Shalom!**
And welcome to this newsletter.
It's where I (John Surico) talk each month about cities & all their discontents: streets, environment, energy, cultures, people, food, form, etc. This month, we cover:
- Age-friendly public spaces;
- The permanence of bike-share;
- The exile of the college-educated.
& much, much more.
This month, I want to dedicate the fortieth installment of this newsletter to an avid reader: my cousin, Matthew Mullin.
In early May, Matt took his own life, at 24 years old. The news has absolutely shattered my family—the days after felt like a haze, and still do in hindsight. We crawled our way through wakes and ceremonies, trying to piece together what happened and what to do next. When I read a prayer at his funeral as his confirmation sponsor, it felt like a dream. I wish it was.
When I was young, I watched Matt all of the time; my aunt lived in the town over, and I was the older boy on my mom’s side. (We were the first born in 50 years!) I’d read books to him, and he’d gobble up words in no time. But we grew apart as we grew up. Not for any particular reason; he was always quieter, and I was enough years older to define an age gap. Yet we had a bond as lifelong geeks. Matt was our family’s prodigal son: a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin, he had just won an award for his work on renewable energy.
Everyone who’s lost someone to suicide has that ‘would’ve, could’ve, should’ve’ moment. Or multiple ones. For me, it was the fact that Matt and I hadn’t spoken in a year. I hadn’t known that he struggled with COVID complications related to depression, a part of the long-hanging shadow of this terrible virus. Or that he loved riding his e-bike around campus. Or that he would make jokes to his brother, Will, that highways were the bane of humanity’s existence. (We are most certainly related.) Or that he fanboyed, like me, over The Legend of Zelda and Avatar: The Last Airbender. Or how much he dedicated his life to the environment — our family planted trees and donated to the Sierra Club in his memory. Or that he read Streetbeat often, and told his friends all about it. He never told me any of that. And regrettably, I never asked.
So this one’s for Matt, and all the conversations we would’ve, could’ve and should’ve had with our loved ones. I’ll miss you, buddy.
Now, onto the news:
That’s a wrap
This month marked ten years since my friends and I graduated from New York University, entering a job market still rocked by the Great Recession and finagling a way to make it in a city deep in the throes of 2010s-era gentrification. For journalism students, it was an uneasy time—legacy outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post were struggling to make the Web profitable, while VC-backed upstarts like VICE and BuzzFeed offered hope in what seemed like a new age of media.
It’s funny how much has changed—and how much hasn’t—since 2013. I can’t remember a time in my professional career when media wasn’t a mess; this is an industry that still hasn’t figured out how to bring in sustained revenue, and so it constantly finds itself in a cycle of boom and bust, much like our economy. And so, around graduation, I often tell the seniors in my class to embrace the chaos; if something is never stable, or never going to be stable, then the floor is yours to chart your own path. (Or not! And that’s okay, too.) I’ve been freelance my whole career thanks to those market forces, patching together different projects to form some cohesive body of work that: a) I enjoy doing; and b) pays the rent. But is that for everyone? Absolutely not. But it works for me.
I hate giving advice for that very reason. (And I remember hating getting advice at that age, too.) Because I can count on one hand the folks in my graduating class who are still reporting and writing. Everyone took what they learned, and applied it to their liking—and that rule still stands, if not even more so today. And to be frank, who am I to proselytize to a generation when they’re just happy we had a graduation party for the first time since 2019?
I’m taking a very long road to basically say: the kids will be alright. (Breaking the #1 rule as a college professor: don’t call your students kids.) And I know so because of the capstones I watched them create in order to graduate—a selection of deeply reported stories about issues facing their city. It led to some stellar pieces about the growing acceptance of midwifery in mainstream healthcare, and addiction in the legal cannabis industry; the gender imbalance of opera, and the racial imbalance of immigration rights; more consciously designing parks for mental health, and more representation in the city’s Deaf community; the fight against a new jail in Chinatown, and the fight for more reproductive care from NYU; a climate-induced return of urban wildlife, and an AI-induced discussion about diversity in fashion; and how female-identifying artists afford to live in the city. You can read them all here.
Needless to say, as proud class dad, I was proud to see them off—even as they enter this great unknown. Because I know they’ll do just fine.
Return of the wonk
I wrote my first policy report in 2018, for Center for an Urban Future (CUF). It was entitled A New Leaf: Revitalizing New York City’s Aging Parks Infrastructure. It took over a year to research; I fielded close to a hundred interviews, visited dozens of parks, and immersed myself in a world that, at that time, I wasn’t very familiar with to. It was also the first time I ever did anything of the sort.
I’d joke that typically at the end of stories, journalists don’t give the readers bullet points of what to do next. (Or, in wonk speak: policy recommendations.) You tell the story, and nothing more. Doing so went against everything I learned in journalism school. And I loved it. Solutions always felt like a missing piece for me, as a reporter. Shouldn’t we be saying that someone (ideally: government) should be doing something about the issue we’re exhaustively telling you about? Or are we still ardent believers in the idea that by merely reading about it, the average citizen or policymaker will rise up and take action themselves? The latter is the very basis of journalism: that knowledge of power, and having more of it is a good thing, no matter what.
But by 2017, the world had made me… skeptical of that. So since that first report on city parks, I’ve been supplementing my journalism with a constant stream of policy work. I continued to grind at CUF with work on libraries, capital construction, returning college students, and workforce development. I wrote about the future of infrastructure for the Aspen Institute, and helped the European Union map out pandemic-era street design responses. And most recently, I spent a year at Central Park Conservancy, aiding in some of their initiatives around parks equity and climate adaptability.
Today, I’m happy to share that I’ll be returning to CUF as their new Senior Fellow for Climate and Opportunity. (It’s a nice title!) I’ll be overseeing the bulk of the think tan’s work on sustainability for the next year, as the city tries to decarbonize with funds from Albany and Washington trickling in. I’ll be working on a few different things, which I’ll have more to say about soon. And just like 2017, I’m excited to do journalism—and a bit more.
It’s a MerWorld
I don’t spill enough ink in this newsletter on my partner, Angela. (Fun fact: she came up with the name Streetbeat! As well as Parthenon of Produce, which she is most proud of.) Not only does Ange dislike me gushing over the work she does as one of the most tireless producers in the game, but also, unlike my written work, the documentary projects she’s attached to span months, if not years. She is happy to just be your regular reader and mom to the cat child that joins us at the end of this missive each month. But folks, it is time for some Ange love.
For over a year and a half, Angela would regularly leave our apartment at dawn and take a flight from LaGuardia down south to help shoot the ever-expansive world of professional mermaiding. As lead producer, she was part of a tight-knit crew—many of whom have since become good friends—that embedded themselves within the vast spectrum of characters and personalities that have turned what was once a niche culture in the Weeki Wachee Springs of Florida into what’s now a half a billion dollar industry, fit for the TikTok era. She assembled shoots on cruise ships and at kids’ birthday parties; she played middlewoman for merfolk drama; and she commandeered her way out of supply chain crises, when cases of priceless gear would get stuck at the Miami airport. As always, she proved to be an absolute hoss — and as her partner, I can say this one had to be one of the most challenging reporting experiences she’s ever undergone. But in turn, it may be the most rewarding.
So friends, if you find yourself on Netflix this month and looking for something post-Succession, I encourage you to tune into MerPeople, the resulting four-part docuseries on this endlessly fascinating subculture. It is a beautiful story about identity and community—what it means to truly be yourself in this strange world we all inhabit together. The response so far has been phenomenal. And I couldn’t be prouder to share it here. You did great, love.
OSA: All ages
I’ve spoken here in the past about the silent majority of public spaces. The folks who enjoy them, but don’t actively tell their lawmakers that — because, who would? It’s why community board meetings often double as scenes from Parks and Recreation instead. Negativity is a helluva drug, and it makes people loud. Positivity, albeit far more common, is there if you look for it.
Well, this month we didn’t have to: the 31st Ave Open Street was recently named a 2022 winner of the ‘Family Friendly’ awards given out by UP-STAND, a parent-led organization that advocates for more age-friendly spaces and infrastructure. They advise the MTA, for example, on issues like stroller access on buses, which they recently scored a victory on. According to the organization, the Open Street is notable for its easy access, ample room, and stroller parking (since the whole street is free space), amongst other things.
This year, the city offered accessibility training to all partners, so our public spaces can reach as many people as possible. That’s part programming and outreach, sure — e.g. we’re fundraising for more kid-friendly classes and language translation — but it’s also in the built environment, as this nomination reminds us. It’s asking things like: are the barricades wide enough to fit a variety of mobility devices? Can a wheelchair sit at the public café seating? Is programming only accessible to able-bodied people? And do parents feel safe walking on a street that, most days, isn’t due to car traffic?
Needless to say, there is always room to improve. And if you enter the conversation refusing to think that, you probably shouldn’t be the one leading this process. FYI: no public space is ever truly accessible. But slowly but surely, through constant dialogue and effort, you can inch your way there.
Bright Side: Citi Bike at 10
I travel in many ways, but I spend the most time on Citi Bike. I use the chrome blue or silver public bikes to get everywhere: from home to work; from work to park; from park to coffee shop; from coffee shop to friend’s house; from friend’s house back home. I know the dock locations about as well as I know subway stops or restaurants. Citi Bike has stretched beyond just a ‘last mile’ option for me; I’ve fully replaced public transit trips (and lord knows how many car trips) ever since I subscribed way back when. Even walking.
This month, there were loads of great words out about the bike-share program’s tenth anniversary, and what a monumental occasion that is. This is a mode that is now being ridden by about 125,000 people everyday (sometimes more) as the largest network of bikes outside of China. It’s a crucial piece of the transit map. But ten years ago, it was considered a huge gamble: I always show students this amazing clip from The Daily Show after it was first introduced, when neighbors hilariously decried the idea of sharing bikes with strangers. (This reminds me of Zoey Deutsch pitching Uber in Zomebieland: Double Tap.) Let alone in the tony West Village. Now, you find a dock on almost every corner of Manhattan.
Ten years is a century in city-making, and in that time, bike-share has grown into a fixture of our urban landscapes. It’s actually difficult to find a city that doesn’t have bikes readily accessible to the public — or to remember a time when this wasn’t the case. Bike-share still has a long way to go, in terms of equity and infrastructure, and I’ll have more to say about that soon. But a city with Citi Bike is the only city people now know, especially if you were born after 2013.
Every night, a group of tweens ride Citi Bikes down my block; the other day, I dodged a horde of kids who were racing towards the last electric bike at a dock. It’s normal to see kids sitting on bikes, just hanging out. That is the city they’ll know, and the city they’ll come to expect. And it’s a city that’s better for it.
On the Radar: White(-collar) flight
Coastal Cities Priced Out Low-Wage Workers. Now College Graduates Are Leaving, Too by Emily Badger, Robert Gebeloff, and Josh Katz. (The New York Times)
The story of cities in the 2010s was of great urban migration. But to be more specific — thanks to who was weaving this narrative — what that really meant was great urban college-educated migration. After years of decamping to suburbs, bachelor and master’s degree holders (which leaned white and wealthy) were returning to cities in record numbers, as they grew safer, less polluted, and more attractive to well-paying jobs. It was a comeback of sorts.
But not for everyone. As that was going on, these cities were losing low-wage workers. The phrase ‘playground for the rich’ was thrown around a lot for cities like New York, London, Dubai, and Milan. And this became the M.O. for so many places: middle- and upper-class residents moved into big cities for the reasons mentioned above, and low-wage workers, squeezed by higher housing costs and disappearing industries, decamped to smaller ones. (The two are tied together, of course.) Cities prospered, but also, segregated.
But this month, we saw some new statistics, courtesy of the Times: that college graduates are also leaving big coastal cities (New York, Seattle, Boston, San Francisco) and heading to smaller or mid-sized cities (Dallas, Nashville, Tucson). My own friend group has followed this pattern, and the pandemic only accelerated it. But an underlying assumption is that college-educated automatically equals good, so losing them equals bad. And sure, I’m not one to deny that a degree is a great on-ramp to class mobility. (I’ve said it here before!) But I think we have to look more closely at the cities we built this last decade.
It’s clear that clustering college-educated folks in a handful of places wasn’t a great growth model: it spikes gentrification; it chips away at economic resiliency; and it leads to inequitable development. But we still defend this model like the gospel. Take the awkward conversations people still have about leaving big cities during COVID. Responses range from existential betrayal to anger. Yet we all have different criteria to which we build our lives; I don’t mind that folks re-evaluated what mattered to them most at a time of crisis. Sounds healthy, to be honest. I often reply: good for you!
Let’s not get too capitalist here, but monopolizing anything is never good. Like with mobility, business or even composting, a stronger system is one with lots of cogs doing well, rather than one or two dominating the damn thing. The same goes for cities. Badger made this point in a follow-up: you can now get good Thai and Indian food in lots of other places. They’re attractive much in the same way that New York and San Fran were a decade ago. That’s a good thing. Let’s spread the wealth. And then maybe after, we should spend some time thinking about how we build cities that work for everyone.
Streetbeat Gig Board
Wanna post a job? Submit it here.
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Transportation Alternatives, the forces behind New York City’s ‘25x25’ plan, is looking for a digital communications coordinator. (New York, NY)
NYU Journalism, where I teach and work, is hiring a managing editor at its First Amendment Watch project. (New York, NY)
The tactical urbanism wiz’s at Street Plans are in need of a new content and proposal manager. (Atlanta, Miami, New York or remote)
Hiring has begun for the new cohort of City Service Corps, which places recently graduated college students in a variety of city roles, like tree stewardship and climate response. (New York, NY)