Ellen Dunham-Jones Wants To Retrofit Suburbia

When Serenbe was first conceived, Steve Nygren had the opportunity to rethink almost everything from the ground up. But most of the places where people live don’t have that luxury. They’re already built, and in many cases, they’re struggling.

That’s where our guest today, Ellen Dunham-Jones, comes in. An architect, urban designer, and longtime professor at Georgia Tech, Ellen has spent more than two decades exploring how existing suburbs can evolve. 

In this conversation, Steve and Ellen explore everything from transforming abandoned malls and creating more third places to stormwater parks, autonomous transportation, climate migration, and what the suburbs might look like twenty years from now.

If Serenbe is an example of what can happen when you start with a blank slate, Ellen’s work asks an equally important question: What should we do with the places we’ve already built?

Show Notes:

• Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson
• Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson
• Ellen Dunham-Jones: Retrofitting suburbia (TED)
• Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU)
• DPZ CoDesign (Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk)
• Nygren Placemaking 
• Serenbe

Are You Ready For Radical Common Sense? Visionary placemaker Steve Nygren chronicles the rise of Serenbe, a pioneering model of biophilic living outside Atlanta, and charts a path for others wishing to challenge the status quo, embrace optimism, and reinvent their communities…and themselves. 

Order the book today. 

Subscribe on Substack and receive a free essay from Steve every week. 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to season two of Start in Your Own Backyard, a series about the power we each have to shape the places where we live and in turn the world around us. I'm Steve Nigren, and this season I'm looking outward, sitting down with people who have shaped the way I think about the built environment, and others who are putting their ideas into action in communities of their own. I believe the built environment as it exists today is at the root of many of our biggest challenges. But I also believe it can be a powerful part of the solution. These are stories about taking agency, using the skills and resources we have, and starting wherever we are. Because meaningful change doesn't always begin with a grand plan. Sometimes it starts in your own backyard. When we set out to build Cerembi, we had the opportunity to rethink almost everything from the ground up. But most of the places where people live don't have that luxury. They're already built, and in many cases, they're struggling. That's why I was eager to speak with today's guest, Ellen Dunan-Jones. Ellen is an architect, urban designer, and longtime professor at Georgia Tech, where she taught for more than two decades. She and her co-author, June Williamson, have spent years documenting what they call retrofitting suburbia, finding new life for dead malls, aging office parks, oversized parking lots, and other places that were never designed for the challenges we face today. One of the things I appreciate most about Ellen's work is that she doesn't dwell on the issues with suburban development. Instead, she asks a much more useful question: How do we make the places we already have work better for both people and for the planet? In our conversation, we talk about everything from transforming abandoned malls and creating more third places to stormwater parks, autonomous transportation, climate migration, and what the suburbs might look like 20 years from now. If Cerembi is an example of what can happen when we start with a blank slate, Ellen's work asks an equally important question: what should we do with the places we've already built?

SPEAKER_01 2:42

The environmentalists and the affordable housing folks would often be at odds on how you know that solutions to one were going to hurt the other. And CNU's charter was about we recognize that these are interrelated problems and they need they need interrelated solutions. And that design alone is not going to solve um these problems, but that design is a is a very important piece of it.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

You know, I was just thinking, what year did you start teaching at Georgia Tech? 2000. 2000, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

So uh about the same time you started CERNB.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

That's right. It was the exact time when we were thinking, you know, what what do we do to save this area and how can we bring balanced growth in? So I remember that you were in our early conversations, and I was I was I was thinking you just arrived there. And before tech, where were you?

SPEAKER_01 3:40

I was at MIT for uh eight years before and then at University of Virginia for seven years before that.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Right, right. So uh it's hard to believe all those years have passed.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

I know I literally I have just I am officially, I'm in day 22 of retirement. Oh, retired from Georgia Tech, July 1.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

So Oh, that is an update. I hadn't I hadn't heard that. Yeah. And so what are you doing in retirement?

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Well, I'll actually have more time to actually do work on my research, um, to do consulting, to do watercolors, to travel and have fun, um, to volunteer for things. I mean, all the stuff that I haven't had any time for.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Oh well, I have all sorts of ideas. We'll maybe be calling you on a couple boards and things going on that uh retired life uh allows that to sometimes happen. Yeah, yeah. Uh and what are you researching now? What what's your current research?

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Well, I'm still I want to, I have not had been able to really update my database. Um, it's it's out of I've got 2,500 case studies in there, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. And I've just uh uh a number there used to be four of us teaching urban design. I'm it now, and I gave the school three years' notice that I would retire in 2026 because I just haven't had any time to be able to keep up the database. So I want to figure out what to do with the database. Um I do have a feeling AI probably could make its own version that would be full of errors, but maybe better. I don't know. I'm I'm gonna have to sort of figure out.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

That's why a whole other conversation.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

But retrofitting suburbia is still my research topic.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Exactly. And so when did you really start thinking about suburbia and the issues that we were probably gonna face in there they're they're here today?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

So it actually does go back. My first teaching job was at University of Virginia. And like I it was a great place to learn how to teach. I really respected my colleagues, all of whom, all of us are trying to polish the top of the pyramid of excellence in architecture and get our students, you know, operating at that level. At the same time, beautiful pastoral Charlottesville, you could practically hear the bulldozers coming down from Washington and chewing up countryside and building sprawl. I grew up in New Jersey and I was suddenly going, oh my God, it's starting to look like New Jersey. No, no. I think I want to start trying to lift the bottom of that pyramid. There's more, plenty of my colleagues. I love great design, I love great architecture, but everybody was focused on the top, and I started getting interested in focusing on the bottom. Saw a lecture by Andres Dwani and Liz Plater-Zyberg and kind of went, uh-huh. That's that's the step. That's the kind of discussion I want to be part of. And it was going to CNUs. I didn't turn uh invent the term retrofitting suburbia, but there were projects that Victor Dover, other folks were presenting, and they weren't sexy enough to be published in the architecture magazines, but I thought this is important work. I this is what I'm going to document. I think this does deserve a bigger audience.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

So we don't always think of suburbia and CNU as being together.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Oh, absolutely. Actually, the charter, the the first paragraph of the Charter of the New Urbanism states, and I won't be able to quote it exactly, but you know, that we recognize the interrelated problems of you know uh reinvigorating our downtowns. They didn't, I don't know, they it's not exactly retrofitting suburbs, but you know, um making helping our suburbs better perform and conserving our greenfields and recognizing that there were different groups um focused on each of those in somewhat different ways, but the environmentalists and the affordable housing folks would often be at odds on how, you know, that solutions to one were going to hurt the other. And CNU's charter was about we are trying to find solutions. The we recognize that these are interrelated problems and they need they need interrelated solutions. And that design alone is not going to solve these problems, but that design is a is a very important piece of it.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

So so for me and our listeners, uh help me connect those dots because uh many times I think about new urbanism as being in new places. A lot of them are what we consider the green field where place development hasn't happened. And you were one of the first voices that I really remember that with a retrofit. This was okay, let's let's let's retrofit something that isn't working, whether it's that means let's use the structure to re-redo it or just tear it down ground. Is is that true, or was I mean that's what I think of it?

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Well, the news media picked up always on the new things. That's what all the media uh so and early on, I mean, Seaside got all the attention um uh as the the poster child for new urbanism, and it is a greenfield project because it was illegal everywhere else to build, as you know, mixed use, small lot, mixed lot, mixed income um development. So it was only on the redneck Riviera, as it was sort of called at that time, uh, that it was possible to suddenly try this out. And so Seaside did become the poster child, but really quite quickly, um, you know, that was uh designed in the 70s, but really the 80s, built in the 80s. By the 90s, Ray Gindros was the chair of the Congress for the New Urbanism and entirely focused on downtowns and public housing. So it was the downtown, a lot of work. CNU was brought in by uh Henry Cisneros, Clinton's secretary of HUD, to rewrite the design guidelines for public housing to become mixed use and mixed income. And that was a huge focus when I was starting to really get involved. And then the attention to retrofitting suburbia became kind of a bigger focus in the aughts, you know, the early 2000s.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

What are some of those poster child projects that are the retrofitting the cities?

SPEAKER_01 11:12

So the downtown cities, again, mostly around a lot of around public housing. So Ray Ginjos was doing some amazing work in Pittsburgh, really right in the downtown where 1960s public housing was falling apart, and uh Cabrini Green in Chicago, uh Peter Calthorpe worked on. Uh so that those would be two that just immediately come to mind. And they were replaced then with mixed-income um the guy, the rewriting the rules to reconnect the street grids that had been demolished to make way for the super block 1960s type public housing, to make the buildings the same basic massing as their surroundings, so that they would no longer be identified as the projects in something different. Give every home a street address so children going to school would not immediately be identified as from the projects. And to finance them so that approximately one-third were market rate, one third were somewhat subsidized, and one third were truly folks getting significant welfare.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

And so then, but but you're one of the first ones that started talking about suburbia. Is that is that correct? And and for our listeners, you you might uh describe what you call retrofitting suburbia.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Absolutely. So early on, I as I said, I've I saw these projects that I thought we're actually doing really important things, you know, building urbanism on the sites of dead malls, dying office parks, aging commercial, mostly aging commercial properties, especially in the early days. So when I talk about retrofitting suburbia, um we're really and and I have my co-author, June Williamson, joined me very, very early on. And so I really say we. We've written two books, uh two award-winning books on this. And it really is, I think our argument is that so the retrofitting takes three basic forms: redevelopment, re-inhabitation with social infrastructure, and re-greening. And most communities really want, and developers really want the redevelopment with walkable, mixed-use, uh, mixed income urbanism. They want to reclaim their tax base and kind of the cash cow that that mall or office park or strip mall was providing. But that, and that works great in strong markets. In weaker markets, often the banks aren't going to finance. It seems too risky to really, you don't have the population growth to justify necessarily mixed-use redevelopment. And that's where we see a lot more reinhabitation of that existing box with social infrastructure, putting in all sorts of education at every level, pre-K through university, uh, lots of health care, lots of jobs. Uh, it's actually surprising how easy it is to just take a dead mall, put in some carpeting, get out a chainsaw, put in a few more windows, and you've got perfectly good office space. So um the and then the third strategy that is finally starting to happen more, but has has never been enough, is re-greening. So repairing the ecology that we messed up when we built all this parking lot-dominated building types. And you know, but it it is helping to, it's it's in a somewhat sad way. I mean, because climate change is recognized now more and more as such a threat, that's actually spawning a lot more re-greenings of parking lots into stormwater parks, into just social green parks for people to be able to recreate and get together in town greens. All three of those strategies we consider examples of retrofitting.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

And interestingly, when when you started talking about retrofitting suburbia, I think malls were still being opened. And in this period of time, my goodness, uh what what you would identify the problem has certainly come home that um many of our regional malls are all struggling closing, uh uh and all trying to figure out what they're doing. I I think uh you need to send each one of them one of your books.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

It's uh yeah, I mean the first dead mall to downtown was in the early 90s, down in Boca Ratone, Florida. But and then the second one was in Bell uh outside of Denver in Lakewood, Colorado, in the late 90s, kind of getting into the early 2000s. And those both did so well that all of a sudden, as malls were beginning to really by 2000, the last mall we built in the US was around 2005-6. Uh, but there was just a cascade as they were starting to age because of online shopping, and then you get COVID. I mean, they took a real hit. The high-end malls are still doing very, very well. And they've actually bounced back fully. But the B, the C, the D ones have already died. We've lost more than half of the malls that we at one that we at one point had one point had. And and they're these are opportunity sites. I mean, you get 50 to 100 acres, usually located right near plenty of highway access. They've already been cleared, they've already got some utilities, maybe not enough. Uh you know, they'll they need they'll need more. But the these are um it's it's fascinating to see the creative and different ways that they get reused. And I mean, everything from uh certainly the mixed-use town center, but there's all lots of different models on that. Um in England, there was a very a dead mall that has since been redeveloped, but before it got redeveloped and they got all the financing together, it was reused as a zombie theme park. And it had a six-month wait list for people who would pay a lot of money for a whole two-hour experience in the dead apocalyptic mall being chased by zombies, and they had real act professional actors playing both zombies and nurses, but you didn't know whether the nurses were actually going to infect you and make you a zombie. Um, anyway, I digress. But I mean, people have gotten very, very creative with what to do with dead malls.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Well, you know, you think of the malls are all in well, suburbia, where people have gone for larger lots, more disconnection, and now you're coming in with density. How have you found that accepted as you go into these communities?

SPEAKER_01 19:07

So a couple of things. On the one hand, I think one thing that the new urbanists learned early on, and and you've certainly seen, I think, in your uh work as well, is that people associate density with ugliness. And yet if you, I mean, uh new urbanism early on learned that the way that if you design things in a very traditional manner and made them as cute and pretty as possible, that traditional design was for new urbanists, I often described it as that was the sheep's clothing over the wolf of urbanism and density. And that folks, when they would see renderings, they go, oh, well, if that's what you know, they see these sort of beautiful, a beautiful mixed-use um community that looks like a more traditional place. If that's what you mean by density, that's fine. You know. I think what it also really comes down to, though, even more important than because that role of traditional design, that that was being used very strategically. It wasn't an aesthetic preference on the part of the new organist. It was the only way to get permits early on. But I think the real the question with density that people should be asking is is this density contributing to or detracting from the quality of the public realm? And too often we focus on the individual building and just think, okay, is that a pretty pretty building or not? What is much more important is that a really great public spaces feel like an outdoor room. They are clear where the buildings are the walls, the street walls that frame that space, whether it's a plaza, whether it's a park, whether it's a street, but a great public space. It feels like an outdoor room. It might be tree-lined, it might be paved plaza just flanked with uh buildings. It but it has the kind of spatial enclosure that makes us as humans feel very comfortable. And it has a lot to do with the ratio of the width of the space to the height of the buildings and some degree of consistency. And at that point, you can have really great, you actually can't have really great uh urbanism. Without some degree of density.

SPEAKER_00 22:02

You need to make those and these are the places you call the third place, I believe, right? Sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

So uh have you already discussed third places on the on the podcast? Or do you want me to should I define them? Sure, go ahead. So Ray Oldenberg, a sociologist, defined third places as so home is the first place, work is the second place, the third place is where you go to build community. And the rules in the third place are that the hierarchies of either home or work no longer apply. So often a third place, it might be a barber shop or a salon. Um, it might be, it's often a cafe or a bar. And for for the listeners who are uh closer in age to both Steve and I might remember the TV show Cheers, which was a sitcom centered on a bar where everybody knows your name, and where the postman and the snobby psychologist would belly up to the bar next to each other, and there's absolutely no hierarchy between them. And it it's that kind of community building that Oldenburg uh describes and and and recognized was difficult to you you recognize a third place when you see it working. Um, a British pub, classic example, often you know it has locals, it has regulars, but yet strangers still feel welcome. That's another one of the rules. But he he felt you can't produce, you can't guarantee that what you're making will really function as a third place. But if you don't have them, spaces where that can happen, you're guaranteeing that you won't build community.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

And you see that as one of the most common things through, you know, through decades and centuries that defines places that survive and thrive versus those that sort of shrivel.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

You know, absolutely. I I think there's a bit of a funny, interesting. I do think third places are extremely important for communities. But I also think it's really interesting when you start diving into them. There are differences in how, I mean, one could say malls in the 1970s and 80s, the mall rats, uh, teenagers, they those were third, very important third places. Today we wouldn't, we kind of that's not what Oldenburg had in mind, you know. Um, but they did serve that, but they also served it differently to boys versus girls. Teenage girls actually did go to comparison shop. Teenage boys mostly went to try to meet the girls. And so when a new mall would open up, the girls would be really excited to just leave the old mall, go to the try fought, try out the new mall. And the boys would be devastated. They just lost their social life when the when their mall died. A new mall opened up. So, you know, there yes, I think third places are super, super important. Um, but I think it's also, I mean, it's also really interesting. One of the um early dead mall to New Downtowns is Bell Mar, which was is uh six miles outside of Denver in the suburb of Lakewood. And they've uh did a great job. What was a hundred-acre site is now 22 blocks, mixed use, lots of really diverse housing types, um very well well made, well done. Uh but what's been interesting was that actually the food and beverage places thrived. The retail struggled. The food and the because the neighborhood, the the rest of Lakewood is basically like so many suburbs now, it's mostly aging baby boomers. Uh what Bel Mar was providing did attract a lot of seniors who love the sort of lock and load, like lock and leave, you know, of a townhouse. But you had also just a lot of younger people moving in. And so restaurants at lunchtime, the music is low, it's comfort food, and it's operating perfectly for the baby boomer, larger surroundings. But at cocktail hour, five o'clock, the music goes up, it's all about the the young the hipsters and the younger generation. And food and beverage could play those games. But a retailer is like, I don't know, should I open a garden supply shop for the rest of this? Or a boot, you know, a hipster boutique. And they had they they've had a little more trouble. So all of which is is just to say, you know, ideally, I the a really great third place, I think, is serving multiple audiences, but they do often rec recognize that there's just different times of day that different groups are going to be in there, and you know, it's all of that sort of finessing, which I know you could you could lecture on for hours, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

We've really experienced that. And and we find that the um uh what fills some of our our our commercial streets, along with the hospitality and and traditional sort of retail, are the services. And and we're getting these incredible mama-pop services, some unique, some more expected. And that's really filling in a space that also drives traffic from, you know, you see the volume of of all these things we have at Cerambi. It's it's it's way beyond what our residents could support. But they're they're all things that can draw people from those other places.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

Uh and that you cannot get online. That's what the service is. They're very much in person.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

That's right. And that's that's where we see the growing shops that can populate our our streets. You know, it it's going to be changing, you know, how as you see uh anyone born in this century uh really sees a car as a burden. And of course, they're taking the keys away from my generation. So uh that this is moving both both pockets to these more walkable communities that we've all been talking about. Um you know, project out 20 years with you, you think about those trends. You think about you know, autonomous cars now. Uh my 10-year-old grandson just loves going to Midtown so he can ride in the in the Waymo's. Uh we have to park the car. We we we can't use the car anymore. Once we hit the city, you know, it it's all that. So what how's this going to change uh suburbia, especially where it is so autodependent?

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Well, I think you know, often it's all uh almost a sort of truism, but that there's there are heaven and hell scenarios. And to me, the hell scenario, especially, I think the suburbs have the most to gain and lose by autonomous vehicles, and it really that's where we'll see what really happens. Uh basically, you know, if every privately owned car is soon replaced by a privately owned AV, we will see sprawl just expand. I mean, it just totally the commute distance means nothing, will mean nothing anymore. We already have so much work from home. Um, it will just accelerate, most likely, a lot of um suburban expansion into the the land is always cheaper further out. We need more unbuilt places to follow your example of what you've done with Chattahoochee Hills and the 70-30 rule, but we need a lot more of that. But so the fear on the one hand is just this acceleration of sprawl, which will also mean that all the existing suburban communities as well as downtowns will get double the congestion of all the drive-thru traffic. Uh, everything that was ever there's a lot of studies um indicating that you know, we already see with Waymo's and all the and the robo taxis that the number of deadhead empty trips, zero passenger trips, goes way up. And it's not all really working to the advantage of existing communities. Where I get more up more positive and hopeful is I think there's a tr there it could be tremendous upside for the suburbs in converting well in basically uh autonomous vehicle transit, public transit shuttles. Right now, the cost of operating a city bus half approximately goes to the driver. When you're paying that much for the driver, you you buy the biggest bus you can. And that's an expensive system that then means your the suburbs are rarely justify, can justify that investment. And if you do, at best, you're getting one bus an hour. A shuttle, an AV shuttle bus, if once you don't have to pay for the driver, instead, for the same cost of buying one big bus, you could buy six small shuttles. And those could start coming every 10 minutes. Those could start, those suddenly open up the areas that currently are considered too low density to support transit. And we've now got all the on-demand, you can make on-demand shuttle buses, on specifically geolocated routes, and we're starting to see more and more uh communities that are doing this, you know, and they're starting with sort of a small piece. I'm not seeing much yet out in the suburbs, but certainly that's where I see the suburbs could potentially really gain is by have being able to finally get uh once you get transit coming every 10 minutes, that's a game changer.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

That's right. And it's going to change. And it's interesting because we uh, you know, we have several uh developments now. Uh the um uh DB just entitled the Bukhart property for 8,000 acres, and through our zoning, they're they're putting all their density on 2,000, saving six. As this develops, I'm trying to convince everyone to to to have a uh autonomous car corridor. But but everything that's coming in from you know our regional commissions for approval is all requiring in the future, as this development happens, more asphalt, more lanes of traffic, more turncircles. And I I don't think our regulators are keeping up with where we're headed because I think these uh these autonomous shuttles, I mean, there's enough in the research. These aren't going to be six people even facing forwards. You're gonna be able to call the shuttle that does your manicure on your way to wherever. And and that's going to what's going to encourage rather than one person in a car. It's it's sort of the the new third place that's going to happen as we uh move in these these new interesting rooms on wheels.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

I couldn't agree more. Uh absolutely. It's understandable that the regulations are behind the technology. And you know, I think how the questions of usually you sort of get around that with pilot projects and things. And there were 85 pilot projects in the country in the world uh with AV shuttles just prior to COVID that were not just little two-day demonstrations, but really were at least like a six-month uh pilot. And then all of them shut down because of COVID. We're just starting to see that ratchet back up. And I do hope we start to um the regulations can begin to catch up.

SPEAKER_00 35:12

So as you look into the future, what gives you the most optimism?

SPEAKER_01 35:17

On the one hand, I do I'm I'm super optimistic about that. We are starting, I'm starting to see more stormwater parks. Um basically a recognition that climate change, all those surface parking lots, increase the runoff problems and exacerbate the flooding that we're all we see from the increasingly severe storms. And so, you know, even um uh uh blanking on whether it was Austin or it was New York. Uh but anyway, one of those cities just even came up with a plan just saying, hey, we've got a whole lot of gas stations are on the way out, and we already see we've lost, the country's lost a huge number of gas stations already. What if we want to make what if they all became little pocket parks and little pocket stormwater parks right in the city? So in addition to the ones that I'm actually seeing getting built, that's one of the more um quite a lot of golf courses becoming are aging out and becoming stormwater parks. So that's one side I'm very optimistic about.

SPEAKER_00 36:30

And certainly Atlanta's old fourth ward park is one of the real poster childs in so many ways.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

It's absolutely a fabulous example of really you know making an open, recognizing that it's less expensive if you make the water instead of building a big vault underground to store the water. No, just make it a big open-air uh pond with wildlife. And I mean, yeah, I love the Fourth Ward Park in Atlanta. I love also, uh, there's a great example in Meriden, Connecticut, which is a very working-class community. It took them 14 years to get finally get the financing pulled together, but they had a dead mall right in their downtown. I mean, in the 70s, tail end of urban renewal money, we actually built quite a lot of malls in downtowns to try to help them compete with the suburbs. This one was built right on top of a creek, fairly common before the Clean Water Act, and it flooded the entire downtown when the when the um the culverts failed several times. So now they have just made it in, take it, demolished them all. The whole park is like this green bathtub. It's just a a park, but it's green and it has the creek, it's been day lit, runs right through it. And then when there's a big storm, it fills up. It is designed to come it to completely fill up. It has removed over 200 and some uh downtown properties out of the floodplain, and that has enabled their train station now, because it's out of the floodplain, it can qualify for federal funds to become actually a um high-speed train station. They had some public housing that was also in the floodplain. HUD would not allow any funds to be spent on the project because it's in the floodplain. Now that project is getting uh renovated and updated and stuff. So the stormwater parks, they happen, those are what I love about the stormwater parks is I think they're happening in both wealthier communities, less wealthy communities across the board, and finding ways to make it happen. That said, we still have a long way to go. We have we aren't doing enough though to plan really the big question. I mean, we're still not decarbonizing enough. And the really big question is climate migration and planning for. I mean, Atlanta is expected to be a receiver city. That's right. Um, as sea levels rise, as wildfires continue. Uh, we are going to see some really pretty major changes in where population in the world and in the US will live. And there's not a we're not really planning for that yet.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

We're not facing the reality of a lot of things with that, and including our food sources and how this is going to change, what we can grow where. And and uh we're not educating the people growing our foods that that awareness that they're just concerned that that somehow they're not producing as much, and they're trying to figure out why. And it's between you know depleting the soils and climate change, and lots happening there, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 40:11

We have some real things happening that with both with uh someone who's uh come here from South America to deal with uh you know reforesting our forests that are in as bad a shape. And so we have a lot to catch up with, Ellen. It's time for us to uh come down and uh we we'll have a cup of coffee and I'll uh share with all the things that are going on.

SPEAKER_01 40:29

Oh, I always love that. And you I there's so much. I mean, really, I think part of what gives me optimism is our books like yours. Uh sharing, you know, the we need those examples. That's uh examples of uh of how we can by thinking differently and doing things differently, we really can have so much more impact. In general, though, I mean what I mean, what I I think the other big picture idea that um I wouldn't say haunts me, but as someone who's been teaching for 45 years, when I look at my current students, within their professional lifetimes, the globe is likely to hit peak population.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

And then we start going down. That's right. Oh and the US, all bets are off on what we're really we we are certainly doing everything we can at the moment to reduce uh population growth. And real questions about so uh, you know, where should we be building, what should we be building, and for whom. Um I uh really kind of feel you know, we we need to invest in improving our existing places. We don't have enough money to uh do infrastructure endlessly and uh everywhere. Um just repairing our existing infrastructure will take enormous, enormous efforts and costs. So I I love seeing the retrofits to existing, the existing places to allow people to live more sustainable lifestyles.

SPEAKER_00 42:19

Well, you our listeners are are are folks that are curious about these issues. Uh, I think people that will will make a difference. And is there any closing message that you would like to share with everyone?

SPEAKER_01 42:31

No, I think it's we've demonized the suburbs culturally, even though most Americans live in the suburbs by far.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

And we're continuing to grow a lot more of them. This hasn't stopped.

SPEAKER_01 42:45

Absolutely. So, you know, the the point of retrofitting suburbs is just to help, I think, folks recognize that we can make life better for people, we can make life better for the planet by retrofitting the suburbs. It's not that I'm anti-suburbs trying to completely just, you know, uh wishing they would go away. It it really is about recognizing that they are here and they are beloved for many reasons. They're also stigmatized for all sorts of other reasons, often kind of snobby. Um, but it's it's important to try to help uh you know, every little new sidewalk, new bike lane, new pocket park uh helps.

SPEAKER_00 43:47

Make the difference, right?

SPEAKER_01 43:50

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 43:51

Well, we uh those that are not aware of your book will certainly put that in the link and so that everyone can uh can find your book and and uh um Two.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

The second book, I think the second book is a better book, actually.

SPEAKER_00 44:04

Well, tell us why.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

So the first book we were um published in very December 2008, right after the market had crashed, and that did help with sales, actually. Um, but the the first book, we were so focused on reducing dependence on the car. That was really, if you were doing anything to reduce autodependency, that's you got in the book. That's where the bar was. We had about 80 case studies. Uh I was maintaining have been maintaining the database and it would just and could see that there were just more and more and more retrofits, and they were getting better designed and they were more ambitious. So that increasingly now, communities that can are saying to developers, okay, while you reduce car dependency, what are you doing to improve public health, to support an aging population, to leverage social capital for equity, to compete for jobs, and then the big one add water and energy resilience for climate change. So those were that's really the second book. The examples are doing all of the above. And you know, not necessarily all, but they're they're combining.

SPEAKER_00 45:26

More comprehensive of what we're going to be facing.

SPEAKER_01 45:30

Absolutely. And I think that it's really, you know, reducing car dependency is absolutely still job one. You will never succeed with all the others unless you reduce the negative impacts of car dependency. And AVs and EVs are taking some steps towards that, but um, we need more.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

Well, shared transportation is going to be one of the biggest things, is however that happens.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

And and really, I think you know, I think um, again, your book and the and the the podcast, Steve, uh that you're you're showing us all the way.

SPEAKER_00 46:09

Well, we're we're we're out there trying to just share uh what we have learned because I've been so surprised at how dysfunctional uh once I started uh pulling the covers back. And uh and what you realize is just, oh my goodness, how how do we open more people's eyes on how serious the issues are and uh how much the built environment is causing the dysfunction. Uh the the you know, the the human health and the planet health. It it so much of it comes back to the built environment.

SPEAKER_01 46:39

Well, and this is where also the the suburbs were largely the post-war suburbs, really were the product of this um post-World War II attitude that technology and the technocrats and sort of military organization, the military-industrial complex, that's how we solve things. And so you had the transportation engineers designing the system, sort of dendritic system of roads, and not talking to the planners who were focusing on the social, who were not talking to the architects, designing the buildings. I mean, everything was so siloed, biologists were not consulted in the least at that point in time. And it is through the cross-disciplinary, you know, the only way to, I think, get any of these changes. I I've been proud of how Congress for New Urbanism, it took seven years of meetings between the New Urbanists and the Institute of Transportation Engineers to come up with an agreed-upon professional standard practice now for um safer streets and context-sensitive streets, street design. Uh it those kinds of rewriting of the rules is so important. And it's it kind of it does take, I think, folks who are knowledgeable and passionate and a little bit patient to work with the other folks.

SPEAKER_00 48:15

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

And at least have those conversations, you know, get in the room and work it out.

SPEAKER_00 48:20

Well, I'm encouraged. There are there's more people talking about the connections between the environment and health. Uh, and and those connections, as obvious as they are, have not always been made. And uh uh while a lot of people will not change lifestyle or change what they're doing to save X money, they will do it for the health of their own and the people they love. And I think that that that might move the needle more than than we're thinking.

SPEAKER_01 48:48

I I I agree, yeah. No, I think that it's super important.

SPEAKER_00 48:53

Our time's up. We could go on for for some time. So we we have to do this in person, just uh off the record to to catch up.

SPEAKER_01 49:01

Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 49:04

Thank you, Ellen.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

Thank you, Steve. My pleasure.