLES, TOMATOES, EGGPLANT, REALLY KIND OF LNG TO THE CLIMATE AND DOING WHAT WILL WANT TO PERFORM HERE.
1:30 · SO WE’RE GONNA PLANT SOME PURPLE TOP TURNIPS.
1:33 · SHE SAYS THEY REA FOCUS ON WHAT CAN BE HARVESTED WEEKLY AND SHARED WITH THE 100 OR SO FAMILIES THEY S EVERY WEEK IN THIS FOOD DESERT.
1:42 · I THINK IT’S REALLY POWERFUL TO INTERACT AND BE CLOSE TO GREEN SPACES AND BE MORE CONNECTED TO THE FOOD.
1:49 · IF YOU CAN, YOU NOTICE YOU’RE NOT SEEING A LOT OF AVAILABLE FRESH PRODUCE IN THESE AREAS.
1:55 · THEY ALSO SELL COMPOST AND HONEY IN ADDITION TO TILLING, FERTILIZING, AND PLANTING.
2:00 · T6B HAS SEVERAL PROGRAMS, INCLUDING FOOD ACCESS, CANOPY AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT.
2:04 · DOCTOR TERRELL WILLIAMS IS A MARINE CORPS VET AND BOARD MEMBER AND SAYS ORGANIZATIONS LIKE T-6B ARE NEECAUSE THEY HELP ACTIVATE COMMUNITIES AND BRING HOPE.
2:14 · IF YOU G OVER TO THE.
2:16 · HENRIETTA LACKS EDUCATIONAL PARK, IT’S AN INCREDIBLE SPA AND IT GIVES ME JOY BECAUSEA EVERY TIME I DRIVE BY AND I DRIVE BY DAILY, THERE ARE FAMILIES IN TRK, AND I NEVER FAMILIES IN THE PARK BEFORE.
2:29 · HOPE PLANTED ONE SEED AT TIME
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)
Poor home air quality can increase risk of heart disease and cancer Study
ABC News, 01 13, 2023
Video (3:32)
Description
ABC News business reporter Alexis Christoforous provides tips to keep your indoor air clean as you bump up the heat this winter.
Transcript
0:00 · welcome back winter is in full swing across the country and chilly temperatures outside mean more cozy days inside but poor air quality at home can impact your health sometimes even increasing your risk of heart disease cancer and more ABC News business reporter Alexis christopherus has some steps you can take to keep your indoor air clean this winter the weather outside is frightful but the fire inside could be problematic too according to the American Lung Association exposure to burning wood can
0:29 · cause respiratory problems and increase your cancer risk and that’s not the only air pollutant in your home that can adversely affect your health as you spend more days inside this winter consider taking steps to improve the air quality in your home you can start with your fireplace try not to use it too much if you’re going to use a fireplace make sure that you have the flu cleaned
0:52 · that there is a screen across your fireplace if you can afford it consider getting an EPA certified insert for your fireplace right now there is a federal tax break of 30 percent on the purchase and installation of the units gas stoves can also release pollutants such as nitrogen oxides so use your vent use an
1:12 · exhaust fan or just open a window and block that kitchen or living room smoke from entering your bedroom where you can spend hours every night by keeping bedroom doors closed if you can deal with it you can keep your pets out and so whatever is on their fur won’t get on your bedding and won’t be in the air in addition to dusting and vacuuming once a week to combat allergens and dust use an air purifier look for vacuums and air purifiers that have an effective HEPA filter Consumer Reports has ratings on
1:43 · air purifiers and what studies have found is that the effective ones can take out as much as half of all the bad particulates in the air which can affect people’s health and to prevent mold growth that can cause Asthma and Allergy flare-ups clean bathrooms kitchens and basements regularly
2:04 · and Alexis christopherus joins me now for more on this Alexis what about mold because that can be a big issue when it comes to home air quality so how do you combat that yeah there are a few ways and and definitely if you see mold don’t ignore it because it’s only going to grow so what you want to do is keep the humidity levels in your home as low as you can so you can use a dehumidifier to do that in places that usually collect moisture naturally like your basement make sure that you fix any leaks in the house a roof that’s leaking uh Plumbing walls where there are leaks and then you
2:37 · can use your own solution if you see mold on the wall and it’s a small enough space you can use a solution of five percent bleach and water you don’t want to combine bleach with other chemicals that can get dangerous but if you have a larger area say more than 10 square feet of mold in your home you should probably bring in a professional do want to make a note though on humidifiers because
2:58 · this time of year A lot of people are using those yes I was going to ask about that because it’s dry outside right but humidifiers themselves can cause mold problems if you don’t clean them correctly you really have to be on top of your humidifier they can be great but try to clean them thoroughly at least once a week all right Alexis Christopher’s thank you you bet hi
3:17 · everyone George stephanopolis here thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel if you’d like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our Channel and don’t forget to download the ABC News app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching
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
Road diets designing a safer street
Vox, 07 19, 2018
Video (5:14)
Description
Reconfigure the lanes and the traffic will calm.
Subscribe to our channel! http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
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.
Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE Follow Vox on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o Or Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H
Over the course of the 20th century, the car became America’s dominant mode of transportation. As vehicle miles travelled soared well past the rate of population growth, demands on the roadway surged. Congestion became a major issue. So transportation planners made the roads wider and added traffic lanes.
Today, we now know that bigger roads and extra traffic lanes do nothing to solve congestion. In fact, it tends to induce even more traffic. So we didn’t fix the congestion issues, and on top of that, we built wide roads that are relatively unsafe.
Transportation planners in the 21st century recognized that many of the roads that were overbuilt could be redesigned to calm speeding and add space for newer multimodal transportation options. And thus, the road diet was born.
The video above explains why road diets are implemented, and how planners survey the feasibility of a lane reconfiguration. You can learn more about road diets with the following resources:
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/10053/10053.pdf
https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/road_diets/guidance/info_guide/rdig.pdf
https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/conversion_of_four_lane_undivided_urban_roadways.pdf
Transcript
What is a road diet
0:01 · This road might not look like anything special.
0:03 · But what if I showed you the same road, a few years earlier —notice anything different?
0:09 · Here’s a better angle of that: The old road has 4 lanes for traffic.
0:17 · The new one has two.
0:18 · And now there’s this middle lane for left hand turns.
0:22 · There’s also a new bike lane.
0:24 · This is what transportation planners call a road diet.
0:28 · And it’s a very popular to make the roads safer.
History of overbuilt roads
0:33 · Over the course of the 20th century, four lane roads became an American institution.
0:37 · It started with the release of Ford’s model-T in 1908.
0:42 · A few decades later, there was one car for every two households in the states.
0:47 · By the 1960s, many roads became so busy, that traffic engineers had to figure out how to add capacity.
0:54 · So, they added lanes.
0:56 · A lot of pavement was getting put on the ground.
1:00 · Even where maybe when the population and traffic volumes weren’t so high that we needed that pavement.
1:09 · But we wanted that pavement.
1:11 · Sometimes your eyes are bigger than your stomach.
Safety benefits
1:14 · Fast forward to the present day and we’re left some overbuilt roads that are pretty unsafe.
1:20 · And crash reduction is a major benefit that planners can achieve with just a bit a paint.
1:26 · Four lane roads have quite a few conflict points – these are places where accidents could happen.
1:31 · These ones represent merging accidents.
1:32 · These are rear ends, and there are multiple left turn crash scenarios.
1:37 · Now look at what a 3 lane reconfiguration does — There are far fewer crash points.
1:43 · A road diet can also make left turns suck way less.
1:47 · The shared middle lane takes left turners out of the traffic flow, so they won’t hold up drivers who want to continue through.
1:53 · And now, left turners will only have to cross 1 lane of traffic instead of 2, which will eliminate broadside accidents.
2:00 · And the benefits don’t end there.
Speed and multi-modal use
2:03 · By slimming each lane in the road, the road diet reduced the travel speed by almost 7 miles per hour.
2:09 · Narrower lanes can cause that psychological impact on the driver to slow down a bit.
2:22 · And while a 6 mile an hour difference in speed may seem modest, it can make an auto accident much less deadly … Narrower lanes also leave more space for expanded sidewalks or bike lanes.
2:33 · your pedestrians will feel safer.
2:34 · It might’ve given you more green space to separate from your vehicles.
2:39 · And your bicyclists might have a dedicated space to ride.
2:45 · In the midst of these changes, the number of traffic lanes has gone from 2 to 1.
Maintaining traffic flow
2:50 · So if you drive a car, you might assume that the tradeoff of a road diet would be congestion…
2:55 · How could traffic not increase?
2:58 · That’s usually their concern before a road diet is implemented.
3:03 · That’s not what happens.
3:05 · The volume of the roadway is still sustained.
3:08 · We wouldn’t want to put a 4 to 3 conversion on a piece of roadway that would then push half your traffic somewhere else.
3:14 · And what we found in a couple of places, it actually makes moving through town easier.
3:23 · But traffic flow is only one part of the equation — you’ve got to also balance commercial and safety benefits too.
3:29 · especially if this is through an urban corridor where you’ve got businesses, coffeeshops, it works.
3:34 · it keeps people moving, it doesn’t take traffic away from that corridor, and it reduces those rear-ends that thendo stop the road.
Contextual success rates
3:45 · Iowa is conducting this road survey because so far, the plan has worked really well for them.
3:49 · A study of 15 streets in the state saw a crash reduction rate of nearly 50%.
3:53 · At the same time, the diet didn’t substantially disrupt other activities along their corridors.
3:58 · A key factor was the traffic volume, measured by engineers as ‘Annual Average Daily Traffic’.
4:05 · Most road diets will run into problems as you approach that 15,000 vehicles number.
4:10 · In Iowa, many roads don’t get that much traffic.
4:13 · The same could not be said for the suburban contexts in California.
4:16 · A study comparing road diets in Iowa to corridors in California showed that California’s streets average about double the amount of daily traffic.
4:25 · The same kinds of road diets resulted in a 17% crash rate reduction – significantly lower than the reductions in Iowa.
4:33 · This is not to say that the road diets in California are an outright failure.
4:36 · It’s just a difference context for the road diet.
4:39 · And the success of a road diet is driven by so many other factors – economic impact, land use, or level of service to name a few.
4:46 · What works in Iowa may not be the right fit for California, and vice versa.
4:48 · So the case for road diets is pretty clear: they do slow streets down and they do reduce crashes.
Conclusion
4:54 · But whether or not that’s worth the trouble depends very much on the context of the world that surrounds the road.
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.
Help us make more ambitious videos by joining the Vox Video Lab. It gets you exclusive perks, like livestream Q&As with all the Vox creators, a badge that levels up over time, and video extras bringing you closer to our work! Learn more at http://bit.ly/video-lab
Read more: http://www.vox.com/2016/8/4/12342806/barcelona-superblocks
Thumbnail image from http://shutterstock.com
Subscribe to our channel! http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
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 to get up to speed on everything from Kurdistan to the Kim Kardashian app.
Check out our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H
Or on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o
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 real reason streetcars are making a comeback
Vox, 08 09, 2017
Video (5:56)
Description
It’s mostly about economic development.
Subscribe to our channel! http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Starting in the late 20th century, modern streetcar proposals started rippling across municipalities in the United States. They’re touted as infrastructure carrying benefits ranging from the social to economic and the environmental. But these projects often make appearances in the news as costly, blunder-filled experiments in public policy.
Cities are willing to bet big on this technology for its potential to develop the local economy. But there is some disagreement as to whether the streetcar is driving this progress, or if it is simply the result of planning around the streetcar.
If you’re looking for more information on public transportation and urban planning, here are a few links:
This interactive map by Yonah Freemark and Steven Vance allows you to zoom in on all public transportation projects across North America. http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/transitexplorer/#6/38.617/-78.673
This paper by Randal O’Toole of the CATO institute looks closely at the policy winds that drives streetcar proposals. https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/desire-named-streetcar-how-federal-subsidies-encourage-wasteful-local-transit-systems
For more information on New York City’s streetcar proposal, you can check out the Friends of the BQX website here: http://www.bqx.nyc.
For a view of local opinions on the BQX, you can check out this documentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8XmFjZOSSo&feature=youtu.be
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 to get up to speed on everything from Kurdistan to the Kim Kardashian app.
Check out our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H
Or on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o
Transcript
The resurgence of streetcars
0:01 · This is Washington, DC’s Streetcar.
0:05 · It runs through 2.2 miles of mixed traffic in the United States capitol.
0:10 · And it was once part of an ambitious 37 mile streetcar network for the city.
0:15 · But those plans have changed drastically.
0:18 · The project was delivered 7 years past its deadline and tens of million dollars over budget.
0:25 · The idea was to increase mobility for residents while revitalizing an economically depressed area of the city…
0:31 · But it’s had trouble along the way…..
0:34 · Similar problems sprung up in Atlanta and Salt Lake City too.
0:37 · Still, there’s a massive resurgence of streetcars underway.
Why cities build streetcars
0:41 · Since 2001, about a dozen streetcar systems have cropped up across the country.
0:46 · But why do so many cities want streetcars?
0:50 · The general goal is based on the idea that if we build more densely around our transit stations, then we’ll convince more people to walk around, bike around, and take transit to get work to get to school and other destinations.
1:06 · Streetcars are also touted for their ability to add a certain… je ne sais quoi to a neighborhood.
1:11 · You know, every city in the country even around the world wants to have some type of train going through their city because they see it as a positive, modern looking and modern feeling public transportation system.
1:24 · The case for building streetcars has historical precedent.
1:27 · They’ve been around since the 19th century, when they were first horse-driven.
History and the Portland model
1:31 · Later, in the 20th century, the electrical versions became really popular in cities.
1:36 · Their popularity started to fade when cities turned their focus to building infrastructure for buses and cars.
1:41 · But in the last decade or so, streetcars have made a comeback.
1:45 · There’s been a lot of excitement and enthusiasm about urban living and some of that comes with excitement about mass transportation.
1:52 · But big, sort of traditional heavy rail subway projects are very, very expensive.
1:58 · So cities look for something cheaper that they can do and a lot of them have come up with streetcars.
2:05 · The Portland Streetcar was one of the first in the new wave and has led the way for other cities.
2:10 · Its success is often cited in proposals to exemplify the benefits of a modern transit system.
2:15 · But all streetcar proposals are not created equal.
Challenges of mixed traffic
2:18 · Some have seen roaring success…
2:19 · While others, like in Atlanta and D.C see a ton of criticism The problem is that having gone for mass transit on the cheap you get transit that isn’t very useful for transportation.
2:32 · It looks nice — you have this cool shiny new train — but if you’re running in mixed traffic you’re gonna go as slow, or often times slower than a traditional bus.
2:41 · Aside from the slow pace, limited connectivity has kept commuters away in DC.
2:46 · I’ve been living here for 37 years and I like the streetcar.
2:56 · It’s convenient, the only thing I don’t like about the streetcar is that it doesn’t go far enough.
3:01 · I wouldn’t use the streetcar over the bus because the bus takes me straight to my job.
3:02 · Right in front of my job.
3:03 · The streetcar doesn’t go over the hill, which I didn’t think made sense, but…
Economic development focus
3:09 · So if they’re not improving the commute, why is there a push for more streetcars?
3:13 · From my perspective they are almost entirely designed to support economic development and not increase mobility.
3:22 · In Portland, for instance, planners actively sought development adjacent to the streetcar.
3:27 · Our narrative was pretty development focused early on, to the point where people were saying the only the only reason you built the streetcar was for development purposes.
3:35 · Now that we’re carrying upwards of 16,000 passengers a day it’s very much a mix.
3:42 · The system succeeded because Portland Streetcar worked with developers to support their plan.
3:46 · You have to really look at the development side of things.
3:49 · Having the rail on the ground is significantly important for them.
3:52 · To see the commitment from the city for them to make catalytic investments is is important.
3:57 · Right?
3:58 · We’re asking these developers to build something that they may not build anyway, but for the rail investment.
4:05 · There’s a little bit of quid pro quo there.
4:09 · That kind of focus on economic development is at the heart of other projects too.
4:14 · The Brooklyn-Queens Connector, or BQX, a state-of-the-art streetcar that will run from Astoria to Sunset Park, and has the potential to generate over $25 billion of economic activity for our city over 30 years.
4:31 · Projections aside, the Brooklyn Queens connector has already proven to be a contentious issue.
Debating transit investments
4:35 · I think one clear reason why the project has been advanced is, is similar to the streetcar projects being discussed around the country which is that there is an economic development goal in the brooklyn and queens waterfront by some major investors who want to improve transportation for basically the new towers that are being constructed along the waterfront.
5:00 · The motivation behind development, and its effects make for a messy debate.
5:04 · A year after its launch, D.C. is starting to see the development that tends to follow transit.
5:10 · A string of luxury apartments, restaurants and stores has fueled a real estate boom along H-street.
5:15 · There is evidence that suggests that government expenditures of any sort that provide a public benefit will provide a sort of a stimulus for development You know whether their parks, whether they’re investments in neighborhood retail improvement, whether they’re better sidewalks — but it doesn’t have to be a streetcar.
5:32 · There are many ways to attract new investment and the streetcar may not be the ideal one or even the right one.
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.
Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o
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.
This Greek island solved its rubbish problem - by getting rid of its landfill entirely
euronews, 09 04, 2026
Video (8:00)
Description
This Greek island solved its rubbish problem - by getting rid of its landfill entirely
Most small islands have little choice but to bury their rubbish in a landfill. Tilos in Greece has found another way. Euronews visited the world’s first zero-waste island to see how its system works, and whether other places can do the same.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2026/09/04/this-greek-island-solved-its-rubbish-problem-by-getting-rid-of-its-landfill-entirely
Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/euronews?sub_confirmation=1
Watch our LIVE here: https://www.youtube.com/c/euronews/live
Subscribe to our thematic channels:
NoComment: https://www.youtube.com/c/nocommenttv?sub_confirmation=1
Euronews Green: http://bit.ly/2sMsaDB
Euronews Next: https://www.youtube.com/c/EuronewsNext?sub_confirmation=1
Euronews Travel: https://www.youtube.com/c/EuronewsTravel?sub_confirmation=1
Euronews is available on YouTube in 12 languages: https://www.youtube.com/user/euronewsnetwork/channels
Transcript
0:08 · Small islands likeos here in Greece all face the same problem rubbish shipping it somewh else is just too expensive islands do what used to do bury everything [μουσική] in a landfill out of sight out of mind but few years ago [μουσική] decided to stop doing that today this is officially [μουσική]
0:36 · [μουσική] is in the southeast of the Greek archipago draws visitors who quietines like Mavis Williams who bought a house here years ago. But then she was told something unexpected.
0:59 · ating goodness is really going to work because you know we have a village which has got little narrow streets how they going to get up and collect all this waste before we had these big huge bins and they were overflowing people would leave things beside it resident specials to sort and organic waste at home for the collection teams to pick They’re so efficient at collecting everything you don’t feel that you’ve got waste hanging around at all.
1:27 · Every waste bag and bean in carries an individual QR code when collectors scan they log the weight of each bag on the spot.
1:39 · managers run more [μουσική] effidy [μουσική]
2:05 · [μουσική] Βλέπουμε αν είναι διαλεγμένες σωστά σε ανακύκλωση. Μη ανακυκλώσουμε και οργανικά και το λέμε στους κατοίκους και τους ενημερώνουμε αν είναι σωστό ή λάθος. Και όταν χρειαστούνε κάποια βοήθεια είμαστε πρόθυμοι να τους βοηθήσουμε αμέσως.7% used to send [μουσική] 87% of waste to landf that figure is now zero.
2:30 · The island has no landf all the [μουσική] once a large rubbish heap with plastic blowing on beaches the center of circular inovation where all the waste [μουσική] is sorted and processed.
2:49 · Αυτή τη στιγμή στεκόμαστε πάνω στον παλαιό χιτά της στύλου ο οποίος έχει κλείσει. Δεν υπάρχει πλέον επιλογή ταφής και έχει αντικατσταθεί από ένα νέο σύστημα, ένα σύστημα ανακύκλωσης. [μουσική] Είναι ένα νησί το οποίο παράγει απόβλητα, αλλά δεν θα βει τίποτα.
3:06 · Επεξεργάζεται το 100% των αποβλήτων. Για την ακρίβεια 330 τόν αποβλήτων παράγονται κάθε χρόνο, όπου το 60% είναι ανακύκλωση, το 30% είναι οργανικά και ένα 10% που μένει δεν είναι τίποτα άλλο παρακαύσιμο που γίν που δίνεται τις μετοβιομηχανίες. [μουσική] aluminium, batteries, textiles, and more. Not rubbish [μουσική] but valuable raw material for cycling.
3:50 · Είναι ο βασικότερος λόγος ε για να επιτύχει ένα τέτοιο πρόγραμμα, το να συμμετέχουν οι πολίτες και να μπορέσουνε να διαχωρίσουν από πριν τα υλικά. Καθώς όταν δεν είναι διαχωρισμένα τα υλικά σωστά, είναι πάρα πάρα πολύ δύσκολη η δουλειά μας εδώ πέρα. [μουσική] [μουσική] Εδώ πέρα έχουμε το τελικό προϊόν από την κομποστοποίηση των οργανικών υποπροϊόντων.
4:32 · Αυτά είναι πάρα πολύ βοηθητικά για το έδαφος, καθώς τις περιέχουν θρεπτικά που μπορεί να βοηθήσουν στην ανάπτυξη και στην καλλιέργεια των φυτών της στήλου. Δίνονται δωρεάν στους κατοίκους. circular [μουσική] transformation europeos that polygreen grey [μουσική] zero concepting regionth [μουσική]
5:22 · Πήγαμε πρώτα απ όλα στα σχολεία οπότε πείσαμε τους μαθητές. Οι μαθητές το μεταφέρανε στους γονείς τους και από κει και πέρα άρχισε να διαδίδεται όλο αυτό. Πήγαμε, μιλήσαμε στους μεγαλύτερης ηλικίας ανθρώπους και τους είπαμε δεν θα έχετε, δεν θα έχουμε κάδους δρόμους. Και πού θα πηγαίνουν τα σκουπίδια μας [μουσική] δεν θα τα πηγαίνετε πουθενά. Θα ερχόμαστε εμείς και θα τα παίρνουμε από το σπίτι σας. Οπότε αυτό τους χαροποίησε. [μουσική] [μουσική] [μουσική] Engkainsell [μουσική]
6:33 · [μουσική] 43% [μουσική] reuseycle rather than simply dispos [μουσική] is secretary [μουσική] Έχουμε μπει σε μία λογική ότι τώρα πια δεν είναι απορρίματα, είναι υλικά. Όλα έχουνε δεύτερη ζωή και προσπαθούμε να βρούμε σε ό,τι οι άλλοι θεωρούν απορρίμματα, τη δεύτερη ζωή τους, την καλύτερη χρήση τους. Είτε
7:17 · ανακύκλωση λέγεται αυτό, είτε να γίνει κομποστοποίηση. Θεωρούμε ότι είναι κάτι το οποίο μπορεί να πραγματοποιηθεί παντού. Είναι θέμα παιδείας, θέμα εκπαίδευσης νέας γενιάς και είναι θέμα αντιμετώπισης των πραγμάτων. Πρέπει να βλέπουμε τα πράγματα διαφορετικά πια. The [μουσική] goer project is ready to grow. Regal auor plan [μουσική] to extend the model so that more islands across the properly. [μουσική] เฮ
Tiny home villages pop up for LA’s homeless ‘They saved my life’
ABC News, 10 28, 2021
Video (5:51)
Description
ABC News’ Will Carr reports on Los Angeles’ newest initiative to provide security and shelter for the homeless through villages of tiny homes.
ABC News Live Prime, Weekdays at 7 EST & 9 EST
WATCH the ABC News Livestream: https://bit.ly/3rzBHum
SUBSCRIBE to ABC News: https://bit.ly/2vZb6yP
WATCH MORE on http://abcnews.go.com/
LIKE ABC News on FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/abcnews
FOLLOW ABC News on TWITTER: https://twitter.com/abc
Transcript
Tiny home villages
0:00 · a different approach to helping americans living on the streets find homes for decades in los angeles has struggled to confront its homeless crisis but a new transitional housing project has the mayor hailing the program as the city’s best hope for change vibrant tiny home villages have been popping up in neighborhoods around the city offering shelter security and pathways to more permanent housing for those looking to get back on their feet abc’s will carr reports
0:33 · [Music] it’s been two months since roya shorts moved into her new apartment and she says every day with a permanent roof over her head is a blessing beautiful thank you i’m so thankful and god bless all of you guys i’m gonna sleep very good thanks bed to sleep in a kitchen table to eat on a sofa to lay on just a short time
0:57 · ago these were all basic living essentials that were out of reach for roya last year she found herself struggling to make ends meet amid the pandemic and a sudden loss of household income she and her adult son were forced to move out of their southern california home to survive they started living in her car and she didn’t know where to turn i thought what are we gonna do i was sitting and sleeping for a whole year homeless people living is very hard you have to look for bathroom you have to look for the shower you have to look for food yeah it’s hard
1:29 · it’s not easy roya eventually spoke with the social worker who told her about a new program offering homeless city dwellers a small clean air-conditioned space to stay temporarily she says she didn’t know what to expect when she pulled up with her son but once she stepped out of the car there was an unmistakable sense of community they take care of you like their own family is safe we have a roof on our head we can lock the door we have bathroom shower roya is
Tiny homes for the homeless
1:58 · one of hundreds of formerly homeless angelinos who have flocked to the city’s tiny village housing projects the program launched this spring with just a single collection of 40 colorful homes in north hollywood since then the program has expanded to neighborhoods throughout the city all the costs that we pay to keep people barely alive on
2:16 · the street is much more than just housing them and ending that condition this is unamerican to have people on the streets our veterans our kids this is not who we are and los angeles is showing what happens when we step up each one of these homes is 64 square feet and right now this is the largest tiny home community in the country it’s one of six here across los angeles and they’re planning to build more to try to combat the city’s homeless crisis and it’s not just the homes from laundry machines to meals on site residents have
Services
2:47 · access to a range of services it’s essentially a one-stop shop once the basics are taken care of case managers help plan what comes next including substance abuse counseling mental health resources job training and housing navigation the goal to move anyone who
3:03 · stays here into a permanent home within a few months we will not give up on you until we get you placed into permanent housing ken kraft is the man behind the mission along with his hope of the valley non-profit he’s had a hand in helping countless people living on the streets find permanent housing through the years the tiny village program run in tandem with the city is the organization’s latest push to help unhouse people who want to relocate do so but the charity isn’t intended for everyone to access this site you do have
3:32 · to live within a three mile radius and we have access and engagement teams that are already going out in the community building relationships letting them know about this site and there is a waiting list kin says that three mile radius is supposed to keep the tiny village’s concept at the neighborhood level as more villages take shape on city lots throughout los angeles the goal is to have people living around the block come to these transitional housing developments organically once they come
Neighborhoods
3:59 · in here it really is a stabilizing force because when people are on the streets they’re not really living they’re surviving now all of a sudden their basic needs are met they get three meals a day they get hot showers they get clean clothes they have access to laundry and all the services now the brain can start to think forward and
4:16 · that’s when we see hope ignited some neighbors are excited to see the program land in their backyards it’s a great thing it’s a great thing for these people that get to have a shelter hopefully uh it has more it’ll bring more people uh watching each other’s back and helping each other out he’ll bring the community together but not everyone’s on board a change.org petition garnering nearly 800 signatures is calling for the soon to be open tiny village next to a playground in highland park to be moved somewhere else we don’t
4:46 · have any issues with the tiny homes being built it’s just we don’t have any parks like here and that’s a part that we would use i mean there are people in our neighborhood that are selling their houses it’s something that we’ve contemplated on doing some residents say they’re worried the program will draw more homeless to the area leading to spikes in crime in lower property values
5:07 · what would you rather have an encampment or would you rather have a tiny home community and i haven’t had one person yet tell me i prefer an encampment because on site we can bring the services people need to help end their homelessness for roya those services have already made all the difference as she takes a new lease on life they saved my life they saved our life and it’s i fall in love with tiny homes
5:36 · hi everyone george stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the abc news youtube channel if you’d like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel and don’t forget to download the abc news app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching
Trains, planes and automobiles The state of U.S. infrastructure and why it’s hard to build things
Harvard Kennedy School, 11 25, 2025
Video (6:07)
Description
The state of U.S. infrastructure is improving, but not great, according to Samantha Silverberg MPP 2012, a former Biden administration official and visiting fellow at the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at Harvard Kennedy School. In this video, Silverberg discusses the challenges that face federal, state and local government officials who endeavor to fix the country’s infrastructure, from roads and bridges to tap water and transmission lines. Topics covered include:
• The importance of infrastructure to our daily lives
• Why it’s often challenging to get new infrastructure built
• What infrastructure priorities policymakers should focus on in the coming years.
You can read more about Ms. Silverberg’s thoughts on our website: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/taubman/state-and-local-perspectives/interview-samantha-silverberg-mpp-2012-taubman-center
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
The importance of infrastructure
0:00 · Listen, right now it takes too long and it costs too much to build infrastructure in the United States, and we need to do something about that.
0:10 · Infrastructure is so important for everything we do in our daily lives.
0:15 · Think about the roads you drove on or the train that you took to get to school or work today, the tap you turned on and the water you drank, the internet that you use, even the electricity that powers everything in our homes.
0:28 · But infrastructure is something that we really only pay attention to when it fails.
Current state and challenges
0:33 · The state of infrastructure in the US right now is better than it was, but still not great.
0:40 · The American Society of Civil Engineers gave US infrastructure a grade of C in its most recent infrastructure report card, and that’s really because of decades of underinvestment in our infrastructure that has led to crumbling roads and bridges, unreliable transit systems, power networks that are unable to withstand the impacts of climate change and so much more.
1:06 · There are tens of thousands of bridges in this country that are in poor condition.
1:12 · There are millions of Americans that still don’t have access to high-speed internet, which is far worse in rural America.
1:20 · Our airports and ports lag their peers in other parts of the world, and the list goes on and on.
1:27 · Infrastructure is funded and financed in a shared way through both the federal, state, and local government, primarily through taxes and user fees.
Funding and historical context
1:38 · There are some privately-funded projects, particularly things like power plants or electricity transmission.
1:44 · And then there are some that are a mix of private and public funding.
1:48 · You can think of airports or ports or toll roads are often common examples of public-private partnerships.
1:56 · Some of the most remarkable investments in infrastructure were accomplished by the United States government.
2:03 · You could think about the Hoover Dam, the Bay Bridge, LaGuardia Airport.
2:12 · These were all built during the New Deal.
2:15 · When there was a real national effort that provided the resources, the trust, and the commitment of the entire American population behind what the government is doing.
2:25 · I think there’s a real and meaningful tension between efficiency and democracy.
Overcoming bureaucracy
2:32 · When you want communities and the public to have a voice, which is a necessary and appropriate thing of any democratic process, there are often many veto points.
2:43 · That process can be exploited by actors who are trying to stop good things from getting done.
2:50 · The system right now is overly litigious.
2:53 · Things like environmental permitting, which have an important and good purpose, have been used as a tool to stop good projects, even clean energy projects that have an overall positive benefit on the environment.
3:05 · And as a result, these systems are getting in the way of progress.
3:09 · If we want to get things done, we need to take a hard look at the way things are currently done within our governments and within our companies.
3:17 · This means re-looking at rules and regulations and requirements that maybe each individually made sense, but when layered over years have created a process where well-intentioned public servants can’t get anything done.
Investing in public capacity
3:31 · The same time, we need to make sure that those public servants have the resources they need to do their jobs.
3:37 · My colleague and friend Zach Liscow at Yale Law School has recently published research that shows how state departments of transportation have actually shrunk over time.
3:47 · And those reduced staff have real impacts on the cost of projects.
3:52 · Zach has shown that as staffs have declined, prices have gone up.
3:57 · His team has also shown that experienced engineers actually save money on projects.
4:03 · So if we’re going to get things done, we need to invest in our public institutions, we need to invest in public servants, and we need to make sure that they have the tools to get their jobs done.
Successful projects and efforts
4:13 · When we think about infrastructure projects, it’s important to think of both the mega projects and the backyard projects because both of those types of projects have meaningful impacts on our communities.
4:23 · On the mega project side, one of the examples that many people raise is the Mario Cuomo Bridge in New York.
4:29 · This was the replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge.
4:31 · It was executed using an innovative procurement method at the time.
4:36 · It also went through an expedited environmental permitting process, and as a result of both of those activities, it was delivered on time, on budget, and, by some estimates, saved billions of dollars for the taxpayer.
4:49 · At the same time, I think it’s really important to think about those smaller backyard projects.
4:55 · In the Biden Administration, one of our priorities was to replace lead pipes.
4:59 · There are still 9 million lead pipes serving our homes, which are a source of toxic chemicals.
5:05 · Through money provided by the federal government, the city of Milwaukee has already replaced thousands of lead pipes.
Future priorities
5:12 · I think the top three infrastructure priorities for the next 10 years are, number one, climate resilience.
5:18 · We need to protect our communities from the impacts of climate change.
5:21 · The second is clean energy generation and transmission so that we could power our future.
5:26 · And the third is to close the digital divide, because we know that affordable, reliable high-speed internet is important for everything from remote school to work to accessing telehealth.
5:37 · I also want to say, though, that every community knows what their own priorities are and they can’t just be told by Washington where they need to invest.
5:45 · And so the feds need to continue to invest in infrastructure carrying forward the legacy of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act so that our communities can invest in what they need.
Trash containers making a difference in NYC’s war on rats
CBS New York, 08 06, 2026
Video (1:56)
Description
There have been fewer complaints about rats to 311, which appears to show trash container efforts are working. CBS News New York’s Dave Carlin reports.
For video licensing inquiries, contact: licensing@veritone.com
Transcript
0:04 · CALL IT A TRASHY TRIUMPH FOR CITY LEADERS IN THEIR WAR AGAINST RATS. AS DAVE CARLIN REPORTS, FEWER COMPLAINTS ABOUT RATS TO 311 APPEAR TO SHOW THOSE CONTAINER EFFORTS ARE WORKING.
0:17 · HIS EAST VILLAGE APARTMENT IS ON A STREET WHERE RATS SEEM TO HIDE DURING THE DAY. BUT AFTER THE SUN GOES DOWN, THEY’RE OUT FOR BUFFET TIME, SAYS JOHN HENNIGAN.
0:26 · AT NIGHT, THEY’RE VERY ACTIVE.
0:30 · ACTIVE ALSO DESCRIBES CITY SANITATION WORKERS DEPLOYING EMPIRE BINS. THE JOB IS DESCRIBED AS DONE IN PARTS OF HARLEM AND MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, WHERE WE SEE THE NEW BINS FOR BUILDINGS, NEW RAT RESISTANT CORNER LITTER BASKETS AND APPROVED SECURE BINS FOR BUSINESSES. FELIX MOLINA SITS IN A PARK HE ONCE AVOIDED FOR BEING RAT INFESTED.
0:50 · NOW IT’S NO PROBLEM AT ALL.
0:51 · MY WIFE ACTUALLY HAD A A FLOWER BED IN OUR FRONT WINDOW THAT WE COULDN’T KEEP FLOWERS IN BECAUSE THE RATS WOULD JUST COME IN AND DIG IT ALL UP AND TEAR IT ALL TO PIECES.
1:02 · AND WHAT ABOUT NOW?
1:04 · NOT NOT A PROBLEM.
1:06 · GREGORY ANDERSON IS COMMISSIONER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF SANITATION, AND WE ASKED HIM WHAT’S GOING ON WITH RAT SIGHTINGS CITYWIDE.
1:14 · AND YOU HAVE SUCCESS.
1:14 · SO IT’S ROUGHLY 22% DECLINE IN RAT COMPLAINTS IN THE FIRST SEVEN MONTHS OF THIS CALENDAR YEAR COMPARED TO THE SAME TIME LAST YEAR. CONTAINERIZATION IS THE REASON.
1:24 · HELP WITH RATS ROLLING.
1:25 · OUT NEIGHBORHOOD BY NEIGHBORHOOD. AND IT’S GOING TO TAKE TIME. ACCORDING TO THE CITY, THE CITY MUST BUY HUNDREDS MORE OF THESE AUTOMATED SIDE LOADING COLLECTION TRUCKS TO GO WITH THE EMPIRE BINS.
1:35 · EVEN THOUGH WE’VE TAKEN TWO 3% OF PARKING SPACES, IT’S REALLY MADE A BIG IMPACT ON JUST HOW THE NEIGHBORHOOD LOOKS AND FEELS.
1:45 · THE FOCUS NOW PARTS OF BROOKLYN, INCLUDING DUMBO, THAN THE REST OF THE CITY.
1:48 · WE WILL BE CITYWIDE BY 2031.
1:50 · SO WE’RE ESTIMATING AROUND 60,000 BINS.
1:53 · LOOK FOR THE PARTS OF BROOKLYN TO BE COMPLETELY CONTAINE
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?
Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►► http://wrd.cm/15fP7B7
Listen to the Get WIRED podcast ►► https://link.chtbl.com/wired-ytc-desc
Want more WIRED? Get the magazine ►► https://subscribe.wired.com/subscribe/splits/wired/WIR_YouTube?source=EDT_WIR_YouTube_0_Video_Description_ZZ
Follow WIRED:
Instagram ►►https://instagram.com/wired
Twitter ►►http://www.twitter.com/wired
Facebook ►►https://www.facebook.com/wired
Tik Tok ►►https://www.tiktok.com/@wired
Get more incredible stories on science and tech with our daily newsletter: https://wrd.cm/DailyYT
Also, check out the free WIRED channel on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV.
ABOUT WIRED
WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. Through thought-provoking stories and videos, WIRED explores the future of business, innovation, and culture.
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.
Vancouver’s Streetcar Drama CBC Short Film by Uytae Lee
CBC British Columbia, 01 27, 2020
Video (6:16)
Description
The City of Vancouver piloted the Olympic Demonstration Line ten years ago to promote the idea of streetcars as an alternative to buses and skytrains in the city. Uytae Lee learns that differing perspectives and priorities at TransLink make it very unlikely that it will return anytime soon.
Video
Uytae Lee
Writing
Uytae Lee
Beulah Lee
SOCIAL MEDIA
Twitter: @aboutherevideos @uytaelee
Facebook: @abouthere
The ‘About Here’ YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpA8SRNrqDpq3Ad7lOCfCLg
Transcript
The Vancouver streetcar trial
0:00 · it’s now been a full decade since the Vancouver Olympics and I vividly remember three things from that time Sidney Crosby scored that overtime goal Yuna Kim given the performance of a lifetime and oh yeah streetcars yes for a brief moment in 2010 you could travel from Camby street to Granville Island for free using fancy street cars from the future also known as Brussels it was all part of a pilot project called the Olympic demonstration line and it saw 550,000 riders over 60
0:28 · days until it was never seen again so what happened to it [Music] [Applause] so what happened to the Olympic demonstration line well I’ll show you there it is well there there it is yeah
Empty tracks and grand plans
0:58 · it was a really great time of the year to film this story but anyways as you can see today those tracks are very very empty and they’ve been like that for the last 10 years but that doesn’t mean we forgot about it you see the City of Vancouver has actually looked into bringing a street car back to these train tracks many times before and when
1:15 · you look into their plans you quickly realize that this Olympic demonstration line was really just the tip of the iceberg the City of Vancouver has been considering a streetcar route from Granville Island all the way to Waterfront station with future plans to extend that line to Stanley Park and Yale town and we’re just getting started there’s another plan for a streetcar line going all the way down to South Vancouver following the Arbutus Greenway and it looks like this could be a pretty easy win the tracks are already there and a lot of the groundwork has already been done ever wonder why East 1st
Benefits of streetcar transit
1:44 · Avenue in Olympic Village is so wide it’s because the city has planned for this streetcar to run down the middle of it now these streetcars would be a big change to public transit in Vancouver other than the sky trains most of our transit here relies on the buses so what do these streetcars have to offer well streetcars can carry more passengers than buses and as long as their tracks are separated from the roads they can be quite a bit faster too now they’re not skytrain fast but they also tend to cost a lot less most guide
2:13 · train projects cost billions of dollars but the first leg of this streetcar line was estimated to cost just a hundred and two million dollars in 2005 but for the City of Vancouver it’s clear that this project is more than just about moving people in that 2005 study the city’s case for building a streetcar line includes fostering economic growth and supporting tourism as well as helping revitalize neighborhoods like the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown the study also goes on to say what I imagine we’re all thinking streetcars are just cooler or as the
The case for building it
2:43 · report puts it smoother rides easier access and better viewing often translate into more riders due to the increased level of passenger comfort sounds pretty great right so why hasn’t the City of Vancouver brought back the Olympic demonstration line well it’s because it’s not their decision to make who makes that decision god I’m kidding
TransLink’s resistance
3:01 · it’s TransLink our transportation authority for the metro vancouver area if we do bring back the streetcar they would be the ones to operate it and translates response has been a hard pass at the end of that 2005 streetcar study is a letter from TransLink stating I’ll
3:22 · admit I was a bit disappointed to hear this I mean seriously translate a gondola to SFU is totally on the table but a streetcar in Vancouver where the train tracks already exist and you’re saying no thanks but I looked into it and I think TransLink has a point first off there’s already a transit option that takes you from Waterfront station to Granville Island the 50 bus it comes
Speed and capacity concerns
3:44 · every 15 to 20 minutes and it’s overcrowded just 1% of the time so there’s really no need right now for a larger streetcar but second and more importantly the street cart just wouldn’t be that fast according to the 2005 study it would move at just 18 kilometers an hour barely fast on the bus and when you take into account the differences in their routes the streetcar would actually take longer than the 50 bus to get from Waterfront station to Granville Island 17 minutes versus 11 minutes as much as
4:12 · I like this streetcar it seems like it wouldn’t really be much of a transit solution for this area but it’s also clear that its proponents don’t just see the streetcar as a transit solution they see it as an economic solution one that would bring more tourists Granville Island and bring new life and development to the neighborhoods it runs through but I’ll be honest with you that’s a much riskier strategy first of
Transit versus redevelopment
4:36 · all those neighborhoods along the streetcar line that the study mentions revitalizing our gentrifying areas where changes have been really controversial in the past but even if redeveloping these areas wasn’t easy there’s still no guarantee that it would actually happen a number of studies have shown that new streetcar lines don’t always result in new buildings development economics is just not that simple but ultimately I
4:58 · think we’re making a big assumption here that a lot more people will choose to take public transit even if it’s slower because they have a nicer vehicle to ride and that’s not exactly true I remember when I first moved back to Vancouver I was so excited to take the Sky trains but after 10 days 60 days a
5:17 · year well now I’m staring down to my phone like everyone else I still take the sky train because it’s the fastest way downtown but I honestly wouldn’t go out of my way to use it and that’s a lesson many cities are learning the hard way there are many examples of streetcars across North America that were constructed under this same premise and are now struggling to attract enough users some
5:39 · even after offering rides for free and don’t get me wrong here streetcars are very much a transit solution that can work really well under the right circumstances but at the end of the day people take transit because it’s a useful service because it’s reliable convenient and fast I think that’s the truth regardless of whether you’re on the roads or on tracks and the more we forget that the more we run the risk of building a transit service that’s just bells and whistles [Music]
When Mold in the Home Is a Problem
California Department of Public Health, 01 06, 2021
Video (1:37)
Description
A first animated video in the 6-part Mold in the Home Video Series. It is an introduction to the series and explains when mold in the home rises to the level of a problem that must be addressed.
The Mold in the Home Video Series is created by the Environmental Health Investigations Branch of the California Department of Public Health. It is designed to answer basic questions about mold in the home using plain language in English and Spanish.
Attn: The web link at 1:26 has expired, please use go.cdph.ca.gov/mold for more information.
To view this story with audio descriptions go to – https://youdescribe.org/video/3umAOe1eSUg?ad=6310fb4773ff460a05c83653
If you need additional information, or are having difficulty accessing this content, please contact askehib@cdph.ca.gov to request this information in an alternate format
Transcript
Intro
0:06 · Mold is in the air everywhere but you can’t see it It is not an issue until mold in your home finds water and starts to grow.
0:15 · Water can come into the home through roofing problems, plumbing leaks, bathroom moisture, and air gaps around windows and doors.
Signs of Mold Problem
0:26 · You have a problem when mold appears near a leak or other dampness in the home.
0:31 · Signs of a mold problem include the smell of mold.
0:35 · Mold has a musty odor.
0:38 · Sometimes you can’t see the mold because it is hidden behind wall paper, dry wall, or paneling, or is on the underside of carpets.
0:48 · The smell lets you know that it is an important problem.
0:52 · If someone cleans or paints over the mold, it will return.
0:56 · This is because the water problem causing mold to grow is not fixed.
Prevention of Mold
1:04 · Mold is common around bathroom tiles, windows, showers, and sinks.
1:09 · It can be hard to keep these damp places completely free of it But you can usually prevent this mold from growing by cleaning it regularly and increasing the air flow.
1:21 · For more information, see the next videos in this series.
1:25 · Visit the CA Department of Public Health’s website cdph.ca.gov/Mold for information about mold in the home.
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
Click here to subscribe to The Economist on YouTube: http://econ.trib.al/rWl91R7
Daily Watch: mind-stretching short films throughout the working week.
For more from Economist Films visit: http://films.economist.com/
Check out The Economist’s full video catalogue: http://econ.st/20IehQk
Like The Economist on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheEconomist/
Follow The Economist on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theeconomist
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theeconomist/
Follow us on LINE: http://econ.st/1WXkOo6
Follow us on Medium: https://medium.com/@the_economist
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.
»»» Subscribe to CBC News to watch more videos: http://bit.ly/1RreYWS
Connect with CBC News Online:
For breaking news, video, audio and in-depth coverage: http://bit.ly/1Z0m6iX
Follow CBC News on TikTok: https://bit.ly/3TnHioe
Follow CBC News on Twitter: http://bit.ly/1sA5P9H
Find CBC News on Facebook: http://bit.ly/1WjG36m
Follow CBC News on Instagram: http://bit.ly/1Z0iE7O
Subscribe to CBC News on Snapchat: https://bit.ly/3leaWsr
Download the CBC News app for iOS: http://apple.co/25mpsUz
Download the CBC News app for Android: http://bit.ly/1XxuozZ
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
For more than 80 years, CBC News has been the source Canadians turn to, to keep them informed about their communities, their country and their world. Through regional and national programming on multiple platforms, including CBC Television, CBC News Network, CBC Radio, CBCNews.ca, mobile and on-demand, CBC News and its internationally recognized team of award-winning journalists deliver the breaking stories, the issues, the analyses and the personalities that matter to Canadians.
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.
Subscribe to our channel! http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
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
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 to get up to speed on everything from Kurdistan to the Kim Kardashian app.
Check out our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H
Or on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o
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 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?
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.
Read More (Links):
Open burning: https://theconversation.com/health-crisis-up-to-a-billion-tonnes-of-waste-potentially-burned-in-the-open-every-year-152778
Waste around the world: https://datatopics.worldbank.org/what-a-waste/trends_in_solid_waste_management.html
Waste to energy as a solution (IEA): https://www.iea.org/articles/will-energy-from-waste-become-the-key-form-of-bioenergy-in-asia
Waste to energy as a solution (Project Drawdown): https://drawdown.org/solutions/waste-to-energy/technical-summary
Waste management in India (Pritpal Randhawa): https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsc.2020.00014/full
Environmental impacts of waste to energy: https://www.eunomia.co.uk/reports-tools/greenhouse-gas-and-air-quality-impacts-of-incineration-and-landfill/
Waste to energy in Europe: https://e360.yale.edu/features/in-europe-a-backlash-is-growing-over-incinerating-garbage
0:00 Intro
0:39 Why we need better waste management
2:00 Waste to energy
6:04 The Waste Hierarchy
6:51 A waste solution for the Global South?
6:47 Decentralization & Diversification
9:34 When incineration makes sense
Reporter: Amanda Coulson-Drasner
Video editor: Amanda Coulson-Drasner, Cem Springer
Supervising editor: Kiyo Dörrer
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?
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.
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
Read more:
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
Read more:
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 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.
Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG
Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Follow us:
Facebook: http://www.pbs.org/newshour
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/newshour
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/newshour
Snapchat: @pbsnews
Subscribe:
PBS NewsHour podcasts: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/podcasts
Newsletters: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/subscribe
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.
This video is presented by Wix, sign up at https://www.wix.com/go/vox
Subscribe to our channel! http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
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.
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.
Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o
Or Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H
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
For access to live and exclusive video from CNBC subscribe to CNBC PRO: https://cnb.cx/2NGeIvi
» Subscribe to CNBC TV: https://cnb.cx/SubscribeCNBCtelevision
» Subscribe to CNBC: https://cnb.cx/SubscribeCNBC
Turn to CNBC TV for the latest stock market news and analysis. From market futures to live price updates CNBC is the leader in business news worldwide.
Connect with CNBC News Online
Get the latest news: http://www.cnbc.com/
Follow CNBC on LinkedIn: https://cnb.cx/LinkedInCNBC
Follow CNBC News on Facebook: https://cnb.cx/LikeCNBC
Follow CNBC News on Twitter: https://cnb.cx/FollowCNBC
Follow CNBC News on Instagram: https://cnb.cx/InstagramCNBC
https://www.cnbc.com/select/best-credit-cards/
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
The Urban Jungle
Human Footprint The Urban Jungle Season 1
Episode 5 of Human Footprint (Season 1) - Released: 2023-08-02 - Duration: 00:54:41
<iframe width=“560” height=“315” title=Human Footprint The Urban Jungle Season 1 allow=“autoplay; encrypted-media; fullscreen” allowfullscreen=“” src=https://player.pbs.org/portalplayer/the-urban-jungle-7grk9d/?uid=2486c076-d951-436d-bf82-bac59b0b60f5&userPassportStatus=yes&callsign=KUON&station_id=b107784d-680c-48d5-8d48-ccb870cbb9dc&unsafeDisableUpsellHref=true&autoplay=true&unsafeDisableContinuousPlay=true>
Description
Shane explores three thriving urban species and envisions a wilder future for our cities.
Transcript
Shane, voice-over: Once upon a time, the Lenape called this place “Manahatta.”
A land of densely forested hills and slow-flowing streams… …it was, as Henry Hudson wrote in 1609, “as pleasant a land as one need tread upon.”
Today, all that remains of that place is the ground I’m standing on.
Rakim: If you was born in New York City Let me year you say, “You know that” Crowd: You know that!
In just a few hundred years, we cut down the forests, rerouted the streams, and leveled the hills.
In their place, we constructed a labyrinth of tunnels and pipes beneath a grid of asphalt streets lined with towers of concrete, glass, and steel.
In the blink of an eye, “Manahatta” became Manhattan.
Nas: Yeah, yeah Nas: Yo, black it’s time word?
Today, half of all humans– more than 4 billion people– live in cities.
But they’re not just a place to live.
Cities are a new ecosystem spreading across our planet.
One made by us, for us.
So how is this purpose-built human habitat treating us?
And what will it take to keep these urban jungles wild?
Nas: To the New York state of mind [Horns honking] Welcome to the Age of Humans… where one species can change everything and what we do reveals who we truly are.
This is “Human Footprint.”
The idyllic Manhattan of yesteryear was shaped by beavers, hydrological engineers whose vast earthworks transformed the entire ecosystem.
We humans alter the landscape, too.
We just do it bigger.
Humans have been called the ultimate ecosystem engineers.
And here in New York City, our talents are on full display.
Chorus: In Napoli where love is king When boy meets girl Simmering beneath this iconic skyline is a melting pot of more than 8 million people who speak 200 different languages and eat at over 1,400 pizzerias.
Man: As a New Yorker, I always lean towards pepperoni.
Shane: I can respect that.
Shane, voice-over: Bobby Corrigan is one of those 8 million New Yorkers.
He loves everything about this place: a good slice of pepperoni, the city lights, and, oh, yeah…rats.
In college, I had to save money, so I took a job as an exterminator.
They put me in the sewers right away… and I thought, “Oh, this is cool.”
Literally working your way from the bottom up.
Exactly.
Shane, voice-over: Bobby spends his free time writing poetry on the street, but by day, he’s a world-renowned urban rodentologist.
Are rats the scourge that people make them out to be?
I admire them.
I respect them.
However, they live in dirty areas.
Shane, voice-over: And, uh, that dirt got cooties.
It’s viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoans.
55 different diseases.
55?
Wow.
OK. And think of the plague, Shane.
You know, I mean, 25 million people go down with the black rat and their fleas.
Yeah.
Shane, voice-over: No place needs Bobby’s expertise more than New York, where it seems like rats are pretty much everywhere.
Here we are, sitting at a restaurant.
If that door over there is not pest proof into the pizza shop, across the kitchen counter, and urinates and defecates and leaves a film, and then someone touches the film the next morning, and then, you know, boom.
This pizza’s tasting a little less good now.
Ha!
Yeah.
Shane, voice-over: It was time to walk off that pizza on what Bobby calls a rat safari.
We’re gonna cross over here, Shane.
There’s a park here.
Here we are, almost at the end of June.
You know, their breeding season is in full swing.
Love is in the air.
Love is totally in the air, and families are growing.
Narrator: We know that rats are the most prolific of all mammals.
A single pair of rats would become 360 million in the short space of 3 years.
As the sidewalks begin to deteriorate, the rats will move below the sidewalks for their burrows.
You’re literally sometimes walking right over the tops of the heads of rats.
Sometimes, rats will go right up the tree if there’s a bird nest up there.
They’re predacious on those birds.
Is the reason why you’re wearing the hard hat because a rat might jump out of the tree onto you, and is that something I need to worry about?
Actually, that would be cool if they would jump onto me.
I’d like that a lot.
[Laughs] Shane, voice-over: The longer rats live in our cities, the better they get at it… and the harder we try to keep them out.
Here we have something that’s very common: the bait box.
The rats will go inside that box and find the poison bait.
And 8, 9, 10 days later, they die.
Shane, voice-over: But no matter how much poison we throw at the problem, we’re also throwing rats a lifeline.
Bobby: The rats are gonna be where the food is easy to get to.
All they have to do– 50 feet away, right there.
Shane, voice-over: New York City has 25,000 restaurants– not counting the pizzerias– and millions of home chefs.
3 nights a week, every one of them puts their trash not in a dumpster, not in a can with a lid, but right on the curb.
Bobby: Food in a big city of high-density humans?
Extremely reliable.
So this becomes, like, basically the rat buffet.
It does.
Shane, voice-over: They say if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
And rats…well, they made it.
But how did they get here in the first place?
[Squeaking] Man: If we want to know the story of rats in New York City, we have to know what were they doing before they got here.
Shane, voice-over: This is Jason Munshi-South.
He’s a biologist who loves New York City almost as much as he loves rats.
[Ships’ horns blare] When the brown rat made it here, it sort of hit the jackpot.
Shane, voice-over: The brown rat, or Rattus norvegicus, probably originated in East Asia, where it was first drawn to human settlements by agriculture.
But as people around the world moved into dense cities full of trash, human waste, and safe hiding places, rat populations soared.
Without meaning to, we built a rat paradise.
Narrator: Rats don’t have to go to much trouble to find homes because we provide these for them, made to order, everything but the welcome mat.
It’s like, “Oh.
There’s this massive free food here now, and all I gotta do is hang around these people.”
Shane, voice-over: At the height of European imperialism, rats were already entrenched in cities and ports across the Old World.
So when European explorers sailed west into the unknown, rats did what they’ve always done and came along.
Where we are now is where the Dutch bought the island or stole the island.
I put my money on stole, but go ahead.
But the original… Shane, voice-over: By the early 1900s, it wasn’t just white human settlers who’d colonized all of North America.
It was also rats.
But not all rat habitat is created equal.
I’m gonna show you some different pressures in different parts of the city.
OK. We’re gonna go get that New York City tour.
Yeah, let’s do it.
All right, awesome.
[Engine revving] [Woman singing indistinctly] Jason: Yeah, as you’re driving from Battery Park, where the rats first came in, up to here, you know, this is one of the great rat neighborhoods of the world.
[Shane laughs] Shane, voice-over: But if you keep rolling north, the whole vibe changes.
And Jason’s got the data to prove it.
Jason: We got basically about 70,000 points where rats have been identified.
And this is the outcome of the map, where the green areas are really good rat neighborhoods, like where we are right now, right about there, near Tompkins Square.
But then see this red area here south of Central Park?
-Uh-huh.
-That’s Midtown, where there isn’t a lot of residential.
The companies pay extra money to have the streets cleaned up.
And it seems to create this almost, like, dead zone for rats.
Shane, voice-over: Jason can predict the size of rat populations in different neighborhoods by looking at data on humans.
Jason: Areas that are highly residential and mixed commercial that have a lot of restaurants, super predictive of rats, not surprisingly.
And older neighborhoods with older buildings, they really like that.
Shane, voice-over: The places where rats have food to eat and places to hide are the places they thrive.
On the flip side, take those things away and the rats disappear, too.
It seems so simple.
And yet, somehow… Bobby: Go to any city around the world and it’s plagued with rats.
We are not winning this war.
Shane, voice-over: Rodenticides, or rat poisons, have become a go-to weapon in the war on rats.
But rats are becoming resistant, pushing people to switch up the formula and apply even more rodenticides to keep rat populations in check.
And it’s not just poisons.
Our campaign against rats has grown into a $3 billion-a-year effort, involving legions of people around the world.
We’ve even conscripted other species into the war effort.
[Indistinct chatter] All right.
So this is our service center.
Shane: It’s like the gym, playhouse, sauna, exercise room, all together.
OK. All together, all together.
Shane, voice-over: When Scott Mullaney and his wife Angie aren’t cruising down a scenic highway… [Revving] …they’re training little dogs to do a big job.
[Engine revs, tires squeal] Instead of poison or traps, their company uses dogs to kill rats.
It’s actually nothing new.
As cities grew bigger and denser in the 19th century, rat populations exploded, and people created whole new dog breeds just to kill them.
We’ve worked them on top of 12-story buildings.
We’ve worked them in supermarkets.
We’ve worked them on airplanes.
We’ve worked them on trains, on trains, planes, and automobiles.
I mean, really, any environment you can think of.
Shane, voice-over: Over the years, Scott and Angie’s small team has killed more than 30,000 rats.
Scott: All right, you’re gonna leash up.
Here ya go, kid.
There ya go.
Dogs always give 100%.
They just love what they do.
We’re just gonna finish up so we can close up and go.
Last but not least.
[Engine starts, revs] [Distant siren] [Squeaking] OK, guys, so what we’re gonna do is, we’re just gonna take the leashes off the dogs.
I want to start right over here.
And you can see his kinetic energy.
He just– he’s on point right now.
He knows what the deal is.
Take the leash off and unleash them now.
Shane: It’s game time.
Scott: OK, we got something over here!
[Growling] Angie: Wooo!
Shane: Wow!
Scott: Good job.
This is bananas.
Shane, voice-over: It looks like chaos, but this is actually highly coordinated.
The dogs find the rats with their keen noses.
The handlers move dumpsters and pallets to expose them, and the dogs finish the job.
Yep.
Inside the bait box.
Shane, voice-over: Oh, and the hockey sticks?
Those are for cutting off escape routes.
Angie: Wooo!
Ohh!
Shane, voice-over: The dogs look like they’re having a blast.
The rats?
Well, not so much.
Scott: It’s still alive.
Hold on for a second.
Shane: Oh, my God!
Angie: Hey!
Scott: Yep.
Yeah, just make sure that nothing takes off the other way.
Angie: Good job, guys!
Scott: OK, we’ve got something over here, I think.
[Soft crunching] There are things that I have seen that I cannot unsee, and I will be having a whole different kind of nightmare from now on.
[Both laugh] What do you think our situation with rats says about us?
I think it’s pathetic.
As long as human beings continue with their sanita– poor sanitation habits, OK, and their lack of concern, we will never get rid of rats.
They’re here to stay.
Shane, voice-over: When people come together to live in cities, we create the perfect environment for rats.
They’ve been living with us for centuries.
When European settlers brought them to the New World, rats just had to keep doing what they were best at to thrive here, too.
But further south, in the Caribbean, another species is evolving before our very eyes to fit into an ever-more-urbanized world.
[Horn blares] Juan Ponce De Leon founded the settlement that became San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1508, making it one of the oldest colonial cities in the Americas.
500 years later, that tiny colony has grown into the third-largest city in the Caribbean Islands.
But amazingly, you can still see native wildlife here.
If you walk through the city, you’ll just see them on everything.
Shane, voice-over: Kristin Winchell is an expert in urban evolution.
She studies lizards called anoles, which live all over the American tropics.
For Kristin, anoles aren’t just a scientific inspiration.
They’re also her artistic muse.
[Foamer sputtering] So for you, I guess first of all, what is the greatest animal, and why is it anoles?
Ha ha!
I don’t know.
They’re just fantastic, little critters.
They’re so expressive and so charismatic.
And, I mean, they’re also great for scientific study.
Shane, voice-over: If you can’t tell, I’m a big anole fan, too.
I used to catch them as a kid in South Carolina and I’ve been studying them since grad school.
In fact, Kristin and I actually work together on anole research here in Puerto Rico.
So of all the places to study these lizards, why cities?
But I feel like most people, they’re like, “OK, I want to study them, like, in forests,” and things like that.
You decided to go study them in the city.
It was because I was looking for a species that might be adapting to urban environments.
I came across anoles and started reading about their rich evolutionary history and rapid change after you modify the environment.
Shane, voice-over: Anoles might seem like unlikely science heroes, but biologists have been studying them for decades and published literally thousands of papers on them.
There are more than 400 species of anoles that live throughout the Caribbean, Central and South America, and the Southeastern U.S. And I just had this moment where I was like, “If this is happening, it’s in these guys.”
Shane, voice-over: Once you know what you’re looking for, anole adaptations can be easy to spot.
You see, species that live in different habitats have different traits: big toe pads that help them stick to leaves in the treetops; long legs that allow them to run fast on the ground; short legs that help them climb without falling on the tiniest twigs; and so on.
Kristin’s question was, which of these traits, if any, would help anoles survive in the city?
Kristin: All right, let’s find some lizards.
Shane, voice-over: Kristin and I study the Puerto Rican crested anole.
Step one is to find out whether urban and forest anoles are different from one another.
Kristin: Say it, and the lizard gods will deliver.
Yeah, there’s a female right there.
Shane, voice-over: So we hit the streets to catch some lizards.
Kristin: Oh, she’s squirrely.
Shane: You’re too slow, K. Stop embarrassing yourself on TV.
I had one and then I let–yeah, OK.
Thanks, Shane.
Ha ha ha ha!
That’s real nice.
Invite me on your show and then make fun of me.
Shane: Ha ha ha ha!
Shane, voice-over: Catching anoles is a delicate scientific process involving a fishing pole and some string.
Luckily, I came prepared… maybe a little too prepared.
Who comes out catching anoles in flip-flops?
This is how you catch urban anoles!
You don’t need those big boots.
[Laughs] You go out in your hiking boots and your field clothes, well, you’re gonna get a lot of looks.
You dress casual like you’re going out on– for a little walk, even bring a little boom box with you.
That helps a lot, ’cause no one walks around doing sketchy stuff listening to reggaeton.
Kristin: Got him first.
Shane: Ha ha ha!
Hey, bud.
We measure with a digital X-ray the–all the bones in the body.
And you can see that they have these enlarged toe pads on the fore and the hind feet.
And so if you were to zoom way in on those, you’d be able to see these tiny scales, and those let the lizards cling to the smooth surfaces.
Shane: So for the Puerto Rican crested anole, what did you find?
One of my initial findings was that in the city, the lizards had longer limbs relative to their body length, larger toe pads with more of these specialized scales on the toe pads.
OK. Shane, voice-over: These are exactly the kinds of adaptations you might expect to see in cities, based on what we already know about anoles living elsewhere.
Kristin: They’re clinging to things like glass and metal and even painted concrete, which is a lot smoother than anything you find in the forest.
And so there’s kind of this combined selective pressure on toe pads, making them able to cling better, and limb length, making them able to navigate the structural environment better.
OK. Shane, voice-over: The urban lizards were different, but the real test was whether they could actually outperform their forest-dwelling counterparts when facing a uniquely urban challenge.
So I set up a lizard racetrack, and I fitted the racetrack with different surfaces.
One was tree bark, one was metal, like fence post metal, and then one was painted concrete.
And then I took high-speed video of these lizards racing up the racetracks.
And what I found was– or what I expected, rather, I should start there, is that the urban lizards would be able to run faster on the concrete and the metal and the urban substrates.
Those are the environments that they were living in.
Yeah, exactly.
And so they’d be better at doing that than the forest lizards.
What I found, though, was that the urban lizard’s just faster overall.
On anything.
On anything.
Even, like, bark and stuff that’s in forests.
Yeah, even bark, no matter what angle, no matter what structure we put on the track surface, they were faster.
They’re just hot rods.
Mm-hmm.
Shane, voice-over: In grad school, I studied how anoles in Texas– where the Polar Vortex causes rare but intense cold snaps– were adapting to the cold.
When I found out about Kristin’s work in cities, I realized her urban anoles could be facing a different kind of extreme.
Kristin: When I came down and tried out this big idea of “are anoles adapting to cities,” one of the things that I measured was body temperature and air temperature.
Shane, voice-over: Cities create what scientists call “urban heat islands,” areas with much hotter temperatures than the surrounding landscape.
So a few years ago, Kristin and I decided to find out how urban and forest anoles responded to extreme heat.
Sure enough, urban anoles could take the heat better than forest anoles, and we even found a few of the genes that affect heat tolerance.
These adaptations aren’t unique to any one city.
We found the same differences between urban and forest anoles again and again, all over Puerto Rico.
We can think of cities as the big Petri dishes that are replicated on a much larger scale.
Shane, voice-over: No two cities are exactly alike.
But for anoles, all cities have some things in common.
To survive on the streets, crested anoles evolved longer legs, bigger toe pads, and better heat tolerance than their forest relatives.
And it happened fast.
Some of our urban study locations have only been cities for 30 years.
That’s evolution in overdrive, even in lizard time.
So is this a feel-good story of animal adaptability?
Kristin: I think it’s a big mistake for us to think that all animals are gonna be able to adapt their way out of this.
We still are going to lose a lot of species as urbanization progresses.
OK. Shane, voice-over: Only two of Puerto Rico’s 10 anole species are found in cities, and just one, the crested anole, is really thriving.
So yes, some species can adapt, but the ones that don’t get squeezed out.
Kristin: I mean, that’s another reason why we should be studying the plants and animals that are doing well here, so that we can maybe engineer cities to be a little more favorable to wildlife.
Shane: So typically, when we think of ecosystems, right, we think of things like forests or deserts.
Should we consider cities as ecosystems as well?
Yes, absolutely.
And we should consider them as distinct ecosystems, just like we do all those others.
Shane, voice-over: Some folks aren’t as comfortable as Kristin with calling cities ecosystems.
But the more I learn about urban biology, the harder I find it to think of them as anything else.
Still, San Juan is no Serengeti.
For one thing, I don’t see any big predators in the streets.
But in major U.S. cities, that’s beginning to change.
With the second-highest population density in the U.S., right after New York City, San Francisco doesn’t seem like the ideal place for a large, wild predator.
But coyotes are full of surprises.
Just ask Officer Stephanie Pone.
One of the many things that I really love about this job is that every single day is a surprise.
Yeah.
It’s different.
There’s never a shortage of ways for animals to get themselves into conundrums.
OK. Nate Rose: Don’t you ever come up out the cracks And try to tell me how to get it Shane, voice-over: Stephanie’s sopapillas are the stuff of legend.
Rose: Spending any time just talking with me Shane: When she isn’t practicing her culinary craft, Stephanie patrols the streets for San Francisco’s Department of Animal Care and Control.
Rose: Tell me how to get it poppin’ really Stephanie: The most succinct way to describe it is that we are responsible for public safety as it relates to animals.
One time, I had a coyote call at Fisherman’s Wharf where the coyote was just chilling but being kind of a weirdo.
And I tried to approach to see if maybe there was something wrong, and the coyote got so scared that it jumped into the bay.
Oh, wow.
And then I had to do a boat rescue to rescue the coyote out of the bay.
And I was like, if I had just stayed out of it, the coyote would’ve been fine.
So it wasn’t like, “You’ll never get me, copper!”
And then he jumps into the– I mean, maybe.
I wouldn’t blame him.
[Laughter] Shane, voice-over: Stephanie’s department gets quite a few calls about coyotes.
I get it.
There’s something about seeing a predator walking down your sidewalk that would be very alarming.
Shane, voice-over: Coyote sightings are becoming increasingly common here, and not just in the city’s green spaces.
We see a lot of coyotes here.
We get a lot of reports in this area, but also in the neighborhood, which is part of the issue.
Shane, voice-over: It’s rare that a coyote actually harms a human or pet.
Still, public opinion of these predators is… let’s just say mixed.
Just like our beautiful city, the response is very diverse.
We get people that on one end, love animals, but they treat them like dogs, and that is terrible for the coyotes and it’s terrible for public safety.
And then we have the complete other end, where people think that they have no business being here and that they should all be killed.
Most people are somewhere in the middle.
Speaking as myself and not as a representative of the city, I’m quite fond of them.
I think it’s magical.
I never get tired of seeing them.
I also am a dog owner, and I have a teeny-tiny little dog who would be the perfect size for a coyote snack.
Shane, voice-over: For many people, it’s fear for their pets that tips the scales against coyotes.
It was 2015 when we started having coyote attacks.
Shane, voice-over: Karin Hu has lived in this neighborhood for 30 years.
I understand why people want coyotes in the city.
We love to look at wildlife, you know?
Maybe teaching people to appreciate the other types of, you know, things we have, like…
This last winter, I saw over 25 species of mushrooms.
I mean, that’s fascinating!
Shane, voice-over: When Karin isn’t teaching a course on psychoactive drugs at the local university, she’s out walking her dog.
And where coyotes are concerned, Karin’s vote is a “no.”
At least, not in her neighborhood.
Is your main concern the safety of your dog, or do you have other concerns as well?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, it’s– It’s all–OK.
If I didn’t have little dogs, I wouldn’t– this wouldn’t be my issue at all.
How do you go about deciding what belongs and what doesn’t belong?
It’s all values.
So my pets, the small dogs in this neighborhood, the cats in the neighborhood, are very high value.
And, yeah, there is value to having, you know, wildlife like coyotes around, but that’s a lower value, as soon as you start being a risk to our family members.
Some people feel uncomfortable and they try to, like, make a rationalization.
I just say, “No, that’s how we are.”
It just is what it is.
Yeah, we’re speciesists, you know?
We value some species more than others.
OK. Shane, voice-over: Historically, we’ve never valued coyotes much in the U.S. To this day, we kill almost half a million of them every year.
But it doesn’t seem to faze them.
Today, coyotes inhabit more of the continent than ever, including thriving populations in major cities.
So researchers want to know, what’s the secret sauce?
Why are coyotes so good at living in the habitat we’ve built for ourselves?
Woman: A big part of what I’ve done is walk around the city looking for coyote scat.
Scat, which is poop, just to be clear.
It is poop, yep.
OK. When I had you to myself Shane, voice-over: This is Tali Caspi.
If she isn’t playing one of my all-time favorite tunes on her upright bass, you might find her scouring the sidewalks for scientific treasure.
You ever have somebody walk by and just look at you like you’re an absolute maniac?
All the time, but actually, San Francisco is full of weird people.
So a lot of people just walk by and they’re just like– Makes sense.
Normal day, yeah.
Sometimes, you just gotta pick up some poop.
Totally, but when I do have those conversations with people, what’s really cool about it is everyone has something to share or contribute.
Yeah.
It’s pretty hard to be a resident of this city and not have had some kind of interaction or story with an urban coyote.
It’s so foggy.
Ha ha!
At this point, I’ve walked around 950 kilometers of urban trails in the city over the span of two years– Your Fitbit must be lighting up!
Tali: Oh yeah, it is.
Basically walking around, trying to find signs of coyote activity to help me find scat that I then pick up and bring into the lab.
And speaking of the devil… Shane: It’s coyote poop!
Tali: Fresh coyote scat right here.
Shane, voice-over: In the last two years, Tali has collected more than 1,300 scat samples.
In the scat are clues about the urban lifestyle of coyotes.
Everything they eat leaves trace evidence behind in the form of DNA.
It’s the DNA of the coyote, but then everything that the coyote ate as well.
Can you tell from the work that you’ve done, you know, like, how much cat DNA or, you know, Chihuahua DNA is in a coyote poop?
Yeah, so unfortunately, I can’t tell how much Chihuahua DNA is in a coyote poop, because coyotes and dogs are actually pretty similar, but I’ve definitely found some cat reads in the scat, but it is by no means the majority or most significant component of their diet.
OK.
The parts of their diet that have come out thus far as sort of the biggest contributors are pocket gophers, pigeons are pretty common, and then these livestock breeds.
so cow, chicken and turkey, pig.
And these are obviously not animals that the coyotes are hunting in San Francisco.
God, I hope not.
Yeah, these are either foods that people are giving to the coyotes or are sort of foraged from garbage bins, from trash, or from cat food and dog food that people leave out.
OK. Shane, voice-over: So coyotes are doing some hunting in the city, but like the rats I met in New York, they’re also making use of what we leave behind.
It may just be that city life is easy living if you’re a coyote.
From somebody who has been studying these animals, what is your take on coyotes in the city?
They’re here.
They’ve been here.
And they’re going to stay here.
Let’s say, tomorrow I could snap my fingers and take all of the coyotes out of the city.
They’d come back, because in all the surrounding areas, there are so many coyotes ready to just colonize an open territory.
The best thing we can do is think about coexistence with coyotes and how can we coexist with them as neighbors in our cities.
Shane, voice-over: That can be hard, because we build cities for ourselves.
These places are supposed to be for us, but coyotes shatter that illusion.
Maybe that’s why so many people have strong feelings about them, both negative and positive.
[Howling] Man: I love them to death.
I think they’re– they–yeah.
They are such a fantastic species.
Yeah.
They give us so many lessons.
Mm.
Shane, voice-over: Meet my friend Chris Schell.
This man can grill up a mouth-watering rack of ribs.
He’s also a professor at UC Berkeley, where he studies how coyotes and other animals live in cities.
How do you go about studying coyotes in this kind of environment?
We use techniques that we use in traditional ecological studies.
Everything from camera traps to fecal transects to GPS collars on the animals.
Shane, voice-over: This camera trap is one of dozens that Chris and his team have placed to observe wildlife in the city.
Chris: So we want to try and put the camera in places where we know wildlife are likely going to be, even though we know people are in the general area.
So let’s go ahead and just go out and view out and see, OK, did we get anything that is for us noteworthy?
Now, we’re super biased.
We’re always thinking about the carnivores.
OK. Chris: And here I already see we got a gray fox.
Shane: Oh, yeah!
Chris: If we continue to scroll, more skunks, another person, more deer.
Man, it’s a higher density of animals than I would expect.
Like, this is just over the course of a few days.
Right.
Wow.
Shane, voice-over: Here in the lush Berkeley Hills, carnivores like foxes and coyotes flourish.
But cities aren’t monoliths.
Just down the hill in Emeryville, the habitat– if you want to call it that– doesn’t look as inviting.
Chris: There’s a lot of concrete here.
Mm-hmm.
As we’re driving through, I’m seeing more built structures.
I’m seeing less vegetation.
I’m seeing less ways for animals to get from point A to point B. Shane, voice-over: But Chris’ team set up a camera anyway…just to see.
Shane: Are you getting coyotes in as dense a number here as you would elsewhere in the city?
So no, we’re not.
And the only species we’ve really caught on that camera have been ground squirrels or raccoons.
OK. OK. And that’s it.
So a good chunk of the wildlife that we saw up at some of the other sites up in the hills, gray foxes, for instance, they aren’t here.
Shane, voice-over: Animals know good habitat when they see it, and wealthy neighborhoods can be brimming with the things wild species need– trees, water, safe places to hide.
Chris: So property values can positively correlate with the likelihood that you’re going to see a coyote or other wildlife species in an area.
And that’s called the luxury effect.
Oh, OK.
So urban species trying to live bougie, too, is what you’re saying?
Oh, yeah!
Right, they’re trying to make it work, like, “Oh, but this neighborhood over here, though?”
So many of the historical processes that have happened in cities… think residential segregation via redlining, or urban renewal programs that then led to displacement, gentrification also, leading to socioeconomic disparities in and across this urban landscape, right?
This entire landscape is constructed, and when we understand how its construction leads to amenities and disamenities therein, we start to understand that we aren’t the only organisms that are being affected by this.
Mm.
That history, right, you’re talking about things, the discrimination, racism, redlining.
Basically, what you’re saying is, more than social, more than economic, they’re tangibly biological.
Right.
Simply put, the past is present.
Shane, voice-over: The noise, the air pollution, the heat, the toxic byproducts of industry, the impacts of urban living hit harder in some places than others.
Chris: Even cities as close as San Francisco and the East Bay or Berkeley and Oakland are so separate from each other.
And the animals, they give us these lessons through how they move, through what they do, through what they eat.
Some organisms, like raccoons, for instance, if they eat too many human foods, develop diabetes.
They develop diabetes!
Oh, wow.
Right?
Just ’cause they’re there doesn’t mean that they’re doing well.
Yeah.
So does the way that animals interact with their environment in a city teach us anything new about how we exist in a city as a species?
They serve as the beacons.
The “bioindicators” is the term we often use.
They are the conduits to allow us to better understand that many of these disparities that hit communities of color, low-income communities really hard are also the same things that are destroying the natural world.
The policies that separate us from us are also those same policies that separate us from the natural world.
Shane, voice-over: Many animals living in our cities don’t know anything else.
So they learn to survive against all odds, even if they can’t really thrive.
It kind of makes me wonder: What if we humans are the same way?
We are impoverishing ourselves, and that’s just the hard truth, that we are hurting ourselves and we don’t know it.
Shane, voice-over: This is Peter Kahn.
When he isn’t serenading the wild on his homemade flute, he studies our species’ shifting relationship with nature.
Peter’s interest in cities dates back to the nineties, when he asked kids in Houston, Texas a couple of simple questions.
We just asked this kind of preliminary question, “Do you know what air pollution is?”
And they said, “Yeah, yeah,” all of them.
Then we asked the second question, which was, “Does Houston have air pollution?”
And the significant number of children went from, “Yes.
Yeah, I understand what air pollution is,” to “No, Houston doesn’t have air pollution,” which completely blew us away.
Because, at the time, Houston was the most polluted city in the United States.
How could these kids growing up in the most polluted city in the United States, how could they not know about that their city was polluted?
And that’s the start, for me, some 30 years ago, in thinking about this issue, about environmental generational amnesia.
That the children are coming of age, and they’re constructing a baseline of what normal is.
Shane, voice-over: That mouthful of a phrase, “environmental generational amnesia,” refers to the way that each generation grows up thinking that their experience of the world is normal.
So in our urbanizing world, the less nature we experience, the less we think we need.
With each generation, nature becomes smaller.
Wilderness becomes a city park and then a row of trees in a median and then…nothing at all.
And thanks to this so-called amnesia, most of us never notice.
Peter: I think we’re building urban prisons.
I think we’re imprisoning ourselves.
Shane, voice-over: Peter’s concerns are rooted in real data.
Depression and anxiety are more common in cities than outside them.
And some studies show that exposure to nature can help, not just with mental health, but physical health, too.
It reduces stress, reduces obesity, helps eyesight, reduces depression.
I mean, the list is on and on.
Can modern cities be transformed into something that allows us to sort of reconnect in that ancestral way with our environment while still having all of the functional components of a city?
Yeah.
There’s some marvelous parts of cities, and I think we both appreciate them so much.
And it’s the coming together of different groups and different energies, different knowledge.
The creativity is so amazing in cities.
We can make them better and we should make them better.
Yeah.
Um… but here’s the thing.
They can get a lot worse, and unless we push back, try to make them better, they will get worse.
Shane, voice-over: We haven’t reached “peak city” yet, not even close.
By 2050, 2/3 of us will live in urban areas.
So as cities continue to grow, how can we create a less dystopian urban future?
Halfway around the world, architects and urban planners are pushing back and reimagining what city living can be, for us and the rest of nature.
In every city I’ve ever lived in, green spaces felt like an escape.
They were in the city but not of the city.
Singapore is different.
Here, nature is never more than a few blocks away.
Everywhere you look, buildings are exploding with life.
[Rooster crows] It feels like a miracle.
Woman: Is it your first time in Singapore?
Shane: It is.
Man, this place, it’s– I’ve never seen anything like it.
It’s incredible.
Shane, voice-over: If you ask Pearl Chee, she’ll tell you it’s no miracle.
It’s all part of the plan.
Pearl: We are challenging ourselves as architects whether we can design better.
We are creating a lot of concrete buildings, it’s like a concrete jungle, but we really want to bring the jungle in.
Shane, voice-over: Pearl is the architect who designed the Kampung Admiralty, the building we’re standing in now.
Pearl: Our design concept, it’s a very unique combination.
We actually have elderly housing, public housing, combined with healthcare, which is a medical center, commercial and some social programs, and a food court, yeah.
Shane: Oh, wow.
So that’s why it’s not gated.
It’s very open.
Anybody can actually come in and use the facilities here.
Shane, voice-over: Singapore is the third most densely populated city in the world.
The entire country is an island with only 281 square miles of land, but 5.5 million people live here.
In a city this dense, you wouldn’t expect much room for nature.
But it’s like they say: where there’s a will, there’s a way.
And by will, I mean law.
Legislation enables it to happen.
The building took the land.
So we need to do replacement.
The legislation actually requires a building to give back 100% landscape.
Oh!
100% of the site footprint has to be replaced into the building.
Every square inch of, like, green space that you take up, you have to put back in…
Put back in, yeah.
into the building somehow.
Into the building.
Shane, voice-over: A few years after completing the building, Pearl’s firm surveyed the animal life in Kampung Admiralty’s gardens.
50 different species had moved in.
Pearl: The species in this building is higher than the species on the ground park.
Oh, really?
Yeah, which is right nearby.
So…
Wait, so there’s more species within this construction than in, like, a natural space of the same amount of greenery?
Yeah, correct.
That’s incredible.
Thinking about an entire city built like this, basically, you’re talking about reforestation and urbanization as sort of one and the same.
Correct.
[Crows] Shane, voice-over: This development is a microcosm of what’s happening all over Singapore.
It’s not just one building or designer or architecture firm.
The whole city is teeming with life.
Narrator: It’s hard to believe that not so long ago, war surged around it and even in it.
Singapore, cosmopolis of the East.
Malays, Chinese, Indians, and British have taken time by the forelock, and the shops and market stalls dazzle the eye and make our mouths water.
As you sort of, like, move around the city now, you know, do you, you know, like, do you go to places and you’re like, “Oh, this is my baby”?
Yeah, yeah.
All the time.
[Laughter] Shane, voice-over: Professor Cheong Koon Hean is a music lover and life-long Singaporean.
She’s also a legendary urban planner.
A lot of folks credit her with shaping Singapore’s singular urban landscape.
BAER: Raise a toast to the GOAT, yeah Cheong: This is one of my favorite neighborhood centers in a public housing estate.
Because in Singapore, 80% of the people live in public housing in estates like this.
Oh, wow.
In highly affordable housing.
Shane, voice-over: Kampung Admiralty, the building Pearl Chee designed, is public housing, too.
And these places are cush.
The apartments are modern and clean, the amenities are incredible, and most developments are a 10-minute or less walk from public transportation.
And, of course, everything is draped in greenery, from the street level to the tops of the skyscrapers.
Where I come from, when we say “public housing,” basically, like, we call it “the projects.”
And I was actually raised a lot in public housing.
And that public housing and this public housing are not the same thing.
Well, you can’t believe it when you come to Singapore today, but, say, about 60, 70 years ago, actually, Singapore was a nation of slums and squatters.
It was also polluted and lots of traffic congestion.
Shane, voice-over: When Singapore gained its sovereignty from Britain in 1959, it was a city of 1.5 million people and massive, unplanned sprawl.
Tens of thousands of people had no place to live.
So the newly elected government created the HDB, or Housing and Development Board.
Cheong: And within 5 years, the HDB, they already built 51,000 units of flats.
It started from very basic housing, but now, of course, the quality is a lot better, as you can see around you.
Yeah.
Shane, voice-over: And public housing is just the beginning.
Singapore is a very small city-state.
It’s actually only half the size of metropolitan London.
Oh, wow.
But we are a country.
We’re not just a city.
So everything you need about a country, whether it’s for water, power generation, ports, airports, plus housing, shops, offices, industry, all has to be built within this tiny island city-state.
And so biodiversity and ecological balance became really quite an important concept.
Now, as we developed the land, of course we start to lose space for planting.
So what did we do?
We decided to move the greenery upwards into the sky.
And so, what you did is you just created new space.
And suddenly, you bring back all the biodiversity.
Back in the States, urban areas and wildlife are sort of like oil and water.
They don’t mix very well.
But what you’ve done here is something very, very different.
Over the years, we moved from being a garden city to a city in the garden because we started to plant so extensively.
And in the last decade or so, we moved from a city in a garden to city in nature.
In a place where you have limited space and you have this growing population that there are two very sort of competing needs.
Shane, absolutely, there’s always competing needs, right?
So it’s really this very important balancing act of allocating the right amount of land for different uses to create this type of an environment.
Shane, voice-over: And who orchestrates this balancing act?
It’s the Singaporean government, with their comprehensive “Master Plan” for managing the city-state’s ongoing growth.
By centralizing the control of urban development, Singapore paves the way– you see what I did there– for projects that fuse function and form.
Cheong: If you look behind us, the Punggol Waterway is actually a man-made river.
We dammed up two rivers to become freshwater reservoirs.
Now, the engineers wanted to connect the two reservoirs with a pipe– very functional.
But then the architects and the planners say, “Why do a pipe?
Why don’t we make a river?”
And so, this river connected the two reservoirs to balance and optimize the storage of water, but at the same time, it became a leisure facility.
So Punggol has a nickname.
It’s the Venice of Singapore.
Oh, that’s amazing.
Because we brought in water, right?
It has its aesthetics, but everything also serves… Function, yes, a function.
a very specific function.
Even the Punggol Waterway, there’s a family of otters that have come back.
Oh, that’s incredible.
They live on the Punggol Waterway.
Shane, voice-over: Singapore challenges a lot of what I thought I knew about cities.
No one’s saying that we should all be like Singapore, or even that we could be.
This place is unique.
90% of Singapore’s land is publicly owned.
The government determines what gets built and where.
And with everyone sharing the same tiny island, by definition, they’re all in this together.
Most places don’t have all that.
But I’m not sure we need it to re-imagine what cities can be.
I think the thing that stands out to me about Singapore is the intentionality.
I’m not sure if this specific model can be applied anywhere or everywhere, but I think they’re doing things that I think other cities can learn from.
We have to get our act together to make cities effective.
Creativity, innovation, and that will to survive and to want to do well are very, very strong drivers.
That’s human beings, right?
That’s what we are.
Shane, voice-over: Cities might just be humankind’s most remarkable invention.
Because we thought we were building ourselves a place to live, but we were really creating a new ecosystem, a place where nature has to adapt to live alongside us and some of our urban neighbors are more welcome than others.
City living brings challenges– for us and all the species that share our urban spaces.
But we shouldn’t forget that cities can also help us flourish.
In Oakland, Chris said something that stuck with me.
We are a communal species.
So for folks to think, “Well, if you just get outside the city, you’ll be OK,” nah, nah, nah, it doesn’t work like that.
We need to be able to have connection.
Shane, voice-over: That’s why cities aren’t going anywhere and why we need to make them better.
With a little creativity and vision, they can deliver that connection– to each other and maybe to the rest of our incredible planet, too.
Human Footprint is available with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video.
- video 'Nutty' situation in Lincoln Park WGN Investigates
- video 5 Tiny Pests That Could Be In Your Home Right Now Deep Look
- video America's deadliest road, explained
- podcast Curbing Urban Sprawl - Why Better City Planning Could Mean Better Health
- video How Can Walkable Cities Become the Norm One Small Step
- video Neighborhood Walkability, Weight, and Diabetes
- podcast Nsilo Berry on making buildings healthier
- film The Urban Jungle
- video Trash containers making a difference in NYC's war on rats
- slide Urban Infrastructure, Housing, & Public Health
- video Why managing chronic health conditions begins at home
- video Zoning Matters How Land-Use Policies Shape Our Lives