Ep 159 Zach Katz audio transcript from video version (Note: Not proofed)

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:19:22
Zach Katz
So basically what it does is it creates four guesses. It used to be three. Now it's four. Like of what it should look like it basically four. Yeah. Just potentialities. It determines what to put in based on how you prompt it. And you can be as general, as specific as you want. Like when I first started doing it, I was typing in Khafre Street.

00:00:19:29 - 00:00:21:09
Zach Katz
Right. And, and you saw.

00:00:21:09 - 00:00:35:06
John Simmerman
A modern pedestrian promenade with lots of greenery, benches and people. And so it's taking those cues. And then from an eye perspective, it's coming up with these options. That's awesome.

00:00:35:22 - 00:00:37:05
Zach Katz
Exactly. Wow.

00:00:38:00 - 00:00:39:20
John Simmerman
And what's the name of this program again.

00:00:41:05 - 00:00:48:01
Zach Katz
Called Daily Dollar, which is Daily, which is a play on Salvador Dali and Wall-E. Right.

00:00:48:13 - 00:01:21:03
John Simmerman
Yeah. Very, very cool. Hey, everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Journal. I'm John Simmerman, and that was Zach Katz with Better Streets. I Better Streets is really kind of taking the urbanism Twitter world by storm recently by presenting before and I don't want to say after but maybe future or planned or dreamed realities for our streets. In fact, it's a fabulous platform for better visualizing what our streets could become.

00:01:21:13 - 00:01:32:25
John Simmerman
It's a fascinating conversation. And Zach is truly a force of nature of creativity and entrepreneurship. So let's get right to it with Zach Katz.

00:01:36:12 - 00:01:38:23
John Simmerman
Zach, welcome to the Action Towns podcast.

00:01:39:27 - 00:01:41:25
Zach Katz
Thank you for having me. Super excited to be here.

00:01:42:11 - 00:01:52:03
John Simmerman
So, Zach, why don't you do this? I love to have my guests just give a really brief introduction of themselves. So who is Zach?

00:01:52:18 - 00:02:19:11
Zach Katz
I am an artist. Musician? I have, like, sort of casually studied, like, Dutch urban planning for a while. I've run a couple of businesses and I currently run a business selling Dutch bicycles to the U.S.. Straight from the Netherlands. And yeah, and as of recently, I started Better Streets.

00:02:20:01 - 00:02:31:19
John Simmerman
So, Zach, you just mentioned something about Dutch bicycles. What on earth is that? I mean, I know about the the, you know, better streets. I but what is this whole thing about Dutch bicycles?

00:02:32:29 - 00:02:56:28
Zach Katz
Well, I wanted to move to Amsterdam, and the best way to immigrate as an American is to start a business in the Netherlands and I realized that one of the things that really struck me when I was visiting is how amazing Dutch bikes are and how ubiquitous they are. And and then I sort of realized all at once like, Oh, you can't actually get these anywhere in the U.S..

00:02:56:28 - 00:03:04:07
Zach Katz
I searched for, like, hours trying to find Cortinas or Berger. So that's the idea there. All right.

00:03:04:21 - 00:03:10:29
John Simmerman
Yeah. There you go. Cool. And and is that also out on Twitter or how how do people find out about it?

00:03:11:29 - 00:03:25:17
Zach Katz
Yeah, it's a real Dutch bike scone. Okay. Yeah. There's also a Twitter, but yeah, it's a wee part for bike shops and the Netherlands, and they're shipped directly from top bike shops right to your door.

00:03:25:24 - 00:03:55:18
John Simmerman
Oh, fantastic. That's great. And you're in. You're absolutely right. It's I've had a couple of episodes where we've talked about, you know, really the power of the simple, plain Dutch bicycle. And, you know, there's just something so incredible about the relaxed, you know, upright positioning. And I've profiled Erin Rediker with the Plane Bicycle Program up in Winnipeg, and they they basically bring, you know, bicycles over in large containers.

00:03:55:18 - 00:04:22:01
John Simmerman
And so they'll they'll go and, you know, retrieve a bunch of the bikes that had been confiscated by the police and, you know, had had been abandoned and all that. So good stuff. I thought, well, I'll I'll be sure to pull up that that website. That was real Dutch bikes dotcom. Yeah, fantastic. Okay. So then that really sort of led to you like thinking about urbanism and streets.

00:04:22:13 - 00:04:25:21
John Simmerman
So how is it that you started the Better Streets Air?

00:04:27:03 - 00:04:57:18
Zach Katz
So when I was when I was living in Bushwick, before I moved to the Netherlands, this was like a year ago, basically. I yeah, I really wanted to like do an advocacy campaign to make my St Irving Ave car free. But I was kind of like and I've run advocacy campaigns in the past in Portland. I did. I led two campaigns, one for free streets and one for a protected bike lane.

00:04:57:19 - 00:05:20:18
Zach Katz
And yeah, the biggest bottleneck was always like commissioning renders, because it's so important to have these renders to like show people what you're proposing, what's possible, and exciting, inspiring them and whatnot. And if you don't have that, it's really like, what's the point of even doing a campaign? It's people don't care about. A lot of people don't even know what a protected bike lane is.

00:05:20:29 - 00:05:41:04
Zach Katz
So you really need to have a visual to show them. And so the way I got started was when I got access to Dali, which is the eye program that I use to make these images. I just started playing around with it and at first I was making like, you know, like dogs eating pizza or whatever, like the funniest stuff that you can do with it.

00:05:41:04 - 00:06:02:06
Zach Katz
Right? Right. But eventually I started, you can upload photos and you can edit them in the software. And I was like, what if I did my st? And so I did Irving and Greenough, which is the other street near me and I was like, Damn, this is really am I allowed to curse?

00:06:02:16 - 00:06:03:12
John Simmerman
Sure. I said.

00:06:04:00 - 00:06:28:22
Zach Katz
Okay, yeah. I was like I was like, Wow, this is really cool. And I, yeah, I was like, I showed my roommate and then I just kept making them and and eventually I was and I was just doing this to kind of procrastinate. I was working on some music and eventually I was like, I should probably like post this somewhere cause they're cool.

00:06:28:22 - 00:06:33:23
Zach Katz
And at first I've made a website and I was like, No one's going to see this website. And then I started putting them on Twitter.

00:06:34:03 - 00:07:01:20
John Simmerman
Yeah and yeah, that's. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. Well, hey, I pulled up your website for the real Dutch bikes, so let's put a bow on that here real quick. So this I'm just so excited about this. This is really, really cool. And I've I've had the honor to be there's Jason's why the Dutch bike is better. It's just fantastic.

00:07:01:20 - 00:07:26:02
John Simmerman
Jason's so cool. He's been on the podcast a couple of times, and so it's it's been wonderful, you know, having his influence in the scene, you know, especially out on YouTube and as well as on Twitter, too, because he's got a lot of stuff going on, a lot of people following him on Twitter, probably a lot of people that are following you or or, you know, also, you know, fans of his as well.

00:07:27:05 - 00:07:51:25
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's something. And so let's get let's pull up this Twitter Twitter site again. So this is the platform. This is where you decided to do it. And it makes perfect sense. I mean, when I look at the number of followers that you have, you're almost to 24,000 followers from basically from zero, right? I mean, you started putting these out there and you created better streets.

00:07:52:00 - 00:08:00:00
John Simmerman
I talk about that just in and of itself to be able to to literally take off like crazy.

00:08:01:21 - 00:08:26:16
Zach Katz
Yeah, I just started tagging, like, advocates that I knew and like organization tag and translate and bike loud in Portland and stuff. And that was kind of how I got the account to initially grow because they started putting and retweeting it and then obviously there's a huge, you know, a lot of a lot of urban is people on Twitter and it kind of just took off from there.

00:08:26:16 - 00:08:35:19
Zach Katz
I got some press like the next day, like literally the day after launching the. Yeah, that's just how Twitter works. I guess it just yeah.

00:08:36:08 - 00:08:54:05
John Simmerman
But what's great about it too is so let's pull up the most recent one that you have here just, just for fun so that people can get a sense as to what it looks like out on Twitter, because this is exactly what it looks like. You you put a tweet out and you basically just have the, you know, the name of of the street and you've got the before and then you've got the after.

00:08:54:16 - 00:09:14:28
John Simmerman
And, you know, this is the you know, this is off my iPad. So this is like a mobile, you know, version of what it looks like, you know, when you are interfacing with it as a customer or consumer. And then, of course, you can always, you know, click on the photo and get a little bit more of of a zoom in on it and then be able to scroll back and forth between them.

00:09:15:13 - 00:09:53:05
John Simmerman
But I mean, that's that's what it is. I mean, if you scroll down on your page here, you just go one after the other after the other of of these before and after. And of course, the before is the current condition. And then the after is your stroke of genius, your artistic, you know, rendition of it. Walk me through a little bit about, you know, those before and after is what what inspires you to a choose the particular street now that you're no longer just interested in your street, how do you find your streets?

00:09:53:05 - 00:10:01:04
John Simmerman
And then what? What, what? Where's that creativity come, you know, come from in terms of, you know, what would be best for this location?

00:10:02:07 - 00:10:12:11
Zach Katz
That's a super good question. And we're actually looking for people to help make them now. It's kind of the next step for the project. So if you're watching and you want to help get in touch.

00:10:14:11 - 00:10:37:29
Zach Katz
But yeah, I started off just making streets that I know and love and cities that I know and love, and it's great creatively. It's way easier to do that because I've had in my head what, you know, Hawthorne Boulevard in Portland should look like for four years. It's like, no, you know, and it is a little more challenging to do cities or streets that I'm not familiar with.

00:10:37:29 - 00:10:49:23
Zach Katz
But it also is kind of a it can be a fun, creative challenge, like, well, I mean, because, you know, part of it is just like esthetics, like, well, what looks good, what matches the vibe that like the buildings and yeah.

00:10:51:00 - 00:10:58:17
John Simmerman
Okay, let's let's blow through a few of these just for fun. So where is this? And, and then well, this is obviously the before.

00:10:59:06 - 00:11:08:23
Zach Katz
Yeah, it's Thoreau drive in Boston. Okay. Which is the highway that just cuts right through this beautiful park and disconnects the city from the waterfront.

00:11:09:06 - 00:11:13:00
John Simmerman
And then after your transformation, voila.

00:11:13:00 - 00:11:13:21
Zach Katz
The Netherlands.

00:11:14:18 - 00:11:17:04
John Simmerman
Fantastic. All right, what's. Where is this?

00:11:18:12 - 00:11:27:05
Zach Katz
This is Cincinnati, Ohio. Okay. Okay. Which is. I've never been to. Yeah, never been Main Street, I think.

00:11:27:13 - 00:11:32:00
John Simmerman
Did they did somebody serve this up to you and say, hey, try this?

00:11:32:00 - 00:11:45:04
Zach Katz
They might have you know, I have a list over spreadsheet of like a thousand requests people have made. And sometimes I like the ones to do and sometimes I just like browser and google maps that someone must have because I wouldn't do Cincinnati yeah accord.

00:11:45:19 - 00:11:48:19
John Simmerman
After your magic fantastic I love it.

00:11:49:24 - 00:12:18:28
Zach Katz
And here and now what I just want to mention the Cincinnati one is one. Oh, actually, sorry. I think I'm thinking of a different one. But you know, there's definitely like there's some progress like this image. I think it might have been this one actually resulted in like they're actually like making the street car great look fantastic. There was one before, but it helped.

00:12:18:29 - 00:12:19:19
Zach Katz
Yeah.

00:12:19:19 - 00:12:45:15
John Simmerman
And if I were to describe this, I mean, this, this particular image in Cincinnati is a yeah, it's just a run of the mill street. It looks like it's one way and couple lanes, beautiful buildings all around. So they mean there's wonderful architecture there. But yeah, I mean, it, it to me the scale of this is very, very European.

00:12:45:15 - 00:13:16:25
John Simmerman
I look at this and go, Oh yeah, I could totally see this as being a people oriented place. And so your rendition, what you did to it, you put a fountain in the middle. It's a complete pedestrian zone. You've got some trees planted in there. And so it really is a very, very impactful transformation. And and for for those people in the audience that are audio only, please know that we're going to have a bunch of these photos out on the website, on the active town's website and the landing page for this episode.

00:13:17:13 - 00:13:35:06
John Simmerman
I know it's difficult when you're not able to see the visuals that Zack and I are talking about. So we'll do our best to describe them a little bit more in detail. So it's a little more listenable as well. Okay, so now we're at this. This looks like New York is this New York.

00:13:36:08 - 00:13:40:04
Zach Katz
Washington Street in Dumbo and the Dumbo neighborhood in Brooklyn.

00:13:40:08 - 00:13:50:13
John Simmerman
Okay, Dumbo neighborhood in Brooklyn. And so now we're a little bit different scale, a little bit taller. It's which bridge is that right in the background there?

00:13:51:10 - 00:13:57:02
Zach Katz
Oh, man, I think it's the Manhattan Bridge. No, yeah, it's Manhattan. It's got to be the Manhattan Bridge. Yeah. Yeah.

00:13:57:02 - 00:14:18:09
John Simmerman
Okay, good. And you can see one of the buildings, you know, framed in the in the arch of the the the bridge there. And, and it's just all car space. I mean, you get two lanes of of parking, car parking. Why on earth is there any car parking in New York, Brooklyn and and then one travel lane and then transform.

00:14:18:09 - 00:14:23:28
John Simmerman
Voila we've got what? Describe it. What did you do here?

00:14:25:10 - 00:14:32:04
Zach Katz
Yeah, there's greenery and there's benches. There's just a place for people to chill and enjoy the view.

00:14:32:10 - 00:14:37:03
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. But what about the cars, Zach? What about the cars?

00:14:38:15 - 00:14:41:17
Zach Katz
What about them?

00:14:41:17 - 00:14:55:07
John Simmerman
So on is this one is just a massive freeway scene. I don't even know how many lanes got to be. 13, 14, maybe 17, 20 lanes. Where is this and what are we going to do to it?

00:14:56:13 - 00:15:03:26
Zach Katz
This is Toronto. I forget the name of the freeway. Never drove on it once, but yeah, it's true. It dropped. Yeah.

00:15:04:20 - 00:15:11:23
John Simmerman
Craziness. Okay. And this is what we did to it. We have this like a bullet train.

00:15:11:23 - 00:15:17:03
Zach Katz
Yeah, that's one of the problem. Sections for Dolly is a European style train.

00:15:17:06 - 00:15:31:27
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And not only is, is all of those lanes have magically just kind of disappeared and the train is now in there. The high speed train we also have planted a few things. What have you planted here?

00:15:33:01 - 00:15:49:20
Zach Katz
Yeah, there's some trees. There's a there's also a lake now. Yeah. It's like, what? What can you do to make it like, really pleasant? And, you know, you have the train for transportation, you have the park for just enjoying the scenery from the train or in the park, you know, during the park.

00:15:49:20 - 00:16:01:11
John Simmerman
And that train will be able to carry just as many, if not more people than would normally be able to travel on these 20 some odd lanes of freeway. Okay, another freeway, which one are we looking at here?

00:16:02:21 - 00:16:07:06
Zach Katz
And this is the BQE in Brooklyn, right? Maybe Queens Park. Yeah.

00:16:07:14 - 00:16:16:23
John Simmerman
This is I've heard of this this particular road before. It's notorious and. Oh, my gosh, what did you do to this thing?

00:16:17:20 - 00:16:20:17
Zach Katz
Well, now it's a park. There's a train underneath.

00:16:21:21 - 00:16:46:14
John Simmerman
Fantastic. Looks like he could do some theories. B golf on this park. And because it turns into a linear park, obviously, with the the highway torn down and what was previously something that divided the neighborhood, now you can stitch the neighborhood back together again with this. All right. We're in another this is a nice tree canopy. This is a great street.

00:16:46:14 - 00:16:48:06
John Simmerman
What is this?

00:16:48:06 - 00:17:12:19
Zach Katz
This is my street in Brooklyn and it's greenhouse in Bushwick. It's not it's not a mensch. It's just a random residential street. But it's gorgeous. The buildings are a little bit I mean, the buildings all have tile or like siding or whatever. So the buildings aren't particularly beautiful, but the trees are beautiful and yeah, that's really yeah.

00:17:13:01 - 00:17:29:27
John Simmerman
So your vision for your own street rather than two lanes of of car parking and it looks like a center lane. Is this a yield lane or is there enough space for two cars to pass going each direction? Or is it just one way?

00:17:30:23 - 00:17:39:20
Zach Katz
It's one way. So enough space for one car to double park and maybe enough space for another car to go around. But, you know, it's yeah.

00:17:40:00 - 00:17:48:19
John Simmerman
It's relatively narrow in all intents and purposes. And I would imagine that this street actually existed prior to the automobile, so.

00:17:49:09 - 00:17:50:24
Zach Katz
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

00:17:51:05 - 00:18:05:15
John Simmerman
So now we have a fountain. Good move. So. So just describe it. Describe your vision. This is your street. So describe what you decided and why you decided to do what you did.

00:18:06:25 - 00:18:30:28
Zach Katz
Well, it's a residential street in in Brooklyn. And for those who are familiar with with Brooklyn and Bushwick, particularly, there's a lot of hanging out on the stoop that happens. And that's great. It's a it's a good it's a fun, you know, you know, sort of cultural thing. But the reason people are hanging on the space because, you know, there's nowhere else to hang out.

00:18:31:11 - 00:18:31:20
John Simmerman
Right?

00:18:32:05 - 00:18:36:29
Zach Katz
By opening up the whole street to be sort of like a neighborhood hangout. Like, that's awesome.

00:18:37:07 - 00:18:37:16
John Simmerman
Yeah.

00:18:37:25 - 00:18:39:15
Zach Katz
And it's just more pleasant and yeah.

00:18:40:10 - 00:19:00:25
John Simmerman
It's very cool stuff and oh, this is an interesting one. So this is a whole bunch of motor vehicle lanes right next to a body of water. There is a whole bunch of people hanging out by the body of water, but that doesn't look super fun. It looks actually kind of familiar. What are we looking at?

00:19:02:07 - 00:19:05:26
Zach Katz
Yeah, this is Lake Shore Drive in Chicago.

00:19:05:26 - 00:19:31:05
John Simmerman
I was. I was I was teasing you with that when I used to live not far from here. So this used to be my morning jog when I lived near the lakefront in the Diversey Harbor area. So a little bit further north from where this photos is taken. But then Lake Shore Drive turns into a beach. We're talking full on beach.

00:19:31:05 - 00:19:31:27
Zach Katz
That's a beach.

00:19:31:27 - 00:19:42:16
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very, very cool. And was there an inspiration to this when you looked at Lake Shore Drive? You're just like, no beach.

00:19:44:00 - 00:19:56:19
Zach Katz
Yeah, I was really like I just I mean, the photo the even the original photos, like very iconic looking. So I just yeah, I just had a feeling like it would be. Yeah, just ahead.

00:19:57:03 - 00:20:05:00
John Simmerman
Yeah, that's. That's that's so cool. Okay, now, this is West Kerry Street. Where is this at?

00:20:06:03 - 00:20:07:03
Zach Katz
Richmond, Virginia.

00:20:07:13 - 00:20:43:01
John Simmerman
Okay. Richmond, Virginia. Now, this is a very, very busy it looks like it's mostly single story shops and locations and a bunch of cars parked. I got to travel lanes in another lane for for parking. So it looks like it's a one way street here and it's just really, really auto centric. But you can tell that, gosh, people would probably love to be able to walk and exist in this space and then you decided to drop in a rainbow.

00:20:43:01 - 00:20:58:20
Zach Katz
Yeah, this was kind of this was the reason I wanted to show this on the podcast. This was kind of like an epiphany that I had with before. Like a lot of them were like sort of Europeans style, like cobblestone. And then I thought, if we just. There's so many more design options. Yeah.

00:20:59:04 - 00:21:08:26
John Simmerman
Yeah, exactly. Well, and of course, I don't know if you've visited Utrecht recently when they put down their Rainbow Street, so. Yeah.

00:21:09:02 - 00:21:13:03
Zach Katz
Uh huh. Beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's the rainbow.

00:21:13:14 - 00:21:36:27
John Simmerman
All right. And now this is very, very suburban. I mean, most of the ones that we've looked at so far had kind of a little bit of an urban, very a city feel to it. This has got just a big wide strode with a cute dhaba and a sub shop and a few other things. And then voila, describe what we've is.

00:21:37:04 - 00:21:42:23
John Simmerman
Because you did you not only did a street transformation here, you also did a land use transformation. Walk us through this.

00:21:43:24 - 00:21:57:20
Zach Katz
Yeah, this is the most effort I've put into any. I probably spent like an hour and a half on this, getting all the details right. And this is I forget the name of the road, but it's in fake London, Ontario, not just by.

00:21:58:27 - 00:22:01:15
John Simmerman
To to Jason. Excellent.

00:22:01:15 - 00:22:22:03
Zach Katz
Yeah. I just wanted to show the potential of, like, what a road would look like with the full array of improvements. Yeah. The infill and the waterside street car. Yeah, everything. This is like, what? A street. This is what a lot of, like, streets look like in the Netherlands. So I really was just thinking that.

00:22:22:11 - 00:22:31:21
John Simmerman
Right, right. And we've got another one here. What are we looking at now? This is another little bit more urban street.

00:22:33:05 - 00:22:39:22
Zach Katz
Yeah, this is Phase Street in Providence, Rhode Island. Yeah.

00:22:39:22 - 00:22:42:12
John Simmerman
Nice, nice. And and then.

00:22:42:21 - 00:22:42:29
Zach Katz
Street.

00:22:43:15 - 00:23:09:26
John Simmerman
There. Street. Yep, they are street. And it's right in front of the the the Avon Theater, Antonio's Pizza Place. And now we've got a nice brick, we got some beautiful flowers. We've got another water feature in the middle here. All right, wait a minute, Zack. So something's changed your background. It's totally different. And you have headphones on now, and you have a mic.

00:23:10:24 - 00:23:11:19
John Simmerman
Oh, my gosh.

00:23:12:23 - 00:23:13:17
Zach Katz
Yeah. What happened?

00:23:13:26 - 00:23:16:22
Speaker 3
What happened?

00:23:16:22 - 00:23:17:18
John Simmerman
Welcome back.

00:23:19:11 - 00:23:19:20
Speaker 3
We.

00:23:19:26 - 00:23:39:07
John Simmerman
You had to take care of a computer that was ailing. And so we had a change of venue. But you are back you're back in the studio. And so for those astute listeners or excuse me, the viewers that notice, wait a minute, something's different about Zack. You know.

00:23:39:20 - 00:23:40:25
Zach Katz
It's all improvements, though.

00:23:41:00 - 00:23:50:25
John Simmerman
Oh, there you go. Excellent. So we were over here and you're talking a little bit about this treatment. You had something else you wanted to say about this. There's something fun.

00:23:51:16 - 00:24:04:28
Zach Katz
What's good? Yeah, it's just cool, because I heard from a local advocacy organizer, group organizer, that there's some momentum for actually making this street car free, partially as a result of our of our images and testing.

00:24:04:28 - 00:24:28:22
John Simmerman
That's great. And when you you had mentioned earlier, you know, some some of them, you know, take a little bit longer to to work on. You had mentioned like an hour and a half was a long time for one is the whole point for you to be able to kind of turn these things out pretty quickly and leverage and make it maybe, you know, happen relatively quickly and not spend a lot of time on it?

00:24:30:10 - 00:24:52:18
Zach Katz
Yeah. I mean, there's definitely like a good balance to strike you know, because you want it to be really good. And with the in its current form, it does take a bit of time to do that. But what's cool is, I mean, even the technology of making these images just came out like three or four months ago basically, and it's already so advanced in another year.

00:24:52:18 - 00:24:55:19
Zach Katz
It's, it could be a click of a button.

00:24:55:26 - 00:25:26:27
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. So I believe that we have some images that are like step by step. So let's, let's start over here with this one and get a sense. So this looks like a block that we should all know. Radio City Music Hall is there. So this is right in in New York. And walk us through what you're looking to try to do with this particular sequence, and I'll get over here to that this step.

00:25:26:28 - 00:25:28:10
John Simmerman
So walk us through this.

00:25:29:19 - 00:25:54:03
Zach Katz
Yeah. So you paint out, they call it in painting is the new terminology you arrest, you erased the part that you want to replace in most cases, it's all the pavement and the parked cars. In some cases, you want to replace the sidewalk as well. Okay. And then you type in the prompt that you want, wanted to replace it with a top.

00:25:55:08 - 00:25:55:22
John Simmerman
And then.

00:25:56:00 - 00:25:58:24
Zach Katz
It, it does its best right to do that.

00:25:58:28 - 00:26:25:04
John Simmerman
Yeah. Okay. So, so this sequence here and I'm going to zoom out a little bit so we can make sure that we can see all four or five panels here. So let me get to this. I'm going to zoom out just a little bit here. And so and then I'll zoom in. This is where we were at. So we were here at this and you painted that out and then now you're able to to start dropping in options.

00:26:25:10 - 00:26:25:21
John Simmerman
So.

00:26:26:06 - 00:26:37:25
Zach Katz
Yes. So basically what it does is it creates four guesses. It used to be three, now it's four. Like of what it should look like. It basically four. Yeah, just potentialities.

00:26:37:25 - 00:26:46:10
John Simmerman
Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You mean this thing is actually guessing what should go in there?

00:26:46:10 - 00:26:52:29
Zach Katz
Yeah, well, it's it's it's. I don't know if guess is the right word. It, it kind of is depending on what it really specific I yeah.

00:26:52:29 - 00:27:05:07
John Simmerman
So is predicting or anticipating what parameters do you put in so that it thinks to put this in instead of more cars.

00:27:05:07 - 00:27:25:17
Zach Katz
Yeah. Well this is this is a this is the big this is what I was going to say is like the it determines what to put in based on how you prompt it. Okay. So what you type in that box up there is everything. So like and you can be as general, as specific as you want. Like when I first started doing it, I was typing in Car Free Street, right?

00:27:25:17 - 00:27:26:09
Zach Katz
And, and.

00:27:26:10 - 00:27:40:17
John Simmerman
You saw a modern pedestrian promenade with lots of greenery, benches and people. And so it's taking those cues. And then from an AI perspective, it's coming up with these options. That's awesome.

00:27:41:03 - 00:27:41:22
Zach Katz
Exactly.

00:27:41:26 - 00:27:45:02
John Simmerman
Wow. And what's the name of this program again.

00:27:46:15 - 00:27:53:07
Zach Katz
Called Daily Dollar, which is Daily, which is a play on Salvador Dali and Wall-E, right?

00:27:53:24 - 00:28:02:20
John Simmerman
Yeah. Very, very cool. So that's the panel there with the four different options.

00:28:02:20 - 00:28:18:08
Zach Katz
Well, and I should I should be clear. Like these are not sometimes the options are terrible and you have to just keep making new ones and then sometimes you have to edit, you have to take the best one and then edit it and be like, I don't like this bench. Don't make a different color, different, you know, a million different.

00:28:18:26 - 00:28:23:00
Zach Katz
It's like painting, but with like a really good sous chef. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:28:24:01 - 00:28:34:11
John Simmerman
Yeah. That is just fascinating. So your earlier you had mentioned that you are an artist and a musician. Were you a like a graphic artist or what type of artist were you?

00:28:35:27 - 00:28:54:07
Zach Katz
Well, when I say artists, I don't know, like musician is a mostly like my like passion is making music okay. And of course, that for some reason musicians don't get to be called I mean, they do get to be called artists, but it's like almost a separate category. Yeah. Yeah. But I just. Yeah, artists, I don't know. I've dabbled in graphic design.

00:28:54:07 - 00:28:57:06
Zach Katz
I don't have any. Okay. You know, I'm not trained in it.

00:28:57:10 - 00:29:04:26
John Simmerman
Yeah. And some, some people, they have like the terminology of like, oh yeah, I'm a visual artist. It's like, oh, okay. What does that mean?

00:29:06:02 - 00:29:06:27
Zach Katz
Yeah, exactly.

00:29:07:17 - 00:29:10:00
John Simmerman
I guess you're a visual artist now.

00:29:10:00 - 00:29:11:12
Zach Katz
So you're, you know.

00:29:11:12 - 00:29:29:07
John Simmerman
Especially when you did this one, I suspect that this was a lot more work because like you said, it took you a little bit longer, mainly because I, I would anticipate is because you you wanted to anticipate changing the land use patterns off to the side of the road. You're not just changing the road space.

00:29:29:07 - 00:29:42:10
Zach Katz
Everything, though. Even the road space takes a lot of work to get it to look really good. Right. At least, you know, with the limitations of the I at the moment. Yeah. Like even just yeah. Sometimes it'll spit out like really weird looking people or whatever and you have to.

00:29:42:17 - 00:29:48:18
John Simmerman
And you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no aliens. Come on here. I knock it off.

00:29:48:18 - 00:29:49:27
Zach Katz
Were for the Mars urbanism.

00:29:50:06 - 00:29:51:17
Speaker 3
Yeah, exactly.

00:29:52:12 - 00:29:58:06
John Simmerman
So is this your full time job? What do you is this is this actually making money for you yet? At this point.

00:29:59:11 - 00:30:32:26
Zach Katz
I was originally taking like commissions from like NGOs and also just people like activists who wanted to pay me to make this. I didn't sell a whole lot, maybe made like a couple. And I also was taking donations and I did make like like a couple hundred bucks from that. But now and maybe this is a good segue way or not into into what we're kind of working on now, which is what I realized is like, it's great to have these amazing images, but the Twitter account alone is not going to like make them actually happen in real life.

00:30:33:14 - 00:30:55:27
Zach Katz
So over the last month or two, I've been sort of developing this idea and now with the team of people we are developing this idea about like how we can make the images happen in real life and I'd love to tell you about that. But in terms of making money, this is kind of the new product, I guess, and.

00:30:55:27 - 00:30:56:05
Zach Katz
Right.

00:30:56:29 - 00:31:22:29
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, it's, you know, obviously, I mean, I have a nonprofit advocacy for healthy communities and there's that side of it. And I've been involved with nonprofits for many, many years. There's not a lot of money in, you know, from a nonprofit side of of doing this type of work, urbanism and transformation, street transformations. That's not to say that you can't make a living.

00:31:22:29 - 00:31:51:05
John Simmerman
You can, but it's it's not like the, you know, motor dome. It's not like the automobile industry where they're literally throwing, you know, billions of dollars at, you know, shaping the the vision and, you know, the marketing. I mean, just the power that the automobile industry has in shaping what we see out of on media is is just phenomenal.

00:31:52:15 - 00:32:05:12
Zach Katz
Yeah, well, not yet. I mean, the idea is to make it make good urbanism, give urbanism the same firepower that the auto industry has now in terms of marketing. And, you know, everything else that goes into it.

00:32:05:18 - 00:32:32:06
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And tastic. So it sounds like this is under the works. So you've got the green, you've you've had a viable, you know, product out there in terms of, oh, there's interest in this. And now it's just a matter of working with some of your partners and I would assume maybe a board of directors or something like that to try to figure out, okay, well, how do we how do we make this happen?

00:32:32:06 - 00:33:16:17
John Simmerman
How do we actually take these visions and and help bring them into into into real life, you know, because it's I mean, this the cool thing about the I, I part of this is you're able to transform, you know, create these transformations and get them out there very, very quickly. But they're really not that much different than what, you know, designers and architects had been doing, you know, the hard way, first trying them out and then, you know, and then designing them, you know, with, you know, computer aided design and that was kind of the joke, too, you know, that was kind of the hit on them is like, oh, fine, you can draw all

00:33:16:17 - 00:33:23:11
John Simmerman
the pretty pictures, but nothing ever gets built. And so it sounds like what you're saying is you want to get some things built.

00:33:24:21 - 00:34:01:19
Zach Katz
Yeah. Because yeah, it's definitely like we're not surpassing the quality of professional like architects or artists or whatever. The thing that the air allows us to do is to create these visions at scale. And because this was the bottleneck before where you couldn't you couldn't run an advocacy campaign for every single street in New York, because even just I mean, like other infrastructure side, like the website and volunteers and stuff, there's just no way to to affordably commission an image for every street.

00:34:01:26 - 00:34:36:25
Zach Katz
Now that that's possible, you can do things like what we're doing, which is build a platform for street transformations worldwide. You know, the images are obviously like better and people like want them to happen. So by building a platform that captures this demand and generates new demand and by just means of traditional marketing, because once you have a centralized platform, you can marketing it in ways, traditional ways like bus stop advertising or Facebook advertising or just people like sharing links to friends.

00:34:38:01 - 00:34:59:08
Zach Katz
You can yeah, just buy it by capturing all that. Okay. So by capturing and generating new demand, capturing that demand, you can then show because ultimately all that matters is that elected officials want this to happen. Like they're the ones who determine like if a mayor. And so by showing elected officials all this demand. Well, that's that's how you make change.

00:34:59:08 - 00:34:59:17
Zach Katz
Right.

00:34:59:27 - 00:35:27:18
John Simmerman
And I think that's where this tweet thread comes in, is, you know, this is an image and you're you're like, okay, let's let's get down to work here, folks. And here's four ways that you can use these images to help make these things reality. Because really what we're talking about here is trying to leverage the technology, trying to leverage social media, trying to leverage other platforms for people to reimagine what their streets are like.

00:35:27:29 - 00:35:52:21
John Simmerman
And that's a phrase that I use frequently, because that's the same as like open streets, you know, 34 that is 34th Avenue is like a great example of, oh, it's an open street now and you can reimagine what streets are for. And so this is a way that you can help leverage reimagining what the street can be. So then we go over to the four steps to walk us through these four steps.

00:35:53:23 - 00:36:38:08
Zach Katz
Cool. Sure. Yeah. So first one, share them online. Online is the best way to market stuff at scale and then I don't think advocacy, Safe Streets advocacy has taken full advantage of the the power of the Internet yet to do this. And every time I mentioned Reddit on in this and every time I go, I posted a couple of images to different city subreddits and I saw other people post them and they always get to the top of the subreddit like the Providence Car Free Street was on like 2000 upvotes and was on the top of that Reddit for a few days.

00:36:38:23 - 00:36:52:02
Zach Katz
Yeah. So it's just like this. This stuff is so popular and putting it on Tik Tok and Facebook and stuff is like just a crazy thing, like fire hose of attention. That's totally unprecedented for this kind of thing.

00:36:52:24 - 00:37:00:21
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And so is that one of the things that you're doing is you're also putting these things out on TikTok and these other platforms as well?

00:37:02:17 - 00:37:10:10
Zach Katz
We like to yeah, we don't have like a TikTok person yet. Okay. If you're a tech talker and we don't if you haven't this.

00:37:10:10 - 00:37:10:19
John Simmerman
Yeah.

00:37:11:22 - 00:37:27:04
Zach Katz
Yeah, yeah. Well I saw one person, he goes by like GMB something on TikTok and he posted a video about Better Streets I and it like kind of went viral and some people told me they found out about it through TikTok. So and there's like a huge there's a lot of like urban us on TikTok.

00:37:27:04 - 00:37:52:22
John Simmerman
So there's more. Yeah, yeah. It's growing daily. I mean, one of the first ones was Mr. Barricade Out of California and that really just somebody getting out there on the platform and and talking about streets really I think, you know, got that that flywheel of momentum heading in that direction. I don't know if I will be heading in that direction, but you never know.

00:37:53:18 - 00:37:58:05
Zach Katz
You probably will be. It's if you want to stay on top of it, it's yeah. Well I don't yeah.

00:37:58:05 - 00:38:26:29
John Simmerman
I, I have a secret that I haven't shared with anybody yet about a specific camera that I got that might be perfect for that. So that'll probably get unveiled in my next Netherland trip, which is going to happen at the end of October. So it's good stuff. Okay. So these are the four steps. I mean, it's basically, you know, again, share them online, get it out there, put out fliers doing the the that's like the block to block stuff.

00:38:26:29 - 00:39:04:13
John Simmerman
It's like people to people and talking about it and, you know, engaging within your neighborhood, you know, get it. And again, the number three is like presenting them at that community meeting. Again, that's that that personal touch of like really having these conversations with people at all along your street and, you know, really getting that. And it says demand results from politicians and really there's a step in between number three and number four is is really helping the bringing the politicians along, too, and bringing them up to speed with, hey, this is kind of what's happening.

00:39:04:22 - 00:39:31:14
John Simmerman
Their phone's ringing off the hook and they get a deluge of emails from, you know, the NIMBYs that are like, No, don't take a parking space away, don't change our streets. We want things the way they are. And so that's that next step. You know, that's the three point A and B is engage those politicians and really work with them and bring them along.

00:39:31:14 - 00:39:55:12
John Simmerman
Demand is a little bit tough, a little bit harsh in the interim stage because you have to at least help try to bring them along. And, you know, and then it's like, you know, it's that demand. It's like, no, we're serious. This is quality of life issues for us. And, you know, we want to see this. And do we have your commitment?

00:39:55:26 - 00:40:07:05
John Simmerman
And if you're you know, if if you're not committing to this and you won't do this, you know what? We may run a slate of candidates to run against you that will do it. And then you vote them out.

00:40:07:20 - 00:40:23:10
Zach Katz
So vote them. Yeah, totally. Yeah. 100%. Need a lot of I should. I also want to add like a lot of like politicians do already like want to do this stuff. Yeah. And they just need sort of like a push I guess they don't, they.

00:40:23:10 - 00:40:30:02
John Simmerman
They need the three and the two and they need that momentum. They need to know that they constituency has their back.

00:40:30:23 - 00:40:33:02
Zach Katz
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:40:33:07 - 00:40:39:16
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. Boom. So talk about this. Talk about transform your city.

00:40:39:16 - 00:41:02:18
Zach Katz
Yeah. So this is just like a really rough mockup, but just to visualize, like what we're working on, it's basically like Change.org. But for better streets. Okay? It's just surprising to me how like, before now, like this platform, it doesn't exist. There's nowhere to see this stuff, right? And it's such an obvious like thing that the world needs.

00:41:02:29 - 00:41:29:25
John Simmerman
Right? Well, and I think you said it. It's it's like, you know, change.org or it's like any other type of petition type of thing. I see them come across my radar screen. A lot of, you know, it's like, hey, sign this petition. We need to get this to, you know, over to the politicians and to the city council to understand that we want this street to to remain car free.

00:41:29:25 - 00:41:50:25
John Simmerman
I mean, for instance, I signed a petition or, you know, share some information on a petition that was all about a street in Boulder that had been car free from the pandemic era. And they decided to open it back up to cars and car parking. And so people were freaking out about it and etc. and so they were signing petitions.

00:41:50:25 - 00:41:59:02
John Simmerman
And so it sounds like what this is, is more formal, formalized for that purpose. Purpose, is that correct?

00:42:00:02 - 00:42:17:23
Zach Katz
Yeah, it's formalized. And it's also like one of the problems with Change.org for that kind of thing is it's all the all the petitions are disparate. So if you sign a petition for that street to remain car free, you're also likely to be someone who wants all the other streets to be car free and protected, bike lanes on the streets.

00:42:17:23 - 00:42:40:10
Zach Katz
And by having it all in one place, someone clicks, I want this on this in the screenshot and then it'll show them, Here are some other streets. Do you also want this where they could? Even on the city they'll be like one page for like all the visions in Boston and they can click, I want all of these in one click and that's really powerful.

00:42:40:21 - 00:42:47:09
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. So why Car Free.

00:42:47:09 - 00:42:50:27
Zach Katz
Well, as opposed to Car Light or.

00:42:51:01 - 00:43:21:01
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. As opposed to early. And the reason why I ask that is, you know, I recently had Amelia Hannah from the The Car Free mega-Cities campaign. So it's the campaign that's currently a challenge between New York and London in Paris, and it's called the car free mega cities. But really what they're trying to do is to break car dependance.

00:43:21:11 - 00:43:48:11
John Simmerman
So it's not really car free per say, but it's it's trying to, you know, transform our environments so that it is more I don't know, we talk about, you know, we talk about, you know, the Netherlands a lot. You know, it's it's a little bit more user friendly than this. In other words, it's not car dominated. Is that sort of the spirit is is that it's it's not necessarily, you know, 100% car free.

00:43:48:11 - 00:43:50:17
John Simmerman
It's just like, hey, let's get this back in balance.

00:43:51:16 - 00:44:02:05
Zach Katz
Yeah, it's 100% about just copying the Netherlands. Like, they're like they're they're like but yes. Yes. In what sense, though?

00:44:03:06 - 00:44:20:04
John Simmerman
They recognize that every place needs to make sure that they can learn from the things that they have learn from. But it's not a copy paste. It has to be context sensitive to to the environment that you're in. So yeah, that's, that's what I would tell you. Yeah.

00:44:20:17 - 00:44:41:11
Zach Katz
I mean that's a very diplomatic well I guess, but it's also like yeah, I agree. I mean it depends what you mean by copy paste because I guess what I meant by that is like the general principle that like every street has a, a function that it should serve, right? Whether it's like an arterial or like a commercial street or like a residential street or whatever.

00:44:41:17 - 00:44:50:05
Zach Katz
Yeah. And that's I guess that's the fundamental problem in the US is that like roads like streets are function, are masquerading as roads and vice versa.

00:44:50:10 - 00:45:16:08
John Simmerman
And this is a great street to, to use as an example. So in a Dutch context, you know, this actually may not ever be a car free street, but it would probably be. And this is one of the things that a lot of people don't realize about Dutch network is that like when you look at their cycle network, the the part that gets all the attention is the the separated and protected facilities.

00:45:16:08 - 00:45:47:18
John Simmerman
But in reality, 70% of their entire cycle network is actually shared space with automobiles. It's the feed struts and it's the, you know, the slow residential streets where there's mixing of, of, of cars, people driving motor vehicles and motor vehicles parked and and people on bikes. And in some cases, like in Utrecht recently, they remove their protected bike lanes and transform that street into a feed street.

00:45:47:27 - 00:45:53:19
John Simmerman
And the reason was, is because the number of people on bikes outnumber the number of people in cars 8 to 1.

00:45:54:12 - 00:45:59:29
Zach Katz
And so I noticed this in Amsterdam, they were also removing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fascinating.

00:46:00:01 - 00:46:26:02
John Simmerman
It is fascinating. And that's the great thing that I love. And one of the reasons why the Dutch experts advise not against, you know, copy pasting is because there's isn't done yet. They're constantly transforming it. They try something, they see it, they see how everything works. And then as situations change, then they tweak it again. And so it's a constant evolving, dynamic environment.

00:46:26:12 - 00:46:35:22
John Simmerman
But with the key tenant of is this a people oriented place and it will this or yeah, all ages and abilities and active mobility.

00:46:36:25 - 00:47:02:03
Zach Katz
And it's also like the reason that they're able to to make Ft struts is is because they it's like that's where they're at in terms of like and they do things to restrict car traffic and stuff too like on that street in, in Utrecht to my understanding. But, but it's like that design also wouldn't necessarily work in the US because they're so far ahead of us that they can like.

00:47:03:05 - 00:47:12:04
Zach Katz
Yeah, I guess as long as you meet like the bare minimum of like is it safe to bike on the street and pleasant to walk? Yeah.

00:47:13:15 - 00:47:18:21
John Simmerman
Like, yeah, that'll take you a long way because we're. No, we're no, we're nowhere close to that. Yes.

00:47:19:07 - 00:47:19:25
Zach Katz
Exactly.

00:47:19:28 - 00:47:51:13
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. That's good stuff. Now, earlier you had mentioned that you had wanted to to move to the Netherlands and do this. And you mentioned that that is possible for citizens of the United States to do that. That program is actually called the Daft, the Dutch American Friendship Treaty. And that was put in place in the 1950s after World War Two as a thank you, you know, for for the help that the the the U.S. gave to help the helping liberate the Netherlands from German occupation.

00:47:51:24 - 00:47:59:23
John Simmerman
And there are other reasons but that was one of the main reasons are are you still planning on doing that?

00:47:59:23 - 00:48:04:11
Zach Katz
Oh, I did, yeah. I just moved back to New York after living in Amsterdam for about six months.

00:48:04:16 - 00:48:04:26
John Simmerman
Okay.

00:48:05:08 - 00:48:13:25
Zach Katz
I missed New York. I loved Amsterdam. But yeah, I. I realize there's more to life than bike lanes. I guess.

00:48:13:25 - 00:48:14:24
John Simmerman
And Dutch bikes.

00:48:16:03 - 00:48:17:00
Zach Katz
And those folks. Yeah.

00:48:17:18 - 00:48:19:16
John Simmerman
But you're bringing them back here, so.

00:48:19:20 - 00:48:21:10
Zach Katz
There you go. I'm bringing it back here. Yeah.

00:48:21:24 - 00:48:41:12
John Simmerman
I love it. I love it. Zach, it has been such a pleasure chatting with you today. It was so wonderful to see Better Streets. I hit the, you know, hit the airwaves and hit Twitter and it was fun to just kind of watch it take off. And it's been an absolute pleasure having this opportunity to meet you. Thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns Podcast.

00:48:42:15 - 00:48:44:00
Zach Katz
Likewise. Thank you so much for having me.

00:48:44:12 - 00:49:00:23
John Simmerman
Hey, thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Was that Katz? And if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and. Be sure to share this episode with a friend. That's the best way to grow. The movement is for somebody to hear it from you, so please pass it along.

00:49:01:09 - 00:49:33:24
John Simmerman
And if you haven't already done so, I'd be honored to have you subscribe to the channel. Just click on the subscription button down below and ring the notifications bell so you can customize your notification preferences. So, so year about when I have new episodes coming out as well as other videos, profile videos and many of you know that I am actually in the Netherlands right now as we speak as this video's coming out and I'm filming a lot of wonderful things here and getting some more interviews to sell and really excited about sharing that content with you here in the future.

00:49:34:08 - 00:49:59:00
John Simmerman
Well, that's it for now. So until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers. Also sending out a very big thank you to all my amazing active towns ambassadors who are directly supporting my efforts through Patreon. Buy me a coffee, the YouTube super chats and super things, as well as buying things from the active town store and making donations to the nonprofit.

00:49:59:08 - 00:50:16:19
John Simmerman
Every little bit helps and is greatly appreciated. Thank you all so very much.