In this episode with author Robert Searns of Beyond Greenways: the next step for city trails and walking routes, we discuss the potential of destination walks like Tucson's turquoise trail and Denver's 5280 Trail, to do more than connect points A to B. As we meander through this conversation, we uncover the profound impact of physical wayfinding on our daily urban adventures. It's not just about getting from place to place but also about the cultural landmarks, tree-lined medians, and rest areas that turn a simple stroll into a vibrant communal experience. By listening to our chat, you'll step closer to envisioning a future where every step through our cities fosters a more connected, healthy, and vibrant community.
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In this episode with author Robert Searns of Beyond Greenways: the next step for city trails and walking routes, we discuss the potential of destination walks like Tucson's turquoise trail and Denver's 5280 Trail, to do more than connect points A to B. As we meander through this conversation, we uncover the profound impact of physical wayfinding on our daily urban adventures. It's not just about getting from place to place but also about the cultural landmarks, tree-lined medians, and rest areas that turn a simple stroll into a vibrant communal experience. By listening to our chat, you'll step closer to envisioning a future where every step through our cities fosters a more connected, healthy, and vibrant community.
Show Notes:
To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/
Episode Artwork by Tim Gouw on Unsplash
Follow us on social media for more content related to each episode:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/booked-on-planning/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BookedPlanning
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This episode is brought to you by Confluence. Confluence is a professional consulting firm comprised of landscape architects, urban designers and planners. Their staff of 70 Plus includes 39 licensed landscape architects and ASCP certified planners. Confluence is comprised of energetic, creative and passionate people who are involved in making our communities better places to live. They assist clients on a wide range of public, educational, institutional and private sector projects.
Stephanie Rouse:You're listening to the Booked On Planning podcast, a project of the Nebraska chapter of the American Planning Association. In each episode we dive into how cities function by talking with authors on housing, transportation and everything in between. Join us as we get Booked On Planning. Welcome back, bookworms, to season three of Booked On Planning. We hope you had a great holiday season and are off to a great start in 2024. We're kicking off this year with author Robert Serns talking to him about his book Beyond Greenways the next step for city trails and walking routes. Robert's work focuses on expanding walking beyond greenways hence the title to new concepts of walking routes and gran loops. These are focused on giving residents more access to connected, safe and interesting walking routes, either within or looping the edge of their community.
Jennifer Hiatt:This is actually a very special conversation with Robert, as his twin granddaughters were born the same day. We spoke with them, so we would like to welcome them into the world and, as with most things in transportation, I use Lincoln's Walking Trails all the time and have a massive amount of respect for you, stephanie, and our Parks and Rec team, but really haven't given it any thought or thinking about trail planning and what it would be like to like, beyond making sure that every redevelopment plan that I put together ensures that you guys have the appropriate land dedications necessary for the future trail system that's already mapped out.
Stephanie Rouse:Well, I can't really take credit for our awesome trail system, that's, our amazing park staff and the visionaries back in the 1980s that saw opportunity in abandoned rail corridors, but I do spend a lot of time collecting user data on them and I found this book to be really interesting, given my work on planning for bicycles and pedestrians, but also just as someone who lives in the city. The most basic level of walking route that he identifies is the doorstep walk, which is the one route that isn't necessarily planned top down, but it's more of a product of people creating the walks that start at their doorsteps and it makes the most sense for their lifestyle. We, as planners and city officials, can set policies that influence walkability and we get into those details in our conversation with Robert.
Jennifer Hiatt:I really liked the idea of the town walk, which Robert defined as like a two to six mile recreation and fitness loop that's kind of built into the neighborhoods, downtowns, other urban spaces but it kind of creates that loop. So it's a kind of connection and I guess we all kind of make our own walking loops in our own way but I really appreciate like the intentional idea that would provide some interesting information and context within the city or within a neighborhood on my daily walks.
Stephanie Rouse:I agree. There's only so many times you can go on the same walk before getting bored, so it'd be nice to have some other intentional routes to choose from.
Jennifer Hiatt:Yeah, exactly, and you're like oh, I guess I'm just going to walk down this neighborhood again today.
Stephanie Rouse:The only downside to reading this book and talking with Robert is that I now have another pet project to add to my long, growing list of ideas from reading all these great books for the show. And then it's to create a series of destination walks and looking at how we can get our Grand Loop built faster.
Jennifer Hiatt:Yeah, for sure. That's been the struggle of hosting this podcast for the last years. Like my whole project list just became a mile long. But I am down to help you with that project and try and find any way that we can to get those things going.
Stephanie Rouse:Yes, definitely.
Jennifer Hiatt:So let's get into the conversation with Robert Serns.
Stephanie Rouse:Well, bob, thank you for joining us on Booked on Planning to talk about Beyond Greenways, the next step for city trails and walking routes. In the book, you discuss two new trail concepts the Grand Loop and the walking route. What are these and how do they differ from the traditional trail systems that we are all familiar with, such as boulevards and greenways?
Robert Searns:Sounds like a good question and I'll just take a step back for a minute and just talk a little bit real quickly about how I got to this. There were really a couple of epiphany events that got me thinking about this. I've been developing greenways and urban trails for four decades and a few years back I was getting to a point thinking about oh, what do I want to do next? What do I want to think about? And I happened to go to a trails conference on Sheshu Island in Korea and the emphasis there was on walking. And while there I got exposed to the Sheshu Allee, which is a walking path that encircles the entire island. The island's about the size of Maui and it runs along the seashore. On one side you've got the little towns and cities along the way and the other side is the ocean. Also, it was really neat because the emphasis was primarily on walking. So that just kind of got me thinking about another kind of modality of trails, maybe something a little bit of different version, a little bit different geometry than greenways. So after that I came back to Denver, got together with a few friends and a couple of dogs and we decided to do a grand loop walk around Denver. We didn't call it a grand loop at the time but kind of mimic the JG Allee walk around Denver. So a bunch of us did go out and do that walk and kind of through the foothills on the edges of the city and through the prairie and the other edge to experience a metropolitan area where city meets countryside. And it was just an amazing experience and just really inspired me to think more about this kind of geometry, walking loops.
Robert Searns:Along with that I began to think about what about closer in kinds of places? I've been doing some planning. Well, in one area, commerce City, which is a working class suburb just outside of Denver, that was sponsored by a health agency and they really wanted to try and get people more engaged in routine activity to improve and really make things better in terms of just the awful rates of obesity and other health problems, a lot from sedentary lifestyles. And while we were doing meetings for that Commerce City planning process, a couple of women came up to me and they said you know, we just want a place to walk, you know, without obstructions, without bicycles coming up behind us, and that kind of got me thinking also about this notion of smaller loops, closer in things and also routine exercise where you know ideally you could just go out your doorstep and go on a walk every day and kind of engage more people in that fitness activity to kind of make every doorstep a trailhead.
Robert Searns:So those two experiences just got me thinking more and more about this notion of maybe a different kind of geometry. So that kind of evolved. I started doing some walks on my own. You know around where I live in the Denver metro area, doing these three and six mile loop walks, just kind of laying them out, you know, and then my wife and I and our dog would walk those and that experience, so I began to try and put all that together maybe into more of a cohesive concept of a different kind of geometry. Jumping ahead, what evolved is this notion of grand loops and town walks, which are kind of the core of the book Beyond Greenways, and grand loops are really these routes that are on the edges of urban areas where city meets countryside.
Robert Searns:You know they might be 100, 150 miles long. They're more trekking routes, although you don't have to do the whole route all at once, you can do a piece at a time. But if we could lay out and connect these kind of places together, maybe we'd really have something going. And then the town walks idea, as I mentioned, kind of evolved to those. Two things came together. I kind of began to see these as maybe a next step in the evolution from the more traditional boulevards, parkways and greenways. So that's kind of how I got to the idea. I actually did a master plan or a concept plan for Grand Loop around Denver and did some other planning and started doing some research and seeing town walks in different places too.
Jennifer Hiatt:So I work in urban development and I don't do a lot of stuff with trail walks. Stephanie is our transportation planner in this group and so this was a completely like new concept to me. And so I was thinking. I took your idea of your town walk and was thinking about how I could like use the redevelopment process to incorporate the town walks. I can't do as much with the grand loops because we're not really redeveloping on the edge of town we're developing, so we don't have quite the same level of control. But you broke the town walks into three different categories the destination walk, the community walk and the doorstep walk. Can you explain those differences and how each of those different levels kind of fits into that greater connectivity goal?
Robert Searns:Yeah, I certainly can, and you kind of think in a way, you know, if we think about regional parks, community parks, neighborhood parks as maybe an analogy. Let's start with destination walks. These are places and their loops I'm using this loop geometry in this concept that focus around places that are significant, you could say iconic or important places. For example, there's a walk that two women they literally did this with a can of paint and a paint machine. They got the city to do. They put a walking loop by painting a turquoise stripe around the historic part of Tucson connecting the old barrios together and some of the historic colonial Spanish buildings, restaurants and other cultural destinations that really reveal old Tucson and historic Tucson. So you can actually follow this green line, just walking on the sidewalks and walk around a loop and experience downtown Tucson.
Robert Searns:So that's the notion of a destination walk. That's kind of a very simple, easy to do, really rudimentary kind of walk, but it's wonderful, it's a great tourist destination. I see tourism in this destination thing. But it's also a walk for people who live locally, just to, you know, go downtown or go to a place that has maybe some historic or iconic places that you can experience.
Robert Searns:And I noticed that Denver proposed a loop called the 5280 trail that goes around the core of Denver. It goes past the Capitol and the baseball stadium and sort of the old historic downtown area. So again it's kind of a destination where maybe people would come from all over the region. And this 5280 walk, by the way, is five miles long but you can walk around that and experience the different kind of significant cultural and iconic places in Denver. So that's the notion of a destination walk, the community walk. If you think in terms again of a community park, it's something that's a little bit more accessible. It's not right out your door but it's maybe a place that's within 10 minutes walking distance or not very far by transit or even driving to get there. That might be like you'd go to a community park, maybe for a weekend outing or even after work.
Robert Searns:It would be a little bit more of a branded, really well improved quality walking space, you know would have a nice level sidewalk where people can walk side by side. It would have ideally a tree median between the sidewalk and the street for shade, other amenities like rest areas and also wait points along the way. That would make it attractive to walk. Maybe there's restaurants, maybe there's coffee shops. You know should include maybe a library. So that's the notion of a community walk and how that fits the picture.
Robert Searns:And then doorstep walks are basically, it really be ideal, every doorstep, in my opinion, should be a trailhead and you know, going back to that notion of those ladies in Commerce City about having a place to engage routinely, these are walks just out your door and obviously that's a tall order, you know. Obviously we can all lay out our own doorstep walks if we have the facilities. But a lot of communities, particularly in suburban areas, but in some city areas too, don't have good walking routes, and so this is more of a call for policies that get cities and towns and communities to improve the whole walking infrastructure system. You know, to look at it the same way we look at roads, that you need these walking facilities. They're really ubiquitous. They're everywhere, but you can plot your own route just right out your door.
Stephanie Rouse:So when you're describing the Emerald walking route that was created, it made me think how so many communities have several historic districts throughout their communities and how easy would be to just paint routes to send people around them, versus having these printed maps or the mobile apps that have walking tours, because a lot of people don't know about them or don't have access to technology to be able to use something like a mobile app. But being able to see a painted line on the ground will take you right around really really pretty easily.
Robert Searns:I'm really glad you brought that up, stephanie. You know I guess I'm kind of a Luddite in some ways, but having something physically there is nice. It's kind of nice if you're out taking a walk to not have to look at your phone to find your way. And, as we learned in trying to get on the Zoom call this morning, just digital stuff doesn't always work the way you want it to work. So the idea is to make it a little bit more physically iconic and I think that draws more users too, because you just see it out there.
Robert Searns:You definitely have some kind of way finding that's going to catch people's eyes, and even people who don't find this on their phone or an app or whatever, they're going to wonder oh, what's this thing? What happens if I follow it? I lean that way too, toward having a physical way finding system and, as we learned from the Tucson experience, it could be very simple. You know it could be more. You know more complex too and more sculptural or artistic, and you could certainly do branded way finding, which would be an optimal thing to do, but I like that notion of physical guidance that guides you.
Stephanie Rouse:And so you already described a lot of what makes a good walking route. Can cities start to map them based on existing sidewalk networks and start promoting them, or is there more that needs to be done in regards to the way finding or filling in gaps in sidewalk networks?
Robert Searns:Yeah, I think there's different levels of ways this can happen. Certainly, cities, you know, and officials in cities, planning people, there's no reason why they couldn't go out and start identifying these routes. Maybe do a few trial ones first that are well done, that offer a good experience and map them out and maybe, as I said, very rudimentary at first Maybe at first it is just up on the web just to get it started and then you start.
Robert Searns:you know, maybe it's just a stripe around the utility poles, like they do with the Randonese in Europe, that tell you that you're following the route. So I think there could be that stage of just mapping them out.
Robert Searns:I also think that community advocates or anybody could go out their door just like my wife and I did, and start plotting your own routes and if you find a good one, maybe share it. You know, and there's online sites and there's urban hiking sites where you can do this, but also bringing it up with planners and engineers and policymakers, with cities, to say, hey, let's try one over in this neighborhood or that neighborhood. And then you know, there's a whole design process and a planning process that's involved in that, but it's not that complicated. We'll get into that, I'm sure, in the questions that come.
Stephanie Rouse:Yeah, I really like that. It could be a combination of city led or kind of grassroots led community, saying that these are the routes that work the best. Would you say that these types of routes should be integrated into a larger, more comprehensive plan, or should they kind of stand on their own, as this document is a collection of all the walking routes?
Robert Searns:Well, I think ideally these kinds of things, just like trails and greenway, should ultimately be in comprehensive plans, because that gives you the oomph that you need to get funding and maybe the incentive and regulatory measures that are needed if it's in conformance with a comprehensive plan. But on the other hand, you know, as we're kind of seeing the theme here, I wouldn't let that stop the process. I think that's the ultimate goal and again, like the two ladies in Tucson you know, they just had an idea there with the Presidio Historic Society there and they just kind of dreamed this up, kind of walked it and found the paint and persuaded the city to paint it. So I think that it's really multiple levels and that's one of the nice things about this whole concept, versus, say, building a more traditional urban trail or greenway.
Robert Searns:If you're going to build an urban trail or greenway, particularly a hike, bike path, you know you have to engineer it, you've got to meet all kinds of standards and you've got to get the rights away and all that kind of thing. In this instance, particularly with the urban ones where you can utilize existing infrastructure to lay out your routes, then I think it's just a lot easier to do. I might add to that. One other thing is that it doesn't always have to be a sidewalk. One of the things I discovered when I started working on this is the availability of what I call walkable streets.
Robert Searns:There are a lot of streets in neighborhoods and on the edges of towns, country lanes, places where there's low traffic, low speeds, where people can walk in the street safely. You know, and I went out with a few people, actually with one traffic engineer who was kind of helping me with this in Denver, and we went out and walked around her neighborhood and a lot of it was in the street and we saw moms and dads pushing strollers in the street because that was the best facility. You know you have to plan it so it's safe, but low traffic volumes, low speeds, good visibility. You're not locked into one hard and fast type of infrastructure that you might be if you're building a more traditional greenway.
Jennifer Hiatt:I think it's kind of interesting. So I live in a 1950s subdivision in Lincoln, really in the center of town now, and so we have sidewalks throughout our neighborhood. But I regularly see my neighbors walking in the street. They have they have the infrastructure. We made sure of that but I don't know if it's just like the streets are a little better maintained than the sidewalks at the end of the day, but people do seem to like walking more in the street in those lower like 20 mile an hour areas.
Robert Searns:Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up. We went and walked a route in Cedar Hills, oregon, which is a suburb of Portland. I actually write about this in the book and my sister, a lot, lives there and she just said you know you should check this out. We went out for a walk. You know their sidewalks are just like you described, but everybody was in the street and it was like a parade because it was, you know, I think it was a Saturday morning. Everybody's they're walking their dogs and rolling their strollers. So it was kind of a social thing to feel a little freer and it's easier to walk. It's easier for multiple people to walk you know sidewalk and then not denigrating sidewalks.
Robert Searns:you know, two people can walk side by side, they should be able to, and yes, that's really important. But where there's a walkable street it's kind of another layer of those kind of street conversions. A lot of cities did the string COVID where they they. They slowed the traffic down and made them more activity places. So yeah, I like that, Jennifer.
Jennifer Hiatt:You're right, I do that almost everyone, it's like all at the same time and they're almost always dogs and kids, like everybody's kind of anyway. The other side of trails, I think and you state this in your book like the perception of safety is almost important as like actual physical safety, and you didn't really camera on it, but it stood out to me. I typically hike or go out solo and I have a very small dog. So even if I take my dog dogs probably not going to do much for me in the realm of safety and I totally I know it's true that the perception is almost as important. I can certainly identify trails that I have not felt safe on, but I've never thought about how to create that actual safety or perception of safety. So what could cities do to a just actually increase safety or create that perception in their grand loops where they're outside of town and it starts to feel a little more isolated?
Robert Searns:Yeah, and I heard this a number of times with people I interviewed and talked with, and in particular, I talked with people of color in different minority groups who also have a. You know, a number of the people I talked to had really strong anxiety about being out and places on the edge of town alone or even in a group. And so I think you've got to think about, first of all, equitable access and all the different types of users in the planning process. You want to be consulting with people of multiple ethnicities and genders to see how they experience, because my sense of it might be different than my wife's sense of it, and that's kind of the security side of safety. I mean, there's also the physical safety too.
Robert Searns:I think what you want to do is consult and pay attention and get people to walk it with you and, by the way, walk the corridors. And when you walk the corridors, take your mother-in-law, take your father-in-law, you know, take your dog, get people's experiences, how they perceive it, think about all the different weather conditions and also, you know, night is very different than day. There are places like Dallas, where people recreate a lot at night because it's in the summer, because it's just too hot to be out there during the day. So you have to ask the questions are there good lines of sight, is there good lighting, are there eyes on the trail or the street and out on the edge of town? You know, obviously people are worried about the wild, you want to consider whether other places to duck out if it rains and you want to think about traffic.
Robert Searns:I just actually did a walk. I decided to test out one of my concepts in Buffalo. It was kind of a thought experiment to have a walking loop all the way around the edge of Buffalo. So I went out a couple of months ago and I did that 120-mile walk around the edges of Buffalo, new York, where the city meets the country side, and there's all these different things that you feel Like. I say, what happens if it rains? You know all those things. One of the things is thinking about having waypoints in places to duck out along the way.
Robert Searns:So you want to think of all those kinds of things. I think statistically the perception is probably more significant than the actual danger, Because a lot of things we do are dangerous and not dangerous. But I have risks involved. But the perception is right up there as number one. But the most important thing is starting point is to go out and walk those routes yourself, Take other people with other perspectives along with you and consult with all these types of perspectives. But I think a lot of these challenges can be overcome, but it's a big part of the process to do that.
Jennifer Hiatt:So we've mentioned a few times the importance of the physical markers on the trail and such. I spend almost all of my day thinking about how to infuse placemaking into redevelopment projects and throughout our downtown. That equally shows up in your book, where you stress the importance of placemaking along grand loops and walking trails and making sure people can identify where they are, and even on the right trail, still right. So how should cities start thinking about how they can plan for placemaking along trails?
Robert Searns:Yeah, there's several aspects and let's just start with the core, which I think is wayfinding, which is always a huge problem. I mean, so many trail planners and entities really don't know how to do wayfinding very well. Wayfinding doesn't necessarily have to be expensive or complicated. In fact, simpler a lot of times is better. For example, on the Jeju Ali trail, they developed a little sculpture of a little horse and the horse points in the direction that you're supposed to. Well, I can go either way, but it's pointing to places you go and people speak multiple languages there, so you just follow the little horses. So, or the Rondonais in Europe, same thing they use a color. I think the wayfinding, you know, the spacing, needs to be right Anytime there's a decision point. There needs to be clarification, because if you come to a fork in the road, people are going to want to know where should I go? And, yeah, sure, you can use Google, and when I walked around Buffalo it wasn't an established trail, I was just bushwhacking, so I did use Google Maps and it was a wonderful help to find my way, but not everybody's going to do that, nor should they have to. So I think at the core of this is wayfinding and I think, as we talked about earlier, it's basic little icons that are out there physically, out there ideally. So that's an aspect of wayfinding that I think is important at the core.
Robert Searns:I think placemaking not only to kind of find your way, but I think a good route is we have what's called links and places, so these places become kind of spots that you're going to. You know, maybe it's the bridge overlooking the stream, or maybe it's a piece of sculpture or maybe it's a institutional building. There's a three professors at the University of Buffalo who wrote a nice kind of report on this and they really went into this. They call these artifacts. They even kind of in the report talk about having these artifacts, maybe specifically designed and placed, as I mentioned, kind of sculptural elements, and it kind of gives you a reward for maybe walking that one segment or going out and doing the route. So that's another reason for having good placemaking. And also, you know, as we talked about in Tucson, you know you have these iconic kinds of places that people are going to want to get to. I think of it almost like a charm bracelet, and in cities they might be closer together, like you know, maybe these destinations in Tucson that I talked about.
Robert Searns:If we're talking about a Grand Loop, these places might be maybe they're more like 10 miles apart or something but it might be a state park or it might be a grand overlook, Just some kind of reward. It might be even kind of a nice rest area, but a rest area that's done nicely, with an overlook and a meditative spot. That's kind of the fun of the design. By the way, the report these guys at the University of Buffalo School of Architecture it's called Pathways and Artifacts, kiro Hada, ernie Sternberg and Dan Hess they're three professors there that put that report together. It's a wonderful report about that very notion you're talking about.
Robert Searns:But that's really the fun of what we do, you know, in a way I like to say you know, we're in the entertainment business, those of us who lay out these kinds of things, and so, just like composing a tune or writing a book, you want to have subplots, you want to have sub themes, you want to have a rhythm to it, you want to have crescendos. Think of it as entertaining your public but also having them find their way. I'm going to add another aspect of placemaking too. I call this my Tim Horton's theory of placemaking. Tim Hortons are really popular coffee shops in the Buffalo area and when I did my walk I had a lot of anxiety because I'm just this one guy out there alone, walking on the edge of town. When I was laying this thing out and I was thinking where am I going to?
Robert Searns:eat? What am I going to do if it starts raining? What if I have to go to the bathroom? You know what? How am I going to manage? And then I started going on Google Maps and I put in coffee shops because I figured you could probably find just about anything you wanted along those lines at a coffee shop. And I realized Tim Horton's is kind of like the Starbucks in that part of the country and so I started plotting my maps connecting Tim Horton's together. So all those kinds of elements are in your toolkit when you think about placemaking.
Stephanie Rouse:I love the idea of picking a coffee shop that provides all the amenities that you really would need and making routes around there. I really struggled. One of our community organizations had a grant and we're working on I can't remember the exact name of it, but it was something like walking routes to everyday destinations. It was hard trying to think, well, where do people want to go or need to go and how do we create these routes? If you're trying to create these loops that hit the key, is there a restroom? Is there somewhere to eat, somewhere to sit down? And then using that as the foundation makes it a little bit easier to understand, I think.
Robert Searns:Yeah, I'm glad you expanded on that a little bit there, stephanie. I think that's really helpful because in part of my thinking about this actually I made a presentation to some librarians and that really got me thinking about this notion of what people call third places. And this is the socialization aspect, which is another need in terms of place, making an important one, particularly for the in town kinds of trips. And third place is the notion of your first place is your home, your second place is your workplace and the third space are those places where you go in the community that are available to socialize and, like you were saying, it could be a coffee shop, it could be a bookstore, it could be the Tim Hortons, it could be a library. And actually I'm working on a piece now about this is how maybe we expand places like libraries as third places.
Robert Searns:And a lot of libraries are having things like walk with a doc. You know where you go to a library and somebody leads a walk. It's not just and I shouldn't say just going to get books, it's not just going to check out a book, but you can go maybe check out a bike at a library or engage in a meetup to walk with other people at a library. So that's another element of it is the third place I like to call third space. Third place sounds like you won the bronze medal, but that's fine. Another same thing wrong with the bronze medal versus the gold. But third space it's a place where you can go and people can go and particularly in COVID we started to learn this where you could just be amongst people again. Even if you're not necessarily specifically interacting with them, you can be around other people. So that social aspect I think is part of that placemaking too.
Jennifer Hiatt:I think it's interesting that you bring up the third space or third place. I'm racking my brain trying to remember what podcast I was listening to. But I was just listening to a podcast about how in Europe a lot of people's third place is a park so London has all of these iconic parks and how in America we've almost commercialized our third place. There are not a lot of public places that we identify as third place. We identify third place like the bars or the coffee shops or the place where you go play trivia, but you don't think as much of the library or just in general going and socializing in a large park area. And you see some of our parks and we don't do that a lot, maybe more in like the larger cities, like New York, especially not in the Midwest. So kind of pulling that third place into a trail system or nature system is kind of an interesting concept.
Robert Searns:Yeah, jennifer, there's an aspect that I've seen of that too is that there are a number of people, especially the urban forestry people, who are talking about cooling nodes and planting little micro wooded areas along routes like this. It's a kind of a neighborhood or pocket park, and certainly the big major parks are important, but these days a lot of our parks have become more athletic venues Not all of them, but many have. So in some ways a park is a destination, but it would be nice, even within those parts, to think about the scale and the design of the space that promotes a little more intimacy. So maybe you have a little over a little gathering place or a place where maybe some musicians can perform or somebody reads poetry or people just sit and talk. So in terms of public park space, I think we can think of different modules from a you know, a full city park that could have these spaces.
Robert Searns:My wife and I were doing these little loop walks around Metro Denver.
Robert Searns:Sometimes we just find a little corner, maybe just where two streets meet, and it might be an area that's 50 feet by 50 feet, but it's got a nice bench and some shade and some other things that invites you in and it's also designed so maybe two or three groups of people could even sit there and socialize or not socialize as they want to.
Robert Searns:So for you know the designers that are listening. I think that's another fun thing to do in laying out this tune that you're laying out is having those little places. They can be cooling spaces too, particularly, you know, with climate change. Maybe they even have a push a button and it activates a mister, but even getting into the shade to cool off and spacing those in an appropriate way as comfort places. So you're right, I think the public spaces and it's got to be beyond libraries. Libraries are one aspect and one indoor aspect, but maybe some of these places are coupled with libraries. But I was intrigued by what I've been seeing about these green micro forests and wooded nodes that the urban forestry people a lot of them are talking about this kind of thing now.
Stephanie Rouse:So you kind of touched on policy a little bit at the beginning of our conversation. But many communities, lincoln being one of them require land dedication or easements for trails through our planning process and then when we have the funding, then we go in and actually build. And this is actually a big piece of how Lincoln will get a grand loop eventually. How can communities get a working grand loop while waiting for land to develop enough in order to get all the right away? Or if they have the right away but they don't have the funding to build a more formal route, take steps to get kind of a rudimentary system in place.
Robert Searns:Yeah, that's, that's a loaded one, isn't it? And it's really at the heart of it is because really, at the end of the day, what this is all about in my mind is something called the right to roam, which is increasingly diminishing. You know, in Europe traditionally you could wander anywhere as long as you close the gate and the cows couldn't get out. You know you didn't vandalize the land or whatever, but there wasn't that sense of. You know, everything is private. You can't be here and increasingly I think we're losing that right to roam, blocked off by private property and highways and other things. Part of that, I think, is at the core of that, that right of way question. But then it goes to so many other levels. You know I mentioned earlier the importance of a comprehensive plan, because then I think you have the grounds to get developers to dedicate rights of way. It might be through regulation, but it can also be through incentive, by making the case to those developers that there's money for them by doing it, because those become more desirable places. So if they dedicate the rights away, but on the other side of the coin you've got all the xenophobia and not my backyard. You know, when I was proposing this project in Denver, people were worried that homeless people were going to all camp on this. You know, 150 mile grand loop around Denver, which was kind of absurd on the face of it. You know. It was just another fear that was put out there and my belief is you can't live in fear of things and not develop infrastructure.
Robert Searns:I think the other thing is that you need to try to figure out a way. You ask me the interim, what do you do? You figure out a way to do viral, inspiring projects. And maybe they aren't the whole thing, as I said earlier, but at least it has enough of a level of quality that it's going to be a good experience for people. And just like the Greenway Movement, when we first started working on Greenways in Denver, everybody was fighting it. Then we got, we got a built and the example was there and then other cities picked up on the example.
Robert Searns:So you don't necessarily have to have a viral example in your community If you can find one somewhere else and cite the example and the benefits. For example, there's a trail around Phoenix called the Maricopa Trail that goes all the way around Phoenix. That's already built. There's one being built around Las Vegas. Louisville is proposing one, there's one being proposed in Paris for the Grand Loups, and then, of course, we got a Tucson Trail and the other ones that I mentioned, like the Denver 5280. Having those examples in your you know your toolkit to show people, so you want viral examples.
Robert Searns:I think if you do build something, though, even if it's rudimentary, make sure it meets all the criteria of offering particularly a good experience and a safe experience, even if it's rudimentary. You know in, the Turquoise Trail is an example of that. So it can't be kind of, you know, half done. It's got to be, maybe that's not the word, but just sloppily done. I think you still want to have it meet the criteria, but it doesn't necessarily have to be complicated. In fact, a lot of times, just simpler is better.
Stephanie Rouse:And then going along with kind of the policy and design side of things? Are there other ways besides, like sidewalk regulations, making sure when development mints go in that they're building sidewalks, or in Lincoln we have block with regulations to make sure it's easier to cut through and you don't have, you know, half a mile to travel before you can make a turn? What other key considerations would support better walking routes within communities?
Robert Searns:Yeah, you raised the other side of the coin there, in fact, and my colleague, mark Fenton he was the host of the PBS America walks show and I talked to Mark about this and he showed me a pyramid and he said really, at the base of the pyramid is policy, and that means getting policy implemented. And we're going to see this in places. Some places are going in reverse but getting that foundational policy, that walking is as important as any other activity for all the reasons that we've talked about health, tourism, economic development, all the reasons to have a better city. But then you do need to put the regulatory policies together and that also includes, I think, having a multidisciplinary approach. We've got to really avoid silo thinking. In other words, the landscape architects need to talk to the transportation engineers and the transportation engineers need to talk to the health and hospitals people and public health people, and then they need to be talking with the tourism people and the real estate community.
Robert Searns:So to get those policies implemented, I think you need to build those alliances and it's a battle. I mean there's, you know, we know the current political environment. There's kind of a side of the population that just doesn't want any regulation at all, and it's just unfortunate but worldwide increasingly that's a problem and so it's going to take a lot of networking. But also, I think it's kind of an incentive kind of thing, thinking in terms of you know what's going to attract people, like the Greenway Movement did that, because a few got built and then the model was there and then people said our community has to have that to compete. And then it comes back to maybe citing cities that are more walkable. There are different organizations that have walkability index programs you can log on and find those, and even some real estate organizations. You know they kind of rank the walkability of the place, you know, according to the walkability indexes. So it's kind of pulling together all these different kinds of expertise. It's not easy, but I think if you put some core ideas together and then try and round up these allies, you're following two tracks. You're kind of doing that In the meantime.
Robert Searns:You know I call it. I don't call it, but other people invented this term, tactical urbanism, where you're just out, kind of doing what you can do outside of the regulatory context. In fact, island Press has a book out called tactical urbanism, where they're just going and they're painting these things in because they got tired of waiting for the city to put these safe crossings in some of these other facilities. So some folks are just going out and I'm not advocating breaking the law, but they're just going out and painting stripes or they're even painting graphics and art in the street, that kind of slow cars down. So there's multiple angles of attack. I guess is what I'm trying to say, and you need to strategically weave your way through there. But, as Mark Fenton said, you need that base of policy and it's not just national policy, it needs to be local and town policy.
Jennifer Hiatt:I'm a lawyer by training and one of my very favorite things is just that nice civil discourse that just gently breaks the law to make the change that you need in your life. Not that we're advocating for anyone to go out and, you know, write. And also a huge shout out to Island Press. They're just a great partner of ours, so we really appreciate working with them. You mentioned just an abundance of excellent trail systems as examples throughout the book. I would recommend everyone go pick up the book just to read about the cool trail systems throughout this country. No, I have definitely added a few 2024 trips to my plan of where to go, but what's been your favorite trail system to traverse or work on?
Robert Searns:Oh, my goodness, yeah, I have. I have a few of them. It's kind of like your children you know which one do you do you like the best. But in terms of the ones I've traversed that are my favorites. They're not ones that I was involved in developing, but I've experienced them. And I'll start with the turquoise trail in Tucson. It was just such a. We went with some friends and we walk it when I was researching the book and it was just such an amazing experience and just when I learned the history of it. That's one of my favorite and I recommend people go to Tucson and visit that.
Robert Searns:Another one. That's been kind of a fun one for me. I've been working with some people on as the Grand Canyon Greenway where a bunch of us got together. This was actually a generation ago when we did this. We just had a reunion, in fact last month there at Grand Canyon, but we said let's get an alternative that people just seeing the Grand Canyon from the windshields of their cars. Let's provide a walking biking route along the edges of the rim of the Grand Canyon so you don't have to necessarily go down into the canyon, which takes some hardiness to do. You know, the average tourist visiting can rent the bike or walk and experience the Grand Canyon, and I'd like to see that kind of spread to other national parks. So that's another one.
Robert Searns:I'll raise one other favorite. One that just about predates me as well in terms of its development is the Highline Canal Trail in Denver. Got to name Robert Pyle. He wrote a wonderful book that I recommend people get, called the Thunder Tree, about the Highline Canal. It's an old irrigation ditch that runs literally for 100 miles along the edges of Denver and it's just spectacular, you know, with cottonwood trees overhanging the canal, and actually we recommended it as part of the Grand Loop that we proposed in the Grand Loop trail going around Denver.
Robert Searns:So, those are three. God, there's so many of the Jiguali. I recommend the Kamano. Koto in Japan is a wonderful route that people should check out. It's a pilgrimage route. Yeah, there's a lot of them.
Jennifer Hiatt:There certainly are. Since this is booked on planning always. Our last question is besides your book, because we already recommend that everyone should go buy a copy of that book what is one or a few others books that you would recommend our readers go pick up?
Robert Searns:First of all, I would say from the technical side, you know, if you just Google walkability, you know Complete Streets, dan Burden Google that name, dan Burden. He's put together some wonderful guides on building Complete Streets. There's all kinds of books about ultralight hiking. I would just Google those and the sites will just keep popping up. But talking about my favorite book that really inspired me and has kept me going on, this is it's actually three books, but it starts with Out of Istanbul and it was written by Bernard Olivier.
Robert Searns:He was a French journalist. He turned 62 and his wife died. He had a retire because of the way things work, job wise in France and he was just ready to do it all in. And I actually met him on the flight to Jeju and I talked with him all about this. He was so dispawned and he decided just to start walking. He was kind of like a forest gum thing and he walked from Istanbul to Shuan, china, across southern Asia. That's a 7,000 mile hike solo.
Robert Searns:The stories he tells in Out of Istanbul and there's two other books in the series too that you can get just amazed me and it inspired me when I was walking around Buffalo and thinking, oh, I'm an old man, I can't do this. Then I thought about Bernard and what he did and I said, if he can do it, I can do it. So that's the one that just really jumps out at me is start with Out of Istanbul, and I'm sure you'll, the listeners will like that. Then go on to the other two books in the series. He went on, by the way, to set create a program in France for delinquent youth to go on walks with him as an alternative to a prison sentence. I guess it really worked. He has a whole foundation now.
Stephanie Rouse:That does that Long answer to a short question A lot of great recommendations, and I'm sure our listeners are probably bookworms like us, and I always like to add to their list of things to read, so I want to thank you so much, bob, for joining us and working through some technical difficulties and making this happen.
Robert Searns:Thank you, jennifer. I'm a recovering law student, so the training was priceless.
Jennifer Hiatt:Yes, we hope that you enjoyed this conversation with author Robert Serns on his book Beyond Greenways the next step for city trails and walking routes. You can get your own copy through the publisher at islandpressorg and check out the other great titles we've covered while you're there, and also, of course, always remember to subscribe to the show whenever you listen to our podcast, and please rate, review and share the show as well. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time on Booktown Planning.