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

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:18:19
Tristan Cleveland
So this is just a photo of a parking lot. And they the they raised the train tracks by the trains. It is. And the next photo shows the mixed use building that they built there. They created an arm's length development corporation to partner with developers on major projects like this to get them in their strategic places. They needed them.

00:00:18:21 - 00:00:39:25
John Simmerman
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Active Towns Channel. I'm John Simmerman and that is Dr. Tristan Cleveland with the Happy Cities Organization. And we are going to be talking about Happy cities, what it takes to create happy cities and some of his research that he has done, which went into him being able to earn his doctoral degree. It is a good one, but it is a long one.

00:00:39:25 - 00:01:01:15
John Simmerman
And in fact, this is going to be part one of a two part series. We'll come back and give you the second half in a couple of days. So sit back and enjoy my conversation with Dr. Tristan Cleveland. Dr. Tristan Cleveland, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.

00:01:01:17 - 00:01:03:14
Tristan Cleveland
And it's really my pleasure to be here.

00:01:03:16 - 00:01:12:16
John Simmerman
You let you like how I slip that in there? You know, the calling you Dr. Tristan Cleveland because you are you recently earned your Ph.D. Congratulations.

00:01:12:18 - 00:01:34:24
Tristan Cleveland
Thank you so much. It was a huge project and it's it's really exciting to have now. But, you know, I don't want to just leave this as a study on the shelf. I really want to put what I was studying in the practice and and keep up the work, because as you know, what I was working on really goes to the heart of the biggest challenges that cities face today.

00:01:34:24 - 00:01:36:11
Tristan Cleveland
And I want to dig into it.

00:01:36:13 - 00:01:49:01
John Simmerman
Yeah, you know, we'll come back to that in just a moment. But let's have a pause just a moment to give you an opportunity to to introduce yourself to the audience. So who is in Cleveland?

00:01:49:04 - 00:02:25:11
Tristan Cleveland
Hi, folks. So I am an urban planner and I work at a company called Happy Cities. And Happy Cities works with governments and developers around the world to help them design communities and developments to support the basic needs of human well-being. So making sure that communities support health and social connection and even things like meaning, and just ensuring that when you walk outside you feel good, you look around and the things that you see, the things you hear and feel make you feel good and make you want to spend time in that place.

00:02:25:11 - 00:02:39:19
Tristan Cleveland
So that's what we specialize in. They happily allowed me to take four years to do my Ph.D. on how to redesign suburban communities to achieve these goals. And now I'm back at work full time trying to do this in practice.

00:02:39:21 - 00:03:09:06
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah, that's great. And that sounds all colorful and fun and everything. And we'll talk a little bit about Happy Cities as an organization and Happy City. The book and just a moment, but I want to give some love to that paper that you wrote. And here it is, and I'll be sure to include a link to this landing page for your paper as well as I see that you can click on the PDF of it as well.

00:03:09:06 - 00:03:29:04
John Simmerman
So that'll be included in the show notes of this broadcast episode for the audio only as well as the video description below. Talking just briefly a little bit about, you know, like you said, this four year commitment to writing this paper and basically earning that doctoral degree.

00:03:29:06 - 00:04:13:12
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah. So the most shocking thing to me about finishing this thesis is that people have actually been reading it. It usually does not happen with the Ph.D. theses, but so this this Ph.D. was about how do we take totally a car dependent suburban communities and redesign them into places where people can can walk and bike and have that interaction between retail on the street and the street and transit in public spaces so that they're all reinforcing each other's success, which simply isn't possible in communities where you have massive parking lots separating every destination and where you have giant roads, that makes it very dangerous and uncomfortable for people across the street.

00:04:13:15 - 00:04:47:15
Tristan Cleveland
And the basic challenge is how do we get from here to there? What do we get from this context where walking is a disaster to what a lot of communities want to achieve, which is creating a main street for their community, creating a really wonderful place people are proud of where you can hold a parade. How do you convince those first developers to build a building that doesn't have massive parking and instead has entrances and retail facing the sidewalk in the context where no one walks and everybody drives it up?

00:04:47:18 - 00:04:48:08
Tristan Cleveland
Go ahead.

00:04:48:10 - 00:05:12:09
John Simmerman
I was going to say and we're going to actually get into that visually because you sent some photos along and so we'll dive a little bit in a little bit. We'll dive into some of those examples and t that tease those out. But before we do that, let's let's also just kind of shift gears and talk a little bit about that context that you met that you mentioned earlier, which is you've been working for the company Happy Cities.

00:05:12:09 - 00:05:47:06
John Simmerman
Now this is a consulting firm and in this consulting firm is, you know, part of and was born out of the book Happy City, which is here. And so talk a little bit about that transformation. I had mentioned to you before that I do know or else excuse me, Montgomery and we I had read the book and this is like one of the most influential books of my Establishing the Active Towns initiative.

00:05:47:09 - 00:06:12:12
John Simmerman
And then I had the opportunity to to to meet Charles Montgomery right after he published the book. I have it listed here on my both my active town's featured books for the podcast right there, because we're talking about it right now, but it's also down below because I actually have different categories. It's also down below in the Active Towns Classics part of my library here.

00:06:12:18 - 00:06:23:06
John Simmerman
And then you'll also see some other interesting books in the living sciences. We're going to talk a little bit about all of that kind of stuff in just a little bit, but talk a little.

00:06:23:06 - 00:06:28:25
Tristan Cleveland
Bit about that is a great book list there. By the way. I really look forward to looking through what you have there.

00:06:28:27 - 00:06:31:19
John Simmerman
Kind of slide through. Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

00:06:31:20 - 00:06:33:29
Tristan Cleveland
But those are some good ones. When we talk about.

00:06:33:29 - 00:06:39:15
John Simmerman
This evolution that took place from this book to this.

00:06:39:21 - 00:06:40:12
Tristan Cleveland
A consultancy.

00:06:40:12 - 00:06:42:28
John Simmerman
Company. Yeah, running a consultancy.

00:06:43:00 - 00:07:05:13
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah. So Charles Montgomery was, was a journalist right now, not an urban planner. And he had written a number of other books and other subjects and got into this issue of like, why do we keep building cities that don't make us happy, that that undermine our wellbeing? I mean, what are we building cities for if not for humans?

00:07:05:13 - 00:07:28:10
Tristan Cleveland
You know, like, what are we doing? It's insanity. So he wrote this this incredible book full of really great stories that just really underlines the practical things that we can do to to achieve better human happiness through design and a lot of people have met actually got into urban planning because they read this book, you know, so it was really had a big impact.

00:07:28:13 - 00:07:48:09
Tristan Cleveland
And after he finished it, you know, unlike his other books, people started calling him up and saying, okay, let's do it. Let's make this happen. And so he started wondering, okay, what are okay? Obviously I need to start a company. You know, like people are actually coming to my door asking me to to help them make this stuff happen.

00:07:48:09 - 00:08:25:24
Tristan Cleveland
So he put together a bunch of experts in the field. And since then, for the last over a decade, we've been helping developers and cities around the world implement these ideas. Really, what we focus on is taking the best research that exists, you know, really translating that research and often even doing our own research to make sure that the the designs that we put together and the recommendations we offer aren't just, you know, things that look pretty, but that are really, really supporting social ties and health and all of these things that matter so much for us.

00:08:25:26 - 00:08:50:14
John Simmerman
You know, and I've kind of gone over to your landing page here on the website. And so this is your your background and your it gives a little bit more information about yourself and then some of the projects that you have worked on as part of the Happy Cities organization. What a what a cool group. What a cool company, what a cool concept.

00:08:50:21 - 00:08:54:25
John Simmerman
And it sounds like you've been working with them for for quite some time now.

00:08:54:27 - 00:09:19:09
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, that's right. And I feel very lucky because it's a company where they're values really align with my own and they actually want me to spend time writing blog posts that try to push their field further or, you know, we have research projects on the side where we're trying to figure out how to make this kind of good design standard practice across the board.

00:09:19:09 - 00:09:44:24
Tristan Cleveland
I mean, we're we're doing multiple presentations this year with the Canadian studio planners and other organizations pitching this idea of creating a designation across the country for walkable, pedestrian friendly places so that it would become easy for communities anywhere in Canada to just draw a circle and a map and say, okay, this area is walkable, and suddenly a whole different set of standards would apply that support.

00:09:44:27 - 00:10:05:15
Tristan Cleveland
Pedestrian Priority Design focuses on on people rather than moving the most cars possible. And it's not every company that would allow me to pursue an idea like that and really try to turn it into reality where there's no there's no immediate profit there, you know, down the road that could turn into something where we could start consulting on that, etc..

00:10:05:17 - 00:10:14:25
Tristan Cleveland
But they really have this this faith and in their team to to try to push forward the profession and come up with new valuable ideas.

00:10:14:28 - 00:10:36:07
John Simmerman
Yeah. You know, so what was sort of your background education wise as you sort of found your way to the Happy Cities organization and then like I said, it took about four years to try to focus on doing the doctoral work. What was what was that original sort of foundation, educational foundation for you?

00:10:36:09 - 00:11:03:16
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah. So I did my undergrad in political science and history, my, my masters in Urban Planning at McGill. And then I went and worked in Guyana and Venezuela, which was quite the learning experience. Yeah, it was wonderful. Then I actually worked for many years as a advocate for sustainable planning in Halifax, and a lot of what motivated that, both the the thesis and the other work that I'm doing was the frustration I ran into as an advocate.

00:11:03:16 - 00:11:24:02
Tristan Cleveland
You know, where we're asking for government to be doing stuff that should be standard practice, you know, having to beg for things like safe streets where people can walk with their children outdoors during the day without having to worry about their children dying, you know, like simply something that we have to push hard for this to just be the way it works.

00:11:24:02 - 00:11:48:09
Tristan Cleveland
Right. And then actually, after I finished working as an advocate, I also worked as a campaign manager for a local councilor that kicked out the incumbent, got him elected. So I've been involved from advocacy, from research, from politics, and also as a professional consultant. So seeing the the issues from many angles.

00:11:48:11 - 00:12:13:28
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. Oftentimes when we think of activity, we think of exercise. So someone says, Oh yeah, I have an active lifestyle. Oh, what are you doing for exercise this? Or you know, this is an active town. Well, you know, what does that mean? You know, And so I try to bring it back to the words that you had just talked about of what are we doing to create a more walkable environment.

00:12:14:01 - 00:12:51:04
John Simmerman
Talk a little bit about that from from a culture perspective and how we're kind of living in an environment that is a biological disconnect with the human habitat. And these are terminologies that Professor Lieberman, Daniel Lieberman uses in his books of the fact that, yeah, we are one of the reasons why we have chronic disease and unhappiness is because we are living in a biological disconnect, an evolutionary biology disconnect with what we as a species, we're used to feel.

00:12:51:06 - 00:13:08:03
Tristan Cleveland
Look at the design of our physical environment. The communities around us, and what the the default, the easiest behavior and these environments are that the default is to be alone overweight under, slept and distracted.

00:13:08:05 - 00:13:08:21
John Simmerman
Right?

00:13:08:23 - 00:13:31:26
Tristan Cleveland
So there are a few things that you have to get right for human beings to be healthy and happy and and they're like that The the magic cure all is the things that affect everything. So we need to sleep enough, but critically, we need to be physically active and socially connected or we're not going to be healthy. We're not going to be happy.

00:13:31:28 - 00:13:57:13
Tristan Cleveland
Right. And our environments make this so hard. It's like playing a video game on hard mode. You know, We've decided to make it as as difficult as possible to achieve the basics for physical activity. You know, basically everything in our body evolved under the assumption that we be very physically active, burning 3000 calories a day or more.

00:13:57:16 - 00:13:58:09
John Simmerman
Right.

00:13:58:12 - 00:14:26:02
Tristan Cleveland
But to achieve the greatest impacts on health, to prevent our body from basically entirely falling apart, we don't need all of those 3000 calories of like intense exercise. You know, we just need to walk, you know, roughly 20 minutes a day of of just enough to make sure that our muscles are contracting, are being used, because the entire system is based on the assumption that we could get rid of excess energy by pumping into muscles.

00:14:26:02 - 00:14:59:29
Tristan Cleveland
And if muscles don't contract, there's actually a system where they refuse to take in any excess energy and then that ends up getting stuck in our organs and causing many other problems. That is a huge simplification. But the basic message is to, you know, say 80% or whatever it is of the benefit comes from that first 150 minutes a week of just walking, which can be achieved just by going to the grocer, going to the buy some bread, just, you know, if we build this into our if we design communities where the most convenient way, so the most convenient way to get our daily needs is to walk just a little bit.

00:15:00:01 - 00:15:20:12
Tristan Cleveland
Then we've done most of the benefit for making sure that our bodies work. And then once you have that foundation, then yeah, if you want to exercise, you can go above and beyond that and get the extra health benefits. But at least you've done the majority of the benefit already. And it's easier to do that exercise because you're already minimally active.

00:15:20:14 - 00:15:51:02
Tristan Cleveland
There is a study in Alberta that found that if that the most healthy active quarter of people only got 10% of their exercise from from dedicated recreational exercise, 90% of their physical activity came from their daily needs from from just living their life. So if we really want to make any progress on public health, as well as so many other issues, we need to design it into our communities.

00:15:51:04 - 00:16:16:20
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And if you'll indulge me, this is like right at the core of my typical stump speech and my presentation, keynote address, and, and, and this is how I phrase it. I'm like, yeah, you know, the £800 gorilla in the room is that we have this rather complicated relationship with physical activity and it's literally one of the most natural things that we can do.

00:16:16:23 - 00:16:43:11
John Simmerman
And it's in when I say natural thing that we can do, I mean just look at small children and how when they are, you know, able to play and do things, they will dash off and run and just they're like little natural athletes quite, quite inherently. And yet this gets to your point. It's like, yes, we have to make it convenient, we have to make it engaging and we have to make it fun for activity.

00:16:43:11 - 00:17:20:00
John Simmerman
But then we also have to acknowledge that we have a very, very complicated relationship with physical activity, and we are inherently we have like what I call the lazy gene. We have this inclination that if there is an easier way, we are hardwired to conserve energy. And so we have a situation like this where in San Diego, California, where it's probably 75 degrees in this photo, they're taking the escalator to go into the 24 hour fitness to get on the Stairmaster, looking out at that very same escalator.

00:17:20:06 - 00:17:42:29
John Simmerman
Right to do the workout. It's not like this was a hot, humid environment and they didn't want to get too sweaty before they went in air conditioning. I mean, give me a break. But the point is, is that it's it's a it's a series of things that we have to do within our built environment because we have literally designed activity out of our lives.

00:17:43:01 - 00:18:17:07
John Simmerman
And so that's that's one of the things that I wanted to sort of highlight here. And also, you know, give a shout out to Professor Lieberman. You had given his book The Story of the Human Body, Evolution, Health and Disease, a shout out in the podcast with Chuck Morone. His most recent book is exercised and really examining. He examines the that relationship of the difference between physical activity, just living life, you know, act, you know, in an active form.

00:18:17:07 - 00:18:44:21
John Simmerman
You had referenced the fact that, you know, through evolutionary time, you know, when we were hunter gatherers, we, you know, spent about that 3000, you know, calorie expense getting, you know, getting out there and doing it, exercise wise as an activity is quite foreign to us. When he goes and runs, you know, in the savannah with wind as he's studying the indigenous populations that are still out there, he they are like, what is he doing?

00:18:44:21 - 00:18:47:22
John Simmerman
He's exerting extra energy and calories.

00:18:47:25 - 00:18:52:22
Tristan Cleveland
Without a goal and know it's something practical being achieved. Yeah, it's actually exactly.

00:18:52:24 - 00:19:18:21
John Simmerman
And so one of my taglines is, is to say that yes, the human body, we have the ability to do extraordinary things. We can, you know, run a 100 mile ultramarathon. We can do the Ironman, Justin's triathlon. These are extraordinary things that ordinary people can achieve and do. But at the same time, we're literally hardwired to do this.

00:19:18:24 - 00:19:44:01
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, I mean, it's like 1% of people are doing that level of physical activity, you know, choosing to. So it's just not it's not a generalized solution. It's not you know, when you look at photos from people in the 1950s and they were all thin and you can hardly see an overweight person, it wasn't because they were all running ultramarathons, you know, running as a as an activity only became popular in later 6070s, whatever it was.

00:19:44:03 - 00:20:10:21
John Simmerman
Yeah. And I think that that brings up the context of what this, you know, movie was about. This is from Wall-E is that literally you didn't have to to lift much of a finger to even do anything. We literally have designed so much exertion out of our daily lives. But it sounds like what you guys are saying is that putting some of that activity back in makes us happier.

00:20:10:24 - 00:20:40:29
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, sure it does. I mean, the the impact on our mind of having just a bit of physical activity is just profound. It's the basis not only of physical health, but mental health. And also a lot of the other things that that make us happy also encourage physical activity. So a lot of experts who work in this field, they focus on, you know, the number of practical destinations that you can walk to near home, which is very important.

00:20:41:02 - 00:21:07:07
Tristan Cleveland
But we can't miss the quality of the environment that you walk through. So I wrote this piece a while back called The Responsibility of the Building to a Street that was published in Planning Design, where I made the argument that the only way that we can create communities that are human friendly and physically active are if we make sure that every single building along every single street creates a wonderful environment.

00:21:07:09 - 00:21:37:05
Tristan Cleveland
So in that requires a few things greenery, it requires visual complexity, which modern architecture is terrible for it requires not having blank walls requires to the extent possible. I mean, like human scale buildings and also buildings that have evidence of human interaction. So if a storefront is the best or patio is the best, but balconies also work or at least doorways, windows, anything that makes sense for the economic and cultural context of that street.

00:21:37:07 - 00:21:45:04
John Simmerman
It sounds like what you're talking about in that sense is kind of what Ann Sussman talks about in cognitive architecture. It's like.

00:21:45:09 - 00:21:53:18
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And I haven't got that book yet, but I'm a fool. You're in Wiseman's work. Yeah. No, go.

00:21:53:18 - 00:21:56:08
John Simmerman
To check out my interview with her. So. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

00:21:56:11 - 00:22:18:23
Tristan Cleveland
I look forward to it. Yeah. No, she's brilliant and it's so important. So, you know, she's doing work on trying to provide a stronger scientific foundation for understanding of these needs for. For how we feel when we walk down the street. And I'm really grateful for people like her who is doing that work, because we need to convince people that this is and this isn't just an esthetic preference thing.

00:22:18:26 - 00:22:40:11
Tristan Cleveland
You don't just see the buildings, you feel them. Like when you we we know that there are certain basic requirements for creating streets where unconsciously we are willing to stop. We will spend time there. We will diangelo's them this great research where on some streets if there's like blank walls and it just feels hostile, then if you see a friend you'll say hi and keep walking.

00:22:40:14 - 00:23:03:08
Tristan Cleveland
Whereas if you're on a good street with, you know, visual mix and it's just an attractive place with, with, with clear evidence that the humans use the space, it feels like a place for humans. The people actually stop and talk to each other. Actually, we did a study. I love this study. This is in Seattle. We had volunteers stand on street corners looking at a map, pretending to be lost.

00:23:03:10 - 00:23:31:18
Tristan Cleveland
And we did this in two places, one in front of a storefront with lots of architectural details and greenery and another in front of a concrete blank wall on a loading bay. And the people who were who stopped to help. And the one location where I don't want to mix up the numbers, but I think there are five times more likely to stop, seven more times more likely to pull out their phone and four times more likely to actually walk the person to the destination to show them how to be there.

00:23:31:18 - 00:24:04:14
Tristan Cleveland
So when you create those human friendly environments that take seriously our basic needs as people are our subconscious needs for a comfortable street, then people treat each other better. The way they behave, the way they interact changes. And this has a profound impact on health because when people are willing, people need to be willing to walk streets for them to, you know, make that a part of their life, it's not enough that there's a destination they could, in theory walk to.

00:24:04:20 - 00:24:31:00
Tristan Cleveland
It needs to be desirable, walk. And then beyond just health, if we want to create the full spectrum of a good life, we it's those good streets that are designed for people of every single building and every single design detail in the street design for humans. That leads us to socializing more. That leads us to lingering on the street, creating that sense of vibrancy.

00:24:31:02 - 00:24:34:26
Tristan Cleveland
So you you just brought up this this diagram.

00:24:34:28 - 00:24:52:26
John Simmerman
Yeah. Because what you were describing to me was like, okay, I see. You know, we've got the building, we've got the human scale sort of interaction that can take place here. You mentioned greenery, we've got the greenery. And so I'm like, Yeah, and we can got to integrate this into that conversation because.

00:24:53:03 - 00:24:53:13
Tristan Cleveland
I.

00:24:53:15 - 00:24:55:09
John Simmerman
Love that street life. Yeah.

00:24:55:11 - 00:25:20:00
Tristan Cleveland
So I have a simple diagram to emphasize why this is so difficult to achieve. So, you know, when you walk a street like this one in the photo where there's lots of people and businesses and transit and street life, it feels easy. Just like there's nothing complicated at all about this. Right. But if you have, you know, like a suburban area with big parking lots, it is so hard to get to this place where you actually have that kind of vibrancy.

00:25:20:03 - 00:25:44:12
Tristan Cleveland
And you it needs to be cultivated. It's not something you can just build at once because it's not just the physical environment, it's also the people spending time there. So way to think about this is, okay, you got to get some homes first. And then once you have homes, you have some people walking on the street. And if enough people walk in the street and you can convince developers to build retail on the sidewalk, which is the hard part, right.

00:25:44:12 - 00:26:06:27
Tristan Cleveland
And we'll come back to that, then you can create more street life because people are going to those businesses. And when those businesses are there and you have a slightly vibrant street that increases the value of building homes, so that attracts more development, more homes, and then all this starts to reinforce each other because the homes and businesses create more street life.

00:26:06:27 - 00:26:41:18
Tristan Cleveland
More street life creates a more desirable place to build homes and businesses. And then transit supercharges all of this because transit brings more street life, more customers to businesses, increases the value of homes even further. And all of these things help bring transit riders. So the the basic challenge that faces us, the those of us who want to create healthy, happy, walkable cities is to kick start this cycle and to cultivate it and to not undermine it with big, ugly wide roads, to not undermine it with big blank walls.

00:26:41:18 - 00:27:04:14
Tristan Cleveland
Because because some starchitect with oversize ego decided that he wanted to do something shocking and have a big blank wall in the street, it means that we can't screw up where every single decision we make has to support more people wanting to spend time on the street, more people wanting to open up businesses, reinvesting in transit as transit roads become successful.

00:27:04:14 - 00:27:12:05
Tristan Cleveland
And then over time you can create more and more successful places. You actually do. You want to go over to the amoeba diagram?

00:27:12:08 - 00:27:12:24
John Simmerman
Yeah.

00:27:12:27 - 00:27:13:14
Tristan Cleveland
B Good time to.

00:27:13:14 - 00:27:15:26
John Simmerman
Shop over the amoeba here, which is a couple over.

00:27:15:26 - 00:27:38:15
Tristan Cleveland
So yeah, yeah. So just recently wrote a blog post about this on Happy City's website, which I encourage people to check out, but this is I love this research. This is by a guy named Toto. Our apologies, Toto, Toto, Stravinsky. I hope I didn't screw that up. I'm not highly practiced in Sweden. Sounds pretty good to me. Yeah.

00:27:38:17 - 00:27:39:27
John Simmerman
Sorry, Toto.

00:27:39:29 - 00:28:10:21
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah. Traditionally the idea in transit oriented development is that if you build a transit station and you have lots of homes and businesses, but then walking distance to say 400 or 800 meters of the transit station, then you will create healthy, walkable streets. And Teodoro said, I think it's not quite so simple. So he walked the streets of multiple cities in Sweden and he mapped out where you actually find that kind of vibrancy that I was just talking about.

00:28:10:21 - 00:28:36:25
Tristan Cleveland
So those places where street level businesses and public spaces and people and transit all reinforce each other to create this this vibrancy, this place where people are actually outside. And he found that it's not just randomly scattered over 400 meters, it's all within most of it's within about 100 meters of stations. Not coincidentally, that is how far we can easily see things, right.

00:28:36:25 - 00:29:02:29
Tristan Cleveland
So if you really want to create vibrancy, you need to focus on what humans actually can see when they exist stations, what businesses they can see, because those are the things they actually go to. And then if you want to extend that street life, you need to to cultivate it outwards. So you need to focus on if people are walking and spending time in this chunk of street, can we invite them a little bit further?

00:29:03:01 - 00:29:26:03
Tristan Cleveland
Can we make investments, placemaking, color, whatever? Can we encourage people to open up businesses to extend that vibrancy a bit further? So it really is like like a plant. He calls it an amoeba, right? Because these is if you map out these places for street life, it forms like a blob on the map. And but it is like a life form that we need to grow outwards.

00:29:26:05 - 00:29:41:16
Tristan Cleveland
And like I said at the start, it's not something that you can just build top down and just command that there be street life in a place because it involves this interaction of people, businesses, buildings and transit.

00:29:41:19 - 00:30:09:07
John Simmerman
Yeah, one of the things that that I like to emphasize with that relationship to what we're seeing here on this image, and we'll try to describe this for the listening audience as well. So we're looking at these concentric circles that are, you know, extended out from where the transit stops are. And these are the nodes. These are, quote unquote, the watershed using the terminology.

00:30:09:07 - 00:30:09:29
John Simmerman
This is the these.

00:30:09:29 - 00:30:12:27
Tristan Cleveland
Circles are just a hundred meters, so much smaller than the usual.

00:30:12:27 - 00:30:14:11
John Simmerman
They're even smaller than that.

00:30:14:12 - 00:30:17:07
Tristan Cleveland
So this is the the the visible said.

00:30:17:10 - 00:30:40:27
John Simmerman
Yes, this is the visible shared. And and that matters, too, because, you know, what do you see when you get you know, to this particular stop here you're able to see that you've got this this active bike lane. You've got an active, vibrant pedestrian realm. You've got the articulation of the buildings surrounding it. You also have street trees.

00:30:41:00 - 00:30:52:17
John Simmerman
You know, you've got you've got some shade that's happening here. So there's a lot of vibrancy, a lot of things going on. And so what you're really seeing here is that that first 100 meters is crucial.

00:30:52:19 - 00:31:20:14
Tristan Cleveland
In terms crucial to screw that up. Doesn't matter what else you do. You know, what often happens is the you know, if those streets around transit are, you know, just blank walls or whatever, they act as a funnel and just scoot people away. And so all of that potential, all that human potential, all of these people spending time in a place every single day that could be supporting businesses and destinations that can make transit even more successful, that could drive the success of the city.

00:31:20:14 - 00:31:26:23
Tristan Cleveland
And our health and happiness is instead just being wasted as people get funneled away to distant places.

00:31:26:25 - 00:31:58:27
John Simmerman
Yeah, not to hijack your your analogy here or your your talk on it with the amoeba, but one of the things that I think has been so instrumental in in my learnings with active towns is how crucial it is to have active mobility modes integrated with transit. And so it's what you're really talking about here is, is there a there there, you know, at these places, at these stops?

00:31:58:27 - 00:32:31:23
John Simmerman
You know, it's it's is that concept of is this a true place worth staying and lingering? The other thing that that I'm referencing though, is that part of what makes the Dutch transit system work so incredibly well is that they're able to lean into transit and the use of the train system to get from city to city and their ability to have a comprehensive walking and biking network that overlays to that transit network.

00:32:31:25 - 00:32:57:26
John Simmerman
And so they end up doing such a great job of attracting people in from the from the more distant neighborhoods by people getting on their bike, getting to the transit station, getting on the transit, going to their destination, getting off. They can get on another bike and go to their destination if it's too far for walking. But more often than not, they have that ability.

00:32:57:26 - 00:33:47:09
John Simmerman
And so one of the things that I'm like really examining is as we like look to these other places like Sweden, which is where this is from or the Netherlands or Copenhagen and many others, is how do we take the reality that our built environment? Isn't that those those distances? I mean, and that's where I think our real big opportunity is to lean in towards the bicycle and to lean in towards that ability to have a ninefold increase to that cap that, you know, catchment area and like you said, really do a good job of this, really do a good job of that hundred meter of those transit areas being in incredibly vibrant and attractive,

00:33:47:09 - 00:34:02:26
John Simmerman
etc.. But then also because our transit systems are suffering, because we don't have a good active mobility catchment area, we have people having to drive to use transit. By that time they might as well just keep driving.

00:34:02:29 - 00:34:23:20
Tristan Cleveland
Right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. A parking rides are not very effective. Where you want to be doing is, is creating, you know, a the city around the transit station. So all those jobs and economic activity is happening right there and that people can can be active near it rather than like you said, if you're already driving, you might as well keep going.

00:34:23:22 - 00:34:48:07
Tristan Cleveland
I think it's helpful to divide to different kinds of destinations when you get off transit. So one is home and work and you will go, you will get to home work, whether you can see it or not. Right. So for that, it's useful to think about that for an hour, meter, 800 meter catchment area for walking or the whatever it is for bicycle over which as you said, nine times longer.

00:34:48:07 - 00:35:26:17
Tristan Cleveland
I think that's about right. Like you know, people will bike are willing to bike quite a long ways and with e-bikes is even further and so that makes sense for jobs and for home before everything else. We really need to be paying attention to what people can actually see and that's just as true for bikes. So for cyclists, are there opportunities along the biking wrote that they can get off and there's lots of activity happening and for cyclists as well, it matters whether the environment is a desirable place where they want to spend time just just like for pedestrians, because cyclists like pedestrians are other human beings.

00:35:26:17 - 00:35:31:07
Tristan Cleveland
I mean, they're they're out in the world. They're like participating in the world as opposed to being inside a machine.

00:35:31:15 - 00:35:40:02
John Simmerman
Exactly. And I even hesitate to call somebody who rides a bike, a cyclist is just a person riding a bike just like it's a person.

00:35:40:03 - 00:35:55:24
Tristan Cleveland
That's a weird word. Right? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. No, there's there's engineering reports and standards that refer to walking as an alternative form of transportation, which is the most mind body thing imaginable. There's only one.

00:35:55:24 - 00:36:00:27
John Simmerman
How do you how do you go from the original mobility mode to alternative, you know, a.

00:36:00:27 - 00:36:08:24
Tristan Cleveland
Fundamental human mobility mode? And cities don't work for that then they don't work for humans. I mean, it really is. Yeah, that's simple.

00:36:08:27 - 00:36:13:09
John Simmerman
It's like, folks. Yeah. Go back and read these books, please. Yeah.

00:36:13:11 - 00:36:34:21
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, yeah. And so Daniel Lieberman in that book, I mean, he really it makes this argument that when you look at what we evolve for, it just doesn't match with how we've designed our environment. And when we're designing a environment, we have to go back to first principles on what we evolved for. So how about let's let's talk about transforming some suburbs into.

00:36:34:23 - 00:36:38:24
John Simmerman
Let's, let's, let's, let's roll the dice. Which one do you want to go to first?

00:36:38:27 - 00:36:57:26
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah. So let's head over to Siri and go to that Siri one image because I want to talk about. So I was talking about this challenge of cultivating this interaction of businesses in street life. And I just want to talk about that challenge in practice, because I've heard people say that it's impossible. Well, it's not impossible, but it is really hard.

00:36:57:29 - 00:37:16:20
John Simmerman
It is very, very difficult. Why don't you set this up in terms of context? We do have an international audience of people tuning in from around the globe. I think I know where Siri is. But for anybody who may not be super familiar with Siri, what's the context of this? Okay, So.

00:37:16:20 - 00:37:37:16
Tristan Cleveland
Siri is a suburb of Vancouver, especially the area we're going to be talking about here was built around a highway. And so all the commercial development on it was just strip malls. So a lot of auto body shops like this one have big roads, big strip malls, and that's all they had for the center of the community. And if you go back to like the 1960s, 1970s, people already hated us.

00:37:37:16 - 00:37:58:25
Tristan Cleveland
You know, this is not an environment people like. They like their homes. They like their single family homes, but they hate that the center of their community is designed around the car and not around people. They'd like to have a place where they can visit and walk. But how do you get there? Because like I was saying, you need businesses and people and development to and homes to all reinforce each other.

00:37:58:27 - 00:38:19:08
Tristan Cleveland
But when you're in this situation, how do you convince that first developer to build a building with that business face in the street, not a parking lot and also the a mixed use building like that is more expensive to build? And why would people pay a premium or agree to live in a smaller unit, in a building that has a view over parking lot?

00:38:19:15 - 00:38:45:17
Tristan Cleveland
Right. So to kickstart this kind of growth, to get that first pedestrian friendly, mixed use, walkable development to happen, you need to get people to believe in the place. And that requires government intervention. It requires some kind of investment to change the reality on the ground and at least in one place, kickstart growth.

00:38:45:19 - 00:38:48:25
John Simmerman
Well, let's describe both of these these photos here.

00:38:48:27 - 00:39:09:12
Tristan Cleveland
So the first one is just, you know, a dreary road with an auto body shop and humorously, it actually has a brick sidewalk, which is part of an early effort to create a main street there, which is just surrounded by dead crabgrass and old broken up parking lots. And, you know, the bricks in the sidewalk aren't doing much here.

00:39:09:15 - 00:39:12:12
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And then in the second photo.

00:39:12:15 - 00:39:14:19
Tristan Cleveland
Is a wide road with a strip mall behind it.

00:39:14:19 - 00:39:19:06
John Simmerman
And I wouldn't even call that a road. This is clearly a road.

00:39:19:08 - 00:39:23:17
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah. Oh, no, it's a stroll. Yeah, This is a classic. Classic, classic road. So.

00:39:23:17 - 00:39:26:14
John Simmerman
And by one, how many lanes are we talking about here?

00:39:26:16 - 00:39:35:06
Tristan Cleveland
Well, this is six lane, so it's not, it's not that bad compared to a lot of American strobes, but it's bad enough. It's not enough. It's got.

00:39:35:06 - 00:39:35:28
John Simmerman
To be a pretty.

00:39:36:00 - 00:39:38:08
Tristan Cleveland
Comfortable place to cross. You know my.

00:39:38:09 - 00:39:45:04
John Simmerman
And and the and again the ever present you know sea of asphalt parking lot too.

00:39:45:07 - 00:40:07:29
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah I mean the majority of the community was asphalt not not for humans so they in the early nineties they built high speed elevator transit. This is a photo here folks of a high speed elevated transit road to downtown Vancouver. And it was hoped that this would kickstart growth. So they had this new plan. Everything was in place to allow high density growth and and nothing happened for over a decade.

00:40:08:01 - 00:40:26:12
Tristan Cleveland
Nothing happened. There was just one new building built for the university, and that was something but nothing else. So then they decided that they're going to make a major investment in this one place. This is a map of Surrey, and a lot of the times when government invests in their communities, they they spread it out and they waste it.

00:40:26:14 - 00:40:47:26
Tristan Cleveland
So they are in Surrey. They decided they're going to build a city hall, a library and a mixed use tower, partnering with with private developers. And yeah, often, you know, the city would put the library over here on one corner and put the city hall over there in the corner. But instead they're saying, No, we're going to do all of this on one block directly next to transit.

00:40:47:29 - 00:40:57:20
John Simmerman
So this is a five lane against road and we've got our strip mall here. What am I missing about this before we go to the transformation?

00:40:57:22 - 00:41:01:27
Tristan Cleveland
Well, this just not a people friendly environment whatsoever.

00:41:02:00 - 00:41:04:09
John Simmerman
It's got decorative lights right there. What's wrong with you?

00:41:04:14 - 00:41:16:27
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, it's about a yeah. So just the size of the road, the speed of traffic and the fact that this parking lots in front of the commerce means that this just isn't a place where anyone would want to linger or spend time.

00:41:16:29 - 00:41:20:07
John Simmerman
Yeah, it looks like this was circa 2019.

00:41:20:10 - 00:41:48:22
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah. So they put in a median and reduced the to four lanes. Now one of the themes of my PhD was it's hard for people to get the full way to people friendly design because there's a lot of clinical controversy. The hardest thing of all is to reduce the size of streets. And it's a difficult nut to crack because a lot of car dependent residents actually love the idea of having a beautiful place they can visit that, you know, they can get out of their car and spend an afternoon walking.

00:41:48:22 - 00:42:06:26
Tristan Cleveland
You know, that's that's a lovely thought. Right. But if you start talking about reducing their four or five, eight lane roads down to two lanes, then they start to get very angry and because that affects their ability to get to work. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:42:06:28 - 00:42:37:17
John Simmerman
Well in in part a part of this is too is an irrational fear that it will absolutely destroy their life. And I say irrational fear because what we do know is that if something happens like, you know, an earthquake happens and the Embarcadero Freeway comes down and blah, blah, blah, as humans, yeah, we adapt, I mean, that's, that's the beautiful thing about us as a species is we do adapt.

00:42:37:19 - 00:43:04:07
John Simmerman
And the other thing when it comes down to the species car of us or whatever you want to call us. Yeah. Automobile it is, is that the, the, that evaporation of traffic kind of happens too. And so it is somewhat of an irrational fear that if this had been transformed into one lane in each direction, that it would be complete chaos and it would be gridlock and everything.

00:43:04:09 - 00:43:08:24
John Simmerman
That doesn't really ever happen because of the homeostatic.

00:43:08:27 - 00:43:10:15
Tristan Cleveland
Chains are habits so.

00:43:10:15 - 00:43:11:00
John Simmerman
Radically.

00:43:11:01 - 00:43:34:11
Tristan Cleveland
Example plan around it. And it's amazing the extent to which people can plan around it. And when you have a high speed rail to downtown and you start investing in higher quality bike lanes as they have been doing, you know, you create the conditions for people to adapt into active modes which take much less space and a lot more people to move at the same time without causing trouble for each other.

00:43:34:14 - 00:43:43:24
John Simmerman
No, let me I'm concerned about those those decorative lights and make sure that, oh yeah, they didn't make it. Yeah.

00:43:43:26 - 00:44:14:12
Tristan Cleveland
That's too bad. So this is a major theme in my my Ph.D. that so I mentioned briefly earlier this idea of creating like walkable designations across Canada where like if you want to use American lingo, context classifications, but like saying that there's a separate kind of design a place in these areas. And one of my motivations for that is to get away from this problem we have where whenever we try to implement walkability, we're always half in it, always across the board.

00:44:14:12 - 00:44:46:23
Tristan Cleveland
We're always making these compromises. And it's because, you know, we understand that airplanes need to be done to a certain level of standards. And we understand that, you know, it's not okay if you build a building for it to fall down sometimes. But when it comes to walkability, walkability, we are constantly compromising the core requirement. So designing lighting to be for cars rather than them for people, though, to be fair, if we go back there and just realizing that, you know, they on one side of the pole, the lighting is aimed at cars and the other side of the poles in the people.

00:44:46:23 - 00:45:10:23
Tristan Cleveland
So maybe this is actually a good design. But yeah, in general we need to recognize upfront that if we really want to create an active town, it's going to require some sacrifices and to be much more honest and clear about that so that if you want the full benefits of a truly vibrant place, we're willing to reduce the size of streets and get rid of parking requirements.

00:45:10:27 - 00:45:47:22
John Simmerman
You use the terminology of sacrifices. I believe that those are still just kind of perceived and feared sacrifices where in reality it really isn't. I mean, the I don't really see transforming this into having one less mobility lane in each direction. And, you know, eliminating parking minimums is really all that much of a sacrifice, because ultimately there's so much armed mobility baked into our system that I really think that it is an actual sacrifice versus a perceived sacrifice.

00:45:47:24 - 00:45:49:13
John Simmerman
Right. Right.

00:45:49:15 - 00:46:02:12
Tristan Cleveland
Politically, I don't know if I can just tell people that, you know, it'll have you know, that they're crazy, that it'll have no impact. But I think we can convince them that the impact is less than they might expect and that the benefits are worth it.

00:46:02:20 - 00:46:14:29
John Simmerman
So I think that's that's where that's where pilot projects really, you know, tactical urbanism pilot projects really help demonstrate that those are, in fact, irrational fears.

00:46:15:01 - 00:46:25:02
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah, Yeah. In New York they showed that when they reduced it to one lane, they often increased throughput because they didn't have people fighting between lanes, etc.. And it's just more efficient and the intersections are more efficient.

00:46:25:05 - 00:46:55:25
John Simmerman
Yeah, exactly. In this particular four lane configuration does have left turn lanes up there. So technically because of the median, it serves like a five lane roadway strode. But but four lane roads that have no left turning pockets available are actually one of the most dangerous street designs that we can have in our urban environments. And quite frankly, I won't go so far as to say they should be illegal across any city.

00:46:55:27 - 00:47:19:22
John Simmerman
Right. Because, you know, you have all sorts conflicts when you do have somebody who's trying to turn turn left in to that destination. Because as a strode, that's the problem. It's not a highway. It's a road. It's there's all sorts of places you want to get to. And so, you know, it sets up a conflict where the crash rates are the highest, you know, possible So yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:47:19:22 - 00:47:42:12
Tristan Cleveland
You mix high speed with with people crossing multiple lanes and distracting while trying to keep their eyes on pedestrians. So we just need to clarify, like there are places where we're trying to move high speed to distant places with high volumes, and there are places where we actually want to be know our destinations and if we want our communities to be our destinations, then we simply cannot design them for high speed, high volume through traffic.

00:47:42:12 - 00:47:44:21
Tristan Cleveland
It's just it's an incompatible goal.

00:47:44:23 - 00:47:47:06
John Simmerman
So this next photo we're in, Siri.

00:47:47:08 - 00:48:11:14
Tristan Cleveland
Another angle on the same block. Okay, progress. Some blank walls, empty parking. And this was transformed into a library boom. And, you know, again, this isn't perfect, but it's a people really loved the library. A lot of lanes on this the street. But it is you know, there have been major improvements for improving it for pedestrians, major investments and trees on the street.

00:48:11:16 - 00:48:32:29
Tristan Cleveland
And if you go one more photo, so this is just a photo of a parking lot and a the they raised the train tracks where the transit is. And the next photo shows the mixed use building that they built there. They created an arm's length development corporation to partner with developers on major projects like this to get them in their strategic places they needed them.

00:48:33:01 - 00:48:54:18
Tristan Cleveland
So this includes a hotel and offices and it's all in that same block with the plaza in the middle. Right. And this kickstarted developments, that's the Plaza. Nice and green space on the street looks nice. There's actually streetlights there now. I was pleasantly surprised when I visited in person. And so before 2010 there was basically zero development applications.

00:48:54:19 - 00:49:28:05
Tristan Cleveland
And then after they announced this program that they're going to make these major investments. You first saw four major developments and seven and eight. Then they actually finished some of these projects and then like 2014 and after that, by 2018, they had 25 major projects proposed the year. I think it's been over 100 projects. Proposal is coming to city council and we're talking like multiple towers, like major scale projects and then some like human scale, you know, four storey, six storey projects as well.

00:49:28:07 - 00:49:57:06
Tristan Cleveland
So once you got a once the dam opened up, once the water started moving, it started moving faster. Right? Right. Because once people saw that other developers are investing in the place, then they could believe that their own investments will succeed. Because there is reason to believe that even if there's no not many people walking on the street right now or ten years ago, that there will be soon because there's going to be all these destinations to walk to and all these new homes.

00:49:57:13 - 00:50:20:12
Tristan Cleveland
And so I can invest in a project that has retail on the ground floor and that's not surrounded by parking because there's going to be people living here. And so once you kickstart that growth, it starts to reinforce itself. And we wrote another piece recently arguing that if you want to keep that momentum going now the job. So the first task is to kick start the growth, get that momentum going in the first place.

00:50:20:14 - 00:50:47:22
Tristan Cleveland
The second task is to cultivate it, to start growing it out where it's like that. That amoeba that we were looking at earlier too. And all of this, the the basic resource, the the basic thing that is of highest value, like gold or oil is three life, street life is our most precious commodity, and it's in a suburban context, is a car oriented.

00:50:47:29 - 00:51:17:19
Tristan Cleveland
It is dearly precious. There's very little of it. And so once you have that street life in one place, the job is to coax it outwards to encourage more development or more destinations for people to walk to, to give people faith that they can invest in more development. So what I'd like to see Syria do next, and I know they're actually starting to do some of this is placemaking making the most of what they are making small investments and turning parking lots into public spaces, building kiosks.

00:51:17:19 - 00:51:37:09
Tristan Cleveland
If we don't have the development in this spot yet, let's build some temporary kiosks and create like commercial buzz that will encourage someone to make an investment in the development, make those consistent small investments to expand that walkable urban form and life outwards. Yeah.

00:51:37:11 - 00:52:17:25
John Simmerman
So let's critique a little bit of this, and let's also address a potential conflict that arises from this. This approach of if we have a limited amount of money, let's focus that money in going big in a particular area, which is actually antithetical to, you know, kind of what strong towns talks about in terms of, you know, Chuck, Chuck basically says, you know, if we've got X amount of money, let's let's have a little bit of small bets over here, over here, over here, which you directly said, and that's not the way to do it from what your research is, is we need to focus this on a particular area.

00:52:17:28 - 00:52:49:03
John Simmerman
But let's let's take a moment to just step back. And you had mentioned, yeah, this is still a very paved environment. I look at this and I still say this is auto centric environment. This is not human habitat. You happen to catch a photo here of or this is a Google photo of a lot of pedestrians here, but I would get I would I would bet real money that normally what we see is a lot of automobile traffic versus people traffic.

00:52:49:06 - 00:52:59:07
Tristan Cleveland
So I was pleasantly surprised that when I went there actually are pretty consistent flow of people walking here. But you're absolutely right. Yes.

00:52:59:12 - 00:53:15:03
John Simmerman
I mean, this is a disaster to me, is that we still have a road. This is still a five lane strode now feeding into a library. And it looks like there's a hotel there. I'm assuming there's some are those residential towers as well, or are these office towers?

00:53:15:05 - 00:53:21:15
Tristan Cleveland
There's residential towers all around this. And there would be actually more in the photo today. Yeah.

00:53:21:18 - 00:53:53:01
John Simmerman
Let's talk about that. Let's talk about residential towers, because you channeled earlier Yan Gail and in in Charles Montgomery the other Chuck Charles talks about in the book Happy City. He talks about that level of happiness of people living in towers, residential towers and how it you know, there is a sense of like, you know, that that uncomfortable ness of being on an elevator going up and down these towers.

00:53:53:03 - 00:54:05:12
John Simmerman
And John Gail talks about how once were above six storeys yeah you're now you're no longer human habitat because you don't have that ability to have a connection. So let's talk.

00:54:05:17 - 00:54:12:01
Tristan Cleveland
About government, the Air Authority. I think he said that, Yeah, because you're so far from the street. They're so far away.

00:54:12:01 - 00:54:16:14
John Simmerman
From the street. You can't even Yeah. If you can't make eye contact. And that's what's beautiful.

00:54:16:21 - 00:54:19:12
Tristan Cleveland
Comfortably talk from your body Correct it his threat. Yeah.

00:54:19:15 - 00:54:34:17
John Simmerman
Correct. Yes it's eye contact and comfortably talk and and that's the beauty of Paris is everything is is that's right dense but it's still built to human scale. So tell us a little bit about that conflict that we seem to have intention here.

00:54:34:19 - 00:54:59:19
Tristan Cleveland
Yeah. Which so all the case studies I looked at, we're trying to create these downtowns with with huge towers and I would love to look at a case study that that was aiming for a more of a human scale that is successful. I know of some cases where people have done that from like blank slate, just like build it all at once, and they've made it work with like four or five storey buildings.

00:54:59:21 - 00:55:14:18
Tristan Cleveland
It's hard to do. And that's kind of where you're taking existing parking lots and turning them into pedestrian friendly buildings because you're fighting that existing parking lot environment. And so you need to allow develop back up.

00:55:14:18 - 00:55:18:07
John Simmerman
The second, what do you mean by fighting that existing parking lot environment?

00:55:18:10 - 00:55:30:18
Tristan Cleveland
Well, so it's it's hard to convince developers that it's worth investing in a mixed use tower in a context that is low value in which your view is of parking lots where there's not really much you can look to easily.

00:55:30:18 - 00:55:35:19
John Simmerman
In other words, the lot next door is is still a parking lot. Yeah, the.

00:55:35:19 - 00:56:05:29
Tristan Cleveland
The broader environment, the big roads, the strip mall, the blank walls, all of that. So the solution that a lot of places are going with is, you know, allow more height and then that can make the investment pencil out a bit better. The risk pencil out. Now, here's how I think about this. The more we invest, the more we use all the tools that are available for transforming that environment, for creating a more pedestrian friendly environment and kickstarting growth, the less height we need to allow.

00:56:06:01 - 00:56:24:16
Tristan Cleveland
So height, in effect, makes up for the fact that we haven't done a great job of creating people friendly streets or all the other things we could do. So if you combined all the tools that I identified in my thesis and more, I think that you could achieve this kind of change without needing as much height. So let's run through the list really quick.

00:56:24:19 - 00:56:39:11
John Simmerman
Okay? That's the end of part one. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed it, please give it thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, please be sure to subscribe to the channel. Just click on this subscription button down below and ring the notifications belt.

00:56:39:13 - 00:57:02:04
John Simmerman
And in a couple of days I'll be back with part two of this conversation. Dr. Tristan Cleveland and again sending a huge thank you to all my active towns ambassadors supporting the channel on and buy me a coffee YouTube super thanks as well as making contributions to the nonprofit and purchasing things from the active town store, every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated.

00:57:02:06 - 00:57:03:14
John Simmerman
Thank you all so much.