Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:07:06
John Simmerman
All right, Tristan, we're back for the second half of the episode. Thank you so much for joining me. We're going to continue our conversation.

00:00:07:08 - 00:00:26:18
Tristan Cleveland
Awesome. Look forward to it. I think that you could achieve this kind of change without needing as much hype. So let's run through the list really quick. So one is interesting. We call it one great block. So create a nucleus of high quality development of public destinations to kickstart growth. So that's what we did, and I think that's brilliant.

00:00:26:21 - 00:00:52:23
Tristan Cleveland
To transform the local streets and add new streets that are completely pedestrian friendly, really prioritize pedestrians in this one place, at least one lane in both directions, potentially pump outs at intersections designed to be slow. You know, people shouldn't be driving faster than, say, 35 kilometers an hour that there's on street parking, actually, and that people are actually using to create a buffer between people in the street.

00:00:52:25 - 00:00:54:09
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, those those are the key things.

00:00:54:09 - 00:01:08:01
John Simmerman
So let's let's stick with that design for a second in and really kind of understand it. So if if I were to look at that from like a European context, I would lower that speed to 30 kilometers per hour.

00:01:08:08 - 00:01:12:28
Tristan Cleveland
I don't know why that extra five Sara throws you crazy.

00:01:12:28 - 00:01:41:24
John Simmerman
Canadians are telling you, But there's a mad there's a magic to that, right of of 30 kilometers per hour because now we're talking about you know for for those of us on the imperial system, that's 17 miles per hour. Now, we're starting to get into non-lethal speeds because as we start to creep up, then it just goes insane in terms of the number of fatalities that would happen if there's any sort of interaction between a person walking or a person on a bike.

00:01:41:27 - 00:02:10:15
John Simmerman
But the beauty of 30 kilometers per hour is the default speed for shared spaces. In the European context, when a person on a bike and a person driving are going to share that space, if it's a pedestrian priority zone, which which is a true shared concept, they'll bring that speed down to more like 15 kilometers per hour that be truly pedestrian priority.

00:02:10:19 - 00:02:26:27
John Simmerman
So that's the only reason I wanted to clarify whether you were thinking like closer to the the 30 kilometers per hour, the feet strike sort of speed or the 15 kilometers per hour, meaning pedestrian prioritized street.

00:02:26:29 - 00:02:32:13
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah. Yeah. Not just prioritize, but actually shared space through what people walk in and drive exactly the same.

00:02:32:14 - 00:02:35:01
John Simmerman
Spaces and maybe no curbs because it means no.

00:02:35:01 - 00:02:53:20
Tristan Cleveland
Curbs at that point. Exactly. Different design concepts. So all of those would be appropriate. So there's different ways to achieve like a truly pedestrian friendly place. But the test is will people allow their children to walk across the street on their own? If you fail to do that, then you haven't created a human friendly place. Yeah, right. And slower cars make less noise.

00:02:53:20 - 00:03:24:23
Tristan Cleveland
So there's that. They create less stress for people near them. There's just on many dimensions. It's just critical for creating that environment that feels like a destination, like a wonderful place to stop and spend time. So creating that first nuclear development strategy, improving those streets, adding new streets so you have small blocks and great connectivity. One thing Siri did that I think is brilliant is so this is number three, create tax incentives to develop but with a hard deadline.

00:03:24:23 - 00:03:55:04
Tristan Cleveland
So we all hate tax incentives. We want to create a city where development is intrinsically worth building. But if you create a hard deadline, then you're giving people a reason to invest now, not later, which breaks open that dam and gets that self-reinforcing development going, which is the goal here. Right. So create like a really strong financial incentive and reward those people who make the first few risky bets in those first 3 to 4 years because we need to get those first developments going.

00:03:55:04 - 00:04:25:13
Tristan Cleveland
So why not use financial incentives? Number four? So walkable environments and car dependent environments undermine each other. Right. So if you want a successful, walkable environment, you need to visibly hide the car dependent environment, all those existing parking lots and big roads. If you haven't fixed them all, you need to hide them somehow. So create hedges, fences, placemaking artwork, anything to hide them.

00:04:25:15 - 00:04:42:26
Tristan Cleveland
Six kiosks. So instead of waiting for developers to create those first commercial places on the street, those first destinations make really, really low cost places where people can set up shops or kiosks and restaurant trucks. What's the word I'm looking for?

00:04:42:28 - 00:04:43:27
John Simmerman
Yeah, food trucks.

00:04:43:29 - 00:05:08:28
Tristan Cleveland
Food trucks. Thank you. Yeah. So all these things create those destinations without having to wait for development to happen. Eight or wherever I am on the list. Land value tax. So make it expensive for people to not develop their land. So I won't get into the technical details on how a land value tax works right now. I don't think it's necessary, but the key point is to set up your tax system so someone sitting on top of really low value land next to a transit station is going to cost them money.

00:05:09:00 - 00:05:42:28
Tristan Cleveland
You know, they're going to have to pay taxes as if they had developed it, which encourages them to to make that development. So let's say that we do all of that and maybe one or two other things then now we're really making it so that the thing that makes sense to do. People have confidence that if they build, say, a six storey, pedestrian friendly building with commerce on the ground floor, it's going to work because we've done everything to create a fertile environment for that to succeed, and you can allow that lower height.

00:05:43:00 - 00:06:09:22
Tristan Cleveland
I'd like to this is maybe a good moment to respond to that issue of, you know, people have strong towns and elsewhere argue that, you know, we should be making small incremental investments. And here I am arguing for this sudden major investment. And I really do think that the two points of view are compatible, because the way I think about it is that you need to intervene to create that hospitable environment for the kind of pedestrian friendly growth we want.

00:06:09:25 - 00:06:39:16
Tristan Cleveland
And then once you establish the basics, then it can start to reinforce itself on its own. And you don't have to make these kind of risky, major public investments. But it does require that initial investment because, I mean, if you there's actually studies where they've done streetscape enhancements in totally codependent environments or if we you know, there is a photo of the the bricks in the sidewalk, you know, bricks on a sidewalk in a walkable place might actually help make it a convivial place where people want to spend time.

00:06:39:18 - 00:06:55:14
Tristan Cleveland
But in an environment where you have a car, body shop on one side and a wide road in the other, and crabgrass and broken parking, it, it accomplishes nothing. It actually accomplishes nothing. And those that's what the studies show is these these small scale investments don't change anything.

00:06:55:16 - 00:07:12:16
John Simmerman
I would even go so far as to say that it not only does it accomplish nothing, it actually very quickly degenerates into being a non walkable environment. And, you know, it makes it very difficult for a person in a wheelchair to navigate it because they're not maintaining it. You know.

00:07:12:16 - 00:07:13:29
Tristan Cleveland
It's just not maintaining. Right.

00:07:14:01 - 00:07:17:14
John Simmerman
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So this image here for Surrey.

00:07:17:16 - 00:07:41:15
Tristan Cleveland
This is a proposed development, folks, and it's like really high class, futuristic, beautiful big towers or really tall towers, though narrow. So so they reduce the sun impact on the street, shadow impact. But, you know, lots of awnings, lots of features to create a people friendly place and lots of people on the street. I don't think that that's a lie here.

00:07:41:15 - 00:07:44:18
Tristan Cleveland
So I do think that if they build this, there will be people there.

00:07:44:21 - 00:07:54:04
John Simmerman
Yeah. So this reminds me a lot of Vancouver. Yeah. Okay. How far away is Surrey from Vancouver?

00:07:54:07 - 00:07:58:29
Tristan Cleveland
Well, about 40 minutes. Something on the train. Okay, so on the train.

00:07:58:29 - 00:08:49:07
John Simmerman
It's on the train. So in other words, this is like a legitimate because of high cost of housing in Vancouver, you know, Surrey is suddenly envisioning itself as being I mean, I'll look at it if somebody looks at this and says, you know, what you're talking about is trying to Manhattan guys are, you know, little town, you know, our community that we have this seems like this is trying to Vancouver ize Surrey because it's starting to look and feel like a real city, you know with towers and in all this environment this kind of hard for a lot of people in suburban can't single family home communities to to swallow at times.

00:08:49:09 - 00:09:27:11
John Simmerman
And I really caution us for for going making that jump from single family home community with strip malls to mega towers. I really don't know that that's necessarily the easiest sell. You've talked about just a moment ago that you didn't see the two things, you know, incompatible going big in and this incremental approach to it. Either way, the thing that's not being mentioned that has to take place first is we need to be able to legalize doing something other than card dependent suburban sprawl development.

00:09:27:13 - 00:09:32:09
John Simmerman
That's right. The first thing that has to happen is we have to make it legal to do something other than that.

00:09:32:12 - 00:09:59:12
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah. Yeah. So well taken point I if if our only model for creating walkable suburbia is to turn it all into downtown, then it's a political nonstarter. Right? In the Surrey context, it works. You know, the mayor who got that stuff going, she had a 72 approval, 72% approval rating. Very, very popular project, extremely popular because it's just like center to like a city region.

00:09:59:18 - 00:10:15:05
Tristan Cleveland
You know, it makes sense to actually have a downtown there. And it will this new downtown will be more at the center of the wider region than Vancouver is. Vancouver is up at the edge on the water rate. This will be really in the center of the urban region. So it makes sense there. But no, but your point is well taken.

00:10:15:05 - 00:10:57:00
Tristan Cleveland
Actually, if you want to go back to that photo and the the main directory of the Eastern Passage project. So this was a development that was approved a few weeks ago. This is an on a transit corridor in a longtime suburban community of Halifax, my home city. Okay. Instead of proposing massive towers that would have gone over like, you know, poorly, we were proposing, you know, townhouses in the middle, a four storey apartment building in front next to transit with a few shops on the ground floor, some stacked townhouses near transit in the back, a few single family homes to meet some of the planning requirements next to a school next to original park.

00:10:57:03 - 00:11:18:15
Tristan Cleveland
The developer is spending their own money to create a public square in the center of this development because they believe in it. This project, yes, it was a little bit controversial. There is five people who showed up at the public hearing to express great opposition to this, but five is not that many. I've seen hearings with dozens of people.

00:11:18:15 - 00:11:51:22
Tristan Cleveland
Right. And so this is pedestrian friendly, walkable, transit, orient, growth, all the buzzwords, and it's appropriate for a suburban context. This is something politically people are willing to accept. And I do think that not just politically but ethically, we should be building this kind of development at a much larger scale because it is very human friendly. This like low rise, street oriented buildings where where you you know, you can let your kids play in their backyard or go to the public square and we're safe.

00:11:51:22 - 00:12:17:11
Tristan Cleveland
You know, it's like it's a good human centric design. And also because people have different preferences. And when we design cities, we need to have a multiplicity of contexts that respond to those different preferences. So some people like the vibrancy of a downtown. Some people love that energy. Other people really prefer to have a place as quieter and they don't need to be able to do as much during the day.

00:12:17:11 - 00:12:42:17
Tristan Cleveland
But hey, you know, they really would like to have a local pizza shop or cafe, you know? And so this kind of development aims to address that, demand that for so long suburbs have car dependent suburbs have been meeting, but it really does a better job meeting it because you have almost the same level of density on the street like houses in a lot of suburbs are really packed closely together.

00:12:42:19 - 00:12:49:18
Tristan Cleveland
But the street network is more efficient and we have just a little bit of commerce so that people can actually walk to things they need.

00:12:49:20 - 00:12:57:00
John Simmerman
Yeah, you know, and I'll point out in the, you know, sort of the diagram, the visioning the.

00:12:57:02 - 00:12:57:20
Tristan Cleveland
And.

00:12:57:22 - 00:13:33:06
John Simmerman
Rendering that we have here. Yeah, we see that we've got some nice density that's happening here. We also see the treatment of people riding bikes as okay, yes, they're going to just occupy the street. Yeah. And so and I have no problem with that as long as we stop doing what is happening here in this photo, which is treating the street no differently than we treat the street, you know, when we, you know, are prioritizing automobiles.

00:13:33:09 - 00:14:05:25
John Simmerman
And so going back to get your design right of your street in these in these rich environments that communicate to the driver that you're no longer in driver priorities space. You are in people priority space and it makes sense makes sense intuitively that this is a 30 kilometers per hour zone. If it's not a 30 kilometer per hour zone, then we've got to bite the bullet and and put in protected and separated infrastructure because it's not all ages and abilities.

00:14:05:25 - 00:14:18:26
John Simmerman
The only. That's right. This works is all ages and abilities is if that auto infrastructure is is tweaked to the point where it's no longer auto infrastructure, it's people oriented infrastructure.

00:14:18:28 - 00:14:19:26
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, yeah.

00:14:19:26 - 00:14:24:13
John Simmerman
And it's hard to represent that in these renderings, but it's, it's.

00:14:24:14 - 00:14:48:05
Tristan Cleveland
Well, no, it's abso I mean this is an accurate rendering of, of the street as is currently conceived. And so we the city city's developing new street standards and we went to the absolute maximum that was possible, not standards to narrow that street so that if there is on street parking on both sides, it actually will slow traffic enough that people can feel comfortable walking and biking there.

00:14:48:08 - 00:15:07:00
Tristan Cleveland
Now, I might be going in detail wrong there. Could you cut that out? Because I would have to go back and check. I believe that we might have decided not to use on street parking because we were afraid that people wouldn't use it. And what often happens is you end up with a street that was supposed to be narrow too wide.

00:15:07:03 - 00:15:07:27
Tristan Cleveland
Really wide.

00:15:08:00 - 00:15:33:24
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think we keep that in there because that's a good reflection to that brings up the point that. Yes. And Jeff Specht talks about this a little bit in his book Walkable Cities, you can use on street parking as a traffic calming mechanism because it creates more friction on the street. But if people aren't parking there, then suddenly you've got a wide tarmac.

00:15:33:24 - 00:15:36:04
John Simmerman
And what do you get when you have a way to harmonizing speed?

00:15:36:05 - 00:15:37:14
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, Yeah, that's.

00:15:37:14 - 00:16:24:03
John Simmerman
Right. Yeah. And that's where going back to the actual physical elements of what makes up the street is absolutely an imperative, is that if this is truly a 30 kilometers per hour zone, maybe it's not asphalt, maybe it's not a tarmac. You know, maybe you're you're actually putting in material wheels or you were you know, you're looking at the design of it so that if there is separate space for pedestrians versus people driving and people riding bikes, maybe that space that's people driving and riding bikes, if it's asphalt, maybe it's red colored asphalt like the Dutch do to to send you know, to really send a clear message to drivers, you're no longer in driver

00:16:24:03 - 00:16:31:00
John Simmerman
priority space. You're now in a place where you need to you're the guest in that environment.

00:16:31:02 - 00:16:54:15
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah. Yeah. So one thing that we could do and we could still potentially do this, I would, I think make a big help is make that crosswalk raised for example. Oh yeah. Yeah. This street is as narrow as we can make it and it is a cul de sac. So at the end of the street we don't have it in this diagram, but the, the engineers we work with who are great helped us with this awesome idea where we have a green meeting in the center.

00:16:54:16 - 00:17:16:28
Tristan Cleveland
So instead of a big pavement cul de sac, you have a green median with a very narrow lane that people drive around to really communicate. So this is slow speed, you know, local, you know, just people getting in their driveways. But it's going to be a very safe place to walk and bike. Now, you know, with projects like this, you always have to decide like, how far do you want to push things with this project?

00:17:17:01 - 00:17:36:11
Tristan Cleveland
I would I think it would be totally appropriate to go when our off on this to to have a completely shared history like we're talking about 15 kilometers an hour. No one is driving far here. Right, right, right. Yeah. Now, I mean, this is like it's it's frustrating to me that it's difficult to implement stuff like that when it's been shown to work around the world.

00:17:36:13 - 00:17:46:25
Tristan Cleveland
It's considered normal to build these huge roads that kill people. And it's considered radical to build, you know, slow people centered, shared streets.

00:17:46:27 - 00:18:03:05
John Simmerman
You know, you're channeling this conversation towards south of the border here. So building streets that are going to kill people. So so this is Tyson. So let's let's go down into let's talk America here now. Yeah.

00:18:03:08 - 00:18:24:12
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah. So Tyson's is this hilarious example, just so everything we were talking about earlier, about being willing to make sacrifices and recognize that if you're going to design for walkability, you're not designing for cars, you're not designing for high speed traffic. I should say you can still design for local car travel and cars, play a very personal.

00:18:24:12 - 00:18:54:08
John Simmerman
So let's talk a little bit about that. Let's talk about the difference between places being accessible versus places that welcome a mobility mode. And so we have universal accessibility of being able to drive a car everywhere or, you know, in every place, you know, in in oftentimes if when they look like this, it's it's also places that encourage and welcome high speed travel.

00:18:54:10 - 00:19:22:18
John Simmerman
So a, you know, an environment that is accessible for people walking and biking. I may not welcome people walking and biking. And so there's a difference between that accessibility and what's an inviting and welcoming environment. So for the listening audience, we're now looking at a massive, massive road here. It looks like it's Virginia State Route 1/20, three.

00:19:22:20 - 00:19:22:29
Tristan Cleveland
To.

00:19:23:02 - 00:19:35:29
John Simmerman
Eight lanes plus the turn lane. So the we're looking at a nine lane monster. That would mean that this is a state highway. But I also see lots of driveway cuts. So technically it's also a stroke, right?

00:19:36:01 - 00:19:37:02
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah yeah.

00:19:37:05 - 00:19:37:20
John Simmerman
Yeah.

00:19:37:23 - 00:20:06:11
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah and the so Tysons Citizens is this massive suburban redevelopment probably the biggest one in the world and it's attracted enormous amount of mixed use development so it's really been a success in a lot of ways because it's close to the airport and close to Washington, D.C. and close to the Pentagon. So there's lots of people who want to live and work in this area, lots of potential, and they'd run out of space to build on, but they weren't willing to sacrifice this network of strobes throughout their community.

00:20:06:17 - 00:20:18:02
Tristan Cleveland
So, you know, really, really wide in many places like eight lanes or more. And in fact, in many places directly next to transit, they widened it. So they widened something like 8 to 10 or 11 lanes.

00:20:18:02 - 00:20:20:13
John Simmerman
And that's a transit stop right here in the photo right?

00:20:20:19 - 00:20:40:01
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, that's a transit stop right there. And they actually did remove one lane in this place on the left. So there's two slip lanes, two lanes that that went through that. So plan slip lanes shouldn't exist in walkable place at all period. Eight lanes for the stop. Yeah it went from nine lanes down eight and I'm sorry that's not far enough.

00:20:40:04 - 00:21:02:08
Tristan Cleveland
You know you're not creating a truly walkable place and so there's all this developable land next to that transit station that hasn't been moving yet. And I really do think that contributing to that is that they haven't been willing to make these what politically at least are seen as sacrifices and to really say, you know, if we want this to succeed, we need to make those people friendly.

00:21:02:11 - 00:21:25:24
Tristan Cleveland
And the people, the local community that was advocating for widening these roads while also advocating for high density transit oriented growth, They didn't they thought that you need wide roads to protect the economy that was going to economically collapse if you didn't allow people to drive and fare, you know that they these are people who spend their entire lives striving to do everything.

00:21:25:24 - 00:21:52:29
Tristan Cleveland
And it's very hard for people in that context to imagine that you could have an economic system that relies on a majority of people walking, biking and taking transit to places, let's just say like far out concept for people who drive for nearly everything and so people who believed in this project, who supported it were actually advocating for widening roads while building, you know, tall towers, a mixed use development, you know, and this is you know, this is not even an arterial this is a collector.

00:21:53:02 - 00:22:15:10
Tristan Cleveland
And it's so this is Tysons Boulevard, I believe, and it's eight lanes wide. I can read that correctly. Yeah, eight lanes. It gets wider in places. Of course, there's been deaths there. You know, this is a minor collector. This is four lanes wide in one direction. It's just everything is just at such a scale. So I want to emphasize something you just said a moment ago.

00:22:15:10 - 00:22:45:24
Tristan Cleveland
So you said there's a difference between making a place technically accessible for people walking or biking. Like in theory, people can do it and achieving true excellence. And I think that the professions of engineering and urban design and urban planning are nowhere near where they need to be on recognizing that to achieve excellence and walkability, walkability means something, and we're failing it over and over and over again.

00:22:45:24 - 00:23:13:25
Tristan Cleveland
And it doesn't mean removing one slip lane and leaving an eight lane road. It means truly bringing these streets down to size, adding more streets to get more cars through elsewhere, but making sure that the entire path that somebody walks somewhere, they have a truly high quality environment for the whole way. It is a difficult task. We need to recognize that this is a hard thing to do and it's going to take a lot of work in some ways.

00:23:13:25 - 00:23:39:03
John Simmerman
In some ways it is a hard thing to do trust. And I'll jump in and say that, yes, in some ways this is a hard thing to do. Political will and the lack of really true imagination as to what we would need to do. It's actually quite simple what has to happen to this environment, this the environment. The street has to be basically completely redesigned and thrown out and blown up to your point.

00:23:39:05 - 00:24:13:00
John Simmerman
What do we have there? That is a bikeshare station. Yeah, It's like, yeah, this is a dare. This isn't creating, you know, I call them activity assets. When you create a safe and inviting environment that encourages people to walk and bike to places are the safe and inviting part is the key thing. It's creating a welcoming environment. It's creating a welcome, welcoming habitat that encourages natural human activity to be able to walk and bike to meet your daily needs.

00:24:13:03 - 00:24:32:15
John Simmerman
Not talking about exercise here, I'm talking about being able to do that. This particular environment, you know, really would have to be completely transformed. And, you know, hey, let's while we're at it, let's let's bring some greenery back in here. Let's have some street trees. Let's create an environment. I mean, and theoretically, the walls.

00:24:32:15 - 00:24:35:10
Tristan Cleveland
Of those buildings, right? Yes, exactly.

00:24:35:12 - 00:25:09:18
John Simmerman
I was just going to say that this is theoretically, theoretically, it's possible to walk here. Theoretically, it's possible, but it's not welcoming these blank walls and everything that you see here. So really, this and I'm glad and I really wanted to focus in on Tysons, because you said a few magic words, very close to Washington, D.C. It's it's one of these environments, you know, similar to like with Surrey, you know, that's there to try to provide alternatives to people who are completely priced out of Vancouver.

00:25:09:20 - 00:25:35:15
John Simmerman
You know, Tysons is had been envisioned as being a place that could be a legitimate alternative, you know, to the metro D.C. area. There probably is technically part of the metro D.C. area, but it's just this auto sewer hell that has been created with plenty of density all around it. But again, it's not walkable and it's certainly not bikeable.

00:25:35:17 - 00:25:49:00
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, go to the next image. So here on the right you see some of the the funny bike lanes and there's some worse bike lanes too. There's, there's bike lanes that are go in the middle of the road with a turning lane on the right and more lanes on the left.

00:25:49:03 - 00:26:17:01
John Simmerman
Well, I'm glad you included and glad you included this particular image. And for the listening audience, this is an image of the Fairfax County Master Bicycle Master plan dated October 2014, and Fairfax County is the county where Tysons is is located there in Virginia. The image that they chose to use is what we would typically kind of conceive of when we think of what a cyclist is.

00:26:17:03 - 00:26:32:02
John Simmerman
They're on, you know, sort of road bikes with skinny tires. They're wearing high, high vis clothing. The guy in the front is and they're wearing helmets. This is not the image that that I'm trying to promote. This is not the the idea.

00:26:32:03 - 00:26:45:28
Tristan Cleveland
Of these men. It is important because exactly. The evidence does show that so only roughly 1% of people will be able to buy who would be willing to bike in this context with that kind of danger and high speed roads. And the most likely is.

00:26:46:02 - 00:26:47:03
John Simmerman
That yes, if.

00:26:47:03 - 00:26:48:17
Tristan Cleveland
That. Yes, exactly. If that.

00:26:48:20 - 00:26:49:24
John Simmerman
Yes.

00:26:49:26 - 00:26:58:16
Tristan Cleveland
The most likely the people who are most willing to do this are often middle aged men. I don't know why that's true, but it appears to be true anyway.

00:26:58:16 - 00:27:22:13
John Simmerman
It's a it's a trope. It's a stereotype. The typical trope. I'm a middle aged man and I also have a racing bike and I wear like on it when I'm on my my racing back. So I am the mammal, the middle aged man in Lycra. Really what we're what it's referring to is that we're talking about sports and recreation cycling, which is much different.

00:27:22:13 - 00:27:23:11
Tristan Cleveland
Than exactly.

00:27:23:12 - 00:27:49:06
John Simmerman
The ability to just want to get down to the grocery store. Yeah. And the grocery store is a little bit farther than walking distance. It may not be served by transit. It's just it's practical and pragmatic to get on your bike and go and do that trip and get back when you have a community that has a network of safe and inviting active mobility systems.

00:27:49:08 - 00:28:10:16
Tristan Cleveland
And for that to work, you can't have to put on highways, clothing or even a helmet. It needs to be so safe and comfortable that anyone can just jump on their bike and head down the street. And so now what's what's frustrating is that the people who are willing to bike in this kind of environment, they are often the only people biking because everyone else has been weeded out.

00:28:10:16 - 00:28:15:21
Tristan Cleveland
And so they become the voices of the bicycling community. And so in this in the.

00:28:15:21 - 00:28:23:06
John Simmerman
Past, in the past, that was pretty much the only voices. Fortunately, now we're starting to see that change because we're seeing this.

00:28:23:06 - 00:28:43:18
Tristan Cleveland
In some seen is Tysons is seeing that change. So the reason why the bicycle masterplan you know, I said all we needed is paint it bike lanes. And it was actually fine to not have bike lanes for downhills. This is actually in the plan. So it's okay to have no bike lanes downhill because cyclists will be going so fast downhill that they'll be matching the speed of cars.

00:28:43:18 - 00:28:53:03
Tristan Cleveland
So you don't need to separate them. I mean, you can can't make that up. But it was because the local cycling advocates were people who are willing to bike in that kind of environment and as well.

00:28:53:03 - 00:29:28:24
John Simmerman
And more diverse. And let's be let's be clear of the context of the situation. So this is 2014. So they had been working on this bicycle master plan in the years leading up to 2014. You know, this is basically a decade ago. So the you know, a decade ago and 15 years ago and 20 years ago, the majority of the people who were actually advocating for any kind of bicycle infrastructure were at that point in time, mostly the vehicular cyclist genre of of bicycle advocates.

00:29:28:26 - 00:29:37:16
John Simmerman
And in all they cared about was a shoulder. You know, they were if that. And and so so for.

00:29:37:16 - 00:29:48:00
Tristan Cleveland
People who haven't heard that term before, a vehicular cyclist, people who believe that we should treat bikes as if they're small cars and yeah, it's a it's a funny point of view. I mean if.

00:29:48:04 - 00:29:53:06
John Simmerman
Yeah, if you really want to dive into that deep rabbit hole, just Google it.

00:29:53:08 - 00:30:02:06
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah. So not a good idea. Let's just say it's not designing cities for everybody. It's designing them for a very small proportion of people. Yeah.

00:30:02:09 - 00:30:15:26
John Simmerman
Yeah. So let's wrap up Tysons here and you've got a couple of images on screen. Walk us through what your intent is on on these two side by side images and describe them for our listening audience, too.

00:30:15:28 - 00:30:46:23
Tristan Cleveland
And this is the borough. This is one of the new developments in the area. So as I mentioned, they were successful in attracting a lot of mixed use development despite their huge roads. But there's a lot of exceptions. Right? There's so on this one street on the left, you have this narrow street, very nicely designed street with on street parking, outdoor cafes, local shops, very tall building, but, you know, a high quality street on the other side of the same building, you have just a massive blank wall.

00:30:46:25 - 00:31:13:09
Tristan Cleveland
And so what they've done in Tysons is that with the streets, you have, you know, streets and turn all the blocks that are pedestrian friendly. And then between those pockets of pedestrian friendly buildings and streets, you have these massive roads and blank walls. So a lot of people describe it as islands of walkability with these like rivers of cars and unfriendly environments around them.

00:31:13:11 - 00:31:37:02
Tristan Cleveland
And what this message is, is that humans, they need to feel comfortable for the entire walk to where they're going and for these buildings and businesses to reinforce each other's success. By that logic that we were discussing earlier, where street life and businesses and homes all make each other more successful and create that vibrancy, that that is the basic requirement of a successful, walkable place.

00:31:37:05 - 00:32:15:04
Tristan Cleveland
That can't happen. If you were severing these communities from each other with blank walls and wide roads. So I really liked what you were saying, that, you know, in a sense this is easy. In a sense, we know what it means to design a pedestrian friendly street and what it means to design a people oriented building. But what it requires is consistency and rigor, because if you create one massive blank wall and one section of street or create one intersection that has this like fast slip lane that no one feels comfortable crossing, then you are cutting off parts of the community from each other.

00:32:15:07 - 00:32:35:20
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, and that is what I think is missing from the professions, the the urban design professions right now, engineering and planning. The whole bit is the lack of rigor and understanding what it truly means to build walkable places and the level of consistency we're going to have to achieve. Yeah.

00:32:35:22 - 00:32:38:16
John Simmerman
And here's another rendering here.

00:32:38:16 - 00:32:43:00
Tristan Cleveland
And this is the milestone isn't so great development.

00:32:43:02 - 00:33:05:17
John Simmerman
Yeah. And again, you know, when I look at these these types of of of designs and design elements, one of the things that I start to think about is, yeah, there's, there's a lot of really good stuff that's happening here. I love the fact that we have the number of street trees that we have. I'm assuming that the motor vehicles that are there, those are parked.

00:33:05:17 - 00:33:08:11
John Simmerman
Is that correct? Is that a parking area?

00:33:08:14 - 00:33:13:04
Tristan Cleveland
Sure. I suspect that's on street parking, but it's unclear. I mean, it's just a rendering.

00:33:13:04 - 00:33:50:24
John Simmerman
So, yeah, it's a rendering. But one of the things that that I think about when I see these types of designs and is a complete disconnect with the functionality of riding a bike in this environment. And and what I mean by this is if this were if this same rendering was of a a Danish city or a Dutch city and you saw those distances, you'd see right away that those distances, as you were talking about earlier, the first 100 meters are so incredibly important.

00:33:51:00 - 00:34:27:10
John Simmerman
In 800 meters is the farthest that somebody is going to be able to want to walk. I look at this and say, okay, where's your bike lanes? Where's your bicycle priority mobility lanes? Because the other thing that we have to do when we change our brain, our cars centric North American brain, is we have to stop thinking about the who rides a bike from this to who's going to use a a bike oriented facility and change that around to.

00:34:27:18 - 00:34:58:29
John Simmerman
Oh, well, yeah, that's going to be somebody who's in a wheelchair. That's going to be somebody who's in an adaptive cycle. That's going to be the little old lady who she rides her bike, her step through, almost eats bike because, you know, she can't walk that far, but she can certainly ride her bike that for. In other words, there is a whole change in our mindset of who actually will ride a bike or a cargo bike with three kids on it, you know.

00:34:59:01 - 00:35:32:04
John Simmerman
Yeah. I mean, and so that's one of the things that I really see a struggling with in North America is, is not designing things. You know, if I were to overlay and I'll do that in the overlay the image of Carmel, Indiana and Mountain Boulevard where you have similar types of heights of buildings. But the but you have, you know, a wonderful facility for people who are rolling through and a separate facility for people who are strolling through.

00:35:32:06 - 00:35:39:06
John Simmerman
And then you also have one lane of traffic in each direction for people driving through. And so it's not.

00:35:39:06 - 00:35:42:09
Tristan Cleveland
Entirely easy to achieve in this context. You know.

00:35:42:11 - 00:36:09:18
John Simmerman
Look at this and you have so much space, you're basically unless this center lane right here is intended to be a multi-use path. Okay, fine. But given the amount of distances that clearly these buildings are theoretically in the distance, yeah, you've got plenty of space. Why not? Why not make it? And if you're saying, well, you know, we want to make it as eco friendly as possible, we don't want to give up green space, Fine.

00:36:09:18 - 00:36:16:26
John Simmerman
Use some pavers, use some filtration so that you're you're decreasing the amount of impervious cover that you have.

00:36:16:28 - 00:36:19:04
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

00:36:19:06 - 00:36:21:26
John Simmerman
I'm the world. I just Royster, I.

00:36:21:26 - 00:36:42:25
Tristan Cleveland
Can't run out of caution, but yeah I believe a majority of families actually have bikes in their homes, right? So when we think about, well, who's going to bank, I mean if you create that context for it's easy and useful for everyone, then they will. I love to talk about one of the critical issues here, which is coming back to what you can see.

00:36:42:25 - 00:36:50:24
Tristan Cleveland
So I'd love to grab an example from both a tanker and downtown Kendall. So let's take the for example first.

00:36:51:01 - 00:36:54:03
John Simmerman
Sure. Okay. So this is this is Uptown Core.

00:36:54:06 - 00:37:16:28
Tristan Cleveland
That's right. That's right. So this is their new main street. Like the other spots, we can critique issues with. I mean, one thing is that the engineering department required that the street be a highway bypass. And so that's why it's five lanes wide and it's just, you know, we should be in a place where we know that if we're building a walkable community, no, it cannot be a highway bypass with a means to stop the table.

00:37:17:01 - 00:37:20:16
John Simmerman
But it's like, no, yeah, hard stuff. No.

00:37:20:18 - 00:37:45:03
Tristan Cleveland
No. Now. And the buildings aren't perfect, but like, this is, you know, a commendable effort and they're starting to get some shops in the ground floors. Now, the thing is, though, that if you go to the next image, they only built out that one block of Main Street with buildings on both sides. And then beyond that, you get the old parking lots and the Wal-Mart that's there and the blank walls.

00:37:45:05 - 00:38:15:20
Tristan Cleveland
And so it's been hard to attract more investment in consistently building out this main street because so much of the main street and attracting businesses to the main street, because so much of it is just totally undermined by this. Basically, it's like it's like a wounded animal. It's like you've you've cut off the bottom half, the animal loses its sorry for the violent analogy, but like and by contrast in the street and having no enclosure, you're like it just loses its energy.

00:38:15:20 - 00:38:36:13
Tristan Cleveland
It just, you know, spills out. And so to create a successful Main Street, you need to invest enough in those first buildings or use placemaking to hide that view, to create a contained sense of space for the entire way that people are walking. Because if you only have one block that is contained on both sides, then you don't.

00:38:36:16 - 00:39:08:21
Tristan Cleveland
It's hard to achieve that critical mass of people walk to create that kind of main street where people are willing to open businesses and we're developers are willing to invest more. And so this is a map of it. So since the nineties you only had a limited amount of mixed use buildings built, whereas there a map of the big box stores that have been built and there are many, many more big box stores have been built in this area that was supposed to become a walkable downtown and they're still hoping to flip those big box stores back into walkable downtown.

00:39:08:21 - 00:39:17:26
Tristan Cleveland
But it's going to take many years. And I think that they slow down the process by failing to visually contain the main street. Yeah.

00:39:17:29 - 00:39:20:07
John Simmerman
Where is this located?

00:39:20:10 - 00:39:47:27
Tristan Cleveland
I'm sorry, this is the Uptown Core and Oakville, Ontario. So Oakville is a suburb, kind of Toronto. It's in the Toronto region and it has a historic, walkable main street. But this is like the deep end of the suburban of the city. Got it. And it is starting to attract a few like larger pedestrian friendly buildings now. But the failure to enclose that street really slowed down the process.

00:39:48:00 - 00:40:08:06
John Simmerman
I think that what you had said earlier is very, very important for us to focus in. I'm zooming in on this image just a little bit so we can get the mixed use and the the big box store, the yellow in the yellow here. And you can see that they're sort of drowning in their sea of parking around each of the yellow buildings.

00:40:08:06 - 00:40:37:08
John Simmerman
There is what you said about going big and the example that I just used by bringing up a Carmel, Indiana, is an example of that. And the way that they were able to transform and build a downtown environment where they none really they had one little tiny Main Street area that was quote unquote, their historic downtown area. But other than that, it was a really small city.

00:40:37:10 - 00:41:03:03
John Simmerman
The Monaghan rail line went through and had a station there at basically Main Street. But when, you know, the rail went away and then that became the Monaghan rail trail that went through there and those 35 miles, you know, stretching from Indianapolis to the north to the communities to the north. But the what they did was they said, we're going to go big.

00:41:03:05 - 00:41:25:04
John Simmerman
And so the city became the developer in the sense of of buying up all of these properties. You know, that would have been, you know, analogous to everything, you know, to the the the upper end of this image and really started to just say, okay, this is our vision. We want to be make this walkable. We want to make bikeable.

00:41:25:06 - 00:41:55:09
John Simmerman
Since it's on the Monaghan trail, it's inherently bikeable all the way up to all of our communities that are along the trail because there's a rail trail, including stretching all the way 15 miles to the to the south, to Indianapolis, downtown Indianapolis. And so, you know, they really had that bold vision of doing it and being the developer so that they could control it and not allow this kind of stuff to happen.

00:41:55:16 - 00:42:20:09
John Simmerman
Because because guess what? They already had that shit, right? Right. It exists in their suburbs because they are primarily they became they were a suburban sprawl development with no heart, no soul, no downtown. And so Mayor Brainard was like, we need to build this. And so there's a lot about the city of Carmel, Indiana, that, you know, you can criticize.

00:42:20:09 - 00:42:37:22
John Simmerman
And I criticize them frequently about how their auto centric roundabouts are not walkable and bikeable. But what they did do very, very well was try to control that building of a sense of place, an actual destination downtown.

00:42:37:24 - 00:43:01:02
Tristan Cleveland
Right. So I would almost say like my my focus is almost the alternative to that. So if you most of the people who write about suburban redesigns recommend buying up everything, having one developer, private sector, public sector do it all at once so you can just build out the whole thing at once and make it work. And in the cases where that works, that that can work.

00:43:01:02 - 00:43:21:26
Tristan Cleveland
It's more of a risk from the strong towns perspective. It like it risks insolvency, right? But like if you go to Baldwin Park in in Orlando, other places where they've done that very well and it's totally doable. But I think that there's only so many times they're going to do that. There's a limited ability for cities to buy up huge amounts of area and redevelop it all itself.

00:43:21:28 - 00:43:48:19
Tristan Cleveland
So my focus is on how do we make a strategic investment in streets in a single block and change regulations to create conditions in which the private sector, where dozens of or hundreds of landlords will choose to redevelop and and actually achieve? A the common goal of creating well-defined space and pedestrian friendly buildings, which requires that that commitment to consistency.

00:43:48:27 - 00:43:51:17
Tristan Cleveland
You can go back to that image you just pulled out there, actually. So I'm going to.

00:43:51:17 - 00:44:21:28
John Simmerman
Come back to I'm going to come back to Kendall in just a moment here, but I want to kind of stick with what you just said there in a minute. Kind of what I earlier in the sense that, yes, we're here and to to sort of, you know, riff off of what you were just saying is let's change the conditions, let's change the game so that we don't we the city, maybe we're not going to leverage debt, maybe we're not going to go into the hole to be able to buy up all these places.

00:44:22:04 - 00:44:28:07
John Simmerman
But we're going to change the conditions and the rules of the game so that this shit stops happening.

00:44:28:09 - 00:44:56:15
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, Yeah. And so example, a land value tax, you know, if you are actually taxing that land based on what it could be used for, given its location next to future bus lines, etc., you suddenly it's, it doesn't make sense to just have, you know, big empty parking lots. You know, you're going to tax it in a way where you got to build something on this parking lots because having something that's producing zero income isn't going to cut it anymore.

00:44:56:15 - 00:44:59:09
Tristan Cleveland
So things like that changes reality on the ground.

00:44:59:11 - 00:45:03:18
John Simmerman
So we could have and we can have an entire discussion all just about land value tax.

00:45:03:19 - 00:45:25:27
Tristan Cleveland
Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'm here for it. So this is so inside one of the suburban retrofits, which is that I looked at, which is downtown Kendall in Miami, Florida. This is one of the first retrofits ever. Very, very cool. Very interesting. There's like, it's about halfway there right now. Parts of it are really working well in other parts, less so.

00:45:25:29 - 00:45:35:27
Tristan Cleveland
But there's this one really cool case study in the center of it, which is a development called Downtown Dade Land. I know this is confusing. Downtown Dateline is inside downtown Kendall, but anyway.

00:45:36:00 - 00:45:39:08
John Simmerman
It's D it's Dade County. So that's.

00:45:39:10 - 00:46:10:02
Tristan Cleveland
Sun dry. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So we're as the uptown core. They only enclose the main street for this one section and the rest was kind of gaping open to parking lots and blank walls. Here. They invested in enough buildings along this one street that it completely encloses the street. And as you look down the street, at the end of the street is this beautiful building with like a rounded facade at the end and a architectural feature on top.

00:46:10:05 - 00:46:17:19
Tristan Cleveland
And the whole street is, I don't know how tall it is, maybe eight storeys or something of that, but it feels reasonably human scale and there's.

00:46:17:21 - 00:46:18:22
John Simmerman
This very European.

00:46:18:22 - 00:46:38:23
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, yeah, it was very European. When this was first built. It was surrounded by parking lots on all sides and wide roads, but you wouldn't know it when you're on that street is it is completely insulated from that current environment around it. So I find this very inspirational. You know, when we're looking at kickstarting this new kind of growth, this is a great way to do it.

00:46:38:23 - 00:46:58:03
Tristan Cleveland
Just totally enclose that one place that that feels truly pedestrian friendly and then that helped encourage other people to make similar investments. And now the entire area around it is slowly becoming completely pedestrian friendly like this and no longer needs to hide it. Yeah, Yeah, I think.

00:46:58:07 - 00:47:02:10
John Simmerman
But what's that?

00:47:02:12 - 00:47:25:15
Tristan Cleveland
So this is what used to be there. This is the old Burger King headquarters. This and this was surrounded by a huge parking lot. So they were up against a difficult fight when they when they first built this stuff. Let's see. Yeah. The next image is an arrow of. So you see what I mean here? That they built enough buildings to create this entire street that on the inside was totally walkable.

00:47:25:15 - 00:47:48:28
Tristan Cleveland
And you see in the background some of the other buildings that went up. Now you see in the bottom right corner, that's Kendall Drive. And the original plan was for this to be turned into like a, you know, one lane street in both directions with a tram and nothing like that happened. So in all of these retrofits, you get these these political fights and institutional fights.

00:47:48:28 - 00:48:03:20
Tristan Cleveland
You know, this was the engineering department saying absolutely not. You will not shrink the size of this. Three of those three, it is where this road is for moving many, many cars at a high speed. And, you know, now it's how many lanes is the eight, you know, eight lanes. I mean.

00:48:03:22 - 00:48:06:17
John Simmerman
Is it a state road?

00:48:06:19 - 00:48:13:01
Tristan Cleveland
I think so. And if I did have that in my thesis. But I do believe that it's a state road.

00:48:13:04 - 00:48:22:08
John Simmerman
And it looks like over here on the left, that's another big monster road. Is that an interstate or a definitely a state highway over there?

00:48:22:08 - 00:48:48:19
Tristan Cleveland
And those were the very first highway in American history. That is the US one there. It goes from north to the south. Yeah. A major highway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This diagram shows the places that have been redeveloped in this one pocket next to Metro Train, going straight to downtown Miami. And some of those spots that are going to be redeveloped soon, but just been delayed.

00:48:48:21 - 00:48:51:03
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah.

00:48:51:09 - 00:49:05:19
Tristan Cleveland
So there's lots to say about downtown. I know we're well over time and that's the main thing I wanted to raise about it was just the strategy of, of creating one street. At least that's for one closed.

00:49:05:21 - 00:49:16:08
John Simmerman
Yeah. Because if you can get one street in and you can kind of like create a demonstration that this is not the end of the world.

00:49:16:10 - 00:49:16:27
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah.

00:49:16:29 - 00:49:44:08
John Simmerman
You know, you know, you can hopefully kind of counter the, the conspiracy theories that are trying to debunk and derail anything that, you know, smacks of walkability in 15 minutes City and all that kind of stuff is just like, look, guys, it's I mean, what's really interesting like in the example Miami, all you have to do is just pop over to Miami Beach and go to SB and all the way.

00:49:44:11 - 00:50:09:17
John Simmerman
I mean, it's just there's some delightful kind of of pockets and enclaves that you can point to and say, yeah, we're not talking about, you know, trying to Manhattan ize this. This is what we're talking about. This is livable. This is this is what you go to and and visit when you're on vacation and you raved to your family and friends about, you know.

00:50:09:18 - 00:50:10:11
John Simmerman
Yeah. After.

00:50:10:12 - 00:50:25:01
Tristan Cleveland
Exactly. Yeah. You know and downtown Kendall once that got going and people got excited about it they they got to work on trying to create 11 other walkable areas like that. So success can really inspire a lot more success.

00:50:25:04 - 00:50:50:02
John Simmerman
You know, what have we not talked about that you really want to leave the audience with in the context of the work that you have done to get to this point and and these examples, these studies as well as what you're interested in moving forward, because I suspect that you've learned a lot and you're excited about the direction that y'all are heading in.

00:50:50:04 - 00:51:12:08
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah. So the one thing I did mention, but I think we need to get to a place where we have official standards that recognize that there is a funding mental and categorical distinction between designing communities for high speed traffic, which is very important. The logistics are important and deliveries are important. Traveling to the next city is important. You Know industrial parks are important.

00:51:12:08 - 00:51:35:12
Tristan Cleveland
We need to have these places that are actually built around machines and we need to do that very well and we're pretty good at it and we need to design other places around people. And right now we have the same standard books applying in both places and even the advocates for walkability. And, you know, the planners that believe in walking and biking, they push back.

00:51:35:12 - 00:51:52:06
Tristan Cleveland
They don't accept there being a categorical distinction. They just want to make everything lockable everywhere. I think they're in a completely dreamy fantasy, you know, And and it's frustrating to me because of industrial parks are not going to become, you know, people friendly, wonderful places to be. And so we need to accept that there is a categorical distinction.

00:51:52:06 - 00:52:28:01
Tristan Cleveland
And if you really want to create, places are going to be truly healthy and truly human centered and just wonderful to to be outside and chat with your friends. It requires excellence. It requires not just small changes, but consistent improvements. Consistent high quality building design consists street design. And so that's that's what we're working on on creating this designation to empower local governments across Canada to say that there are certain areas of their communities that they want to be, you know, not a little bit more walkable, but truly walkable, truly human friendly places.

00:52:28:04 - 00:52:57:15
Tristan Cleveland
So that's that's a big thing for me. The other thing is that, you know, my professional life goal now is to help cities across Canada, the United States and the world transform suburban areas into walkable places. I don't want this to be academic work that sits on a shelf. I want to be out there working with communities on kickstarting that growth and so if you're listening to this and you want to make that happen in your community, let's let's talk because I want to take this to a massive scale.

00:52:57:18 - 00:53:16:23
John Simmerman
Yeah. And we're flipping through some images right here on the landing page to to the website as well. And I want to say that, you know, that's one of the most difficult things that you could try to tackle, is to try to tackle suburban that suburban context and try to change it.

00:53:16:25 - 00:53:45:00
Tristan Cleveland
Exactly. It is hard. Yeah. And that's actually what attracts me to it, because lots of people are experts, like helping make vibrant downtowns a little bit more vibrant. Like that's doable. That's much easier. The task that fascinates me is taking the absolute hardest places to do this and succeeding there because the vast majority of urban area in North America is these unworkable car centric places.

00:53:45:02 - 00:53:52:18
Tristan Cleveland
And so we can achieve any of our goals on health or sustainability or anything else unless we can change these places at scale.

00:53:52:20 - 00:54:27:07
John Simmerman
And I'm going to say that the magic to that is to really embrace the bicycle. Yeah, because the distances, the densities aren't there to be able to support true transit and the distances are too great to support true walkability. And so the, the bicycle, the lowly bicycle that predated the automobile reminder, folks, you know, that was there. But this is.

00:54:27:07 - 00:54:28:07
Tristan Cleveland
The vehicle you.

00:54:28:09 - 00:54:33:17
John Simmerman
Know, there was around about 100 years prior to I mean, the original. Right in original.

00:54:33:17 - 00:54:34:10
Tristan Cleveland
Access the.

00:54:34:10 - 00:54:35:08
John Simmerman
Original safety.

00:54:35:12 - 00:54:35:21
Tristan Cleveland
Bike.

00:54:35:24 - 00:55:14:07
John Simmerman
Yeah, exactly. And so we really do see that we can actually transform many of these suburban contexts into bikeable distances, bikeable communities. And there's some really great examples of especially in like in all of Finland, which is a very suburban context development, but they have an entire network of off street pathways, bikeways that connect to all the cul de sacs so that the kids can get to school, can the you know, everybody can get to work and everything.

00:55:14:07 - 00:55:55:02
John Simmerman
And so you see something like ridiculous numbers of kids getting riding bikes to school, like 60, 70% of the kids we're talking Dutch level bike ridership across all ages and abilities because of a separation of a network of walking and biking paths that are not part of the roadway network. So it is possible. I've even lived in in a facility in a community like that in Orange County, California, back in the early 1990s, where we have this network of off street pathways so that you could get to parks, you could get to the shopping, you could get to the schools.

00:55:55:05 - 00:56:09:07
John Simmerman
So this is possible to retrofit, but we do need to kind of shift things around and we need to transform the on road facilities to to be less deadly because right now they're just absolutely deadly.

00:56:09:10 - 00:56:29:18
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, bicycles are like a force multiplier for walkable contexts. And when there are big gaps between them and between homes and these walkable places, that it allows more people to get to them. And like you just said, the big challenge and of the American and Canadian context is the how to get those bike lanes across those eight lanes throats.

00:56:29:21 - 00:56:56:25
John Simmerman
Yes. Yeah. And in the case of like Boulder, Colorado, way that they've handled that is they have built nearly 100 underpasses so that the bikes the bicycle network actually seamlessly you know goes right underneath the motor vehicle network. Their biggest challenge is where they're not able to do those is having those difficult battles that take place to try to the street space into more walkable, bikeable places.

00:56:56:27 - 00:57:32:07
John Simmerman
So, yeah, fascinating. Well, I got to hand it to you, man. You're taking on a lot going after trying to transform those environments drastically, right. For the the the old historic downtowns and the cities that have, you know, have the bones of an old historic core. And then people move to the suburbs and then abandon the cities. Those places, you know, the Kansas Cities of the Worlds, the Buffalo, New York's of the world in many other Detroit is another great example that are coming around because they're able to re-imagine that downtown that had been abandoned.

00:57:32:07 - 00:57:40:21
John Simmerman
And there's plenty of infill development to happen. But you decided to make it difficult for yourself. You're going after the suburban context, which is.

00:57:40:23 - 00:57:42:25
Tristan Cleveland
Fast, doesn't have to mean bones, as Ted.

00:57:42:28 - 00:58:07:19
John Simmerman
Doesn't have good bones. It's fast becoming obsolete. I mean, we're talking about, you know, neighborhoods that are now 50, 60, even some 70 years old. And so we're watching them crumbling. Some of the infrastructure that we saw in some of your images, you're just like, well, not only that, that's just not attractive to anybody, not even people who prefer to live in a single family home.

00:58:07:21 - 00:58:10:10
John Simmerman
Those places just plain suck.

00:58:10:13 - 00:58:12:12
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, exactly.

00:58:12:14 - 00:58:19:01
John Simmerman
So, yeah, again, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast. This has been an absolute joy and pleasure.

00:58:19:04 - 00:58:22:25
Tristan Cleveland
For me to just what a wonderful conversation you could have talk forever.

00:58:22:27 - 00:58:39:03
John Simmerman
He thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed part two of our conversation with Dr. Tristin Cleveland of the Happy Organization. And if you did, please give the thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, be honored to have you. Subscribe to the Active Towns Channel.

00:58:39:03 - 00:58:59:24
John Simmerman
Just click on that subscription button down below and ring the notifications bell. And if you are enjoying this content, please consider supporting my efforts here on the Active Towns Channel. You can become an active town's ambassador by joining my patron, which by the way, if you're part of Patreon, you're able to gain access to all this content early and ad free, which is super cool.

00:58:59:24 - 00:59:18:16
John Simmerman
Bonus as well as you get 15% off of all items in the active town store, which is another way that you can support my efforts and you can also make a donation. The nonprofit. All of that is available from the website at Active Towns dot org. Thank you all so much. It really means a lot to me to have you tune in.

00:59:18:19 - 00:59:42:06
John Simmerman
And until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers. And again sending a huge thank you to all my active towns ambassadors supporting the channel on Patron Buy me a coffee YouTube super Thanks. As well as making contributions to the nonprofit and purchasing things from the active towns store, every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated.

00:59:42:09 - 00:59:43:15
John Simmerman
Thank you all so much.