Climate & Equity Challenge Projects

On the Park Bench presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in new urbanism and allied industries. Providing an opportunity for the audience to engage in real time. The webinar series is a platform for seeing new members to engage, debate, and collaborate on pressing issues of the day. Today we have Climate and Equity Challenge Projects with Caroline S. Wine. And William. We always appreciate your feedback, so feel free to share your [email protected]. Slash OTPB feedback. And be sure to join us for upcoming webinars. We have design and development of mixed use health districts next Tuesday, August first. You can learn from experts how hospital oriented development works. And how it can benefit cities. You can register at CNU. Dot org slash resources slash on the arc bench. And don't forget about seeing you membership. Thank you. To our senior members for joining us on today's webinar. If you're not yet a senior member, membership offers the opportunity to join an interdisciplinary network of new urbanist practitioners. Across sectors, professions and geography. You can learn more about membership and [email protected]. And now for today's webinar. We are joined by William Bill Nair. Bill is a designer with over 38 years of experience working on a wide array of projects. He is the principal of NARA and Associates, a building and design, a building design and development consulting firm. Has completed numerous successful projects. In 2021. Bill established IB GSC consulting. A division of Near and Associates to focus on sustainable designs in the built environment. Building upon a lifetime of research. And urban design study. Bill obtained his CNUI accreditation in 2015 to better equip him to help neighborhoods in cities become great places to live and work. A deep sense of equity and responsibility to others is embedded in Bill's work and studies. Throughout his design and consulting career. He has explored best practices for meeting the challenges of homeless and affordable housing. To this end, he has been working on a personal passion project entitled The Housing Puzzle from Homeless to Affordable Housing. Bill is currently working on consolidating and publishing this nearly 40 years of study and research to help organizations and communities tackle this critical issue. Caroline S. Wine is a designer. Planner and educator whose work creates inclusive and resilient neighborhoods. Combining her educational role with 25 years of community planning consulting, she integrates urban design and engagement skills to transform a variety of project scales. Her work has led to new parks and plazas, vibrant retail and business districts and economic development initiatives, creating new housing and homeownership opportunities throughout the Midwest. Through community design solutions at UWM. Carolyn has worked on more than 400 community projects from green school yards and parks to new housing. And building rehab projects. Perch process of engaging students. Local architects, community stakeholders, developers, funders, and city staff. Has been integral to representing a variety of voices in corridor redevelopment throughout Milwaukee. Carolyn has a Bachelor of Science degree from UW Madison. And a Master of Architecture and Master of Urban Planning degrees from UW, Milwaukee. And I'm Lauren Mayor, Communications Manager at CNU. And now I'm going to kick off to the A's webinar with a little bit of background. And don't forget to use the QA function to ask questions as they occur to you. So for today's webinar, why do our new urbanists care about climate change? Well, the devastating local impacts of climate change like extreme heat in the southwest. Flooding in New England and hazardous air quality from wildfire smoke in the Midwest are being felt more and more each day. And the fact remains that cities impact the climate and the changing climate impact cities. Here it's seeing you. Our mission is to heal the built fabric of our neighborhoods and cities. And in the face of the climate crisis, we are obliged to act. With the help of our climate committee. We have set a climate action strategy that is based on what we do best as an organization. With initiatives that will reinforce the principles of the charter as the foundation for built responses to our changing climate. And we're not doing that alone. We want to hear from you. We need every member of the new urbanist movement to join us in this fight to save the planet. Your involvement is crucial and we want to learn how you can and will help. Please complete this survey by scanning this QR code. Or going to see new.org slash our issues slash climate. And selecting the get involved box at the bottom of the page. Now on to a bit more about our first program to come out of this focus on the role of new urbanism. Designing for climate change. The climate and equity challenge. At soon you 30 in Oklahoma City, new Urbanists launched the Climate and Equity Challenge to engage all our members, chapters, affiliates, and allies to meet the most pressing issues of our time. The climate emergency and the equity imperative. The challenge was intended as a way for members, chapters, and allies to report on the climate adaptation and equity challenges they see in their communities. Well, getting an opportunity for that work to be publicized and celebrated. These individual projects provide inspiration, lessons learned, and guidelines for those also working in the climate and equity space. The North Central walking tour report inspires communities to start thinking locally. About what adaptation design could look like in their neighborhood. The greening Milwaukee Public School yards project shares best strategies for developing greener healthier spaces for schools. These projects represent different and inspired approaches to centering climate and equity. Through the co benefits that walkable, sustainable, inclusive urbanism can offer. We're excited to share these 2 projects today. So now with that, I will turn it over to you, Bill. Wonderful and thank you very much. It's a great privilege to be with you here today. Before we start I would like to first say that I knowledge that I'm participating today here from the traditional lands referred to as treaty for territory the original lands of the KREY, the Ojibwe, the Soto, Dakota, Nakota. Lakota and the home of the Metis Nation. So where's Regina Saskatchewan right in the middle of Canada in the Canadian prairies? Regina is a medium-sized, city of about 226,000 or about 70. Square miles. It has a medium income of about 76,000 and an average home price of 330,000. Both of these stats are important and I'll show you in a moment. And as you can see, North Central is pretty much dead at the center of the city. It's an older neighborhood. That's right adjacent to the downtown core. North Central is about almost 10,000 people. But as you can see, the medium, household income and the average house price. Definitely indicates that it would be considered an underserved neighborhood. It is bounded by some very hard edges to the north and the south. There's a railway line and to the east and the west there are major arterial roads. So why did we choose the North Central neighborhood? Well, there are a number of reasons. Unfortunately, one of the reasons is that North Central was one's name, Canada's worst neighborhood, V the Mclanes magazine. And really it was the harsh neighborhood for a number of reasons including drug abuse, crime, homelessness, all of the stats that you don't want to think about when you talk about a neighborhood. It definitely had a reputation. But as our current mayor send a master's likes to say North Central is much more than the crime stats. And in fact, it is a community filled with amazing and wonderful people. It has great organizations that are going out of their way to make life in their community safe and, and viable. It's a wonderful place and it's a wonderful environment to be in. So why would we do a walking tour in there? Well, to start our tour with North Central or our journey with the North Central neighborhood. Walking towards the best place to the best place to start. We see this not as just a one off event, but this is the beginning of a longer journey. That hopefully we'll see, some major changes to the North Central neighborhood. When it came to putting this project together, I thought it was very critical to have. The city involved now fortunately our mayor, Sandra is very big in supporter of the north central neighborhood and has a great passion for it when i proposed the project tour she was excited and therefore. Really allow the senior staff and the lot of the key members of the city to get involved. Without them and without the sport of North Central Community Association, this would have never happened. So under the walking tool, what were some of the objectives? Well, we wanted to get a better understanding of the challenges that the residents are facing daily. How climate change is affecting their lives. Also what changes would they like to see to their main corridors? A brave question to ask is in what way city hall is, the residents of North Central. We wanted to know more about their goals and objectives of their neighborhood. And in what ways the city could help. To make these goals and objectives of reality. But one of the key important principles of the whole process was to be active and engaged listeners. They are the experts in their neighborhood and we want to actively and listen. To their thoughts and their concerns. Because North Sandra was so big we chose an area that was a little bit more, hand, easier to handle. And it really identified 3 sort of. She areas have had a community services corridor and a sort of what we would call a civic hard border and a city connector corridor. Those we broke down into a 2 for reach. So they were really 6 sections that we wanted to have a look at. We decided that the event had to be very compact while we would have liked to have had more time because of all the people involved and because of the scheduling. We had to do it on a Saturday and a Saturday morning it seemed to be the best. So we spent a lot of time upfront planning to make sure that we could have an event that would happen that would be very concise and we put together a very aggressive schedule and it all worked actually quite well. One of the things that we talked about earlier on is how we were going to document this. And one of the things that I was hesitant about was using photographs. The reason for that is that all too often North Central has become and communities like it a back rap for politicians to drop in, hand over a quick check and then leave. And we wanted to make sure that the residents knew that this was a very, serious process. This just wasn't a political photo OP that it was an opportunity to engage in listen and really be present when we were talking to them. All credit to our mayor in that she chose very very specifically not to have any kind of media in it because she wanted to be one of those active listeners and didn't want to have to be a distraction from process. Well, at the end of the day, we didn't quite as get as many people out as we wanted, but we always thought that might be the case. We had a couple of, alternative plans and working with the city, people that were working with us. We came up with 2, routes that morning that covered a lot of those key areas. And they worked out to be just fine and they covered a lot of the Yeah, the areas that we wanted to touch on. At the end of the tour and we got down together, we had this opportunity to sort of. Share a lot of the sort of their key observations and while we have a several pages of specific notes. There were a couple of things in themes that were touched on that were very, specific to it. So one of the things that came out Was that from the access to affordable food and shelter to safety? The North Central residents see all of these things as a discussion of equity. You can't. Take equity out of any of these discussions. So this was one of the key foundations of our talks. When we talked about climate change, we talked about, they share their concerns about getting relief from the heat. We're definitely in a part of the world that experiences all 4 seasons and while we were quite used to what can be warm summers and cool winters. We haven't been preferred for the kind of heat in the extended heat periods that we've been seeing. So they wanted to make sure that they have opportunities to shade and watering stations in the neighborhood. When I came to looking at the corridors, safety within the corridors was very cheap. One of the main quarters going through is Doomy Avenue and it is a stroke like in construction. And is actually often used just as as a way to get through the neighborhood onto the next. And unfortunately, the environment is such that it leads people to often speed and not be cautious and aware of pedestrians. One of the most amazing stats that came out of our talk that day was that every person that attended from the community either A had been hit by a car themselves or knew somebody who had been hit by a car trying to cross do me. And that's that's a horrifying stat. The reality is without safe, access and without that, corridor being safer, it literally cuts off a third of the neighborhood just because there's a desire not to cross the street for safety reasons. We talked about revitalization and the things they'd like to see happen in the corridors. They, said and they were very adamant about this. Revitalization only if it doesn't bring gentrification. They in fact be willing to see some of the areas not be developed as extensively as one would think if it meant that they would lose their opportunity to live in that neighborhood. When we talked about the build environment, of course priority number one was a grocery store, but really that is the priority for most underserved neighborhoods. But it is something that they again see very much as an issue of equity. Culture and the social aspects are very key for them. They want to make sure that the rest of the city understands again. That they are far more than their stats. In that they are filled with wonderful people and they have wonderful community activities. A significant part of that community is also from an indigenous background so therefore issues of truth or reconciliation are really important. And it really touched a lot of areas. One of the discussions and we mentioned in Doomi Avenue before, that is, it's a very difficult name for a lot of people who are indigenous and who have come through the residential school situation. It was named after a man who had a hand in the development and the continuation. Of these indigenous schools. So there's a push to change the name to Buffalo Avenue, but they've said, you know, something as simple as that name means a whole lot to the community. Well, there's been some investments in the neighborhood such as the Momo Way Atkins Center, which is a combined high school library and community center. They still need extended programming, programming in all aspects to. To, bring some vitality, but also to provide other opportunities, for the kids in the neighborhood so that, gang activity and drug activity. Is that counteracted by some of the positive things or the more positive things in the neighborhood. Well, we did the tour and we took all the information back, but as saying we wanted to make sure that this was only the first step. So in preparing the final report, I wanted to make a number of recommendations. Going forward for the city to look at. Taking this on to the next level. One of the first things that we talked about was affordable and I put on, one of the top type items was to consolidate an affordable housing form. Well, and here's a plug for why it's important to attend congresses. While I went to the Congress and I talked to a bunch of my colleagues and went to a number of sessions, I got to realize this was just doing something that we practiced over and over again. They have been very active. In telling us the type of housing they need, but unfortunately the housing industry hasn't responded. So. We need to directly look at new opportunities in new ways and new partners to address it and not to spend the time and effort to go through a housing form just to get the same result as we had before, which is really no action. So there are a number of items that were picked out throughout the report. In terms of great opportunities to dig more deeply into design. So a very key aspect is to look at doing some target design sure that's within the neighborhood and really getting the residents to drill down deeper in terms of some of their desires and the things that they would like to see happen in some key parts of the neighborhood. There are also some great opportunities for. A tactical urbanism and a long duty for sure when you look at traffic calming this is a perfect opportunities for the city to invest in some more cost affordable activities to start get people thinking about what can we do to make something like, doing the avenue safer for the residents? This one was sort of key and it was actually even brought home more. At, at Congress this year. I would encourage anyone who is tended to Congress to make sure to include one of the sessions from the Black Caucus as part of your party of your event. It's, it reinforced the idea that reconciliation must include opportunities to participate equally in the economy, which is also a statement within the Truth and Reconciliation Document, that the government had put out. A number of years ago I had a rather chance article about Bernice and the work she was doing through Buffalo. And I think the incremental development is one of the keys to providing some vitality, but also providing those people who have never had an opportunity to participate locally in the economy to do so so we're looking at saying that maybe something like the program that Bernice and monkey are doing through a neighborhood evolution would be a great next step. And, you're doing through neighborhood evolution would be a great next step. We need to get the people within the community the opportunity to get involved with the economy One of the realities is all the types of housing that the people mentioned and our walking tour was to. Would be illegal to build. And so the reality is we gotta get back and start looking at the code and get away from the single family code that is throughout the neighborhood and we need to allow for building as a right a lot of this missing middle housing that's so desperately needed. We also need to look at, Junior Avenue very, intently. Doney Avenue touches a number of neighborhoods. It's a big part of our city in terms of of a traverse in one area to the other. And so it needs to be looked at a larger context, but it also, as we mentioned before, we need to look at the renaming of it as part of the reconciliation process. Long before the settlers are here on prayings, the indigenous people of the prairies knew very well the connection between the environment and the land. And there are some great opportunities. There's some amazing all elders and knowledge keepers within our community that they can teach us and. Upcoming generations about how to have this better relationship. To the land to become better stewards of it. They are great opportunities. I think that could even be expanded to throughout the city in terms of learning about how we are more respectful and understanding of our environment going forward. We need to have a disincentive for vacant properties. There are far too many vacant properties and right now while there are some by laws that address this they need to be more aggressive to make sure that it doesn't. Continued and that this is something that is discouraged. And finally, it's to create a plan to counter that gentrification. I love that sign that says now that the neighborhood is nice. Why do I have to move? And we are very fortunate that the North Central neighborhood is in such a point that these things can be addressed very much on the ground floor and hopefully make sure that the kind of work and the kind of development that goes forward make sure that it's a neighborhood that continues to be affordable and home to all those people who have put the hard work into the neighborhood. My final thought is that this meaningful progress happens in incremental steps. One of the things mentioned at our round table after the walk. Was the need for public drinking water and that was something our mayor identified immediately as something this city could address. And in fact, few weeks ago, water fountains, were put out. And it was an easy win. But it is a step and it's important for the people of North Central that they realize that this is an ongoing commitment. And that if we can show the small steps, flowing forward, we can build a better neighborhood. In which case building a better neighborhood also leads to building a more resilient city in the city that's more resilient. To climate change. So thank you. Hi, I will start sharing. Alright, thanks Lauren again, exciting to hear about your project Bill and there are even though their projects are very different. You are gonna hear that there are some similarities in how there's a ripple effect within the community and having people learn a little bit more about their climate. So I'm excited to talk about our greening school yards project. I submitted this as part of the obviously the climate and equity challenge. A little different than bills, which is just starting. We are in our seventh year, so I have some great projects. Show the the actual impact. I've been doing this through University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. I've been the director of a design center here, Community Design Solutions, but more importantly, we have lots of different partners that we work with on this process. So our partners really vary from environmental engineers, different planners, designers, landscape architects, a variety of educators within each of the schools. And then my staff who are graduate architecture and planning students. So the the main group is reflow, which is a nonprofit headed up by an environmental engineer, Justin Hagerty, and most of the projects you're going to see today are with Milwaukee Public Schools. And none of this happens without major funding and our metropolitan sewage district has been at the forefront of that both locally and nationally. And so you're gonna see that the focus of this is stormwater management, but there is some great opportunities for engaging at local level, community level, neighborhood level, as well as the educational components within the curriculum. From an equity perspective we work with obviously some local schools but 50% of the households are economically disadvantaged. Many of the students we found out have never even been to like Michigan. So all of these are going to take place in the city of Milwaukee and we are on the western edge of a great lake. So we wanted students to understand the impact that their actions have on cleaning our local waters and protecting our waters, as well as the students within the schools. 15 to 25% are in special programs whether they may have a disability or other aspects. So we have some things from Tactile as well as different educational components that we include. So I'm excited that as most of you, none of your work happens without having great partners. So the square conversion process is a multi-year process. We are engaged in the first year through the design center, which is in the conceptual planning phase. It goes through fundraising, detailed design, and permitting where they actually bring in actual local landscape architects and engineers goes through construction and then there's a maintenance and stewardship portion. We do about 5 schools per year. So we just completed, again, as I mentioned, our seventh year. So 36 clearance have been designed. 21 have been constructed in fiber under construction right now. As you can imagine construction has to happen during the summer to reduce some of the impact on the school itself. So I'm gonna walk you through our process just so you understand the magnitude. So first year is all about engagement and conceptual design. It's really sort of my favorite part of this. We do everything from student to conceptual design. Really, sort of my favorite part of this. We do everything from student surveys, understanding. What do the students want to see? Of course they all want to see playgrounds, right? But then we start talking about the impacts of water and collecting litter. So there's a whole aspect where we engage with the students. There's a student and staff, in month 2 of our process and they're monthly green team meetings. So each school competes to be part of this process. 5 are selected based on their engagement at the local school district. So they need an active principal, but usually the teachers and the staff are really the main force between the green team meetings and getting this initiative. Moving forward at their school. We end the the semester essentially our 5 months of being engaged 6 months to completion for our conceptual design with a community open house. So this actually opens it way further into the neighborhood in the elected officials, the school board beyond the immediate school. So you can see in these. It's really a fun interactive process. With the teachers and the staff who actually have a very specific voice about how they use the playground, how do they use it for gym class, which areas do we need to remain open for movement in addition to the ongoing maintenance? And then all of the students come in participate in the open house at the end. And they kind of hear, oh, my voice during that Shorette, the design process was heard and they get quite excited about what they're starting to see. Through the conceptual design process, my staff again, who are graduate architecture and urban planning students develop these and we work jointly with Refl on this. So we develop a conceptual design of, you know, I would say a number one request is having a soccer field especially for schools in more of our Latino neighborhoods. Well, we look at that is how can we incorporate the stormwater management and green infrastructure aspects. So there are underground cisterns that occur in typically those schools that have that. They also vary in size. So some of the schools are only maybe a couple acres. Others are quite large and so it's a really big focus on deep paving and then incorporating elements of play along with the stormwater capture. We do a variety of ways of gathering input, so we do both in person and virtual. So we use idea flip. It's been a really great tool and then the teachers can share that link with their parents of the students and other staff who maybe wouldn't be able to attend our one on one meeting. And it's been a really great resource for going back and documenting. Change as well as the feedback that we heard. Visualizing is you know is really key. We Wanna help people understand what their playground might look like. And the different elements for them to interact. So outer learning is a big component here as well as safe play. So on the right hand image we do a lot of perspectives to show where there will be a bioswale due to cost of construction. Anytime we dig out a bioswale, we need to reuse that soil somewhere on the site. So then we have a lot of different berms that we sometimes use for outdoor classrooms, art of theaters, you will see that there are areas that we keep the asphalt for again, the 50 our dash for gym class. We have outer ear, areas. Trees are really big element for adding shade. So most of these school yards have almost no shade at this point. So that's an element from a safety and health. Oh, aspect as well. One of the big impact visualizations is the before and after aerial view. So this one is very important to show how is it adjacent to teacher parking. How do people move through the site? And then also how does the neighborhood engage with the site? Making sure that there are fences to keep balls in but students in as well. And then incorporating elements. A play shade community gathering. Year 2 is technical design and permitting as well as fundraising and you're gonna see a lot of images here about really great. Play areas, but not, that's sort of an expensive element. We focus more on the nature and the natural play. That comes into the discussion at the school level of how they're fundraising. So Metropolitan Suage District, the city of Milwaukee, different funds are utilized for incorporating their element. Little teaser here. So if we back up the year 3 is construction, as I mentioned, there's 5 schools under construction right now. With those that have been constructed prior to this summer, we've moved nearly 20 acres of asphalt. And I have a series of sort of just before and after images to show you how this has really been impactful, not just to the neighborhood, but to our overall stormwater collection for the city. In the neighborhood. So this is what you typically would have seen. At public schools in your neighborhood, engineers, 30 years ago was all about, you know, removing water very quickly and low maintenance. Well, now there's a lot of sort of injuries and low spots that we hear about as we survey the students where they can play or not play in winter so this is a before. And this is an after. So we have elements from, you know, what type of play do they want to maintain? In this case, they wanted to maintain a baseball field. So there's an underground cistern there. There is open asphalt for other players like Foursquare, top scotch, and then we have an outdoor classroom which doubles as an outdoor theater. And then they will be growing additional perennials and mindfulness areas. Habitat is increased as well. Here's another example. This is a K 3 through 8. So again, we have to think about all the diversity of activities based on the student ages. Large asphalt area. This one includes a soccer field with an underground cistern. We are actually collecting water. From neighboring streets on this one, they have a greenhouse. And an outdoor stage area in the front. And one thing we help them understand is year one, this is what it looks like on the left by year 2, 3 beyond. This is what it looks like on the right. So there's an educational component about the aspects and then all the different habitat that they will bring to their play art. This is a baby of Missouri school. Again, we had to maintain some existing onsite parking. But a huge opportunity for them to incorporate a lot more green space. Small theater outdoor classroom on the left you'll see some large bile swales the left image And then, you know, for all ages, this is some of my staff and we do our tours, but the children really enjoy the balance and the aspects of playing together. The other nature play is called loose parts play where students can move logs, move stumps that teaches them to work in groups. So the impact has been quite significant. Lots of trees been planted, over 3 million gallons are captured per rain event and 36 million gallons of rainwater have been captured annually. So this is really important for our neighborhoods but also for Lake Michigan. Improving our habitat and ultimately the amount of money that is being invested and raised for our local schools. So we have many more to come. This is just a rendering of another school that we completed. So next year, there will be 5 more schools under construction. So increasing those numbers that I just shared with you. And in closing, it's the impact on the community as well. You know, 13,000 students and over 25,000 community members which includes teachers and staff and parents are impacted on a daily basis. So it's changing the curriculum, it's changing how the students are viewing their environment. We have heard stories where students go home and talk about not littering because it protects the rivers. And right now the medical college is doing some studies on the health benefits of how much more the students are moving on site and having different interactions. I encourage you to check out the read flow link. There's lots of before and after images and a little bit more on the process. So I'm excited to again watch this impact as it continues in the neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you both so much. Those are 2 wonderful presentations. Very different, but you can start to see some of the overlaps when it comes to addressing and using design in the face of climate change. So now we're going to move on to a little bit of a structured discussion. Cause I would love to pick your brains a little bit more. So my first question to both. Is how did you first learn about Cnu's climate and equity challenge? I would say from you. Obviously I'm seeing you accredited member. I follow all of the different on the park bench and different aspects. So I saw the email and thought, oh, I'm not sure how this is applicable. And of course, when you start looking at all the projects, many of us are involved in there's many. I thought this one was an opportunity that I could show impact. Different from I think some of your calls was for things that were just starting. So I've learned from you. Exactly the same. It's through that communication that started me thinking, well, this might be a great opportunity to explore something that we wanted to do. So, Who knows for the great lines of communication the CNE sends out. Wonderful. Always glad to hear. So I wanted to know more about What kind of local climate change impacts are you seeing in your own communities and how does your project either respond or lessons learn respond to those challenges? No, I should go first. Alright, it's, yeah, I was standing a little bit in the presentation. It really is. We're seeing the heat effects. Are really substantial and. Again, while we're, we've adapted definitely, you know, over the years to 4 seasons, this, this is something completely different. And we're seeing it have an effect on, really every aspect. The storms that we're getting, the prolonged heat events. We're finding that it, that is creates issues in terms of, of, livability, even within transportation we've had some severe funds that have blocked off underpasses and that kind of thing so there's a tremendous daily there's a tremendous litany of things that we're starting to see that are really changing the lives of the people here in the city. From our perspective, heat was one of the key elements on the playgrounds besides the crumbling of asphalt over the last 30 years. So there was a safety element. From a heat perspective, they've done lots of testing and they know that without the shade trees, there's a 10 to I think almost 15 degree difference in some parts throughout the summer, which was limiting the use part to the playground. We've had a lot of lessons learned because we've been doing this now for 7 years. So even now when they do have, some materials besides the bark chips, we need to mix and have not, you know, when they do have, some materials besides the bark chips, we need to mix and have not, you know, the soft rubber place that goes under tat. We need to mix and have not, you know, the soft rubber place that goes under Tat Lots. You know, the soft rubber place that goes under Tat Lots, you have to reduce the amount of black that is used there because that is absorbing. You have to reduce the amount of black that is used there because that is absorbing heat. So they've actually done some tests on that as well. So heat is one of those. Obviously because we're on a great lake, the stormwater collection has been key. We've had major events in the last 10 years that have flooded the neighborhoods flooded some of these school areas. So what's fun about this is the ripple effect, right? So parents are engaged and they're learning about bile swales. They're learning about rain gardens. They're learning about composting. So many people are now doing this on their own properties. So it again is having a broader impact. Then just the schoolyards. So I would say for us it's been. Rewarding to see that and then some of the different educational opportunities that are happening to learn about the little bugs and different butterflies that are coming back to some of the playgrounds while before they had to go off. Field trips, which they still do, but now your playground is a field trip. That's wonderful. Yes, it's really interesting having both of these projects that kind of different. Stages. It's really inspiring to think what could be next. So my next question for you, which you both kind of had to consider. When submitting these for our challenge was what does equity in climate change design mean to you? I think, equity as I stated before is so much at the center of all the discussions. And I'm sitting here coming to you in a very nice air conditioned space. As opposed to reality of many of the people in north central that are sweltering through the heats where that's not an option. As things are changing, everything from, access to food, all of those things. We're starting to see in climate effects all we start at the, with the poorest among us and in the population. And so everything from the. The built environment. On, must be looked at equitably. We can't just isolate it, to. How is it affecting me, but how is it affecting those least among us? Who are able to adapt as quickly and what do we need to do to help make them, more resilient to these changes. Oh, for us equity started at the engagement process. As you can tell by some of the photos, we wanted to make sure we had all voices. So we are having different conversations with the very young students than we are. We have one high school that we worked with different from when we're talking with the teacher staff and parents. Right, so the equity component there's everybody has a voice. The other aspect was how do they participate? Because we had a lot of different special needs for the different students as well as languages. So there's an indigenous school, there's a German immersion school we worked with, we have one school I think there were 15 different languages that were. Smoking. We had to figure out how to incorporate that in the teachers. Obviously we're working with that. So we wanted to get those families to also feel that they were part of this discussion and process. Equity in terms of sort of the climate aspects as I mentioned it was a different part of the curriculum right so the teachers are in cooperating discussions about trash collection they're cooperating aspects about who uses the water, how do you, how is your health affected by some of the actions and things that are happening. So it was kind of a fun discussion. But a serious discussion and how do you make something more accessible to some of the younger students was part of the process. Yeah. Equity can be about ages as well as a lot of other things. Which is a very cool perspective to think about. And my final question for you is. What advice would you give to people? Looking to do similar projects or to just consider design and equity in the face of climate change in their own communities. Go ahead, Carolyn. 2 things, find great partners. Because none of this happens alone and you can really generate more enthusiasm. We always want to find who our next champions to move this forward and start small. The project I'm showing you are years 5, 6, 7, right? We started with a small component. In year one and years 2 of the large playgrounds. So make it manageable, right? Because if you make it manageable, you'll be able to make an impact, to be able to fund it a little bit quicker. And what happens is after those first few successes. People say, oh, I want to be part of that and oh, how can we make it larger? And you know why? It makes it easier to find funding, right? Because you can show the success. So Great partners and scale up. But start at a manageable scale. Oh, and meet yourself, Bill. Okay. I would agree a hundred percent to both that. Those are really key. The partnerships, I in our case wouldn't have been even feasible without the city as a partner. But also taking it in nice bite-sized pieces. So that, you can have that success as you're going forward and people can. Feel more comfortable coming along for something that they see as as an achievable goal so yeah and I would agree to both of Carolyn say. I'm just one other aspect that we've gone through is you need to be adaptable. Right, I think I push back a little bit when suddenly all our benches need to be permanently put in the ground. I said, well, we want to have flexibility to change the way you use your classroom. Well, we had some safety issues where, you know, benches were disappearing. So we just needed to think a little bit differently about, okay, what's our end goal? And then how do we achieve that in a different format? And that's what all of us I think do in our daily jobs. How do you adapt and still have a really successful outcome? Wonderful. Thanks so much. Let me take a little over at the QA. This one is for you, Caroline, from Jason and it is. Which organization initiated the school year in greening is the school district providing most of the funding? So that came from reflow, which is a nonprofit organization. So I really kudos up to Justin Hagerty. So he approached me. We had done previous work together and he knew the capacity of having my graduate students do some of the drawing, but then Justin and I developed the whole engagement process and how we would be engaged and he manages all the years of work though so he manages then and his staff. The next steps of fundraising construction and then maintenance the funding, Milwaukee Public Schools provides some funding, but a lot of it is coming from those different grant sources that I had on a slide. And then each school needs to fundraise so we work in Justin very specifically with some of the schools says okay you know like I talk about it in buckets so if you want a very large greenhouse that means more of your money is going to that installation and then you have less money for Biles Wells and an outdoor classroom. So there's a distribution of how they spend their initial funds and then how much more. Do they have to fundraise? And it's really fun. You know, sometimes they're doing things as small as a bake scale. Bake sale. Other times they have major events. That they find local partners in their neighborhood or parents have a relationship with a funder. So reflows the core MPS has a sustainability office that they have developed since we started these projects. So that they can manage. The maintenance and manage. Construction along with, reflow. So reflow and MPS have a strong partnership. That overlaps the multi year process. Yeah, sold out those strong partnerships and I love a good bake sale, so that's good. And I'll also turn that question over to you, Bill, just what do you see as the future and role of financing for this walking tour and for the North Central community going forward. This is been a big part of the discussions since the tour. And our mayor likes to refer to the whole process as a layer cake. And there are a lot of layers and they add into the layer cake process at the same time you're playing 3 dimensional chess. So you're trying to put together a lot of different partnerships in finding people who are the ideal partners for it. So that goes from local community partnerships it goes from federal and provincial partnerships It's, there are a number of different sources. So it's trying to put all the pieces together and make it and make it happen. And We're at that interesting stage now where it's all kind of coming together. And so hopefully soon, they'll be, some announcements with regards to future funding all going well. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Looks like that is the And of the QA from the audience. So I will go ahead and wrap this up. Thank you for all the kind comments in the chat. Commenting your wonderful presentations. Thank you both for participating in this challenge. Your hard work really means a lot as we continue this conversation about climate change. Design and equity. And I'm really excited to see what both of your projects have in store for us. For our audience there will be a recording of this available within 24 h and you can expect to see that link in your inbox. So with that, I will wrap this up and say goodbye. Thank you both for joining us. Thank you