Transcript exported from the video version of this episode - Note that it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:04 - 00:00:23:19
Cam Perkins
This is a two lane street that you're saying. And the proposal that's sitting here is is to one way the street and to turn it into a ten kilometer. But how much street with a view to creating an incredible pedestrian space. What you can see just in the distance up on the left hand side with with the glass sort of box building that you can see.

00:00:24:08 - 00:00:47:15
Cam Perkins
This is Christchurch's new library. And if you're ever in Christchurch, you need to go visit this place. It is for double level, double levels of incredible community space. It has a robotics lab, it has a sewing lab, it has all the books, it has a rooftop garden. It is the most incredible example of a community library that I've seen.

00:00:48:09 - 00:00:58:28
Cam Perkins
And so the thinking with the street is that there are so many people who are moving in and out of these buildings in this particular district that this needs to become a place for people.

00:00:59:08 - 00:01:21:10
John Simmerman
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. I'm John Simmerman and that is Cam Perkins with Urban Pirates in New Zealand. And we're going to be talking about some of the amazing programs that he and his team are working on in Australia and New Zealand in terms of doing lighter, quicker, cheaper, getting things on the ground and making some big change happen.

00:01:22:04 - 00:01:35:10
John Simmerman
I'm excited to share this with you. So without further ado, let's get to it with Cam Perkins. Welcome. Welcome to the Active Towns podcast. So wonderful to have you here.

00:01:36:04 - 00:01:43:00
Cam Perkins
Yeah, thanks, John. Super keen to be joining you. Longtime listener, first time caller.

00:01:43:22 - 00:01:51:09
John Simmerman
Fantastic. I really appreciate that. And why don't you just take a moment to share with the audience a little bit about yourself?

00:01:52:08 - 00:02:18:18
Cam Perkins
Yeah, cool. Okay. So my name's Cam Perkins. I am the director of a change agency called Urban Pirates, and we help local government and central government agencies with building capability in what we call adaptive urbanism. And that has really come about from being a frustrated practitioner trying to change streets in our cities and wondering where does the brief come from, who writes the brief?

00:02:19:07 - 00:02:31:23
Cam Perkins
So that's sort of led me over my career to wanting to understand how we write better briefs, to get better outcomes in our cities. So that's probably a big part of the discussion today.

00:02:31:23 - 00:02:43:18
John Simmerman
John Fantastic. That's great. And when you say brief, what does that mean and sort of the terminology and technology from from from your perspective? I'll pull up your website here.

00:02:43:18 - 00:03:13:29
Cam Perkins
Yeah, cool. Yeah, awesome. So as someone who has trained as a designer, I'm a landscape architect. My my clients, when I'm working on cities, are writing me a brief which says, here are the sorts of things that we'd like you to work on. Here's the problem that we'd like you to solve. And often we can look at the whole system of a city and think, You know what, There's probably a little bit more here that we can be doing right within our remit.

00:03:14:04 - 00:03:32:18
Cam Perkins
And so when we have those conversations with clients, sometimes that brief has taken a long time to put together and people are very invested in it and we don't get an opportunity to revisit it, which, which sometimes means that you miss a few opportunities in what you're doing.

00:03:33:00 - 00:03:53:09
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I appreciate that because that was some terminology. I'm like, Oh, I don't know. I don't know that I've ever heard it mentioned like that. You know, obviously City Master plans and Visions and things of that nature, but that particular perspective in the way that you had that phrase, I was like, Oh, I need to ask him about that.

00:03:54:09 - 00:04:09:21
John Simmerman
So that's great. So you mentioned the landscape architecture. So take us back what was sort of the beginning of your career and how did you sort of wind your way into doing this type of work where we're a professional rule breaker?

00:04:10:23 - 00:04:37:25
Cam Perkins
Yeah, yeah, that's it. Landscape architecture wasn't my first degree. My my dad left school at 14 and he really wanted me to go and get an education. And throughout my schooling, he prepped me in Sage Son, I want you to be an engineer. Engineers are doing great things in the world and I tried that for one year in university and I failed every single subject.

00:04:39:19 - 00:05:01:12
Cam Perkins
But I had a really great time of cooking barbecues and I sort of led that. I was that I was quite good at talking to people. And I went and saw Careers advisor. And this person said to me, Have you thought about landscape architecture? And this is back in 1997, 98. And of course I've never heard of that degree before.

00:05:01:12 - 00:05:25:08
Cam Perkins
And I thought, Well, I'll give it a crack. And that was sort of set me off on this trajectory. And I had this incredible mentor as, as one of my first professional roles, who was a really celebrated destination hotel and resort designer. So this was someone who'd worked all over the world, and he took me under his wing and sort of took me around the world with him.

00:05:25:18 - 00:05:37:26
Cam Perkins
And so I had this 15 years of trying to understand how to design destination for people. And yeah, that that picture that's up on the screen is one of those places. Yeah.

00:05:39:11 - 00:06:13:27
John Simmerman
Yeah. That's and in that is an interesting perspective too because when when you think of and I and I can relate to I spent a decade living on Hub Island the Big island and so when you live in an area that is a destination for people to come in and experience that, you end up having a different appreciation for the qualitative nature of the landscape and what you're presenting to people and trying to ensure that that experience is a special experience.

00:06:14:15 - 00:06:28:15
John Simmerman
I have a feeling that that's going to be a common thread as we go into the way your career sort of twisted and turned. So what then happened after you were doing this? What sort of prompted the next stage and what was that next stage?

00:06:30:06 - 00:07:07:20
Cam Perkins
Yeah, yeah. So the picture that you can see on the screen was is is called Savannah Island. It's an 80 square kilometer island off the coast of Abu Dhabi. That was one of of the projects that I'm most proud of, that one most sustainable tourism destination in the world. When we finished that project, my goal with a lot of these projects was was I was really hoping that when people were on holiday and they could see this incredible landscape, this incredible place they were a part of, I thought, what if they go back to their everyday life and think, You know what, we really need to look after this place, right?

00:07:07:26 - 00:07:44:16
Cam Perkins
And it now feels a bit misguided because I don't think it really worked for me, but I but, you know, like youthful, youthful hope, right? With this stuff, you've got to try these things out. So the next stage after that sort of started to become working with clients in cities and in particular big private developers who held large portions of cities and multi building holdings who started to talk to me about how do we create a great destination precinct in a city?

00:07:45:09 - 00:07:54:22
Cam Perkins
And that's where I start to sort of understand what it meant to have this trade off between place and movement in a city.

00:07:55:23 - 00:08:06:19
John Simmerman
Right? Right. Yeah. And with that comes, you know, this, this concept of is this a place that is truly welcoming and inviting to everybody?

00:08:07:09 - 00:08:31:06
Cam Perkins
Really? Yeah. Yeah, completely. When we go on a holiday somewhere to another city, we come back with these great stories of the places that we've seen, the sort of life that we've watched. Stephen Burgess from Hobart in Tasmania, a good friend of mine, he always says you don't come back from holiday with snaps of the best car park that you snagged.

00:08:31:16 - 00:08:31:25
John Simmerman
Right.

00:08:32:14 - 00:08:37:21
Cam Perkins
You know. Yeah right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:08:38:05 - 00:08:59:14
John Simmerman
And, and the photo, that's the picture that's here with these children in front of this mural. One of the things that is, is depicted on the, on the mural is the uninvited. And so getting going back to that theme that I just mentioned is, is this a place that is welcoming and inviting to everyone, to all ages and abilities?

00:08:59:21 - 00:09:01:06
John Simmerman
Talk a little bit more about this.

00:09:02:03 - 00:09:26:04
Cam Perkins
Yeah, cool. So the two children you can see in the picture are my two children. This is. Yeah. So my kids sort of like follow me around in cities sometimes happily. Sometimes they get really bored with dad. Sort of like just dragging them round to all these great spots. And in particular, I love this idea of urban regeneration and adaptive reuse.

00:09:26:09 - 00:09:49:24
Cam Perkins
So how do we use the assets in spaces in cities that we already have? This particular spot was this photo was taken in Brisbane and this doesn't exist anymore. This was a it's a very ephemeral place. It was an old blockbuster video building and there's a crew of of graffiti artists called The Uninvited who do these incredible murals.

00:09:49:24 - 00:10:23:03
Cam Perkins
And it really got me thinking to who are the invited in? Some of our curators to these spaces and therefore who are the uninvited? And often in these planning and design processes, we were catering to a small part of the population, and what I started to see was, was this right to the city sort of conundrum, right? So I'm having to I've got these questions around, well, we design a lot for, say, you know, cycling and walking, but what about skateboarding?

00:10:23:03 - 00:10:47:15
Cam Perkins
What about, say, scooter riding? And you're seen in Paris, this sort of like kick off against the the scooter sort of thinking. So it's like what mode So we're designing for the who are we inviting into our spaces? Because if I go back to the example of great places that we've visited around the world, we often come back with pictures of lots of very different looking people who we haven't seen before, you know.

00:10:47:15 - 00:11:00:29
Cam Perkins
So for me, there's this question about who are we inviting into our spaces and how are we designing spaces to be to cater for, for all these different people? Yeah.

00:11:01:16 - 00:11:09:23
John Simmerman
And of course we have here a skate park. This skate park. There's something special about this, too. What's the what's the story behind this location?

00:11:10:17 - 00:11:50:14
Cam Perkins
Yeah, cool. So this this sits in the largest six star Green Star development. It's a brownfield development in the Sunshine Coast of Queensland in Australia. So that's maybe an hour and a half north of Brisbane. And this place is a town center and it was designed to be completely scalable. We had these, these incredible discussions with the developer at a time when we were reviewing a masterplan for this place and the masterplan showed much of the children's play and all of the activity happening way, way, way away from the town center.

00:11:50:26 - 00:12:12:19
Cam Perkins
And we started to really probe and question this and say, Well, if you're trying to build a place for people and for young families, for activity, what if we thought about brain activity into the town center? And that was a really interesting journey that sort of opened up. This place, which you can see right now, is in full blown event mode as a skate event.

00:12:12:19 - 00:12:18:23
Cam Perkins
But this is the town center that gets used in many, many different ways at different parts of the day.

00:12:20:02 - 00:12:46:25
John Simmerman
I love this, too, because it kind of exemplifies one of the reasons why I love Multi-Use Paths and in places that really welcome people of all walks and abilities and across a multitude of different modes. You know, this is a city center that is functioning, as you mentioned, you know, in a variety of different ways. It can be, you know, this event or, you know, maybe a musical thing happening.

00:12:46:25 - 00:12:57:17
John Simmerman
But in this particular context, on this particular day, you know, that handrail is now a skate rail, you know, for them to do some tricks. Yeah.

00:12:58:01 - 00:13:29:21
Cam Perkins
Yeah. So what was really interesting during my early landscape architecture or career is I had clients from cities saying, you need to put skate protection on these things, as in stop people skating on our furniture. Yeah, yeah. And it didn't really sit right with me. I was thinking, Well, you know, I've been to these, I've been to these great plazas all over the world where there's huge crowds of people who sort of gather around to watch the sorts of ways that people use space, particularly skateboarding.

00:13:30:03 - 00:13:44:12
Cam Perkins
I'm not a skateboarder myself, all right. But I really appreciate the the time and the skill and the dedication that goes into learning how to do this thing. And I thought, surely that's something we should be harnessing in cities.

00:13:44:24 - 00:14:00:24
John Simmerman
Yeah. Now, earlier you had said, you know, something very profound is that we don't go, you know, on vacation and what but what not, and then come back and talk about, you know, how how amazing the parking works. Yes.

00:14:00:28 - 00:14:01:06
Cam Perkins
Yeah.

00:14:01:29 - 00:14:19:01
John Simmerman
You know, I think that, you know, that's that's a little bit of of what we're trying to communicate here with this image is that we're we're you don't talk about Oh, yeah, that was amazing. I was I was in Paris, you know, back when Paris had a motorway next to the San. Wasn't that amazing?

00:14:19:19 - 00:14:44:01
Cam Perkins
You know? Yeah, totally. And this, this image is, is again from, from Brisbane. So Brisbane's where I grew up so there's, there's a few images and sort of things from around that sort of area of Australia. This, this particular image is, is a bit of a golden triangle right in the center of Brisbane and it sits on the waterfront as you can see.

00:14:44:01 - 00:15:11:07
Cam Perkins
So the rendering on the page shows some, some quite intensive development. You can see and imagine the size of the towers that are going up in this place. What we're trying to work with, with, with the developers. So the owners of this particular place was thinking about how do you, how do you draw the river and the green space that people associate with Brisbane back into the city.

00:15:11:23 - 00:15:37:06
Cam Perkins
So how do you move through these buildings to get to the river's edge and how do you move from the river's edge to go back to the city? Brisbane is a very subtropical city. It's it's a beautiful, great place and so we were starting to think about what is the future of this place? How do you make this a really accessible public edge to what is a very, very private realm up in these buildings?

00:15:37:20 - 00:15:56:16
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And this brings us back around to what you were talking about earlier, is, you know, who's setting these visions, who's setting, you know, who's writing these these plans and and putting together the brief and and then we decide, Well, why don't we ask the little people? Yeah.

00:15:59:03 - 00:16:27:18
Cam Perkins
This so you can see where everyone's smiling in this image. So this is this project marked my transition to Auckland. So as a consultant, like I said to you at the start, I was trying to figure out where the brace for coming from and I had a phone call from, from one of Auckland councils. It's the regeneration agency, it's one of the agencies, and they were saying, You know what, we were really keen to find out what you do.

00:16:27:18 - 00:16:51:00
Cam Perkins
Do I come over and to come over and pick up this role of looking at the regeneration of the waterfront And one of our first projects was, was this place, which was actually a car park for 50 cars. And it's right on the waterfront if you know Auckland, this is this is a beautiful harbor that we would all be looking at in that photo.

00:16:51:07 - 00:17:18:26
Cam Perkins
And yet that public space was filled by 50 cars. And so we we were working on a research project with one of the local universities, and it was called Kids in the City, and it was focused on the agency of children to be part of the design processes in cities. And most of these kids are children who actually live in the city and therefore this space that you can see is their backyard, right?

00:17:19:21 - 00:17:48:13
Cam Perkins
Yeah. So this one was about working with this group of of children and taking them through a design process as a collaborative design process to be able to inform a future brief for this place. And so that little bit of green that you can see in the front was one of the one of the parts of the demonstrations and the tests and the pilots that we made to show what this place could be like if it wasn't a car park for 50 cars.

00:17:48:27 - 00:17:49:06
Cam Perkins
Yeah.

00:17:49:27 - 00:18:19:00
John Simmerman
And this a very interesting thing that you just said there, too, is pilot and demonstration and and being able to visualize things in a different way. And that's very much a part of the future where you end up doing even more work because you you end up especially, you know, when you when you go back and you look at, you know, that landing page for your website and you take a look at, you know, that's the spirit.

00:18:19:00 - 00:18:44:07
John Simmerman
I mean, yeah, we're doing it, We're professionals, we're rube, we're professional rule breakers for positive impact. And you can see that you are implementing some lighter, quicker, cheaper pilot projects and really leaning into tactical urbanism to try to communicate. And then and also in the case of like with the kids being able to say, okay, help us design and reimagine what this public space could be.

00:18:45:08 - 00:19:11:22
Cam Perkins
Yeah, totally. That was one of the things that I, I started to understand when I was working in public service and I got to sort of see behind the scenes of what an engagement process was looking like. And we really started to to test and to, I suppose, prod and pull at some some government and local government policies.

00:19:11:22 - 00:19:37:06
Cam Perkins
Right? So there are particular ways that some city councils like to engage with their citizens and sometimes that's really collaborative and sometimes that can be that can be quite controlling, as in wanting to control the message. And so what we were starting to do in in the case of Auckland was to really look at a systems in those processes and say, well, who are we inviting into this place?

00:19:37:20 - 00:19:42:27
Cam Perkins
Whose place is this to design? And how does that inform the way that we use the street?

00:19:43:20 - 00:20:13:19
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And this couple of images that you sent over on High Street here is, is a great example. You know, it's a before and after. So we've got this is the before picture and it's a pretty standard streetscape. You know it's it, it is interesting in in how it's all kind of laid out. It is one way obviously with parking on either side and then the after ends up being this.

00:20:14:13 - 00:20:36:05
Cam Perkins
Yeah, I still look at this after picture. I think this is it was such an incredible transformation. Yeah. That we got through and we got this through because of the way that we worked with the people who live, work and play on the street. And it was the first time that a street like this had been had been done at this scale in Auckland.

00:20:36:27 - 00:21:01:19
Cam Perkins
So we, we were starting to, to, to try and understand what was some of the issues on the street that would inform the way we might approach the design change. And you can see there's lots and lots of cars that are stacked in on either side there. What we started to see through observations is that the user experience on the street was terrible for everyone, right?

00:21:01:28 - 00:21:33:05
Cam Perkins
As in, if I'm someone who is a tradesperson who is coming to fix something that's happening in a shop, I can't find a park because all of the loading space is taken up by people in private vehicles. Equally, we have images of fire engines, ambulances not being able to move up the street because they're getting stuck, but physically stuck with cars and the footpaths that you can well, you can't quite see them in this picture, but the footpaths were really, really narrow.

00:21:33:10 - 00:21:54:05
Cam Perkins
Yeah. Yeah. And we did a couple of tests with some parents with prams and asked them what, what's your experience of pushing a pram with your child in it up the street. So what we started to do then was just socialize this idea of the fact that the user experience wasn't working well for anyone, so we needed to change everything.

00:21:55:05 - 00:22:22:06
John Simmerman
Yeah, and as you can see, I'm glad you mentioned, you know, loading zones and things of that nature. There's still a little bit of parking, there's some loading zones up ahead. And so you created a more balanced, more humane, more people centered approach to this. And you can just tell just by looking at, you know, how chaotic and dissatisfying and uninviting this particular image is.

00:22:22:06 - 00:22:26:17
John Simmerman
And it gets, you know, incrementally a bit better here. And that's nice. Yeah.

00:22:27:07 - 00:22:53:20
Cam Perkins
Totally. The really interesting thing that I haven't been able to replicate since with this project is that we we planned this week we planned the intervention. So carefully and all of the elements were prefabricated offsite. We were able to install like change that straight in three knots. We made that promise to retailers saying We will not disrupt your business.

00:22:53:28 - 00:23:19:10
Cam Perkins
Yeah, that was one of the key. One of the key, I suppose, pieces of feedback from from our partners on the street who were saying we support the change in the street, but we can't have a six month construction process. Right. And so this, this timelapse that you see here, which is one of my favorite videos that came out of the project, this is showing the works that happened at night.

00:23:19:10 - 00:23:48:27
Cam Perkins
So the street was open during the daytime, so so people could trade. But we came up with a system that was a no dig system. It has a ten year design life, so it's semi-permanent and everything. Like those plants, as you see being put on the on the ground were all designed, fabricated off site and brought in. So after each day people would see some incredible change had happened by these fairies of elves that worked on straight over night.

00:23:49:16 - 00:23:49:26
Cam Perkins
Yeah.

00:23:50:24 - 00:24:23:25
John Simmerman
And this is really, you know, really powerful. And I love the time lapse on this because it really, you know, kind of exemplify is or kind of leans into the fact that, yeah, we got this done fast. So that's kind of nice. What was what was the that relationship with the public like of trying to communicate this Too often these days I get the sense that we, you know, whenever a bold moves try to move forward, we end up with a backlash.

00:24:23:25 - 00:24:48:17
John Simmerman
And the term status quo comes up a lot whenever you try to push to try to change the status quo. The status quo resists and will do so quite aggressively. But then again, it's not just the status quo. It's also a portion of the population that just kind of gets caught up in misinformation and fear, kind of comes in talk.

00:24:48:19 - 00:24:55:22
John Simmerman
Talk us through how you all navigate through those challenges when you're doing these types of interventions.

00:24:58:09 - 00:25:25:21
Cam Perkins
This has been something that I've been thinking about for a very long time through my career, and it started way back working with private developers in resorts, trying to think about how do I. How do I propose doing something slightly different to the norm? Doing something different is really is challenging for people, and it's an evolutionary trait. It's built in hardwired to our brains, saying change, Change is not good.

00:25:26:01 - 00:25:53:17
Cam Perkins
It's because we like things to be the same, because we can then predict what's going to happen, and that means survival. So that's that just through the heart by piece of that brain. So I've been thinking for a long time about how to help people with change. What I, what I kept seeing was that when people had an opportunity to interact with what the change looked like as in the physical environment, they were able to adjust.

00:25:53:17 - 00:26:14:28
Cam Perkins
People are able to adjust habits and they're able to have a discussion about what the change means as opposed to looking at a drawing. So we are so used to handing people a picture or plan and saying, What do you think? And of course, the first response is, well, this is going to change 105 things in my life.

00:26:15:09 - 00:26:44:29
Cam Perkins
Right? And that is often a really difficult conversation to have with people. So the first steps with with working in that particular example on High Street that you saw was what we call what we call the concept of 1000 cups of tea. And this is about building really solid relationships with people who are in that area so that you're building a foundation of trust that you are going to move forward with your project on.

00:26:45:26 - 00:27:10:09
Cam Perkins
And so when we think about the people who are very, very resistant to change, sometimes it's a better idea for us to put our energy and our focus with those who are willing to champion change in order to in order to build that support for the sorts of change that we need at a big social level. Right? Yeah.

00:27:10:15 - 00:27:33:02
Cam Perkins
So who the what what I coach my a lot of my clients on these days is about is saying don't put your energy into working with curmudgeons. Match your energy with the people at the front of the change curve because those people will be bringing along the the middle who are undecided.

00:27:33:14 - 00:28:01:10
John Simmerman
Well, that's why you're inviting them into the public realm and say, Hey, let's have a cup of tea or let's let's let's grab a bite in this in this space. And to your point, it's not trying to like appreciate the, you know, that process, that typical open house or communication or engagement public engagement process of with the drawings and the the vision plans, it's like, hey, let's let's do something physical.

00:28:01:10 - 00:28:37:02
John Simmerman
Let's you know, let's get something on the ground so that we can, you know, be in that space. And that's why I love that tactical urbanism, you know, pilot spirit, pilot project type of spirit is let's get something out there lighter, quicker, cheaper, let's demonstrated, let's do some tweaks, let's get feedback immediately while we're there. Then we can do some pretty bold steps and we can do some stuff that you normally, you know, you wouldn't be able to do and you wouldn't be able to accomplish something as extraordinary as say, Oh yeah, you know what we're going to do?

00:28:37:02 - 00:28:45:29
John Simmerman
We're going to do a street. And in that street it's going to be, yeah, like ten kilometers per hour. It's going to look like this.

00:28:48:12 - 00:29:14:07
Cam Perkins
Yeah. So this is an interesting one. What you're seeing on the screen is a particular street in Christchurch in New Zealand. If you know a bit about Christchurch, that city was almost completely leveled in earthquakes a number of years ago. And so the city has gone through a rebuild and there are many amazing, beautiful urban spaces popping up around the city.

00:29:14:07 - 00:29:39:20
Cam Perkins
And this particular district is the theater district in Christchurch. And this district is part of an acceleration program that I've been involved in and it's called Streets for People. It's run by what we know as Waka Kotahi and that's the NZ Transport Agency. And you had a little while ago Catherine King, as one of your guests who is the program director for Streets for People.

00:29:40:15 - 00:30:22:29
Cam Perkins
So my role in that program is to run the capability Workstream So we're thinking about what do local government need to need to know what knowledge to they need, what skills to they need, and what beliefs do they need to be able to rapidly reallocate road space. So this is a two lane street that you're seeing. And the proposal that's sitting here is is to one way the street and to turn it into a ten kilometer up how a street with a view to creating an incredible pedestrian space what you can see just in the distance up on the left hand side with with the glass sort of box building that you can see.

00:30:23:17 - 00:30:46:25
Cam Perkins
This is Christchurch's new library. And if you're ever in Christchurch, you need to go and visit this place. It is for double level, double levels of incredible community space. It has a robotics lab, it has a sewing lab, it has all the books, it has a rooftop garden. It is the most incredible example of a community library that I've seen.

00:30:47:18 - 00:31:15:01
Cam Perkins
And so the thinking with the street is that there are so many people who are moving in and out of these buildings in this particular community district that this needs to become a place for people. And so this is the first step to to move towards that, that that vision of the future and to have a real life conversation with people in a real life setting, as opposed to asking people on a plan, what that might what that might mean.

00:31:15:28 - 00:31:36:19
John Simmerman
Right. Right. And as you mentioned, Catherine King and the Streets for People program there for the country of New Zealand and that's one of the challenges, too, is to try to take some of these learnings and some of these experiences from the city level and then trying to apply them out nationally and then hopefully eventually, globally.

00:31:38:17 - 00:32:00:23
Cam Perkins
That's it. That's the secret, right? So this is the secret of the of the systems piece that we all need to be thinking about is how do we become how do we become people who are focused on learning and focused on sharing lessons? And how do we do that in a really safe way, and how do we do that in a way that demonstrates consistent progress?

00:32:01:13 - 00:32:32:23
Cam Perkins
So strengths for people, as an example, is currently a three year program. What came before that was a one year program and that tested a few things out and that gave us some evidence about how to build the next program. Before that was the sorts of demonstration projects like High Street. This was all set up intentionally with a view to thinking about what does a ten year progression of rate of road space reallocation, what does that look like and how do we get there?

00:32:32:23 - 00:33:07:11
Cam Perkins
And so when we think about this sort of idea of system change, in order to scale up physical change, we need to think about the system that is allowing that to happen. And so that system is often local and central government policies and processes that map out how we do these sorts of projects. What I find with many of my clients in New Zealand, Australia globally, is that some of those rules were written ten, 20, 50 years ago and no longer apply to modern cities.

00:33:08:04 - 00:33:41:13
John Simmerman
Yeah, so what's our biggest challenge to try to take these types of initiatives and programs and and try to get them disseminated out to other cultures, other places? And it's good that you had that experience early on in, you know, far away places of doing work because it gave you that early on and in your in your career experience of working in completely different environments and completely different cultures.

00:33:42:02 - 00:33:59:16
John Simmerman
I think that there's certain things that are very much human nature and human behavior and things that we can kind of grab on to. But at the same time, there there has to be an appreciation for cultural differences. And when we are, you know, trying to take this to maybe South Africa or somewhere else.

00:33:59:19 - 00:34:34:22
Cam Perkins
Yeah, yeah. It's a really good question. The the question of culture and the question of what is a norm in our everyday life? What is a norm in our family? What is a norm in our neighborhood, in our town, in our city that can also apply to our own training. So when we think about how say, I might train as an engineer versus how am I trying to do landscape architect versus how am I trained as a sociologist or a Jill or a geographer.

00:34:35:21 - 00:35:06:01
Cam Perkins
We are taught through education processes and taught through the norms in our families, in our neighborhoods about ways of thinking and models of thinking and models of seeing the world. And often we're challenged by new things. We can either be curious about what that means and how to understand what that means, or sometimes we can show that if we're not ready to be able to welcome that into our lives.

00:35:06:01 - 00:35:31:25
Cam Perkins
And that becomes a really difficult thing to work with. But it's a place where we need to think about how do we create safe places for this conversation to happen. And so when we start to apply this idea of, say, psychology to to city building and to city shaping, this is going to help us to understand the innate human that's at the center of these change processes.

00:35:32:07 - 00:35:47:03
Cam Perkins
So helping people to feel safe and creating safe places for cultivating conflict in a safe way is, I think and this is my theory is I think the way that we can move forward with this stuff. Yeah.

00:35:48:05 - 00:36:18:00
John Simmerman
And you are playing a very interesting role, too, because I see, you know, when I see this sort of of positioning marketing of, you know, seeking opportunities for disruption and talking about trying to upset the status quo and change, you know, what's what's kind of the way that things have been done. But at the same time, you have developed a level of credibility of working with municipalities and working with governments.

00:36:18:08 - 00:36:55:08
John Simmerman
And so that's a that's a really special balance to have to have because it's very it's too, too often folks will will, you know, that pendulum swing will go too far and they'll be just activists and and, you know, you know, agitating for disruption and change, but not really working well with others specifically the leaders from above. So so talk a little bit about that because, I mean, there's that balance that has to be done and especially when you're talking about tactical urbanism and trying to maybe do things from the ground up, you know, a movement coming from from the ground up.

00:36:55:15 - 00:37:13:12
John Simmerman
But at the same time, hopefully, ideally, you've inspired you have an inspired leadership so that you can go also from the top down. So from the ground up in the top down, talk a little bit about that because that seems to be that niche that you're playing is helping facilitate both the ground up and the top down.

00:37:15:04 - 00:37:38:10
Cam Perkins
Yeah, I, I must admit I found myself in this really interesting place, and it's not really by design. It it's sheer happenstance that I'm sort of I feel like I'm balancing on a knife edge a lot of a lot of the time, a lot of what I'm doing. And I'm trying to find that spot within the system, that balance within the system, where you can just push it out enough.

00:37:38:18 - 00:38:02:15
Cam Perkins
Yeah, you can just push it enough by testing things out and stretching things in different ways, maybe breaking a couple of things and showing that that, that it's okay to do that sort of stuff. So that comes back to this idea of, of of creating safety and creating a network of support around people when we're doing this sort of stuff.

00:38:03:05 - 00:38:34:15
Cam Perkins
So what I'm increasingly playing around with is the idea of how to use communities of practice and communities of interest to bring together people who are trying to do this stuff. Because what I found is that if you're a one line person trying to do this in an organization, it's very, very easy for you to be say, you know, move to the side, restructured, put in the dark office down the end of the corridor, you know, and not invited back to play.

00:38:34:15 - 00:39:05:08
Cam Perkins
And I've had those experiences. And so when we think about, okay, how do I get an invitation here to apply? Because I need to I've see that I need to adjust that system for that. We need to adjust that system. I'm thinking about how do you how do you bring together a network of champions within these organizations who can then start to agitate for this sort of change And how do you bring together a very diverse group of people who can become trusted messengers inside that organization?

00:39:06:07 - 00:39:37:11
Cam Perkins
So you are very right that my position within some of these organizations, particularly calling myself an urban pirate, raises some eyebrows with how with with people who are people who are used to seeing a certain way of working. And so we have to think about how do we deploy trusted messengers within organizations who understand what we're trying to do and can help us to communicate that change.

00:39:37:25 - 00:40:04:07
Cam Perkins
And so that means often working with people in very diverse situations who aren't used to working together. Yeah. And so when we can help by building these communities of practice, demonstrating that we've got support from a group of people to be continuing this change and when we can communicate what that change looks like and build an evidence base of what that means, that's when we start to get traction.

00:40:05:06 - 00:40:32:00
Cam Perkins
And so the architecture behind these change programs is, is that that that idea of a learning individual, a learning group of people and a learning organization and that's sort of what I feel is my next step is thinking about how do we really build up a proper learning organization, as in let's evaluate this and design with evidence right now.

00:40:32:00 - 00:40:41:12
John Simmerman
You you mentioned, you know, you're only one person, but you're one person with some bold plans and ideas. Talk a little bit about your 10,000 cities mission.

00:40:42:24 - 00:41:10:20
Cam Perkins
Yeah. So one day I'm sitting at my computer and I'm thinking, you know, I've been working with a few cities around the world. I wonder how many cities that are American I work with in my lifetime. And Google tells me there's about 10,000 in the world. And I, I went looking for what does 10,000 things look like and 10,000 things is only a grid of 100 by 100.

00:41:11:18 - 00:41:43:06
Cam Perkins
That's what I'm starting to see with my work in cities is is the power of being able to share experiences and stories. And so my mission is thinking about how do we work with 10,000 cities around the world to tell great stories of change and inspire the sort of change that we need in cities? Because we know that cities, despite the very small, the very small footprint in the world, are consuming most of our energy, most of that resources.

00:41:43:16 - 00:42:14:25
Cam Perkins
And by 2050, I think we're about 75% urbanized across the planet. Bruce Bruce Mao speaks about this idea that by 2050 we'll have about 10 billion people on the planet. And I heard him speaking once and he said, you know what, By 2050 of those 10 billion people, 5 billion are not even born yet. So those people will be born into the systems that we design today.

00:42:15:01 - 00:42:36:08
Cam Perkins
So you won't have to change mind. And that was a real revelation for me. I thought, okay, when you break it down that way, 10,000 cities, 10 billion people, it's maybe possible it might not be in my lifetime, but something that I've learned from New Zealand is this idea of designing for seven generations ahead of you, thinking that seven generations.

00:42:36:24 - 00:42:54:24
Cam Perkins
So that's the sort of movement that I am working on in the background to build, but I don't tell many people about it because it sounds so large and so crazy that some of the responses I get, well, that's not possible, but I love being told that I can't do something because it just goes beyond try it out.

00:42:55:07 - 00:43:00:14
John Simmerman
Yeah, and guess what? We're broadcasting this out to the world right here, right now.

00:43:00:14 - 00:43:00:28
Cam Perkins
By the way.

00:43:03:05 - 00:43:19:26
John Simmerman
So, hey, we're you know, we're going to reach every corner of the world, you know, amazing. If they can access YouTube, that is truly the amazing thing about this platform. Kim, is there anything that we haven't yet covered that you want to make sure that we leave the audience with?

00:43:21:27 - 00:43:46:15
Cam Perkins
Look, I think, yeah, there is. I think if we if we can think as as practitioners who are trying to create active towns, active cities is that we need to start with our own place of learning. First, we need to understand how to be more curious and that curiosity is a bit of a muscle that way that we can work and that we can stretch.

00:43:47:18 - 00:44:17:19
Cam Perkins
I would recommend a couple of books and I'll just try to think. And Leslie, there's a book by Ian Leslie called Curious, and there's another one by Leslie called Conflicted, which have been two quite seminal books in my life, which have really made me think about how do I become more curious about the ways that people are feeling when we're proposing change in cities.

00:44:18:27 - 00:44:39:05
Cam Perkins
And I found over time that if we can be more curious, we start, we can step into someone else's shoes and understand what it is that's driving them and what do they need to feel safe in a change process. And it really leads us to this realization that all the problems that we face in the world are people problems.

00:44:40:08 - 00:44:54:27
Cam Perkins
So if we can focus on those single relationships, on building networks and on that order of 1000 cups of tea, as in relationships are the foundation for all the change that we need to make. That, to me is the message. That's the King George.

00:44:56:06 - 00:45:05:19
John Simmerman
Brilliant, brilliant. Thank you so much, Kim. This has been an absolute joy and pleasure connecting with you all the way across the world and beside.

00:45:06:12 - 00:45:29:18
Cam Perkins
So a lot of the questions you ask. Thank you. It was a real pleasure to be able to explore a few things that I hadn't thought about for a while. And also you challenging me to to just sort of talk about this way of of change. So I thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity. And I hope if your listeners have any questions, then they can come through.

00:45:29:18 - 00:45:34:07
Cam Perkins
You. But otherwise, join the mission, jump on board.

00:45:34:23 - 00:45:56:02
John Simmerman
Absolutely. And for for those watching this on YouTube, please feel free to leave a comment down below in the comments section. I'll be sure to let you know, Kim, if any questions pop up that really need you to address them personally. And and I can always get those forwarded to you. And again, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.

00:45:56:02 - 00:45:57:01
John Simmerman
It's been an absolute honor.

00:45:58:20 - 00:46:02:08
Cam Perkins
And the same job. Alright, have an awesome evening where you are.

00:46:02:28 - 00:46:19:24
John Simmerman
Hey, thank you all so much for tuning in. Hope you enjoyed this episode with Cam Perkins and if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so, I would be honored to have you subscribe to the channel. Just click on that subscription button down below and ring the notifications bell Again, thank you all so much for tuning in.

00:46:19:24 - 00:46:44:23
John Simmerman
It's always wonderful to have you along for the ride. And until next time, Sir John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers. And again sending a huge thank you to all my active tones. 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 town store, every little bit adds up and it's been much appreciated.

00:46:45:03 - 00:46:46:11
John Simmerman
Thank you all so much.