Booked on Planning

From the Ground Up

• Booked on Planning • Season 4 • Episode 1

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Author Alison Sant joins us to discuss the transformations needed in urban settings to combat climate change and systemic racism. Her book, "From the Ground Up: Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities," serves as a lens through which we examine the impact of historical policies that have shaped today's urban landscapes. Together, we reveal how cities like New Orleans and Baltimore are grappling with these issues and the ways local, community-led efforts are paving the path toward resilience and equity.

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Stephanie:

This episode is brought to you by JEO Consulting Group. Jeo is a full-service firm offering engineering, architecture, surveying and planning to clients throughout the Midwest. Since JEO's beginnings in 1937, they have grown to more than 12 offices across Nebraska, iowa and Kansas. With over 250 employees, they provide innovative and cost-effective solutions for both public and private sectors. The JEO team of professional engineers, architects, surveyors, planners and financial experts all work in concert with skilled technicians and support professionals to exceed their clients' expectations. 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. Welcome back Bookworms to another episode of Booked on Planning. In today's episode we talk with author Allison Sant on her book From the Ground Up Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities. This book came at the perfect time for me, as I was working on an application for a large EPA grant, and the programs discussed and the supporting evidence in the book was so helpful.

Jennifer:

Alison did such a great job of finding inspiring case studies that prove how important it is to listen to grassroots groups and support them when they bring great ideas to the table. Some of the best planning ideas, like parking day, have come from a small group of local organizers.

Stephanie:

Alison's book, set up with action language as chapter titles like Plant the City or Tear Up Concrete, has a wealth of program ideas, from small neighborhood scale to citywide programs that have the potential to make real environmental impacts, with programs like the Million Tree Goals or programs that have added benefits beyond the environment to also create jobs.

Jennifer:

I was especially interested in the programs that helped employ those members of our community who have experienced incarceration. They honored those people's skills and experience by employing them as neighborhood safety leaders. I just thought that was really cool. So let's get into our conversation with author Allison Sant on her book From the Ground Up Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities.

Stephanie:

Alison, thank you for joining us on Booked on Planning to talk about your book From the Ground Up Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities. In your book you break up the sections into reclaiming the streets, tear up the concrete, plant the city and adapt the shoreline, with case studies from cities showing how this work can be accomplished by local communities. What are some of the common themes that stuck out to you for the cities that are most successful in these types of efforts?

Alison:

Well, first of all, I just wanted to thank you both for having me it's really a pleasure to get to speak with both of you and also to your listeners and this wonderful podcast that you've created. So thank you. So you're right. So the book is broken into four parts and really, when I was crafting that, I was thinking about each one being called to action. You know, reclaim the streets, tear up the concrete, plant the city and adapt the shoreline, sort of with my fist in the air. And but what's amazing is that when I was doing the research for the book, there really were recurrent themes that came up repeatedly in conversations I had with, you know, over 90 people in writing the book. And so, as I was reflecting on my research and, you know, writing the final drafts, I boiled it down to kind of four main points the first and probably the one that I started with, though the intention of the book kind of grew over time.

Alison:

But you know, climate change is urgent and we're all trying to find ways to address it, and I really came away feeling that cities are the place to act. Cities are responsible for 75% of global carbon emissions and they also happen to be the places that we all live. The majority of the world's population is in urban places, so what we do in cities really matters. For example, when we reclaim our streets from cars to create safe places to walk and bike and more efficient public transit for everyone, we lower carbon emissions while creating greater equity. And then you know over time. Really, as I interviewed people and understood the American landscape in a different dimension, the second point became for me that systemic racism has shaped the American urban landscape fundamentally.

Alison:

And you know, due to discriminatory policies like redlining and restrictive covenants, race is too often correlated with where people live in cities, what elevations they live at, what temperatures they're exposed to and what resources they have in times of emergency, and so, as a result, climate change disproportionately affects under-resourced communities and communities of color. New Orleans is a really stunning example for me in the book and you know, as the city grew, discriminatory development policies really condensed its Black population in the lower elevations of the city, and this had horrifying effects during Hurricane Katrina, when New Orleans' Black population made up something like 70, almost 80%, 76% of its flood victims. And then, in cities like Baltimore, you know, you can have an affluent neighborhood that has something like 50% tree canopy cover, but in East Baltimore's redline neighborhoods it can be as little as 6%. So that means that on a hot day, there's about 16 degree difference between two parts of the same city. So these realities are really endemic to so many aspects of the built environment, and those cities that are creating greater equity while also addressing climate change are really creating the best models for resiliency.

Alison:

And then, third, you know from and this was also interesting that everything from creating bikeways and neighborhood parks to contemplating managed retreat. Really, the most effective solutions are born out of the communities they serve. Solutions that are led by locals can address their actual needs, and not only that, but they help remedy the history of injustice by putting people in communities in positions to really lead the change ahead, and this can ultimately lead to more inventive solutions, I think, as diverse communities and their experiences are brought to bear on some of our most pressing problems.

Alison:

We really need a lot of good ideas to face the challenges ahead, ahead. And then, you know, finally and this is kind of core to my own practice but also seemed to bubble up in so many places is that small experiments, however small, they can ultimately lead to really large scale changes. And a close example in the book that I mentioned, even in the forward, is the example of parking day, which began in 2005. And it created a park out of a parking space, and this one day event eventually created San Francisco's official parklet program and I think by 2019, there were something like 80 official parklets across the city and everyone was patting themselves on the back.

Alison:

But during the pandemic that, it just exploded. Right, they were everywhere. They just multiplied across the city as we needed places to, you know, go to school or shop or eat out, and that all happened in the space of the street. And then today I was looking at the stats recently there's over 2,000 shared spaces, you know, and those spaces are not just in San Francisco, you know, they're all over the world. So you know what happened as a one-day experiment on a parking spot has developed into a set of tools for really reusing the public right of way. So you know, really together all of those, those four themes are really woven into the stories of hope and change that I illustrate in From the Ground Up.

Jennifer:

And as I was reading it, you know, I think planners could absolutely benefit from this book, but the audience seemed to be somewhat wider than just the profession. So, as you were writing the book, who actually were you thinking about as your primary audience?

Alison:

I wanted From the Ground Up, to be accessible to a general audience. You know, when you pick up the book and you sum through it, you'll notice that. You know you can easily flip through all of these illustrations that give you an immediate sense of the content of the book. And they were all drawn by Packard Jennings based on research that we did also with Robert Ungar. And all of those illustrations are not only provocative but they illustrate a lot of the main points of the book and a lot of the case studies in them. And I thought a lot about how also the book could serve people organizing in their communities who really champion similar projects to the ones I feature in the book in the places that they live, and I hoped that learning about these examples around the country helps to fortify their efforts.

Alison:

And then as you point out, it was also important to me to inform the profession, sharing best practices with planners and urbanists, advocacy groups, government officials, designers, so that they can really learn from the efforts of communities throughout the United States. I mean, I think a lot of times we get embedded in our work and we don't have a chance to look up and kind of see the full breadth of who's working across. You know the country, much less the world, so that was really of interest to me as well. And then I'm also a teacher, so I wrote this to engage the next generation of practitioners who are working in the fields of sustainability and urbanism and activism, who are really eager to learn about how this work can be effective and equitable and, ultimately, how it can change cities.

Stephanie:

Well, reading your book actually came at a perfect time for us because I just finished reading it and then we had started work on a grant application through the EPA Environmental and Climate Justice Community Change Grant. And there were so many times where I was flipping through, pulling little facts out, modeling some of the programs. When I was in Minneapolis I was part of the Master Water Steward Program and you reference. I can't remember which city had a similar program. I think it was down in Georgia.

Alison:

But you had referenced a similar type of master water steward program, I was like, oh, that would be perfect for this grant. So it was well-timed, not only at coastal adaptation but there are watersheds statewide and how to address water issues and also move people, quite honestly, from lower and places that are in flood zones to higher and drier places, intensifying cities to be able to accept those populations. But it's great to hear that the book's applicable.

Stephanie:

So there's often a disconnect between local governments and community-based organizations that are on the ground doing this type of work. How can local officials do a better job of connecting with local organizations to accomplish the necessary work of becoming more resilient cities?

Alison:

Yeah, I mean local people and organizations. They bring often overlooked expertise, and it's really important to create processes that engage their knowledge in a number of ways. You know, what I heard most often from the people I interviewed was meet people where they are, and you know that can be street fairs or community gatherings or riding transit. The people need to be compensated adequately for their time. If child care or meals are offered at a community meeting, it's a lot easier for more people to attend, or if they fit their schedules or there's multiple ways of participating. And then if people are contributing over long periods of time, it's really important that they're compensated for their expertise and given money to make sure that they can remain engaged in the process.

Alison:

And then you know it's really important to listen, engaged in the process, and then you know it's really important to listen. People can recommend and offer things, but they need to be listened to when they do that, and that work needs to be taken seriously. I think that ultimately, too, it's providing avenues for local leadership, so that people with lived experience of transportation, inequalities and all of the other kinds of inequalities that exist in cities are really working in government agencies and design firms and you know all kinds of places, so that their lived experience is actually part of the way in which we are addressing these issues. And I'll give you an example of one that I found really inspiring. And I actually live in New York City right now, so this is very close to home. But you both may know that New York City has one of the best public transit systems in the country and it's like a city where a majority of people do not own cars, and that transit also includes having the largest bike share in the country, so making transit accessible is actually a really important thing in this city. As I said, that includes bike share, which we don't always associate with public transit, but really is an aspect of public transit here and, I think, in many other cities as those networks grow.

Alison:

So I covered a neighborhood in Brooklyn called Bedford-Stuyvesant, and City Bike, which is the bike share system here, had installed bike share systems in Bed-Stuy but many of the residents didn't ride them. The majority of the neighborhood's residents are black people and many of them have household incomes below the citywide median. And so, you know, due to the costs of riding bike share and the racial profiling associated with it and the perception that these programs are really just a tool of gentrification and displacement and not necessarily for long term residents, you know the program had not been a success. That was until the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration, which is a community development corporation in Brooklyn, led a group called the New York City Better Bike Share Partnership and together the partnership shaped a bike share system in the neighborhood to reflect the needs of the community. You know it was affordable, it created job opportunities, it created opportunities for local leadership and they organized all kinds of events like helmet giveaways and bike safety lessons, neighborhood rides and youth from the neighborhood were hired to survey residents. They were ambassadors and they surveyed people where they lived and they understood what they needed, and some of those young people actually went on to later get jobs for the New York DOT, which is exciting.

Alison:

There was other examples, like doctors in local hospitals prescribed bike share memberships to encourage active transportation, understanding that it was a part of becoming healthy. Local employers purchased subsidized memberships and SNAP recipients were also given discounts. And then restoration met with local precincts to address racial profiling and really make it safer for people to ride if they were people of color. So in just one year membership increased 56%, which is more than it did citywide. So Bed-Stuy is just one of the examples in the book that illustrates that when residents are involved in generating solutions, they can really make investments in their neighborhoods representative of their communities and relevant to their needs and ultimately just more effective.

Jennifer:

I have a friend who moved to Bed-Stuy last year and so I shared the story with her. I was like, oh, did you know that you guys didn't always have bike share? And she's like I can't even imagine Bed-Stuy without bike share. She takes a bike every day to go down to the subway stop and she's like why wouldn't we have ever had that?

Alison:

Yeah, it's amazing, you know, I think so many bike shares started in kind of the hearts of cities and didn't always, you know, serve. I mean in New York City, all the boroughs for sure, and you see that in a lot of systems where they kind of prioritize the main business district and not necessarily the places where a lot of people live and really need to rely on that, especially if they're not well served by public transit.

Jennifer:

Yeah, omaha, which is Nebraska's largest city, is putting in a streetcar and the main criticism that it's been facing is that it's really only going to shuttle tourists from downtown to midtown and back and that's not really where it needs to be to help people. But you do also have to prove proof of concept right and show that things can work. So it's an interesting balance.

Alison:

Yeah, I haven't looked into this in the context of the book, but one of the more interesting things that I'm interested in researching more is how bus networks can perform that, because they're a lot more flexible. So you can try things, and I know Houston has had some great examples of this and there's some degree to which that's been attempted here in New York City, where the SBS system was tried on 14th Street and has been wildly successful, and so now that will be taken into other boroughs. But it certainly is one way of scaling up a transit network on the cheap, as long as you can have operators and also streets that serve those buses, so that they can actually get around and not just be stuck in traffic.

Jennifer:

It's fair. And also, you know the first book you write but gets the second book you write right.

Alison:

Exactly.

Jennifer:

So, as you mentioned, maybe it's just that I haven't been able to pull my head back from the work that I had to put my nose to the grind on, but we've talked a lot about redlining in past episodes, but you presented a phrase that I hadn't yet heard of from Dr Destiny Thomas, which was purple lining, so can you explain this term in case others haven't been able to pull their heads up lately either and discuss how it's negatively impacting how we still, to this day, design our cities?

Alison:

Yeah, so purple lining was a term coined by cultural anthropologist and planner, dr Destiny Thomas, as really an analog to redlining, and the term came out of the 2020 shelter in place circumstances in Oakland, california, which is one of the first cities in the country to begin closing its streets to traffic, and the city prioritized routes in under-resourced neighborhoods for recognizing that many of the communities that were the hardest hit by the pandemic were those that had the least access to open space. However, as a Black woman living in Oakland, destiny argued that, because Black and Brown communities were not involved in the decision-making process, that many residents wondered who the streets were actually for, and in our interview, she expressed I actually interviewed her during the throes of the pandemic and she expressed that she felt that an opportunity was really missed to reverse the legacy of discrimination and give communities greater agency in determining their futures especially in a time of emergency agency and determining their futures, especially in a time of emergency.

Alison:

So when I asked her why purple, she said that it came out of her own experiences of bias when she was working at the LADOT, leading community engagement efforts, and she described that her mostly white colleagues would shade areas on the map where black people lived using the color purple.

Alison:

And you know, I think this kind of very personal experience, but turning it into a terminology that allowed people to easily understand what that meant. You know, she brought attention to the reality that people were affected very differently by the pandemic. That meant that it was even more important for communities to advance their own solutions to the crisis.

Stephanie:

So another term that you use in the book in several chapters is community-based planning. What is this and how does it differ from a traditional planning approach?

Alison:

Yeah, community-based planning is about local leadership. So historically, many communities have been intentionally left out of the planning process and decisions have been determined for communities instead of with them Often engagement processes. You know they can check boxes but they don't actually promote local decision making. One example that came to mind is really during Hurricane Katrina I was describing earlier that you know, new Orleans' Black population made up this huge percentage of its flood victims and unfortunately storms in Louisiana and in New Orleans are only getting worse. New Orleans has become one of the wettest cities in the United States and most of the storms occur in intense cloud bursts. So that could be in an hour there's something like five or six inches of rain, so really really intense storms, and that makes green infrastructure a really essential tool in managing stormwater.

Alison:

So after Hurricane Katrina, angela Chalk, who is the executive director of Healthy Community Services in the Seventh Ward, which is a very low-lying area, worked with a group called Waterwise Gulf South to really direct investments to her neighborhood and she launched a crew of volunteers to create infrastructure green infrastructure in her own backyard and front yard and the sidewalk. And when the next storm hit and she didn't flood, her neighbors were interested in the same kinds of remedies, you know, wanting to find out how they could fare better. So, really knowing her neighbors and her neighborhood, she brought people together. You know she would make home cooked meals and bring people together in her house and she knew everyone. So it was easy for her to kind of plan things that people could attend and understand their restrictions and what might make a community process more effective. And during those sessions she really helped people to understand how green infrastructure works and how it complements the really complex system of, you know, levees and pumps and canals that make New Orleans work every day. So now, today, the neighborhood has entire blocks of demonstration projects and the Seventh Ward is part of a number of neighborhoods that are part of the Waterwise Champions, which is a training program which provides avenues to employment by connecting people with very local knowledge to technical expertise about green infrastructure.

Alison:

And then, when you know, a $141 million HUD grant was awarded to New Orleans to create the Gentilly District. They toured the Seventh Ward. So these kinds of community approaches that Angela and many of her other colleagues are leading in, neighborhoods in the city are being expanded as a network of permeable parks and green streets and stormwater corridors are being created throughout the city, and residents are really contributing to these projects by sharing local knowledge, by developing water literacy and planning for the future of their city. You know, I think one of the things that really stuck with me is that the truth is that, when it comes to climate change, we really need to engage each other in determining the very difficult choices about how we want to live in the future. There are things that we're going to have to give up and there's things that we're going to have to decide to keep, and that, essentially, should be a democratic process. So, ideally, community-based planning is allowing for everyone to have a seat at that table.

Jennifer:

It seems that often even community-led efforts for change have faced very frustrating pushbacks in their own neighborhoods, like the bike share program that we talked about in Bed-Stuy. So how did they originally go wrong, and what advice would you provide to community activists to avoid that kind of outcome in the future?

Alison:

But this question is also really relevant to another example in the book in Minneapolis, which focuses on the North Minneapolis Greenway. And just to give some context to your listeners, you know Minneapolis has some of the best biking infrastructure in benefit everyone, especially communities of color in Minneapolis, and among those communities are those in North Minneapolis. So it's a neighborhood where there's a majority of Black residents, many of them have been chronically poor, and also there's many suffer from adverse health conditions like asthma, and so there's high rates of premature death in that neighborhood In a city with a robust biking network. You know North Minneapolis unfortunately really lacks it and the city came in sort of acknowledging these inequities. You know, in partnership with Blue Cross, they launched a pilot program to create a Northside Greenway, really seeing biking as being part of a solution to both transit inequity and health inequities, and they painted lanes and they put out picnic tables and they created this kind of temporary version of the Northside Greenway. But you know, not all communities members felt involved and, worse, some felt like the bike lane was again the sort of leading edge of gentrification, displacement, and there was a movement called Stop the North Minneapolis Greenway and it ultimately successfully removed a section of the pilot project, and I think this resistance reveals a kind of justified mistrust of government processes that often can engage communities but they don't adequately resource projects towards correcting broader systemic inequities. For example, you know, if transit, access to transit had been advanced alongside the removal of parking so that residents didn't have to rely as much on cars, that may have been a solution that people felt like okay, well, that's a reasonable trade-off. So and that was acknowledged in the kind of final reporting about it Following that, the neighborhood really came together and they were brought together by two people, will Lumpkins and Alexis Penny, who organize this, the Northside Greenway now, and they're you know, they're locals to this neighborhood.

Alison:

Both of them grew up there and they knocked on doors and they talked with their neighbors and they got people together at block parties and open street events and they organized community rides, all towards creating a common vision of you know really, with the question what is a Northside Greenway and what should it look like? And that vision has really contributed to people saying that you know what they want is a greenway to connect local businesses and cultural centers. You know that it should create an opportunity for kids and their families to be able to walk and bike safely to school, things like that. So as the city expands its neighborhood greenways, I think there's something like 50 plus miles that are, and will be, added to Minneapolis's network.

Alison:

Will and Alexis have been leading a successful effort to get the Northside Greenway into the city's budget as a priority project. But even today I actually just checked this a few weeks ago its construction isn't scheduled to begin until 2028. So when I finished the book it was 2026. You know, communities like that, those in North Minneapolis, deserve those kinds of investments today, and I think this example really illustrates that community leadership is key to creating effective solutions. Perhaps if the project had been started with local advocacy instead of kind of something that people felt was imposed upon them, it might have been built today. So often when there's pushback, it can be because people's needs have not been adequately addressed in the process.

Stephanie:

I think that example is such a good reminder to professionals like us that we have the data, we know where there was disinvestment, where there was redlining, where there's things to be rectified, and we just have these ideas to go in and fix it for them, instead of fixing it with them and including them in the process to make sure it really is something that would benefit them and improve their communities.

Alison:

Yeah.

Stephanie:

So you include the broad bucket of climate change. Resilience planning, or just resilience planning, has so many opportunities for creating jobs, especially those with criminal backgrounds, which you have. A couple examples of programs in the book that are really great, and they include street outreach programs, tree planting and training programs. What has made these programs so successful?

Alison:

Yeah, and when I was researching the book, some of the most compelling case studies that I found were those that were doing more than one thing at a time. You know, as you point out, like there are great opportunities for creating more resilient communities while also creating local jobs and expanding urban forests and all of those things together, and one of the most compelling examples of that in the book for me was learning about the Baltimore Wood Project. You know, baltimore has 30,000 vacant buildings and lots and parts of the city with 25% unemployment and, as we talked about too, the disparity in tree canopy alone right is a huge hurdle in terms of making sure that the city can achieve its 40% tree canopy goal. It has to replant many neighborhoods that have been under-resourced for decades.

Stephanie:

So the.

Alison:

Baltimore Wood Project is a really interesting kind of holistic example in the book. It employs local people many have been formerly incarcerated in salvaging wood from the city's abandoned buildings. They learn the tools of the trade in actually deconstructing buildings instead of constructing them, which offers them an on-ramp to legitimate employment. And a really startling statistic was that there's more wood going into landfills than is harvested from the national forests in this country. So as it decays, that wood is releasing carbon that it would otherwise store.

Alison:

But the wood that the Baltimore Wood Project is salvaging you know much of it is rare species that can no longer be harvested is now, you know, through this process, being sold to businesses like Room and Board. And Room and Board has this line of furniture named after the streets where these houses once stood, so like the Edding bookcase and the McKean storage cabinet. And then the lots where these houses once stood are being converted through community processes to neighborhood parks and small urban forests that are providing great public spaces, that cool the air and clean neighborhoods and ultimately contribute to the city's 40% tree canopy goal. So these kinds of programs that provide jobs, that mitigate emissions, that expand urban forests, are really examples of how social justice and climate action can be aligned.

Jennifer:

I know this is a little outside the purview of the book, but a lot of the projects, especially in the plant the city and adapt the shoreline chapters, reminded me of some of the old public works programs projects. So could you see a way that the federal government could potentially step in and start assisting with these types of projects again, but obviously focusing on more of a ground up effort?

Alison:

Sure. In the context of the book, I looked at how federal policies like the Clean Water Act still stimulating green infrastructure projects that are being built around this country, many of which I discuss in the book and this legislation is as important as ever as storms increase. More recently, legislation like the bipartisan infrastructure bill has created unprecedented levels of funding for active transportation and safe streets, and this bill could ultimately help states to reduce vehicle miles traveled and tip the 80-20 split which has favored highways to mass transit since the Reagan years. But it will take all of us demanding that this funding isn't used by our state DOTs to widen highways and re-entrench the private automobile. You know we're at a tipping point right now. So the federal government, I think, can do and it can also undo a lot, but ultimately we have to remember that it's the people that direct the future of this country.

Stephanie:

A major concern with any improvements made to depressed neighborhoods is gentrification. What ways have communities been successful in ensuring stormwater management improvements, in the addition of more bike lanes or other resilient infrastructure isn't pricing out existing residents.

Alison:

Yeah, this is something that came up a lot in my research and continues to. In one interview, someone made the point to me that gentrification is not necessarily a bad thing as it can bring investments to neighborhoods that need them. But it is certainly true that without protections for long-term residents it can lead to displacement. And one of the most promising tools that I focused on in my research was equitable development plans, which, when I finished the book, was just finishing up and since has been continuing to unfold, and I looked at it in the context of Bayview Hunters Point in San Francisco. So in Bayview Hunters Point, which is located, you know, in the southern part of San Francisco, there is a series of waterfront parks that are being developed and the newest among them is called the India Basin Waterfront Park.

Alison:

And, to give some context, bayview Hunters Point is historically, you know, has some of the highest rates of homeownership among Black people in the city. The Great Migration brought many Black families to the neighborhood who were, you know, many of them were seeking jobs and got employment for the Naval Shipyard. But since, you know, the shipyard has long closed and the neighborhood's been largely neglected by the city and really cut off from the rest of San Francisco by the freeway. So there's been long-term disinvestment in transit and housing and it's an EJ community. The highway and local power plants have polluted the community for generations now, but residents have also organized. There was a really incredible group of women called the Big Five who successfully lobbied in Washington DC to bring investments in public housing to their neighborhood in the 1960s. That was followed by neighborhood activists actually shutting down the PG&E power plant, which began this series of waterfront parks. It's a really inspiring story.

Alison:

And today those parks along the southern waterfront it's really the last remaining coastline in San Francisco that's being developed and really they're using the India Basin Waterfront Park, which is the last remaining piece of that, but also the one that connects all of these other parks, to catalyze the equitable development plan, which is intended to benefit Bayview-Hunters Point residents.

Alison:

So the plan was created by local leaders that have historically been left out of the planning process and they were brought together by the next generation of Bayview Hunters Point leaders, like people like Jacqueline Bryant, who grew up in Bayview and is now the executive director of the local chapter of the A Philip Randolph Institute.

Alison:

And the Equitable Development Plan outlines ways in which the park can really generate economic opportunities for residents through local hires in the creation and operation of the park, by bringing small businesses into the park that can provide concessions or kayak rentals, all kinds of things, and then also that you know the park is host to cultural programming that really reflects the community. The plan also addresses affordable housing and connecting the neighborhood to transit, like to transit, and also bike paths, like the Bay Trail, which circumnavigates the entire bay. So those are really really important in providing access for residents to opportunities in San Francisco. And this work is just beginning. But if it's successful, the park will not only be creating a natural amenity for the neighborhood and mitigating the effects of climate change, but also becoming a catalyst for social justice.

Jennifer:

And, as you've shown throughout, example after example in the book, a lot of change occurs at the grassroots level, but it's really hard work. So what encouragement would you give people who are trying to build from the ground up but might be getting tired at this point?

Alison:

build from the ground up, but might be getting tired at this point. Yeah, I get it. I've thought about this a bit in the process of researching, actually, my next book, which is entitled Street Life, and it focuses on how we can reimagine our city's largest public spaces for people, and in the process, I've been interviewing community organizers that are fighting to reimagine the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, which is, you know, one of the first highways in the country. It was built by Robert Moses here and then, you know, even before the Federal Highway Act was passed in 1956. So it's in many ways the template for the highway system that we have inherited today and it also bears many of the tactics of that system. It was a highway that used eminent domain to displace, you know, thousands of people and black and brown communities. I think the stat is that New York City wide, with all of the freeways that he constructed, it was something like 250,000 people that lost their homes, which is just an extraordinary number. And the BQE, you know, when it was built it displaced people, but it also continues to pollute neighborhoods and increase traffic violence and overwhelm public spaces with just a ton of hostile noises and rumbling trucks and horrible air quality.

Alison:

And this has been a fight that's lasted for more than 80 years. It's generational and it's exhausting for many of the people that have been involved in it. You know, I think what's often the most activating to many of the people that I interviewed in From the Ground Up and continue to in my work today, is knowing that there are other people involved in the same kinds of fights in the US and around the world and that they are a part of a community of shared experience, of expertise and commitment to the kinds of things that they're trying to do, for example. And often it's really helpful to be informed by history. So in the 1960s you look back to the freeway revolts and, yes, we got a lot of horrible freeways, but they also organized to stop many freeways across the nation from ever even being built.

Alison:

And today there's a new freeway fighters movement that's underway in the United States, with more than 100 communities pushing to prevent the expansion of highways in their communities, trying to cap them or retool them as multimodal streets or even to tear them down. So in New York, the BQE Environmental Justice Coalition has organized themselves in neighborhoods along the entire stretch of the BQ I think all 12 miles. And I think what's amazing is that I haven't seen that many coalitions that have used a highway as their common thread. It's really interesting. You know, you can often think of communities and where you live, but this is actually organizing along something that affects them all in very different ways in their very different communities.

Alison:

So it's been really inspiring for me to track it. And together they're calling for plans to reduce driving, to prioritize climate and public health and community reconnection, and they together are essential partners in a grant that the city was awarded through the Reconnecting Communities Program to advance a new vision for the BQE corridor, and that work is underway today. And it's only one of many projects among over $3 billion that was awarded by the USDOT in 2024 to redress the impact of the nation's freeways as part of the bipartisan infrastructure bill. And their efforts are part of a movement to make cities equitable and livable, and to date, both Democrats and Republicans have joined together to support them. So these are the kinds of hopeful examples in which communities are leading solutions ahead and being supported by government policies and funding in doing this work that hopefully will help remedy the exhaustion of constant advocacy.

Jennifer:

And as this is Booked on Planning, besides your book, which Stephanie and I recommend everyone go pick up a copy of, what books would you recommend our readers check out?

Alison:

Well, thank you for that recommendation. I really appreciate it. I have to say that Island Press has an extraordinary library and I would always start with them. Island Press books are the majority of books on my own bookshelf, and Veronica Davis's Inclusive Transportation is the next one on my list, although there's many others behind it. And then I have to recommend the Power Broker by Robert Caro, who you know. This is the 50th anniversary of that book and it's incredible. It's very long but really worth it.

Alison:

Also, this year has been tracked by 99% Invisible, which is a podcast that has been doing a series of interviews and kind of a book club along for the whole year, so you can read chapters and then hear other people's thoughts, and many of them have been affected or were involved in the story of New York City and really that story is one of the damage that can be done with unbridled power in a city like New York.

Alison:

But it's also got complexities. You know Caro is so open hearted and wonderfully connects with with people whose lives were changed by the freeway system, but he also talks about, like Robert Moses's, impact on public parks as well. So it's a really complex and interesting story and I highly recommend it's a brick of a book but it's very worth it. And then one I picked up recently is a book called the Movement by Clara Bingham, and it's a story of the women's liberation movement between 1963 and 1973. So 10 years, and it's told through the voices of people that lived that change, which there was so much that was accomplished in 10 years, and I think it's really hopeful to remember when we've seen such profound limitations put on women's rights in recent years. That you know the movement is also instructive to the next wave of organizing and protecting the rights of women going forward.

Jennifer:

I think I will have to add that to my to be read list as well, and interestingly, you're the second person now that has said the power broker in like the last three interviews.

Alison:

So I think there's a collective group now engaged in this reading and, like most things, when you do it together, it's easier.

Jennifer:

That's fair and very helpful when it's 1300 pages long, Right right and very helpful with 99 PI. Thank you, guys for all of that work that they're doing.

Alison:

It's an amazing podcast.

Stephanie:

Well, Alison, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast to talk about your book. From the ground up local efforts to create resilient cities.

Alison:

Thank you, Stephanie, and thank you Jennifer. It was really wonderful to talk to you both.

Jennifer:

We hope you enjoyed this conversation with author Alison Sant on her book From the Ground Up Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities. You can get your own copy through the publisher at Island Press using the discount code GROUND or click the link in the show notes to take you directly to our affiliate page. Remember to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and please rate, review and share the show. Thank you.

People on this episode

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Jennifer Hiatt

Co-host
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Stephanie Rouse, AICP

Co-host