Speaker 1: It am. We we are.
Speaker 2: Ya having me.
Speaker 3: We are joined by Adam Paul Susanet, who I want
Speaker 3: you all to know, cares a lot. All right, listen, y'all.
Speaker 3: Most folks are like, what's time? I need to be there,
Speaker 3: that's it. Adam was like, can I show photos? Can
Speaker 3: I show videos? I need them to get the information.
Speaker 3: And I really appreciate that. And Adam, I have all
Speaker 3: the photos. So I have all the photos. I have
Speaker 3: the video, I have the PDF, so I have whatever
Speaker 3: you want me to have for this conversation about for
Speaker 3: this conversation that is segregation by design. Segregation by design,
Speaker 3: please topic. Yeah, okay, so I found you on the interwebs.
Speaker 3: Ever so often the algorithm does something useful, and the
Speaker 3: algorithm decided to send you my way. And as a
Speaker 3: black person in this country, you know, I'm all. I
Speaker 3: can't say I'm ever shocked, but it never ceases to
Speaker 3: disgust me the myriad ways that have been used to
Speaker 3: continue the the the operation of colonialism, of separation, of segregation,
Speaker 3: et cetera. But I hadn't I didn't know about highways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well it's exactly that. The highways video, Well,
Speaker 2: the video is a good introduction to sort of segregation
Speaker 2: by design my project. So we can show that. Let's
Speaker 2: say that in a second. Okay, but yeah, the highways,
Speaker 2: it's it's interesting because they really do represent as they
Speaker 2: were designed. They represent sort of a continuation of this
Speaker 2: project of writing white supremacy into law. It's you can see,
Speaker 2: you can see it sort of as a form of
Speaker 2: shifting shifting tactics, like after federal desegregation in the fifties,
Speaker 2: you know, with brown Brown b Board of Education, and
Speaker 2: then with the subsequent Civil Rights Act, a lot of
Speaker 2: the official barriers to or rather a lot of the
Speaker 2: official legal mechanisms that upheld segregation were invalidated federally. So
Speaker 2: then what comes along is the highways, which are able
Speaker 2: to then draw that color line that was technically invalidated,
Speaker 2: but they're able to draw that color line in physical
Speaker 2: space in a much bigger way than it was before,
Speaker 2: and in places where it wasn't already, like the train
Speaker 2: tracks is a famous example. Right, So maybe let's show
Speaker 2: the video if that's okay, But unless you have a
Speaker 2: follow up question, it is it is seven minutes. I
Speaker 2: don't know how we got time. Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2: I have time. It's it's a good introduction to to
Speaker 2: segregation by design. The project, Well, there's this one. This
Speaker 2: one's only a second, this one's only a few moments long.
Speaker 3: Okay, so this video is showing us what.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, so exactly, so, this is showing a highway
Speaker 2: being constructed through Detroit. And what this is showing is
Speaker 2: one of the sort of original sins of highway construction.
Speaker 2: So normally what I like to do is when I
Speaker 2: present this project, basically I talk about some of the
Speaker 2: problems posed by the problems we face with freeways today,
Speaker 2: sort of the history of how we got here, and
Speaker 2: some solutions for what we can do about it. And
Speaker 2: this is both one of the problems in the history.
Speaker 2: One of the problems is that they were built through
Speaker 2: basically black and brown neighborhood specifically, so they displaced all
Speaker 2: these people. You can see all these houses being destroyed,
Speaker 2: and then for the neighborhood, for the neighborhoods that remain
Speaker 2: divided by these highways. Now there's significant pollution, both in
Speaker 2: terms of exhaust from the from the from the cars
Speaker 2: and the entire particular matter brake matter, and then noise pollution.
Speaker 2: And that's another one of those images I sent. But
Speaker 2: we don't have to get to bogged down by the
Speaker 2: images because they're not I didn't send them in any
Speaker 2: particular order, which is my bad.
Speaker 3: So I don't have the video you're talking about. I
Speaker 3: thought this was the video, But where can I get it?
Speaker 3: Is it in the emails?
Speaker 2: Image just sent it? I think at it's I have
Speaker 2: the PDAs I sent it.
Speaker 3: And I have the I have where you said this
Speaker 3: animation this image would be good, and images from this
Speaker 3: page would be good to show. I have all of those.
Speaker 2: This is the one. Oh wait, no, that's playing on
Speaker 2: my here? I can, I can?
Speaker 3: I can bring it up.
Speaker 2: Basically, whoops that I just sent you here? It is.
Speaker 3: Okay? Oh, but this is a link, not the actual video.
Speaker 3: Can I show the link?
Speaker 2: How do I do it? Correct? It's a YouTube link.
Speaker 3: I don't know how to do that on here. I
Speaker 3: can like bring a video onto screen, but I don't
Speaker 3: know how to show like a YouTube video.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not a big deal. We can just
Speaker 2: we can just talk. It's it's basically, it's it's an example.
Speaker 2: The video is an example of of where these highways
Speaker 2: we're used to displace and destroy a black community in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, specifically Sugar Hill. So for for a lot
Speaker 2: of these examples, and and the the pdf I sent
Speaker 2: that one has a bunch of pictures and we can
Speaker 2: bring that up at some point. But for a lot
Speaker 2: of the examples I mentioned, if folks want to check
Speaker 2: out my website Segregation Bydesign dot com, it basically breaks
Speaker 2: it down city by city. Uh, and what I'm that
Speaker 2: there's a there's Detroit. So we're just flowing.
Speaker 3: We're flowing right now.
Speaker 2: We're just doing it. We're just doing it. Yeah, that's fine. So, Uh,
Speaker 2: what I try to show is, city by city, how
Speaker 2: highways were used basically to divide between black and white communities,
Speaker 2: uh in some cases, and then also destroy black communities
Speaker 2: in other cases. How they were used to basically write
Speaker 2: white supremacy into the built environment of American cities, and
Speaker 2: what the process is, how that happened. And what this
Speaker 2: is showing is an example in Detroit. So you can
Speaker 2: see here Detroit basically before and after. In the project,
Speaker 2: I use a lot of aerial imagery basically to show
Speaker 2: what happened, so you can see in this example, I'll
Speaker 2: just talk through it. Paradise valley and black bottom. You
Speaker 2: can see in the before image in those white labels,
Speaker 2: So before federal desegregation is and did again in with
Speaker 2: some with things like brown b board, So this is
Speaker 2: fifty before the fifties. Basically, segregation is legal. Cities are
Speaker 2: allowed to say black people can live here and white
Speaker 2: people can live here. It's by a variety of mechanisms,
Speaker 2: some which are official laws, some which are sort of
Speaker 2: real estate practices. Right, but yeah, so exactly, redlining is
Speaker 2: an example of something that's a law. But then there's
Speaker 2: something like then there's other things like restrictive covenants, which
Speaker 2: are basically so that's real estate. That's that's a sort
Speaker 2: of yeah, well h oo as are the descendant of
Speaker 2: restrictive covenants.
Speaker 3: Ah okay, okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So a restrictive covenant is a thing that's written
Speaker 2: into the deed of houses that says you can only
Speaker 2: sell to quote unquote people of the Caucasian race only.
Speaker 2: So that's that's an example of like a private Uh yeah,
Speaker 2: the Color of lat talks about this example exactly. That's
Speaker 2: an example of sort of private mechanism by which they
Speaker 2: upheld segregation. And then there's redlining, which is sort of
Speaker 2: the government legal way of doing it. But the results
Speaker 2: of that is you get these black districts. You get
Speaker 2: these uh and these are the these are the historic
Speaker 2: districts like Harlem that we talk about, you know. And
Speaker 2: in this case in Detroit, it's Black Black Bottom in
Speaker 2: Paradise Valley and it's basically this linear cord or arrayed
Speaker 2: along Hasting Street, which you see there. So this community
Speaker 2: is is constrained by segregation. But even despite that, in
Speaker 2: this in this case of Hastings and in Paradise Valley
Speaker 2: and Black Bottom and and so many other of these neighborhoods,
Speaker 2: despite the segregation, a really strong actually I mean a community,
Speaker 2: really strong community forms, but a strong economy forms too, yes,
Speaker 2: because within your community exactly. And and you see these
Speaker 2: these corridors in this case Hastings Street. And if you
Speaker 2: if you go back to some of those other pictures
Speaker 2: that was sort of Hastings with John Lee Hooker with
Speaker 2: the guitar, that was Hasting Well that's that's yeah, that one,
Speaker 2: that's good one. The other one, the.
Speaker 3: Butove picture is the thriving Hastings with the record stores
Speaker 3: and the porter market, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and the bottom is what it is now exactly.
Speaker 2: And and what's interesting about the Hasting case is so
Speaker 2: and and these these two images, the before and the
Speaker 2: before images of this one and then the other one,
Speaker 2: these are actually both album covers. So it shows that, yeah,
Speaker 2: this one. Uh so even at the time these were
Speaker 2: like there's a conception that this is like a special place.
Speaker 2: I mean it's like one twenty fifth Street in Harlem,
Speaker 2: you know, right, it's it's uh, it's it's bil Street, yeah,
Speaker 2: exactly of commercial activity, but then also cultural production, you know.
Speaker 2: And and we get out of something like Hasting Street.
Speaker 2: You know Joe's Records where where John Lee Hooker is
Speaker 2: standing in front of there. That's where Aretha Franklin records
Speaker 2: her first album. And her dad was also very famous,
Speaker 2: Reverend and Hey or Key records his first stuff at
Speaker 2: at Joe's Records here. And I actually got these images
Speaker 2: from so Joe Van Battle is the owner of Joe's
Speaker 2: Records here, his daughter Marcia Music. I got these photos
Speaker 2: from her, and she there's an she has an excellent
Speaker 2: blog post, it's like more than a blog post, an
Speaker 2: excellent piece on her website. The Detroit is all all
Speaker 2: about her dad's experiences. So it's and and you see
Speaker 2: they route the highway right down the middle of the
Speaker 2: of the of Hastings there, so the highways okay, so
Speaker 2: to set the stage, yeah, it's it's so you see
Speaker 2: this before image, the nineteen forty nine right, So there's
Speaker 2: the Black Corridor that is basically a raid along Hastings
Speaker 2: that is policed and confined by segregation. The rest of
Speaker 2: the city is largely white, it's largely working class. This
Speaker 2: starts to change after basically around the turn of the
Speaker 2: after the twenties, with the Great Migration, which I'm sure
Speaker 2: you're familiar with. But the Great Migration is a movement
Speaker 2: of six million black uh six million rural Black Americans
Speaker 2: from the South basically to northern and western cities. The
Speaker 2: largest you know, the largest destinations are like New York
Speaker 2: and Los Angeles, Chicago, but Detroit is also a major one.
Speaker 2: And so this is happening. So Detroit is actually a
Speaker 2: really representative example. So you could I'm talking about Detroit
Speaker 2: here specifically, but this can this happened all over the place.
Speaker 2: So there are more and more black people coming into
Speaker 2: cities and on coastal cities, there's more and more immigrants,
Speaker 2: So cities are becoming more more non white, and this,
Speaker 2: to some extent, kicks off white flight unfortunately, basically as
Speaker 2: the non white populations are rising in downtown and because
Speaker 2: that's where a lot of these people are moving, because
Speaker 2: that's where a chap housing is, and then b that's
Speaker 2: where jobs are. So as the racial makeup of the
Speaker 2: inner city, what the inner city is changing, white people
Speaker 2: are basically moving out to the suburbs. And that's not
Speaker 2: because that's not because each and every one of them
Speaker 2: is necessarily a racist. That's because there's a lot of
Speaker 2: financial incentives set up for them to do that, redlining
Speaker 2: being one of them, basically saying that you can't get
Speaker 2: a mortgage in any neighborhood that black people live in,
Speaker 2: which gives an incentive for people who can move out
Speaker 2: to move out.
Speaker 3: Wow, I didn't know it was the reverse as well, Like,
Speaker 3: so they don't want white people living in black neighborhoods either.
Speaker 2: Oh, precisely, exactly. Yeah, So there's push and pull factors
Speaker 2: basically that cause. So, Okay, I guess what I'm trying
Speaker 2: to set the stage here for is white flight, right,
Speaker 2: because this kind of explains then why this area is destroyed.
Speaker 2: It's not just purely I mean, it is largely racial mallege,
Speaker 2: but there's an economic logic behind it that I'm trying
Speaker 2: to set up. But basically, mostly white cities become largely
Speaker 2: non white, and there's various things that incentivize white people
Speaker 2: to leave. There's sort of the push factor of the
Speaker 2: Great Migration, which is all these non white folks moving in,
Speaker 2: moving moving into downtowns. And then there's, especially after World
Speaker 2: War Two, there's the pull factor, which is.
Speaker 3: How they created Israel. It's the same, it's the same
Speaker 3: mechanic mechanism. We're going to push you out of Germany
Speaker 3: and Europe with recent with anti semitism and fascism, and
Speaker 3: then we're going to pull you into Israel with incentives.
Speaker 2: The history of that I'm not familiar with, but I
Speaker 2: think it's probably similar to how they Oh, I'm telling.
Speaker 3: You, I mean this is a fact.
Speaker 2: This is like this Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, this
Speaker 2: is a fact.
Speaker 3: Like you're incentivized to go to Israel as a Jewish
Speaker 3: person because you are going to be given subsidiary subsidiaries.
Speaker 3: You're going to be given free healthcare, You're going to
Speaker 3: be given money for a home, money for school, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera. And so there's the push and the pull
Speaker 3: in order to create an economic space that can be
Speaker 3: then utilized for whatever purpose or you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, it's it's about like clearing out of people
Speaker 2: to then create a space for yes, precisely. And we
Speaker 2: can and and uh, we can get to push pulling
Speaker 2: Jewish folks to because I'm I'm Jewish, but I'm not
Speaker 2: I'm an atheist. I don't we don't practice.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't care if you're atheists. I care
Speaker 3: if you're a Zionist.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm absolutely an anti zionist. Don't worry about that,
Speaker 2: I assumed because you don't. I have a joke that
Speaker 2: I said. I don't want to say it here.
Speaker 3: But this is the place we all are are literal
Speaker 3: quote is by any joke necessary, so say.
Speaker 2: It's like people, it's like I no, I don't want
Speaker 2: to say. But regardless, regardless, Adam chicken out of the job.
Speaker 2: I did chick it out of it. We can really
Speaker 2: get back to it later. But well, I just I
Speaker 2: do have a story about like birth right, we left,
Speaker 2: I went with a buddy and we left. But this
Speaker 2: isn't what Well, no.
Speaker 3: So let me just tell you we're gonna eventually get
Speaker 3: to that, because the question I'm going to ask you
Speaker 3: is how did you become a kind of person, specifically
Speaker 3: a white person who cares about this, Like, we're gonna
Speaker 3: get to that because this type of work, it can't
Speaker 3: we can't just talk about this type of work in
Speaker 3: the silo of the work, because there's a certain type
Speaker 3: of person that pursues this knowledge, right, and then decides
Speaker 3: to expose this knowledge, And we need to as a
Speaker 3: society lift up those people, but also lift up the scenarios,
Speaker 3: the education, the community that creates those people. So it's
Speaker 3: not just going to be So this interview is not
Speaker 3: just about your work. I want to know about why
Speaker 3: you choose to do this work as well, because I
Speaker 3: consider it to be really important and necessary. So they
Speaker 3: draw this, they decide to do the white flight, push
Speaker 3: the white flight, and you're telling you're saying that, So
Speaker 3: I guess my white question before you go on is
Speaker 3: what is the government's goal in creating a nexus of
Speaker 3: white people in one suburban area and black people in
Speaker 3: one area beyond racism?
Speaker 2: Economic development growth? So white flight? Right, So black people
Speaker 2: were formally confined to this area, but then legal segregation
Speaker 2: gets broken down as all these people are coming. So
Speaker 2: and this is also in combination with white people leaving right,
Speaker 2: so property owners downtown are not really happy about that.
Speaker 2: The you see downtown, I've labeled that there yes black
Speaker 2: bottom and paradise value right next to that, right next
Speaker 2: to downtown, and that proximity is important. And this is
Speaker 2: again it's that you know, there's it's it's called the
Speaker 2: inner city for a reason. It's because these people were
Speaker 2: moving to a specific part of the city, which again
Speaker 2: is where the jobs and affordable housing was. And as
Speaker 2: and white people are leaving, the people, the people who
Speaker 2: own property in the commercial districts downtown are really really
Speaker 2: unhappy that now they're surrounded by this racialized inner city.
Speaker 2: And there were and because this is the basically the
Speaker 2: underpinning of redlining in the first place, which is the
Speaker 2: idea that people of different races living in close proximity
Speaker 2: reduces property values. And that really boils down to the
Speaker 2: fact that black people reduce property values. And this you
Speaker 2: can look at the writings of this guy Homer Homer
Speaker 2: Hoyt and Richard t. Eli from the University of Madison, Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: and they wrote a lot of the Basically the academic
Speaker 2: underpinning of redlining, and the idea is that black people
Speaker 2: being proximity reduces property values. So now suddenly the commercial core,
Speaker 2: the oldest part of the city is surrounded by non
Speaker 2: white people. You know, in Detroit it's black people, and
Speaker 2: it's not just black people, but it is largely, but
Speaker 2: it's also Chinatown obviously in Los Angeles, is in many cities,
Speaker 2: and then in San Antonio it's Mexican Town, which is
Speaker 2: what it's called. It's it's not just black, but it is.
Speaker 2: It's it's they end up bearing the front of it.
Speaker 2: Just numbers wise and historic animosity obviously, but urban so
Speaker 2: as desegregation ends, then urban renewal and highway funds come
Speaker 2: along and they use that money to kill two birds
Speaker 2: with one stone. So and you can see that right here.
Speaker 2: What they're doing is they surround downtown in a highway
Speaker 2: loop that protects it from these neighborhoods that have now
Speaker 2: become non white. Right, so it physically creates a division,
Speaker 2: because divisions can protect that property value. Think before we
Speaker 2: add highways the railroad tracks. That's why it's the other
Speaker 2: side of the tracks, right or you know rivers like
Speaker 2: or flood zones. But these divisions, going back to that
Speaker 2: idea that proximity reduces property values. If there's a division,
Speaker 2: uh do, if there's a division, then it can uphold
Speaker 2: the property values.
Speaker 3: So they're they're over there. See see they're over there.
Speaker 3: So the highway, even though it's literally just a structure,
Speaker 3: it provides this like a wall, so to speak, saying.
Speaker 2: Okay, exactly and and and there's a great book. I
Speaker 2: have it here. It's not it's kind of like not
Speaker 2: show up, but dividing lines.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you're not in a warehouse with graded ceilings.
Speaker 2: And you know this is actually this is actually my
Speaker 2: local train station. It took this photo the other day.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, you can see the train of the
Speaker 2: bank there. Nice.
Speaker 3: But you're in Europe.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah. I'm doing a PhD over here, casual.
Speaker 2: I'm from South Florida originally, but and I work based
Speaker 2: in New York, so we go back, and I go
Speaker 2: back quite often. Greta Tonberg would be unhappy with me.
Speaker 3: I just want to point out to you all that
Speaker 3: I am cosmopolitan and then traveled which is how I
Speaker 3: knew that it was Europe once I saw the blue
Speaker 3: and yellow train. All right, let's bring it back. So
Speaker 3: they build these walls of highway, and my question becomes,
Speaker 3: is this also utilized as like, oh, now the white
Speaker 3: flyers have like direct access.
Speaker 2: Into the city precisely right, So, and that's what I'm
Speaker 2: saying when I'm killed too birds with on stone. So
Speaker 2: it divides and and then also creates connections to the
Speaker 2: whites only suburbs, which you better believe have restrictive covenants,
Speaker 2: and as a private practice, by the way, that stays
Speaker 2: on a lot longer than something like legal segregation, which
Speaker 2: is struck down in the courts. That's just that's why
Speaker 2: that distinction is a little important. But so yeah, the
Speaker 2: highways that they divide, they cut through, they protect downtown,
Speaker 2: and then they provide white folks with direct opportunity rather
Speaker 2: with direct access to the economic opportunities downtown. So it's
Speaker 2: some to some extent, you know, it doesn't work that well, right,
Speaker 2: because a lot of jobs still end up going to
Speaker 2: the suburbs, and then we end up with kind of
Speaker 2: hallowed out downtowns. And this is why we end up
Speaker 2: with spaces, right like that, So it divides. That's one use,
Speaker 2: but then there's also times where it just is designed
Speaker 2: almost to take up space, like is designed to remove
Speaker 2: the population they didn't want and then replace that with,
Speaker 2: you know, again a connection to the suburbs. So it just.
Speaker 3: Takes up displacement.
Speaker 2: It's Yeah, the displacement's intentional exactly because they those people
Speaker 2: being there reduced property values. And in some cases they
Speaker 2: build public housing. That's actually kind of rare, but they
Speaker 2: end up building far fewer units of public housing than
Speaker 2: using units they destroyed. And that's true everywhere. You know,
Speaker 2: this is that's definitely turned Detroit, It's true everywhere name
Speaker 2: of city, certainly New York. Right.
Speaker 3: And even when they build a public housing, they don't
Speaker 3: like protect it, they don't support it. They i mean,
Speaker 3: they create kind of dens of criminality that they can
Speaker 3: use to them bring people back into the prison industrial
Speaker 3: crisis by creating public housing that they don't provide resources to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and precisely that exactly. And and and then also
Speaker 2: they will locate yes, very well said. And then they'll
Speaker 2: locate it in areas that are already largely black and
Speaker 2: already largely for uh and and this This happens especially
Speaker 2: in like New York and Chicago. And this explains why.
Speaker 2: You know, when you look at some of these before
Speaker 2: and afters, they just destroy a neighborhood and then replace
Speaker 2: it with these tower blocks. Uh. And the result of
Speaker 2: that is that a what you do there is you
Speaker 2: replace a lot of owners with a lot of renters.
Speaker 3: Practically, they can't we can't skip over that.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a whole other element, because there's the there's
Speaker 2: the sort of good.
Speaker 3: No, gone, no, please, you you're the guest.
Speaker 2: Well sorry, I just feel like I'm like right, I mean, it's.
Speaker 3: Uh, we're here to be lectured by fair enough.
Speaker 2: Well, there's is the mechanism by which these properties get
Speaker 2: taken right through eminent domain. That's the term. And eminent
Speaker 2: domain isn't inherently an evil thing. Sometimes we do need
Speaker 2: to build linear things, you know, linear rights of way, sewers,
Speaker 2: pipes and roads. Yes, sometimes, but eminent domain where you're
Speaker 2: taking where you're just using it to destroy a neighborhood
Speaker 2: because it's reducing property because of reducing property values, because
Speaker 2: of some racist pseudoscience. Yeah, that's no good. And by
Speaker 2: the way, there's an uh, well she actually just shut
Speaker 2: down the organization. Do you know a cavan Ward from
Speaker 2: where is my land? She still does one on one consultations.
Speaker 2: But Bruce's Beach, I'm all over the place here. Bruce's Beach,
Speaker 2: she was the she was basically the organizer behind that.
Speaker 2: So Bruce's Beach was an example of So I was
Speaker 2: the black neighborhood in downtown Santa Monica, the Belmar Triangle
Speaker 2: and no, this is different. Sorry, this is in Manhattan Beach.
Speaker 2: It was a black neighborhood in Manhattan Beach, not in
Speaker 2: downtown Santa Fronica. She there was another there's the there's
Speaker 2: another case, Silas White up in Santa Monica, black neighborhood
Speaker 2: in Manhattan Beach. Property taken through eminent domain. Kevon Ward
Speaker 2: got it back to the family. Yeah, the Bruce family.
Speaker 3: She did sell it off anyway, which made me live it.
Speaker 2: But but that was their right. And I know, I
Speaker 2: know they sold at that time with full knowledge and
Speaker 2: no and not predatory because the first time was taken.
Speaker 3: No, I know, I know, I know. It's just the
Speaker 3: principle of like just get it back and like.
Speaker 2: Can we just Oh, I totally I definitely agree with that.
Speaker 2: But like there. But like the point was, it was
Speaker 2: theirs and they could do with it what they want.
Speaker 2: But ye know, I totally get it. How these properties
Speaker 2: are taken. How do they build a highway through there?
Speaker 2: How do they build a highway through there? They take
Speaker 2: these properties through eminente domain?
Speaker 3: And can you eminent domain real quick?
Speaker 2: So, eminent domain is the right of the government to
Speaker 2: take property for the public good, and they have to
Speaker 2: offer just compensation. They do have to quote offer quote
Speaker 2: unquote just compensation. So yeah, but they so, but they
Speaker 2: get to decide what the public good is and they
Speaker 2: get to decide what just compensation is. Sorry that the
Speaker 2: Columbia you did. Indeed, yes, with Manhattanville. I will try
Speaker 2: not to get distracted by comments. But that's a listen.
Speaker 3: We're here for you. We we love all of your
Speaker 3: NeuroD going all over the place. We're all about it.
Speaker 3: That's our jazz.
Speaker 2: There you are.
Speaker 3: You are giving us intellectual jazz Detroit.
Speaker 2: Domain. I appreciate it, Thank you very much. Excellent. Well, yeah,
Speaker 2: so iminent domain is the right of the government to
Speaker 2: take property. You know, think for again, building like a sewer, right,
Speaker 2: building a train, building, public transportation, and they have to
Speaker 2: offer just compensation, but the way that was actualized in
Speaker 2: practice for most of American history was very predatory, especially
Speaker 2: during this highway building era, where they would just send
Speaker 2: a letter to people with a low ball offer us.
Speaker 2: And basically these letters, and you can see these letters,
Speaker 2: they make it seem as if you have to take
Speaker 2: the offer, which of course you don't. You absolutely don't
Speaker 2: have to take the offer. But there's there's a case
Speaker 2: in in Roxbury and Boston where a reverend's mom she
Speaker 2: owned a three unit uh apartment building in rocks in
Speaker 2: Nubian in a new and square and she got sent
Speaker 2: eight thousand dollars for it. What right?
Speaker 3: And my dad also owned property in Roxbury, Boston and
Speaker 3: sold it. I don't know why. I know I didn't
Speaker 3: see any of that money, but I'm just like, why
Speaker 3: are y'all just giving away like the property?
Speaker 2: Well, they make it seem there's like a big red
Speaker 2: stamp on it, and it says like they condemned. They
Speaker 2: make sometimes it's as condemned with the Robert Moses ones.
Speaker 2: Not not with this one in Boston. The Robert Moses
Speaker 2: he's the one who used the condemned. And I haven't
Speaker 2: talked about Moses yet, but I'll get back to him.
Speaker 2: But they send these letters, they make it seem as
Speaker 2: if you have to take it, and when you do,
Speaker 2: that's it. It's gone. But that's that's the property owners,
Speaker 2: which is the minority most people in like Hastings, they
Speaker 2: were renters and it's just absentee landlords. So when the
Speaker 2: government comes along with these checks, they say sure, yeah exactly,
Speaker 2: because they they view it as a way to cash
Speaker 2: out of the slums. Basically, ah m, yeah, so and
Speaker 2: and one thing I didn't now, one thing I didn't mention.
Speaker 2: And then sometimes they clear out these neighborhoods and then
Speaker 2: replace them with like office buildings. So sometimes it isn't
Speaker 2: yeah because this is right exactly. Sometimes, like in Miami,
Speaker 2: this is they cut down uh Second Avenue, which was
Speaker 2: the main commercial theurf of theref of there, and it
Speaker 2: was in the middle of overtown, but now Overtown is
Speaker 2: like on the left, and then they basically took part
Speaker 2: of it into downtown, built government facilities and and stuff
Speaker 2: designed to basically attract people from the suburbs. Because the
Speaker 2: the building of the highways was also an effort. It
Speaker 2: was it was lobbied for by you know, chambers of
Speaker 2: commerce and mayors. You know, in the case of Hastings
Speaker 2: or of Detroit, it's Mayor Albert Cobo. He said, we
Speaker 2: can use the highway, he said, we can use the
Speaker 2: highways to stop the Negro invasion. He said, we can
Speaker 2: use public works to stop Negro invasion. Right, So they're
Speaker 2: not even shy about it. No, especially in the South,
Speaker 2: especially like in Mayor Hartsfield and Atlanta, I twenty will
Speaker 2: be a line between you know, black and between white
Speaker 2: and Negro Atlanta. Yeah, and again sometimes they clear out
Speaker 2: the stuff and it's to sort of take that land
Speaker 2: and redevelop redevelopment to try to keep downtown attractive as
Speaker 2: it's becoming more non white and as white people are
Speaker 2: being incentivized to leave.
Speaker 3: So there has been advocacy against this.
Speaker 2: Yes, can we can we.
Speaker 3: Talk about the advocacy that has been done against this
Speaker 3: and if there's been any success. I mean, just a
Speaker 3: side note, Like I love when stuff like this shows
Speaker 3: up in like random TV shows. So like in the
Speaker 3: show Cooking with Chemistry, Like there's an entire b story
Speaker 3: with the black character who's her next door neighbor and
Speaker 3: who's her friend and is we're not her next neighbor,
Speaker 3: but she's her friend, and she's like fighting for the
Speaker 3: black neighborhood to not be disrupted by a building of
Speaker 3: either the ten or the one O one or something.
Speaker 3: And they did an entire and it was based on
Speaker 3: true story, and they did an entire goo ahead.
Speaker 2: Well, no, no, that's the that's the video that I
Speaker 2: was good. That's the video that I sent is about
Speaker 2: that neighborhood, sugar Hill exactly. Yeah, we're all right.
Speaker 3: So then talk about it because that was that's an
Speaker 3: example of advocacy. And I would love to just hear
Speaker 3: more because you made a point of saying, like, there
Speaker 3: have been people who have fought this, and we always
Speaker 3: have to make sure to acknowledge that, or else you
Speaker 3: just become so disenchanted and to moralize thinking that the
Speaker 3: power is you know, so overpowering.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, and one of the reasons I do
Speaker 2: this whole project is basically to show that infrastructure is
Speaker 2: the result of decisions and choices that we made, and
Speaker 2: not even that long ago in some cases. So even
Speaker 2: though highways seem like they're natural and really like the
Speaker 2: layout of cities seems like it's natural and almost like
Speaker 2: a mountain or a river. These things weren't built that
Speaker 2: long ago, so we can totally change them. So a
Speaker 2: lot of what I talk about can seem kind of depressing,
Speaker 2: but it is also with the undertone or I'm trying
Speaker 2: to say that, like we can absolutely change these things
Speaker 2: because it's the built environment. We built it. So I'm
Speaker 2: an architect, as like, by great job. Yeah, this isn't
Speaker 2: my full time. I mean, I'm doing this is my
Speaker 2: PhD project basically, and it's very much related to what
Speaker 2: I do for work, because I work on sort of
Speaker 2: reconnecting communities projects and that's sort of the solution. I mean.
Speaker 3: But there's something very clear in stating these are decisions, right,
Speaker 3: because then that leads us to decisions are made by
Speaker 3: people and so people can be influenced, which is what
Speaker 3: abgnacy ends up being about, right, Like how to influence
Speaker 3: the people who are making decisions, to make decisions that
Speaker 3: are for the people versus for profit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, and in the lessons in chemistry example, So
Speaker 2: that was the ten I think the Santa Monica Freeway,
Speaker 2: I mean, ultimately they weren't successful. That was the sixties.
Speaker 2: It was a very wealthy neighborhood, very wealthy black neighborhood
Speaker 2: in West Ada, in Los Angeles. It's Hattie McDaniel lived there,
Speaker 2: who was the first black woman to win an oscar
Speaker 2: Ethel waters Louis Beaver's who's a Broadway star. So it
Speaker 2: was very it was like a wealthy neighborhood. So and
Speaker 2: what's illustrative about that about this point is it's it's
Speaker 2: not just that it was poor neighborhoods that were because
Speaker 2: because people could say like, oh well, no, it's poor
Speaker 2: neighborhoods around downtown that that are reducing property values, It's
Speaker 2: like no. Sometimes these were straight up like rich neighborhoods,
Speaker 2: as is the case in sugar Hill, because Sugar Hills
Speaker 2: like right off downtown or West Adams is sugar Hills
Speaker 2: like a smart subpart of West Adams right off downtown.
Speaker 2: So it's the same thing. It's it's who's there, even
Speaker 2: if they're wealthy. You know, it dc like there was
Speaker 2: basically a plan to build. It never got finished. But
Speaker 2: you know there's a there's a highway that goes under
Speaker 2: the mall and then kind of pops up that was
Speaker 2: supposed to be a full loop that would have like
Speaker 2: built a wall right next to Howard, cutting Howard off
Speaker 2: from the downtown area. Right as if Howard is lowering
Speaker 2: property values, that that got stopped because of successful advocacy.
Speaker 2: And it is often college towns that often are able
Speaker 2: to do that. But that's that's a different issue. What
Speaker 2: was I saying, Oh, advocates, Yes, so they they weren't
Speaker 2: successful in that case because that was the sixties. There
Speaker 2: was nothing they could have done really right. But today,
Speaker 2: indeed there's there's move people recognize. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 2: the first person to say this or you know, I'm
Speaker 2: really just building off of sort of decades of people
Speaker 2: talking about this stuff. And then there's obviously the lived
Speaker 2: experience I've used. Sort of what I'm doing is communicating
Speaker 2: it through a like using the skills that I have
Speaker 2: as an architect and city planner to communicate it in
Speaker 2: a way that's accessible. Because this exists in books, but
Speaker 2: a lot of us don't read anymore, but that we should.
Speaker 2: But then and and one of the best books about
Speaker 2: this for for New York folks, you know, is The
Speaker 2: Power Broker, which is a fifteen It's a biography of
Speaker 2: this guy Moses who is the He sort of originated
Speaker 2: this in a lot of ways. He's the one who
Speaker 2: came up with this use of highways to clear out neighborhoods, basically,
Speaker 2: use of highways not just for transportation, but to remove
Speaker 2: neighborhoods viewed as undesirable. That goes back to him in
Speaker 2: New York. Ah, and a lot of what he did
Speaker 2: in New York gets emulated everywhere. So yeah, that's well,
Speaker 2: that's that's public housing show the cover. Sorry, Oh sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: This is he created this method and it got copy
Speaker 3: and pasted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he yes. Basically the answer is yeah, he
Speaker 2: a lot of the highways he built in New York.
Speaker 2: So like the b QWI and the Cross Bronx in particular,
Speaker 2: they actually they predate the interstate system, but they become
Speaker 2: the model for the interstate. So the Cross Bronx, the
Speaker 2: Cross Bronks in particular, cuts through the South Bronx and
Speaker 2: divides the north, the northern more white part from the
Speaker 2: southern Puerto Rican black part. And it also it reinforces
Speaker 2: that division and creates it in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: So he's really the first to route highways, to use
Speaker 2: highways in such a way to achieve this dual purpose,
Speaker 2: and he's the one who lobbies for the creation of Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that's the demolition of San Juan Hill is an
Speaker 2: exact it is an exact example of like that's right
Speaker 2: up against that's right north of fifty ninth Street, right,
Speaker 2: So it's this Puerto Rican neighborhood that's viewed as potentially
Speaker 2: impacting the values of the Upper West Side and then
Speaker 2: down into midtown so level it especially, it's such valuable
Speaker 2: land because of where it is. Yeah, you know, so
Speaker 2: it's this there's these conflicting aims, right, It's like Downtown
Speaker 2: New York is always a little different, but like Downtown's
Speaker 2: are becoming devalued, but there's still this recognition of incredible
Speaker 2: potential because of the centrality. So they're always demolishing stuff
Speaker 2: and rebuilding. You know.
Speaker 3: So how did how did how did you get this way?
Speaker 3: How did you become a high Quada tee white? How
Speaker 3: did it happen?
Speaker 2: Oh? My god? Well, I didn't talk much about advocates
Speaker 2: because they are but we can, we can talk about them.
Speaker 2: But for you know, for me, there's a couple of
Speaker 2: things I did. That book, The Power Broker is fifteen
Speaker 2: hundred pages long. I to some extent got tired of
Speaker 2: telling people to read that book does in the first place, Oh,
Speaker 2: it's the whole history of New York unfortunately, but you're
Speaker 2: from Miami.
Speaker 3: I've got to get to the bottom of how you
Speaker 3: became this person? Are your periods?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the history of New York is the history
Speaker 2: of American urbanism. I know in New York is special
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways because it is different. But
Speaker 2: everybody emulates New York always it It's it's contradictory, right,
Speaker 2: New York is like the most European and San Francisco.
Speaker 2: But but you know, the every other city emulates what
Speaker 2: New York does infrastructurally and economically they try, but infrastructurally specifically.
Speaker 2: So yeah, the history.
Speaker 3: Interested in city planning and infrastructure, you have to understand.
Speaker 2: New York, yes period. Yeah, in the West and no,
Speaker 2: actually worldwide because you know in in well absolutely like
Speaker 2: the highway Mecha. I'm not as familiar with Chinese cities,
Speaker 2: but the limited access highway as we know it, which
Speaker 2: China has built quite a lot of has its origin
Speaker 2: the urban limited access highway. It has its origin in
Speaker 2: Robert Moses who is the is New York and and
Speaker 2: he took up you know, he didn't invent the limit.
Speaker 2: When I say limited access highway, I'm talking about like
Speaker 2: the interstate. You know, it's cars only, it's it's there's
Speaker 2: no direct intersections with roads. That really goes back. That
Speaker 2: really goes back to the autobon in Germany, which is
Speaker 2: Nazis right, But that is a little different because that
Speaker 2: didn't go into cities. It's I don't necessarily have a
Speaker 2: problem between with with highways between cities. Uh, it's when
Speaker 2: you it's when you disrupt, It's when you cut into
Speaker 2: the middle, right exactly, because you don't need to have
Speaker 2: automobile access to the middle of a city. That's what.
Speaker 3: Well, why do you have a problem with this? Who
Speaker 3: are your parents? How are you raised? Why are you
Speaker 3: like this? Because this is real because people see this
Speaker 3: and they see how do I capitalize on this?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: People see this through different Everyone sees these types of
Speaker 3: things through different lenses, and so you know, part of
Speaker 3: my work in decolonizing is trying to understand the different
Speaker 3: ways that folks are shaped to see things through a
Speaker 3: lens of community versus a lens of how do I
Speaker 3: exploit So why do you feel like you're somebody who
Speaker 3: sees lens, who sees through a lens of community. You've
Speaker 3: never been asked that question.
Speaker 2: But no, no, no, no, well you know you're right,
Speaker 2: You're right. I really love cities. And I grew up
Speaker 2: in a So I'm from South Florida, so I think
Speaker 2: maybe I am being exploited. I just well, so I'll
Speaker 2: get to But I grew up in South Florida in
Speaker 2: a suburb, so like my you know, where recipients of
Speaker 2: like a lot of the white flight stuff that you know,
Speaker 2: became my parents parents move that they were white flight
Speaker 2: from the Bronx uh And I just I grew up
Speaker 2: in a suburb, and I it's really I don't like it.
Speaker 2: I hate it's it's you know, it's I you can't
Speaker 2: go anywhere. It's it feels imprisoned and and and and
Speaker 2: just bland, and there's and a like spiritually devoid, you know,
Speaker 2: and a versus you know. When I went to college,
Speaker 2: I went to Berkeley, so I lived in uh a
Speaker 2: city for the first time. And it's just it's so fun.
Speaker 2: It's it's so and this is why I'm being like,
Speaker 2: I think where It's like, I just really like the
Speaker 2: life and culture of a city, and that that does
Speaker 2: require a certain and I think maybe I'm being an
Speaker 2: architectural determinist. It does require like a certain built environment,
Speaker 2: which is density and walkability and people sort of being
Speaker 2: close to each other a city, you know, not so.
Speaker 3: You identify racism because you like a city? Is that
Speaker 3: what you're trying to tell me right now? It's because
Speaker 3: how are you able to identify racism? How?
Speaker 2: Well, it's more than just because well, it's more than
Speaker 2: just because I like the city. It's because anything that's
Speaker 2: like worth, anything that's culturally interesting or sort of exciting,
Speaker 2: is in the comes from the community that is made
Speaker 2: possible by a city. Yeah. No, I think that if
Speaker 2: if you just have everyone living in this spread out suburb,
Speaker 2: you don't you don't get any It's very it's you
Speaker 2: don't get much culture, you don't get much.
Speaker 3: Am Why did you go to birth Ride and leave?
Speaker 3: You need to know this for yourself. Why did you
Speaker 3: leave Birthright?
Speaker 2: Well, it was very very poorly planned, and it was
Speaker 2: also whitewashing the whole thing. Obviously I had to explain
Speaker 2: to people like what the green line was. But no,
Speaker 2: I think putting it is like I just like the
Speaker 2: city is a little bit is a little bit reductionist.
Speaker 3: I know, that's my point. I don't think it's just
Speaker 3: that you're putting it that way. But the reason why
Speaker 3: I keep coming back to this is because this kind
Speaker 3: of work has to have love beneath it, It has
Speaker 3: to have meaning beneath it, beyond simply just the science
Speaker 3: of it or else it's just being done by roche.
Speaker 3: And so what I'm trying to understand from you is
Speaker 3: what drives this beyond simply just the like of a city.
Speaker 3: Because the things that you've said in this interview, there
Speaker 3: are things that you've said in this interview that are
Speaker 3: very clear indicators that you have on moral ground around this.
Speaker 3: You have an ethical lens that you see this through.
Speaker 2: Well. The way that we live currently urbanistically, which is
Speaker 2: the way we all live. You know, even if you're
Speaker 2: in a rural area, the way that we live currently
Speaker 2: is very extractive. Everything is about production, producing capital. Everything
Speaker 2: is just about and that's what all the suburbs that's like.
Speaker 2: So the suburbs, you know, there's a reason that that's
Speaker 2: what they pushed people to after World War two because
Speaker 2: the war engine. I don't mean to get back to industry,
Speaker 2: but like the war engine had pulled America out of
Speaker 2: World War two, right or sorry, I'd pulled America out
Speaker 2: of the Great Depression, and once the war ended, you know,
Speaker 2: we really needed to keep that engine going. And long
Speaker 2: story short, it wasn't very difficult for GM to retool
Speaker 2: from making jet engines and jeeps to making cars. Right,
Speaker 2: it wasn't hard for GE to switch from making jet
Speaker 2: engines to making big appliances that you need for your house.
Speaker 2: And then for developers it's a windfall, and for car
Speaker 2: companies it's a windfall. This is like the way that
Speaker 2: we have set up our system which has pushed people
Speaker 2: to live in this unnatural way because of racism, because
Speaker 2: it said this is a restricted way to this is
Speaker 2: a restricted tract, and so your property values will be safe.
Speaker 3: Why do you have a problem with that?
Speaker 2: Why you know it's not normal?
Speaker 3: White people don't typically have a problem with racism. I
Speaker 3: don't know if you know that, But that's like not normal,
Speaker 3: Like we don't live in a world where majority white
Speaker 3: people see racism and say that's my problem, or where
Speaker 3: they see it and say I want to get to
Speaker 3: the bottom of that. I want to understand why they're
Speaker 3: doing that. They don't, and so the ones that do,
Speaker 3: I want to know that. I want to know that
Speaker 3: the chemistry.
Speaker 2: Well, there's an obvious I mean, there's the moral imperative.
Speaker 2: But but.
Speaker 3: You say that as if you have not seen the
Speaker 3: world we're in. We're watching a genocide and people are
Speaker 3: fine with it. So the moral imperative is something that
Speaker 3: is like a seed within people that either gets fertilized
Speaker 3: or it gets withered. And so I'm curious with you
Speaker 3: how it has considered, how has continued to be fertilized.
Speaker 3: And then you went to Berkeley, which we know is
Speaker 3: you know, it's not like you went to Liberty University. Well,
Speaker 3: you know the great Architecture program.
Speaker 2: It's it's I in this realm. I feel like I
Speaker 2: can do something about it as an architect, as someone
Speaker 2: who is in the the built environment, because I think
Speaker 2: that the entire So the reason I'm like focus on
Speaker 2: on segregation by design is because the history of and
Speaker 2: not just history, but the present form of American cities,
Speaker 2: unfortunately driven by race, is the layout of our linear
Speaker 2: infrastructure and of our zoning. I mean our zoning code
Speaker 2: goes back to racism. So for me, like it's it's
Speaker 2: like a rabbit hole tumbling down, Like why why is
Speaker 2: that highway there? Why does it curve there? Why does
Speaker 2: it it's because why does it go through that neighborhood
Speaker 2: and not that one? You know? Why are there seven
Speaker 2: highways and Boyle Heights but none in but like one
Speaker 2: on the west side right the ten? So oh, and
Speaker 2: why do I care about racism? Right?
Speaker 3: Everybody's asking the question because you have yet to answer it.
Speaker 3: We're not really sure why you're not giving us the
Speaker 3: answer about why you care about racism. I don't even
Speaker 3: know if you know why you care about.
Speaker 2: Racism because it's wrong?
Speaker 3: Why do you think racism is wrong? Who taught you that?
Speaker 2: That's a good question? I mean, I guess my parents.
Speaker 3: You know, we've seen the opposite, right, Like, the environments
Speaker 3: that are shaping people who think this way have to
Speaker 3: be examined the same way that you. They have to
Speaker 3: be examined morally, the same way you're examining, you know, infrastructurally.
Speaker 2: So you see what I'm saying. Oh, absolutely, so I
Speaker 2: know I think so yeah, And and and there's a
Speaker 2: great book so thanks for I think I this is
Speaker 2: this is the therapy session. Thank you very much. But
Speaker 2: there's a great book by Heather McGee called The Some
Speaker 2: of Us Ah. So the central metaphor of her book
Speaker 2: is basically public swimming pools. So yeah, yeah, So public
Speaker 2: swimming pools, they used to be very common. They used
Speaker 2: to be very common in American cities. Uh. And they
Speaker 2: were segregated. They were whites on the right, so and
Speaker 2: and a lot of them they were like big beautiful
Speaker 2: are tips that it's they were like WPA stuff, so
Speaker 2: our deco, beautiful architecture really and again whites only. But
Speaker 2: then in the fifties, as as desegregation comes down from
Speaker 2: the courts, they say, to these local facilities, to these
Speaker 2: municipal public swimming pools, you have to desegregate. And rather
Speaker 2: than doing that, a lot of a lot of cities
Speaker 2: just drained the pools and demolish them. They got rid
Speaker 2: of it. Buffalo, Saint Louis, Montgomery, Birmingham, the South, all
Speaker 2: of them. It's that they're got in Boston. And then
Speaker 2: after that you see the rise of backyard swimming pools,
Speaker 2: especially in places where it wasn't necessarily like the vernacular before.
Speaker 2: So what's interesting in that case is basically, in order
Speaker 2: to uphold white supremacy, we got rid of a public
Speaker 2: good and we privatized it. We made it only for
Speaker 2: people who could afford a backyard swimming pool. And that
Speaker 2: is to some extent what we did with the American
Speaker 2: city with with education. Obviously, with education, we're telling us.
Speaker 3: All things that we know except for the thing we
Speaker 3: don't know, which is why you care about this?
Speaker 2: We sure, well, I guess I don't need to be
Speaker 2: here there, but we didn't.
Speaker 3: Know about what you were talking about before. But you're
Speaker 3: here because.
Speaker 2: I bring that. That's why it's interesting to me is
Speaker 2: because how that that zero sum is self defeating for everybody.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know. There's the moral imperative that
Speaker 2: I don't that I can't explained. I think it's it's
Speaker 2: self evident if you see a wrong that you have
Speaker 2: the capacity to do something about which I feel that
Speaker 2: I do as someone in the built environment, you do
Speaker 2: something about it. So I don't know, I can't explain that.
Speaker 2: But the zero sum, if you want to put it
Speaker 2: in in a nature in a like a why do
Speaker 2: I care? From a self interest point of view. There's
Speaker 2: that zero sum game. We destroyed the whole idea. I
Speaker 2: mean again, I love cities. We destroyed cities, but we
Speaker 2: destroyed the whole idea of the public. You know, everything
Speaker 2: that's public. The word public has become a dog whistle
Speaker 2: for but the word public has become a dog whistle
Speaker 2: for for for black you know, uh in where I'm
Speaker 2: from in South Florida, like, uh, you say you're taking
Speaker 2: public transit, you say you're taking try rail, and everyone's like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, you're going to get stabbed, Like that's
Speaker 2: what people say. It's like and that's that's racism obviously.
Speaker 2: But but it's this idea that of the public just
Speaker 2: being racialized, and that's you can't that's that's that's not
Speaker 2: at that's a that's a decrepit society. That's that's uh,
Speaker 2: that's one where it's feudalism. You know, if you don't
Speaker 2: have a public it's it's when what the hell is that?
Speaker 2: So yeah, selfishly, I don't want to live in a
Speaker 2: society that's just divide and conquered by capitalists, which is
Speaker 2: what which is why they've taken up that. You know,
Speaker 2: they themselves are racist, but why racism is such a
Speaker 2: useful tool, Uh because because I guess, Yeah, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of people very I mean, for there's a lot
Speaker 2: of people who are just more self who are who
Speaker 2: think that the gains that they will get from their
Speaker 2: protected mortgage are are more than everything that's lost by
Speaker 2: dismantling society. Yeah, you know, so I I care because
Speaker 2: I want to live in a society. Uh. And and
Speaker 2: the logical endpoint of this is death. I don't know,
Speaker 2: is is a poverty and and uh nothing.
Speaker 3: So one of the reasons I refer to myself as
Speaker 3: an artistic intellectual is because I I've gone through the
Speaker 3: graduate school program like I've gone through you know, academia,
Speaker 3: and so much academia does this thing where it sterilizes
Speaker 3: intellectualism by making it, you know, even if it's not mathematic,
Speaker 3: by trying to make it mathematic, right, like trying to
Speaker 3: castrate the personhood from it, the morality, the ethics from it,
Speaker 3: et cetera, and put it in these bubbles. But we
Speaker 3: always see that what ends up living longer than most
Speaker 3: studies are the ones that are actually grounded in something
Speaker 3: more than just like the boxed version of something. Even
Speaker 3: though PHG programs want to do this all the time, right,
Speaker 3: They want to like break you down and make it like, no,
Speaker 3: this can be for everybody, So it has to have
Speaker 3: a very generic if either has to have a hyper
Speaker 3: specific or generic point of view. And what I love
Speaker 3: about your work is that it marriages those two things
Speaker 3: in terms of the artistic intellectual, because it marriages the
Speaker 3: realities of the moral and the a moral and unethical
Speaker 3: with the actual skyship around city planning. And a lot
Speaker 3: of people won't see that, right, They just see it
Speaker 3: as these are the blocks that we live on, and
Speaker 3: they were created and now we live here. But no,
Speaker 3: they were choices that were made, and even the scholarship
Speaker 3: around that and how it's discussed as a choice because
Speaker 3: there are others who would do the same work and
Speaker 3: frame it as innovation. You know, Ezra client is looking
Speaker 3: at the same thing and calling.
Speaker 2: In abundance, right, yeah, which is kind of willfully ignorant
Speaker 2: of sort of basic city planning principles because its issue
Speaker 2: is like we are building houses, We're not building the
Speaker 2: right houses. It's just so I saw this awful. It
Speaker 2: wasn't that there were some elements though it was okay,
Speaker 2: but this article in the Times about like why we
Speaker 2: need sprawl and it.
Speaker 3: Was about trash, so that doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 2: Well, so it was about and there's some great people
Speaker 2: who work there. Written for them before.
Speaker 3: I've been profiled by them twice.
Speaker 2: There you go exactly, so it's like any yeah, but
Speaker 2: but lately, you know, I know that, and and the route.
Speaker 3: Change and things, and you know, things happened like.
Speaker 2: And are women ruining the workplace? I was, I was
Speaker 2: flying and that was like the only article that had downloaded,
Speaker 2: and so I read way too much of that before.
Speaker 2: I was like, what the it's like it was it was.
Speaker 3: I mean, they just put out an article today, the
Speaker 3: case for overthrowing Maduro, Like oh my god.
Speaker 2: That's what is the phrase for that? Like yellow journalism?
Speaker 2: That sounds racist actually, but like we're where.
Speaker 3: But it's yellow because it's callow. I mean it's not
Speaker 3: it's it's it's not CALO's not the wor I'm looking for,
Speaker 3: but it's it's it lacks courage. I mean, it's being
Speaker 3: paid for. And I just pressed you one. I wanted
Speaker 3: to press you be because because I know you're going
Speaker 3: to be often come off of this and like have
Speaker 3: to go decompress and probably take a nap, But I
Speaker 3: wanted to press you because the work you're doing is
Speaker 3: the kind of work that people don't want done. And
Speaker 3: I know that you've already had to I'm sure argue
Speaker 3: why are you doing this work? And I'm sure there's
Speaker 3: been people who've been like, this is not really am
Speaker 3: I wrong?
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, no exactly. I mean there's always people that
Speaker 2: wonder why I'm doing it.
Speaker 3: They're like, you're a blue eyed, good looking white man,
Speaker 3: you have blonde hair, you can do whatever you want
Speaker 3: in your dentimp shirt. Why are you caring about this?
Speaker 3: And there has to be it's like, I mean, for
Speaker 3: lack of a better reference, Lady McBee and Macbeth when
Speaker 3: she's trying to convince Macbeth to murder the king says,
Speaker 3: through our coverage, to the sticking place, and we shall
Speaker 3: not be moved. And that is the type of energy
Speaker 3: that has to be hadn't don't need allies, We need
Speaker 3: co conspirators. And that only happens when people are morally
Speaker 3: driven with the work they're doing. So when you say, like,
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't understand, like you're asking me about
Speaker 3: something that just is in my body. That's actually very
Speaker 3: like comforting to me to hear someone say that, like,
Speaker 3: I'm not like this because I was taught or because
Speaker 3: my so my surroundings. You're like, I'm like this because
Speaker 3: I'm like this, Leave me alone, Amanda, I came on
Speaker 3: your show to talk about highways.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think it's natural to Oh is
Speaker 2: it just me? No, I was gonna say, I think
Speaker 2: it's natural to try to strive for a better world,
Speaker 2: the utopia.
Speaker 3: I was like, did she just hang up on me
Speaker 3: on her own show?
Speaker 2: I was like, is it just me? I was, And
Speaker 2: I was like, oh my gosh, I should have taken
Speaker 2: advantage of that better. I think everyone's just like it's
Speaker 2: I it's I think it's it's at least I think
Speaker 2: it's natural to try to strive for a better world.
Speaker 2: And and these are all problems. One of the reasons
Speaker 2: I talk about this in particularly, these are all such
Speaker 2: solvable problems. They're all there's and and they're so the
Speaker 2: solutions are so precedented. It's like, remove the highway and
Speaker 2: build a lot of affordable housing and actually make it
Speaker 2: and redefine what affordable is. So its uh move that
Speaker 2: bar down because it hasn't kept up with inflation obviously,
Speaker 2: But that's if we do, if we do want to
Speaker 2: talk about solutions. That's that's one of the reasons I
Speaker 2: I I have some time. If you want to keep talking, I.
Speaker 3: Would love to hear. And I hope that this also
Speaker 3: extends two like indigenous communities, because that's something we were
Speaker 3: talking about earlier. How Like on a global scale, we're
Speaker 3: seeing this exact effort being done through other methods, right,
Speaker 3: but the effort of like separation of displacement and using
Speaker 3: I mean, that's what this un that's what this Trump
Speaker 3: Plan and Gaza literally is. I mean, it's we're going
Speaker 3: to use development as a dog whistle for displacement.
Speaker 2: Development is a way to salt the earth. Development is
Speaker 2: a way to literally replace and make sure replace what's
Speaker 2: there and make sure that what's there can never come back.
Speaker 2: That's like if you look at you know, Greenwood in Tulsa,
Speaker 2: the Black Wall Street, if you look at it now
Speaker 2: it's mostly parking lot. They literally salted the earth. I
Speaker 2: mean they paved the earth. And and that's exactly what
Speaker 2: this Gauza plant is. Yeah, it's it's there's a great
Speaker 2: book about Los Angeles called City of Courts about them,
Speaker 2: it's about basically the development of La But there's a
Speaker 2: good book or a good part about the demolition of
Speaker 2: Bunker Hill. Uh. And he talks about how they clear
Speaker 2: out the street grid, they clear out everything. Uh. And
Speaker 2: they they remove public transit links and it's it's trying
Speaker 2: to they and they basically build a wall between La
Speaker 2: Plaza and Bunker Hill. So La Plaza is the sort
Speaker 2: of an Alvera street. So he's talking about like they're
Speaker 2: trying to remove any articulation between a non Anglo past
Speaker 2: between you know, passe Los Angeles by literally, ah, removing
Speaker 2: the street connections, assaulting the earth and getting rid of it.
Speaker 2: So absolutely uh. And this has been done another place. Yeah,
Speaker 2: City of Courts.
Speaker 3: Because they always want to know what the book looks like.
Speaker 3: City is this is this the book?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And that's that's a picture of a uh yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a it's a it's a jail. Right, it's a
Speaker 2: federal jail, which is kind of unique.
Speaker 3: But I'm gonna say, like, wait, a federal dale.
Speaker 2: That's a bit contradictive, but it's like a holding. It's
Speaker 2: because it's for the whole West Coast. It's one of
Speaker 2: those things. But the the reason he uses that photo
Speaker 2: is because he's talking about you know, I talked about
Speaker 2: how they clear out these neighborhoods and replace it with
Speaker 2: stuff designed to attract white people back from the suburbs. Architecturally,
Speaker 2: that takes the form of killing the street. So you
Speaker 2: get rid of storefronts, you get rid of you get
Speaker 2: rid of like human scale stuff on the street, storefronts basically,
Speaker 2: and apart and brownstones, brownstones, so anything that creates and
Speaker 2: allows for store for street life you get rid of
Speaker 2: because the street has become a sort of racialized thing
Speaker 2: post white flight. So if you can get rid of
Speaker 2: the street and replace it with again parking lots or
Speaker 2: like a building that's just a big wall, that's what
Speaker 2: the city, that's what that is, or a entrance to
Speaker 2: a parking garage, that's golden. Because then then you've gotten
Speaker 2: rid of the connection to the street, and that's that's
Speaker 2: like in Minneapolis, they have a lot of skyways, like
Speaker 2: overhead things that connect between buildings. Newark has this like
Speaker 2: and and they connect between office buildings so you net
Speaker 2: you can drive into your parking garage and you never
Speaker 2: have to even go down to the street. So there's
Speaker 2: another reason. And this is why, like I think maybe
Speaker 2: like it's my I care about it also because it's
Speaker 2: very bad design, and it's bad for like your brain,
Speaker 2: and it's bad for living. It's obviously bad for the environment.
Speaker 2: I haven't even mentioned that it's obviously very bad for
Speaker 2: the environment. This way that we have, We used racism
Speaker 2: to leverage and create this way of living that is
Speaker 2: wildly inefficient for anyone but developers and card companies.
Speaker 3: It's it's honestly, but because it's a cancerous mindset, right,
Speaker 3: like if we just keep expanding and developing and spanding
Speaker 3: and developing, like you know, there's no limit. And it's like, well,
Speaker 3: there is a limit. And then you have someone liking
Speaker 3: on Musk who's like, well, my goal is to take
Speaker 3: this money and go to Mars and create a new
Speaker 3: world on Mars. It's like we can't breathe, Yeah, we
Speaker 3: can't breathe on Mars. Are you going to build an atmosphere?
Speaker 3: Because that's the type of shit that they want to do,
Speaker 3: Like they want to go and build an atmosphere and
Speaker 3: privatize breathing, Like that's the type of stuff that these.
Speaker 2: People are on like that's why. Yeah, I know it's terrifying.
Speaker 2: It's like, uh growing up, you know, I'm a boy,
Speaker 2: so like video games, you know, sci fi, like Halo whatever,
Speaker 2: it's just in the future. Also in that series, space
Speaker 2: travel is run I mean, the un is not good,
Speaker 2: I know that, but it is public. But so like
Speaker 2: Space is run by like a public entity that's at
Speaker 2: least for good. And then in the other there's like Aliens,
Speaker 2: which that's all privatized and everything is like dark and dank,
Speaker 2: and unfortunately that's what we're getting. I guess, so fuck.
Speaker 3: I mean, have you ever watched The Expanse?
Speaker 2: Uh? Yeah, I didn't finish it. I got to where
Speaker 2: they opened the portal. It was really good, though, Should
Speaker 2: I finish it?
Speaker 3: You should? Yeah, you should. Had me in a choke
Speaker 3: hold for I've luckily waited to watch it until it
Speaker 3: was finished, so I binged it for a good three weeks.
Speaker 3: I lost a lot of my life to the Expanse,
Speaker 3: but it was worth every second.
Speaker 2: Nice. Yeah, I mean, that's like That'll Star Galactic.
Speaker 3: I was about to say, I'm about to do a rewatch.
Speaker 3: I'm literally about to do a rewatch about so I'd
Speaker 3: like to feel like I have a new consciousness and
Speaker 3: I'm like, am I Asylon?
Speaker 2: Maybe it gets a little off the rails, but in
Speaker 2: interesting ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to season four what Silon started being like what
Speaker 3: you mean, I'm a Cylon, That's exactly.
Speaker 2: It's like, what's going on? And once once that guy
Speaker 2: starts his own religion, it's like, wait, weren't you a scientist?
Speaker 2: I don't understand.
Speaker 3: And then they and then they like do Adam and
Speaker 3: Eve all over again?
Speaker 2: But it's fine, it's fine. It's I'm watching a Chair
Speaker 2: Company right now. Everyone should watch that.
Speaker 3: That's so I was going to say, do I need
Speaker 3: to stick to that?
Speaker 2: Oh? I really I loved Tim Robinson, I adore him, didn't.
Speaker 3: Have any idea where we were going. But I also
Speaker 3: did that with severance and deeply regretted this because then
Speaker 3: Severn turned out to be amazing. So I was in
Speaker 3: that episodes of The Chair Company where you feel like.
Speaker 2: Oh, definitely, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I agree. I
Speaker 2: would say, keep watching excited. But back to solutions, by
Speaker 2: the way, so yeah, we just we can take out
Speaker 2: these highways and and unfortunately, you know the that's not
Speaker 2: going to bring back the community and in some cases
Speaker 2: taking out the highway could lead to gentrification.
Speaker 3: So right then it becomes well, now that we don't
Speaker 3: have these highways, we need the rich class to have
Speaker 3: easier access to the to the city, so we bring
Speaker 3: them back.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and you think about where where the highways
Speaker 2: they're taking out are Again, it's the ones like right
Speaker 2: around downtown. So that's super valid highways. Right now, there's
Speaker 2: a discussion. Yeah, so in various cities there's been a discussion.
Speaker 2: You know, highways were the Interstate in particular, so the
Speaker 2: Interstate was built starting in the sixties. A lot of
Speaker 2: the main major structures have sort of reached the end
Speaker 2: of their useful life. That's why we see collapses of
Speaker 2: bridges in like Minneapolis, and so they need there. A
Speaker 2: lot of them are in like desperate need of repair.
Speaker 2: So some states are actually using the opportunity to make
Speaker 2: some progress. New York is doing New York's doing pretty good. Rochester,
Speaker 2: New York, took out a part of a highway that
Speaker 2: separated the black neighborhoods from downtown interesting and replaced it
Speaker 2: with affordable housing. So it's very recent. We'll see how
Speaker 2: it pans out, but it looks beautiful at least. Again,
Speaker 2: the issue is like affordable housing, what does that exactly mean?
Speaker 2: But it is subsidized housing. So it's the best we
Speaker 2: can do. I mean, I try to be realistic within
Speaker 2: within the current font confines. But so that's that's there's
Speaker 2: like removal is one option. This was a very underused highway.
Speaker 2: But then there's capping. So that's sort of what they
Speaker 2: did in Boston where they took an elevated highway and
Speaker 2: put it underground. A yeah, with the big dig that's
Speaker 2: not always a great option because there are still a
Speaker 2: ton Yeah, because there's always there are still a ton
Speaker 2: of cars, and there still can be pollution.
Speaker 3: Like in the soil.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh well yeah, there's that.
Speaker 3: Water, the water table, all that stuff.
Speaker 2: And it's also if you're digging a tunnel in the
Speaker 2: middle of a city, it should be for it should
Speaker 2: be for a subway, probably not for enough for a highway.
Speaker 2: Just in terms of efficiency.
Speaker 3: Exhauce with it. You know what, We'll do this for
Speaker 3: five hours ATAM.
Speaker 2: I do have a graphic. I do have a graphics
Speaker 2: showing the exhaust. It's the it was one of the
Speaker 2: first I sent it to the noise pollution and asthma
Speaker 2: rates in the Bronx, but you see it in the
Speaker 2: South Bronx, which is totally surrounded by highways. Sorry, she's
Speaker 2: got the South Bronx, which is totally surrounded by highways.
Speaker 2: It has every census tract in the South Bronx is
Speaker 2: in the ninety ninth percentile for asthma rates.
Speaker 3: That's how I just went this keep going, yeah, because
Speaker 3: basically I realized that like if I just like move
Speaker 3: my cursor too fast and left, it just like kicks
Speaker 3: me out. And I don't know why it's doing that,
Speaker 3: and I don't know whose idea that was, but I'm
Speaker 3: gonna have to write a very strong letter, strongly word
Speaker 3: of email to stream Yard because that is not helpful.
Speaker 3: Let me see if I can find these asthma rates.
Speaker 3: Whilere you talking.
Speaker 2: Not a big deal of the camp, but capping advocates,
Speaker 2: there's you know, the people who live next to these
Speaker 2: highways obviously know that there's there's negative effects, and then
Speaker 2: in a lot of cases, their parents were devastated by
Speaker 2: their neighborhoods being destroyed. So there's definitely a lot of
Speaker 2: advocate advocacy, is what I'm trying to say, you know,
Speaker 2: in the Bronx we're working on I've been in contact
Speaker 2: with the group there Loving the Bronx, who's led by
Speaker 2: Nilkam Martel, who we all want to run for city
Speaker 2: council or something, but she doesn't want to. But she's
Speaker 2: basically single handedly pushed for this project to cap over
Speaker 2: I ninety five, the Cross Bronx Expressway, and it's it's
Speaker 2: gonna it's like a decade long project, but we're like
Speaker 2: five years into it, so it's moving. It's a massive
Speaker 2: project because it's like a seven mile long highway and
Speaker 2: it's it's not any highway, it's Eye ninety five in
Speaker 2: New York. But it's moving forward, capping over it, going
Speaker 2: to build a bunch of parks. You know. The ideal
Speaker 2: would be to remove it and reconnect the neighborhood and
Speaker 2: then re route IE ninety five around New York. But
Speaker 2: then suddenly that's sort of like a national project. So
Speaker 2: that's that's one of the things that's so tough about
Speaker 2: these highways in terms of fixing them, is that they
Speaker 2: have very much local impacts, but they are part of
Speaker 2: a regional network that when you shift something, you need
Speaker 2: to change it things elsewhere.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think this is also one of the
Speaker 3: things that is not considered in when we think about
Speaker 3: like socialist politicians being in position or socialist governance being
Speaker 3: in position, like this idea of threethinking how cities exist
Speaker 3: even and I don't I just don't think many of
Speaker 3: us think about the road like I don't really feel
Speaker 3: like I have been doing enough thinking about the way
Speaker 3: that the roads and the highways are lined up. So
Speaker 3: can you just so the top one is noise pollution,
Speaker 3: in the bottom one is asthma prevalence.
Speaker 2: Exactly, so that on the top one so and the
Speaker 2: top one you can see the noise pollution and that
Speaker 2: maps right onto the highways where those purple where those
Speaker 2: big thick purple lines are. That's as loud as a jackhammer.
Speaker 2: So that's incredibly loud. And there's tens of thousands of
Speaker 2: people that live in that noise shit they have to
Speaker 2: just they just can't open their windows, you know, and
Speaker 2: when they do, there's soot and it's it's it's not
Speaker 2: just because it's not just co two I mentioned, it's
Speaker 2: like crap from the tires and the brake pads. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: And that's the Bronx. So that's like one of the
Speaker 2: densest places in the United States. So there's the noise pollution.
Speaker 2: So that one that cuts across all the way is
Speaker 2: the Crossbronx. Uh and it connects to that bread those
Speaker 2: bridges on the other side. Uh So a lot of
Speaker 2: that's just through traffic. That's a different point. But what
Speaker 2: we're trying to do is.
Speaker 3: Basically building up that Cross Bronx.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But so what we're trying to do is basically
Speaker 2: build a cap over it. So sort of a big
Speaker 2: dig for the Bronx, but hopefully not as delayed.
Speaker 3: Well, build a cap to run the highway, to run
Speaker 3: the Cross Bronx underground, you know, the Cross Bronx like
Speaker 3: Lincoln Tunnel tie vibe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the Cross Bronx basically is underground. It's just
Speaker 2: in a trench with no top. Yeah, because there's we're
Speaker 2: just talking about building a top over that, which is
Speaker 2: something that's really common here in the Netland. That's actually
Speaker 2: one of the reasons I'm here in the Netherlands. So
Speaker 2: this is I'm involved in this project through work the
Speaker 2: Cross Bronx, and my PhD is is uh, basically looking
Speaker 2: at the impact of CAP thing on social and environmental
Speaker 2: metrics around the CAP. So they've done it quite a
Speaker 2: lot here, so I'm looking to see did it work basically?
Speaker 2: Did it reduce pollution? Did it improve mobility? Did it
Speaker 2: did it gentrify? I'm trying to see yes or no.
Speaker 2: It's a bit different the context here, but a lot
Speaker 2: of the tools we can still use. And the answer
Speaker 2: is it's mixed. It depends how you do it. But
Speaker 2: that's what I'm That's what I'm trying to study and
Speaker 2: figure out.
Speaker 3: Is how far into the DHD are you two.
Speaker 2: And a half years? Oh?
Speaker 3: You got tam.
Speaker 2: I should be done in about a year because I
Speaker 2: have a lot of preexist I have a lot of
Speaker 2: pre existing work, you know. And then we'll see. Maybe
Speaker 2: I'll stay here. I might. I'm probably going to go
Speaker 2: back to New York, but we'll see here. What's up?
Speaker 3: Don't come back here?
Speaker 2: Well? Yeah, but I should. I feel like a phony
Speaker 2: talking about everything I'm talking about being over here. But that's.
Speaker 3: What we have learned, y'all, is that Adam is about authenticity.
Speaker 2: Well there, but there is a lot we can learn
Speaker 2: from here, and I don't I don't mean like necessarily
Speaker 2: in terms of like Amsterdam, but just the city that
Speaker 2: I'm in now, Rotterdam was totally destroyed and will so
Speaker 2: first of all, incredibly diversity. It's it's only about fifty
Speaker 2: percent Dutch. The rest is, yeah, the rest is immigrants,
Speaker 2: so it's mostly people from Dutch colonies, Dutch colonial legacy,
Speaker 2: so it's Indonesians, it's surnames Curassow. And then there's a
Speaker 2: lot of Turkish folks that's not a colony. But so
Speaker 2: it's incredibly diverse here. It's the biggest port in Europe,
Speaker 2: so it also has like a history of diversity like
Speaker 2: New York, you know, big port city. Rotterdam rules, but
Speaker 2: it was unfortunately destroyed in World War two and so
Speaker 2: totally flattened and then rebuilt with American money and rebuilt
Speaker 2: the Marshall Plan. Rotterdam got the most of any city
Speaker 2: in the Marshall Plan, and we designed it. You know,
Speaker 2: it wasn't totally on us. The Dutch were happy to
Speaker 2: do modernism too, but we we redesigned Rotterdam from the
Speaker 2: beautiful like Amsterdam like medieval city to a modernist American thing,
Speaker 2: you know. And and just like the American city before
Speaker 2: we destroyed it for highways and and and urban renewal.
Speaker 2: Rich people and poor people lived close together, you know,
Speaker 2: immigrants and natives lived close together. And that was the
Speaker 2: same in the United States, right, but we we destroyed it,
Speaker 2: and and World War two destroys it here and and
Speaker 2: they try to institute a similar planning logic and they do.
Speaker 2: You know, Zoud becomes the south becomes the poor area,
Speaker 2: uh and and north and and and downtown becomes not
Speaker 2: residential at all. And they hate it. People the Dutch,
Speaker 2: they hate it because they that's not how they live,
Speaker 2: you know, the the they're urban planning. You know, they
Speaker 2: had to make there's this joke, the Dutch joke, like,
Speaker 2: you know, God created the Earth, but the Dutch created
Speaker 2: the Netherlands because the Netherlands is mostly unreclaimed land, so
Speaker 2: they had to like drain a lot of land. But
Speaker 2: so they they have a very unique way of urban planning.
Speaker 2: It's very specific and tactical and like about about efficiency.
Speaker 2: So then the Americans come in with this ridiculous spread
Speaker 2: out way of living that is based on racism in
Speaker 2: our way back in where we live. Other countries adopted
Speaker 2: happily South South Africa, Belfast in northern Ireland. But the
Speaker 2: Dutch there there are plenty of racists. Don't worry.
Speaker 3: But they oh, yes, we know about smart smart se Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh they're they're incredibly racist and they're they're they're big
Speaker 2: racist dufaces in a lot of ways. But when it
Speaker 2: comes up and planning, that's important to them. So they
Speaker 2: in the seventies they had a moment of like urbanism
Speaker 2: that we're sort of having in American cities now, recognizing
Speaker 2: that you know, car culture is exclusive, is damaging, blah
Speaker 2: blah blah. So they had that in the seventies and
Speaker 2: they have since fixed Rotterdam. And Rotterdam is a city
Speaker 2: with bones, just like America because it was rebuilt in
Speaker 2: the image of America with this, but they fixed it.
Speaker 2: So we can learn a lot from Rotterdam. Amsterdam is beautiful,
Speaker 2: but it's medieval. We're not going to do that. But
Speaker 2: Rotterdam has big, old, wide boulevards and highways. But now
Speaker 2: we have beautiful wide boulevards with bike lanes and trams.
Speaker 3: I see what you're saying about this, Okay, you're saying
Speaker 3: that you went to the place that is ahead of
Speaker 3: where we could be. Yeah, that's ahead of where we
Speaker 3: are as a model for where we can.
Speaker 2: Become urban planning wise, you're checking out, is it legit?
Speaker 3: I mean what I think what I think it's really
Speaker 3: important work because it also allows you to see, well,
Speaker 3: where are the ways it doesn't solve, and where is
Speaker 3: the way that it does, and how do we solve
Speaker 3: for the things that it doesn't solve? You know, which
Speaker 3: is you know, so much of America is anti intellectual,
Speaker 3: so it doesn't do that work. It just like bullies
Speaker 3: its way through things versus like well wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 3: somewhere else did it? And I know they're not American,
Speaker 3: but they may have good ideas. I don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, there's it's that's American exceptionalism, right, it's we
Speaker 2: think where they And there's New York exceptionalism too, right,
Speaker 2: Like we can't we can't learn from other places, especially
Speaker 2: when it comes to like the subway. It's very frustrating,
Speaker 2: like there's we can't adopt best practices because you know,
Speaker 2: we're the subway. We of course we know how to
Speaker 2: do it. But yeah, no, I mean, and and you
Speaker 2: do see the shortcomings. Absolutely, taxes are really really really no,
Speaker 2: I'm serious oh my god, and uh do you But do.
Speaker 3: You feel your taxes in your lifestyle?
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, Yes, the trains work, the streets are clean, fair,
Speaker 2: but it's funny, yeah, basic things. I mean, I actually
Speaker 2: think that the Netherlands itself could learn a lot from
Speaker 2: Rotterdam because the rest of the Netherlands they say Rotterdam
Speaker 2: like how Americans say Detroit or Chicago, like yeah, it's racialized, yeah,
Speaker 2: oh absolutely, yeah yeah yeah, but but it's a beautiful
Speaker 2: place here.
Speaker 3: And let's let's answer a question before you go becau
Speaker 3: as I see someone just throw one out. Si Williams says, question,
Speaker 3: does the way the grid of the infrastructure affect the
Speaker 3: flow of energy in our communities and or frequencies that
Speaker 3: affect our way of life? I mean it's like the
Speaker 3: function way of it all. Yeah, but you were seeing
Speaker 3: that it's the environment.
Speaker 2: So yeah, well the grid. I really do want to
Speaker 2: answer that question. I always do this. I just want
Speaker 2: to say, just to put a bow on the capping
Speaker 2: and the removal. Thing that is great for making a
Speaker 2: better city, that is and making and it's better for
Speaker 2: the environment. It's not necessarily always the right thing for
Speaker 2: the community that we're trying to help because of this
Speaker 2: issue of gentrification. So it's just me. I consider myself
Speaker 2: like an urbanist, Like I do want to improve cities,
Speaker 2: but we the way to do that isn't always just
Speaker 2: more big infrastructure. But uh, basically I'm trying to endorse
Speaker 2: community land trusts give some ownership back to the community.
Speaker 2: A community land trust is like as a you know,
Speaker 2: a nonprofit corporation, uh, where the community basically just owns
Speaker 2: a bunch of land and gets to decide what they
Speaker 2: want to do with it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean, if it were if I mean
Speaker 3: it is essentially a socialist construct.
Speaker 2: Do I consider myself a democratic socialist? Yes? Is that
Speaker 2: is a CLT socialist? I don't know, because it's uh
Speaker 2: like ideally.
Speaker 3: It's within a capitalists Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, it's within.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and I think as a democratic socialist. By the way,
Speaker 2: I think that cap You know, you can have a
Speaker 2: beautiful bubble of capitalism within the guardrails and the bubble
Speaker 2: within the guardrails of democratic socialism, and then you compete
Speaker 2: on things like uh, quality of service. Sorry, I'm thinking
Speaker 2: about example, like in Europe. It's not perfect here, but
Speaker 2: like the state owns the rails, and then the operators.
Speaker 2: So there's a government operator, but then there's some private
Speaker 2: operators that then have to compete based on service, not
Speaker 2: based on something like the rails, which any private operator.
Speaker 2: No one can build that because it's too big. But
Speaker 2: like an example would be in the US, like if
Speaker 2: the government owned the cell towers, which is too big
Speaker 2: for any small company to possibly build. Only AT and
Speaker 2: T and Verizon can build something like that. And because
Speaker 2: they own the towers, and because only they're big enough
Speaker 2: to do it, they can fuck you over. But so
Speaker 2: if somebody, like if there was a public agency that
Speaker 2: owned the towers, then you could rent it out to
Speaker 2: private operators who would then have to compete on Oh god,
Speaker 2: guess what service? Does that make sense? So I think
Speaker 2: it does.
Speaker 3: It's true, like at the end of the day, it
Speaker 3: exists for now, but all they need is incentive to
Speaker 3: which is what these capitalists are trying to do, right,
Speaker 3: is to remove the incentive of even having this type
Speaker 3: of bubble and just making it all privatized in general.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm more of a parent in my sentiments
Speaker 3: that wherever capitalism lives, there's always going.
Speaker 2: To be.
Speaker 3: The there's always going to be the possibility and the
Speaker 3: incentive for capitalism to grow, because that's all it does.
Speaker 3: I mean, it doesn't know how to stay in the bubble.
Speaker 3: It's counterintuitive to its existence. It's literally cancer. Like the
Speaker 3: mind state of capitalism is how do we grow without limit?
Speaker 3: So for now, that's why I like the concept of
Speaker 3: democratic socialism is I believe democratic socialisms, y'all are just
Speaker 3: folks who are just on the way to being socialists.
Speaker 3: You're just not there yet, but you're on the way.
Speaker 3: I'll see you soon.
Speaker 2: Well wait, okay, Well now I think they we're just
Speaker 2: getting into semantics.
Speaker 3: Because democratic socialis are still they still hold a piece
Speaker 3: of capitalism in their eye, in their mind's eye.
Speaker 2: Well okay, so I guess I was saying that competition
Speaker 2: isn't inherently a bad thing in terms of providing services.
Speaker 3: And I would say that wherever competition exists, where in
Speaker 3: terms of the quality of services, know that the provision
Speaker 3: needs to be guaranteed.
Speaker 2: But the but the.
Speaker 3: Mean, there's there's like different versions of socialism that we've
Speaker 3: seen right where it's like there's portions of Richard Wolf
Speaker 3: did a really good podcast about this recently, where there's
Speaker 3: like portions of land ownership and service ownership that like
Speaker 3: you're talking about where it's like the government owned some
Speaker 3: of it, but then there's privatization, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: But then it ends up at a certain point becoming
Speaker 3: who's gonna.
Speaker 2: It?
Speaker 3: Always capitalism always requires there to be Okay, you're not
Speaker 3: letting us grow anymore. So that's what I'm saying. It's like,
Speaker 3: that's all I'm saying that at a certain point, they're like,
Speaker 3: we'll play along with this, but then if we get
Speaker 3: if the bubble gets too small, we're going to figure
Speaker 3: out we're going to try to figure out how to
Speaker 3: burst the bubble. So then I'm like, well, then how
Speaker 3: do we make it so that there is no bubble
Speaker 3: at all?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Fair enough, And let's not say we can keep
Speaker 2: talking about that later. That's always a fun topic. But
Speaker 2: can can we bring the press the question back?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: Just because I did want to talk about the grid
Speaker 2: because it is kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: I lost the question, but the question was how does
Speaker 3: the grid affect like the flow of energies of people
Speaker 3: in a city, Like I mean, it was kind of
Speaker 3: like a feng shueish kind of concept.
Speaker 2: Right, like yeah, yeah, but the grid, I from a
Speaker 2: city planning perspective is American cities are really there, you go,
Speaker 2: are really grid e you know, we we love a grid,
Speaker 2: and I actually think that that's kind of cool. The grid. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's very democratic, like small d democratic because unlike the
Speaker 2: European cities where there's like the center of authority, which
Speaker 2: is normally a church, so there's the church and then
Speaker 2: everything kind of emanates around from that and it's kind
Speaker 2: of radial. The American city is all about the grid.
Speaker 2: Is all about the grid where there's no necessarily there's
Speaker 2: no point that's necessarily prized, and there's equal access to everything.
Speaker 2: So I like it grid. And that's why that's one
Speaker 2: of the things that's like tragic in the highways is
Speaker 2: that they just disrupt the city grid. They absolutely a limit.
Speaker 2: They get rid of that logic because the grid is
Speaker 2: all about like on the ground connectivity, not vehicular connectivity.
Speaker 2: So and the highways just upend that and they destroy
Speaker 2: it and they inscribe a economic logic, which is, you know,
Speaker 2: prioritizing suburban access to the core. So the grid, I
Speaker 2: wish it would make a car that I wish it
Speaker 2: would make it come back in places where it's been disrupted.
Speaker 2: And you know, gridlock is something that is a product
Speaker 2: of cars, not people.
Speaker 3: Agreed because like in Grenada, which is a very small island,
Speaker 3: you see like more cars than there is like land.
Speaker 3: It's all it starts to feel like that. Well then
Speaker 3: there are roads, right, So there's this gridlock for the
Speaker 3: sake of gridlock. Because the other part of this I
Speaker 3: can say this because I'm Caribbean, is it Folks typically
Speaker 3: want cars so they can get up and go, so
Speaker 3: they have control, so they can dominate, like when they
Speaker 3: arrive somewhere. But what's sitting in people? We're not on time,
Speaker 3: So what is the point, y'all? What's the point and
Speaker 3: everybody having the car if you're not going to get
Speaker 3: there on time? Adam, thank you for not only being
Speaker 3: Adam was early, y'all. Adam's here a half hour before,
Speaker 3: so we've had two hours of Adam.
Speaker 2: Paul SU's the next time, so much fun. We had
Speaker 2: a whole.
Speaker 3: Spiritual session about morals and ethics. We then talked about
Speaker 3: everywhere from Rotterdam to Detroit, which is a journey I
Speaker 3: did not know we were going to go on, but
Speaker 3: I can assure you that everyone here is leaving today
Speaker 3: with so much more than they came with, thanks to
Speaker 3: you sharing your knowledge and the work that you continue
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 2: So thank you, Adam, Thank you so much. You know,
Speaker 2: if you want to carry on the conversation, because there's
Speaker 2: some points that I I always do that you know, I.
Speaker 3: Was like I should have said, We'll definitely invite you back.
Speaker 3: So make a list, make a list of the points
Speaker 3: that you feel like you need to add.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, next time, I'll be a little more.
Speaker 2: I'll send them in order. But if folks, can I
Speaker 2: do my can I do my plug?
Speaker 3: Please?
Speaker 2: Just so Segregation by design dot com. It's broken down
Speaker 2: by cities and then unfortunately Instagram is the place some
Speaker 2: of the most active so at segregation underscore by underscore,
Speaker 2: de sign check it.
Speaker 3: Out, segregation.
Speaker 2: Segregation under greg gaish. It's kind of funny. One of
Speaker 2: the terms for like the type of highway that the
Speaker 2: interstate is like limited access is a segregated highways.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you put it in the name?
Speaker 2: No, I know exactly when you think. There's so many
Speaker 2: spatial terms that are like explicitly racialized, like inner city,
Speaker 2: other side of the tracks, I won't keep going.
Speaker 3: It's facts, and so once you started, when you started
Speaker 3: learning language of the United States, you're like, oh, all
Speaker 3: of this is racist. And I learned that the ice
Speaker 3: cream Truck song is racist. I was like, I give
Speaker 3: a I'm out.
Speaker 2: And really racist.
Speaker 3: It's like that one super dupery.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, enjoy your evening in Rotterdam, and thank you again
Speaker 3: for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thank you that's so much fun.
Speaker 1: Bye An, bye find Ye