Merry meet*
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:
- The frontlines of the car culture war;
- The increasingly crowded bike lane;
- The power of the public pool;
& much, much more.
The war on cars
Donald Shoup, the UCLA professor who first got the planning world to really think about parking’s outsized impact, has a famous saying: “Nothing is more political than parking.” It’s a line that, for me, hints at a collective identity crisis: in a world where public space is used for the (often free) storage of private property, anything that even resembles taking it away or questioning that system is seen as an all-out assault on one’s way of life. Urbanists will recognize this existential attachment as a phenomenon called ‘car culture.’
Cars are crucial to countless livelihoods. They’re how the broad majority of people get around—including many folks who are reading this right now. They’re in our movies, our songs, our commercials, and maybe even some of our fondest memories with loved ones. (I saw the Eras Tour film this month, and I think Taylor Swift mentions cars in almost all of her songs.) In terms of life events, getting a driver’s license can be as monumental as graduating high school.
So going against that grain—or at least just saying “huh?'“—is difficult; it’s a countercultural statement that evokes heavy emotion. I know many people reading this have nervously asked me for my opinions about cars. (It’s okay!) Because it is uncomfortable, right? Something about it just makes us squirm—and pits people against one another almost immediately. Forget religion and politics: cars are often harder to talk about at the dinner table.
But I am fascinated by those tough conversations. Because I think they’re going to signify some of the most significant roadblocks (pun!) to changing policies and realities in the years ahead, as cities look to reduce emissions and traffic violence—all of which will require less cars on the street. (Sorry, EV users.)
The politics could get brutal, and we’re just now starting to feel the tremors of it. I wrote about what’s been bubbling to the surface, and why change is afoot, in an op-ed for Streetsblog NYC. Let’s talk!
It’s a squeeze
We’re living in a time of mass mobility abundance. Besides planes, trains and automobiles, you’ve got throttle e-bikes, mopeds, Segways, trikes, cargo bikes, pedal-assists, e-scooters, unicycles and those one-wheel scooters that I just Googled the name of and found out that they’re actually just called one-wheel scooters. (And I’m missing a few here, no doubt.) Even if some are still gas-powered, like mopeds and most cars, the advent of a durable and cheap lithium ion battery has led to a boon in personal mobility devices the likes of which we’ve never seen before. I’ve written this here before, but cities need to adapt their laws and streets to this rising army of new modes—and fast.
To see what happens when they’re slow to the roll, look no further than New York City’s bridges. All of those modes above regularly try to tango over a few feet of space at high speeds, and as a result, they’ve become hotbeds for crashes—a danger that could threaten the impressive uptick in cycling we’ve seen not just in New York City, but in cities everywhere.
For New York Magazine’s Curbed, I heard from a number of New Yorkers who have either experienced or witnessed these crashes firsthand. I also asked them a burning question on my mind: what we can we do about it?
Healthy places
We’ve been going over newsworthiness in the undergraduate journalism class that I teach—or how to convince readers that something is worthy of coverage. Public health in cities is a good example. Just look at these statistics: Eight out of 10 deaths globally, or about 41 million people each year, are from what’s known as non-communicable diseases, or NCDs. These are your preventable deaths, like heart disease and car crashes; they’re more linked to our environment than our DNA. And about 86 percent of these deaths happen in low-income or developing countries, hindering their growth and progress. Now, where do cities come in? Well, by 2050, we know that two-thirds of the world’s population we’ll be living in an urban area. (It’s already over half right now.) Do the math, and cities are baring the brunt of these avoidable tragedies. That’s your elevator pitch.
But cities are doing the work to get those numbers down, especially after a life-altering event like a global pandemic that viscerally showed us why health is paramount to urban development. In an interactive (sponsored) piece for The Guardian, in conjunction with Bloomberg Philanthropies, I explored cities who are sharing innovative ideas around issues like traffic violence, bad diets, smoking, air pollution and overdoses. Check it out. (And a shout-out to the Guardian Labs team for their A+ work on the multimedia.)
OSA: The public platform
The Open Street season has this operational paradox where volunteer burnout starts to set in just as the busiest part of the year approaches. Later today, we’ll be activating the two car-free blocks in Queens on a weekday afternoon as part of the city’s second annual ‘Trick or Streets,’ where kids are given safer spaces to dress up and get candy on one of the year’s deadliest nights on our streets. That comes after a jam-packed Halloweekend, multiple markets, a community cookout, lots of rain, and regular weekend programming, and before all of the holiday festivities we have planned before we wrap in December. So, it’s a time.
But this month, I wanted to use this space to expand upon something I discussed here a while ago, about how public spaces can help garner community wealth. In that context, I talked about how our vendor fairs have a symbiotic relationship with Astoria Food Pantry: vendors pay a suggested donation to the pantry, which benefits our hungriest neighbors, in exchange for a spot at a popular market where they get to hawk their wares, sometimes for the first time in public. The street becomes a place that uplifts entrepreneurs, mutual aid, and residents alike. (The story about the toy collectors also comes to mind.)
In that same notion, the street can also be a place where people have an accessible, free platform to connect with their neighbors. We see this every weekend: musicians play acoustic sets to get their name out there; artists host an interactive activity with neighbors to introduce their work; elected officials and city agencies post up to get the word out about resources or initiatives. The street has public-facing appeal; otherwise, you’d have to find a private venue or figure out some other time-consuming (and likely pricey) way to reach people. Here, you put together a table and people are there.
So how can we harness that energy and foot traffic to help more of our neighbors? I had this thought at a recent event—for the first time, we hosted a silent disco on 31st Ave, as part of a community cookout held by Tikkun BBQ and Astoria Horror Club. (It also included free hot dogs and movies.) Four DJs, all of whom are locals who play around the neighborhood, spun tracks for over 100 people over the course of three hours. We couldn’t pay them directly, but they got lots of publicity, a very full tip jar, and a perch to show off their skills.
If we had that more often next year, how many more aspiring DJs or musicians looking to get their start could we invite? How can we turn this single event, which was also just a lot of fun, into a community incubator? And how do we do that exact same thing with everyone else?
Bright Side: Pools for people
The hottest September ever recorded, shocking even the scientific community, should be a sweaty reminder of just how important our access to water will be in the coming years. We all know heat inequity is real: lower-income communities tend to have less trees, reliable electrical grids for all of those A/Cs, and, most pertinent to this conversation, pools. Cities are getting smart about this, opening more lakes, rivers and fountains so folks can cool off. But public pools—many of which were built in an earlier era of progressive urban planning—often remain an untapped resource (another pun!) because they’re expensive and big.
One of my favorite responses to this is the ‘Swimmobiles,’ which were quite literally mobile pools that were wheeled into underserved communities during New York’s heat waves in the 1960s and 1970s. The photos are phenomenal. But this Bright Side isn’t for Swimmobiles, as much as I’d like it to be. Instead, I want to talk about another novel approach to bringing more pools to people.
Last year, New York City enacted a bill that will require swimming lessons for all second-graders in city schools. Studies show that kids who learn how to swim early are not only less likely to drown (a terribly common problem still), but also, more likely to keep the healthy habit up throughout life. But there’s another component to the bill: the lessons will prompt the city to study who has access to pools, and who doesn’t. By asking two agencies—NYC Parks and the Department of Education—to work together to bring swimming lessons to hundreds of thousands of students, the hope is that it’ll become abundantly clear to lawmakers, who fund these projects, where more pools are needed. And yes, there will likely be very cute moments—like this 14-year-old in East New York, Brooklyn, saying that knowing how to swim is a necessity at any pool party.
On the Radar
We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, by Jonathan Safran Foer
If you know Foer, then you know that he wrote some of the most popular post-modern books of the early aughts, namely Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. But then, his writing career took a distinct tonal turn: for more than a decade or so, the award-winning novelist has been obsessed with what we eat, and the immense damage that our meat-heavy food chain has wreaked. Starting with Eating Animals, Foer’s books are big on the plant-forward, vegan-friendly circuits, and he’s now more likely to be found speaking at environmental advocacy events than literary salons.
His latest book—which arrived right before the pandemic—connects the dots between our diets and planet in a remarkably potent way. He writes to his children, about how sorry he is for his generation’s mishandling of our most precious resource. He admits his sheer inability to fully stop eating meat. And he goes through perhaps the familiar cycle of emotions we have when we read about the climate crisis: fear, shame, and, ultimately, numbness.
Foer’s books are inspiring; my partner and I try to maintain a meat-free household (especially during the week) and hearing his pleas and statistics are reaffirming, in a liberal-carrying-a-tote-bag kind of way. And I think it’s good for people to be hit with the reality of their everyday food choices, because modern capitalism thrives on severing us from the negative externalities of our choices. (Fans of The Good Place will know what I mean here.) We don’t see what went into our burger: the methane from the cow, cooking our atmosphere; its suffering; or the carbon from the factories and trucks that delivered that very burger to our plates. And sometimes, feeling that is what gets people to change.
But a note here on something I’ve noticed with these types of books. Foer, a progressive icon, spends about 200 pages making the argument that our diet is one of the best ways you and I can combat the climate crisis tomorrow; by eating no meat until dinner time, we can make a dent in our carbon emissions. (And for what it’s worth: this is true!) But Foer spills little ink on his most intensive habit: his mobility. Foer lives in a transit-rich area (Brooklyn!), but drives his car around on a bunch of local rides—which are not only worse for the environment, but make up the bulk of our trips—and maybe dedicates a sentence or two about whether he really needs to or not. He takes planes all over for talks and events, and maybe dedicates a sentence or two about the high carbon toll of flight.
Now, I am a firm believer that we need to do all of the things as conscious human beings living through planetary demise. Eat less meat. Fly less. Drive less. Use or need less things. In short: live smaller. But it’s common in left-leaning circles to harp on just one section of our climate load when transportation is the largest contributor to climate emissions in the U.S.. And to me, it relates to the point made earlier: culturally, eating less meat is easier than driving or flying less. Of green lifestyle changes, it has the most readily available alternatives and probably provokes the least emotional responses of the three. (Mayer Hillman, who tried to live a totally net-zero life, missed his own son’s wedding because he refused to get on a plane. Imagine that.) But I think we do a great disservice when we only make space for what we want to hear or digest (one last pun for you all!). And the quicker we break from that, the better.
Streetbeat Gig Board
Wanna post a job? Submit it here.
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The City of Boston is looking for someone to lead the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, which sounds like the coolest job… ever? (Boston, MA)
The New York City Department of Transportation is hiring a smart curbs coordinator to help lead the city’s attempt at one of the hottest new trends in transit. (New York City, NY)
New Yorkers for Parks needs a new director of development as it ramps up its parks advocacy in the face of steep budget cuts. (New York City, NY)
Merry meet, merry part, merry meet again!