On the Park Bench - Equity-Driven Planning

hello everybody we're going to get started in just a second i'm going to let a few more people enter the webinar first all right i think we're about ready hi everyone i'm mallory batches i'm the director of strategic development here at cnu and i want to welcome you to on the park bench a public square conversation brought to you by the congress for the normanism on the park bench presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in urbanism and allied industries providing an opportunity for the audience to engage in real time this webinar series is intended to provide a platform for cnu members to engage debate and collaborate on the pressing and emerging issues we're all facing right now let me know if you have ideas of something you'd like to hear about with uh with this webinar series and we'll try to line it up for you today's conversation i'm really excited about this is equity driven planning with mitchell silver um before i begin uh introducing mitch i wanted to let you all know that tuesday september 1st next tuesday at 12 p.m we are going to have bring back main street with small scale manufacturing the who the why and the how with elana proust who's the founder and ceo of recast city so be sure to mark your calendars for that and try to register ahead of time but today we are talking with mitchell silver mitch is the commissioner of the new york city department of parks and recreation and is a fellow of the american planning association his distinguished career of more than 30 years in planning includes being the immediate past president of the apa where he was the first african-american to hold the title from 2011 to 2013. previously he spent many years of his career in raleigh north carolina where he was chief planning and development officer and planning director and before that in dc where he was deputy director of the washington dc office of planning as parks commissioner he oversees the planning and operating of nearly 30 thousand acres of parks playgrounds beaches marinas recreation centers and facilities green streets concessions wilderness areas and all other parkland assets across the city of new york it's a pretty big job his work as commissioner can teach us a great deal though about delivering equity inclusiveness and belonging to all members of the community through the provision of an investment in public spaces and places and parkland mitch is known for his compassion creativity problem-solving and innovative leadership he's been considered a thought leader within the planning industry throughout his career and his expertise in equity driven planning is widely known and on a personal level mitch has been a professional hero of mine dating back to his work in raleigh and his approach to designing for all people within the built environment is one that i think we should all strive to emulate and so i'm so happy to be turning this over to mitch one quick note that after his presentation we'll have plenty of time for questions so please share any you have using the q a button at the bottom of your screen and i'll ask them after mitch presents thank you all for joining us and thank you to mitch for being here mitch the floor is yours well thank you so much uh let me go ahead to this presentation very excited to be here uh greetings uh from new york city uh where we are flattening our curve so we're very excited about that uh but it's also always a pleasure uh to share my thoughts with cnu enjoy the organization have many friends uh and so i'm very excited to share with you uh my perspective on the equity driven planning uh now because i'm parks commissioner i will focus on some of the work we're doing here in new york city but i'll also try to talk a little bit about diversity and inclusion very often those terms equity diversity inclusion are mixed together and commingled so i'll separate them so you'll understand my point of view when i do talk about equity diversity and inclusion i always like to take a step back because equity is not new uh at the very beginning of the playing profession back in the 1910s there was this whole desire that planning was based on scientific efficiency civic beauty and social equity and at that time both the social reformers and the planners were working together but there was a split and the social reformers went one direction and then those are more focused on how to organize the city went their other direction and so the social workers social reform movement kind of went its own path and really didn't connect back until the 1960s when there was this whole push toward civil rights and equal rights uh then it kind of went away and it reared its head again back in the 1990s when there was this strong desire for social environmental justice uh planning a social equity now reconciled again and we saw this rise of those three circles of sustainability that focused on the economy the environment and equity but again it was still just a word no one really understood what it meant but then it was the 2010s when the great recession hit and everyone now understood this whole issue about fairness and equity people saw a main street not recovered but they saw a wall street recover and they said that was not fair and equity in the past really affected uh really people of color those that were underserved those that were in poverty but the great recession started affecting everyone people were losing their homes in all neighborhoods as a result of the recession and the 2010s really brought it and now which i'll get into the end of the presentation uh with the whole social unrest with black lives matter has now taken equity into a whole new realm because now people are being outspoken about what has happened not just since the 1910s but over 400 years now this is a lot of words i don't expect you to read all of it but i like to start this as a basis for those really in the playing profession or design profession it's supposed to be part of our dna apa has both aspirational principles and our code of ethics and i highlighted some key words in red which is supposed to embody what planners are about to serve the public interest with compassion for the welfare of all people in accordance with the professional obligation to act with competence and fairness and again you see the words all persons and to promote racial and economic integration that's part of our code of ethics to be conscientious of the rights of others and rights could take on many forms from voting rights to civil rights so i can go on and on about rights and to increase the opportunities to help people and underrepresented groups advance in the profession and then finally we as planners should contribute time and effort to groups lacking adequate planning resources that pro bono work to really help uplift communities now there's more to our code of ethics but these are just some examples that this really to me gives us the guard rails for our profession to make sure that is part of our dna and that we operate in accordance what we believe are ethical principles but let's go to that word equity and i've been dealing with equity for well over 20 years and people have these very long definitions i came up with two words to communicate what equity means and it's fair and just people understand fairness if any of you have children and you have a pizza party and one gets a small piece the other one gets a large piece some will say that's not fair and they call it out or someone jumps in line after waiting for a long time that's not fair i like the notion of explaining equity for fairness because it's fair and what is just and this is something we should certainly pursue and it's an easy measurement if you're in a city you have a capital budget and for some reason downtown is getting the line share of the capital funds yet the neighborhoods are not that's not fair everyone pays taxes but it seems like it's being focused on areas of downtown and some people say that's just not fair so fairness is a very easy way of explaining what equity means and as i stated i've been doing this work for a long time when i was in dc deputy playing director is our desire to create a vision for a growing and inclusive city we knew that the east of the river and the other part of dc was not being treated fairly so that was part of the framework of our comprehensive plan and i was working with nashville when they actually had a focus on equity inclusion and this was many years ago uh when it wasn't even fashionable that they took a direct interest and then when i was in raleigh uh the 2030 plan had a whole section based on equity and prosperity but then when i came to new york there was a new focus uh the mayor hired me to deal specifically with this issue of equity was very concerned that not everybody had their fair share of resources and so initially there was a senator that came up with a wonderful bill i got it we'll just take money from the richest conservancies and channel it to the underserved parks and i told the mayor that's not going to work so we said you have six months to come up with an idea and what we came up with was a framework for impeccable future to figure out how we could improve the park system and in fact when the mayor reached out to me and said would you like the job and i said no it equals why is it because parks is 80 operations and 20 planning i'm a planner and the mayor said that's what i want that's why i want you i want to rethink parks for the 21st century based on equity access and fairness so to put things in context uh in order to come up with this program we had to take a look back new york city spent close to six billion dollars over 20 years improving their park system we added more acreage to our system and we believe very strongly in this walk score we wanted every new yorker to be within a 10-minute walk to a park right now it's at 81.5 percent our goal is to get to 85 san francisco is the only city in the u.s with a perfect walk score and dc is very close to becoming the second city but while that metric was important about proximity to me it was about quality and i'll show you in a second what some of those parks look like it's not just proximity because i can go to some of those playgrounds within a 10-minute walk and i would not let my child or grandchild step foot in that public space so looking at the equity we looked at proximity but we also looked at quality and we wanted to take a deeper dive but how do we analyze equity how do we figure out if we're being fair in this particular case we decided to take a data driven approach not speak to anyone but tell us what the data is sharing and so we took a look back over 20 years that six billion being spent and how many parts of our 2000 parks receive less than a quarter of a million dollars over 20 years and in park planning that means virtually nothing and it turned out there were 215 parts hiding in plain sight when community groups or other parks being improved they looked at their park and there was no improvement that's children families seniors without a quality place that they could enjoy create memories and grow in new york city we felt that was not fair and it had to change so what the mayor did and i gave him a lot of credit mayor de blasio decided to invest over 300 million dollars to recreate not just do a light paint work but recreate 67 of the 215 parts we did some target improvements in the short term because our process takes about three to four years to totally rebuild the park and we just went in there just to do some sprucing up to show the community we've noticed we cared we're sorry that you had to wait 20 years for something to happen but we decided to go in to do some improvements and put it in context that's from kindergarten to college your park saw no improvement whatsoever and every neighbor in new york is thriving we want to have a public space in every neighborhood so this was really detrimental to those communities so there's one of your nice new york city parks this isn't lovely you can go there roll around the asphalt have a good time this in new york city is considered a park in fact this is within that 10-minute walk to a park and you can go there and enjoy the asphalt the council member and i were looking for one blade of grass and so we determine if this is really a park or a parking lot in fact sometimes the teachers do use this as a parking lot and this is what the neighborhood had to use as one of their public spaces now this one i enjoy a little bit more because there's a bench in trees so i suppose you can have a picnic there and have a good time this park too was within that 10-minute walk and to me this is no place for a person to really enjoy you see the playground there in the background and i just felt that this is not a place where people can go to get healthy to form memories and make connections and so we knew we had to change something and then i don't know if this is unique to new york uh but we have these signs that unless you're accompanied uh by a child if you're an adult 12 and over you cannot go in to me this also was not fair because if i'm a senior citizen and i see a bench in a comfort station i have to walk another who knows 10 15 minutes to find a park i can go in we felt that was not fair so you know all these signs were changed my alternative was that i'd have to create a concession where you can rent a child to go into the public space and i didn't feel that that was going to work so we decided to change all these signs for a senior population just wasn't fair and you could get a violation if you actually sit in this park and a police officer or park police happen to come by so we decided to take a whole new approach it's unfair but how we're going to fix it we decided to do our top design approach to recreate not just paint it but from the ground up break up the asphalt and redesign all of these 67 parks but we wanted to make sure we had these features since they're town centers town commons they wanted to be attractive and used for all ages spray features they're available throughout the year yes when it's warm you could activate the spray but when it's not and it's winter time you can still have kids play on these wonderful formations adult fitness equipment very popular in new york we wanted to use vibrant colors since now these are town centers get away from the dark grey colors happy callers uh kids would enjoy them and now these become these incredible like i said town centers these outdoor living rooms for people to enjoy i cannot begin to tell you uh when we went to our public meetings how often people wanted to break up the asphalt and want it green study at the study will show you the connection of green space to your mental health because parks aren't just for physical health they're also for mental health but there's also storm water capture so the parks are doing double duty it's adding these beautiful gardens that people could enjoy as a respite but also was taking water off of uh the network and putting them here into our park and then finally we have an aging population all of our parks now are multi-generational for all ages we're putting in lots and lots of seating and we push back on the fear of what about the homeless we plan for what we want to see not what we don't want to see and we make sure there's plenty of seating for people of all ages we even have places if you're in a wheelchair or ada issues or a stroller uh there are some of our checkered tables that have a missing chair so you can put a child or a loved one that can sit there and enjoy it with you as well so i'm gonna walk through some examples of what uh this looks like this is uh one of the parts that hadn't been touched in 20 years uh garrison park is right across the street from a community college in the south bronx a very troubled neighborhood but it's on its way back uh you can see from the entrance it's not the most inviting park you want to go into but this is a new york city park now other than the other ones that's covered with asphalt this one in fact did have some native vegetation and so there it is uh and i want you to stop and look for a second i was embarrassed when i saw this that this was actually part of the new york city parks system would you let your child play here or even your dog play here it just was not an inviting place so this is one of the parks that got the full makeover it is right now under construction uh this is the design it was intended to take advantage of the very multi-generational neighborhood the students that go to school across the street and so uh access for us was critically important and now you see the that is the community college in the background that now this is gonna be envisioned uh as a town square with a water play and a splash pads multi-generational people to enjoy this is now under construction and should be finished we had the cove it paused but it should be finished soon and i can't begin to tell you how excited the public is that they now for the first time as long as they can remember have a quality space that they can enjoy and not that jungle that you saw in the previous slide i do want to share one of these powerful stories um for a second uh there are so many stories i can share with you about the impact of this program there was one park we opened up in brooklyn it was your typical asphalt playground the one i showed you in the two of the slides and on opening day there was this boy about eight years old hispanic he would not go into this public space wouldn't go in i asked one of my staff to approach this board and say why won't you come in this is now for you there was now a running track synthetic turf new brand new play equipment landscaping and he wouldn't go in this little boy said he wouldn't go in because he said he didn't know how much it cost to go into that public space it was that nice he thought he had to pay for it and that really struck me uh there's a little boy you see him on the track uh and i can't begin to tell you how his life's gonna change through all the children in that neighborhood he was not used to seeing something like this he thought something like this he had to pay for because it was too nice to be free this is now becoming the place where everyone can gather the boy kept running around his father was taking pictures and i can tell you that now this boy's childhood the families in this community now have a world-class public space that they can enjoy that's what fairness is all about that's what it makes sure that you make all the resources are distributed in a fair manner because people in the community are being affected and their lives are being changed on the lower cost side uh we decided to do this other initiative called cool polls well what is cool pulls well for one we're very excited you've got to be cool so cool paul's had a couple of meetings we wanted people to be cold you know temperature wise be cool don't uh misbehave and then be cool so cool pulls had this wonderful tagline that my staff came up with and essentially we had about uh 17 1970s era pool decks we wanted to take it from a pool to an engaging vibrant place for the community to enjoy we felt that municipal pools which could be pretty ugly looking that we wanted to make sure we wanted to treat them like all pools that you see at a resort and so this is what it looked like there were these modules that were placed in 1970s cracking concrete not very pleasing you see the mold all over the place and we felt a municipal pool does not have to look like this the community deserves better you know you see some public housing in the background so we decided at low cost 150 000 per pool that we decided to do a major transformation to change it from this which you see which is pretty horrible to this simple now people are calling this the resort uh we went ahead with this whole design palette by having cool elements we had snow cones dripping we had our parts logo we had adirondack chairs for all ages and we used the right colors to make it feel fun and refreshing here's just another angle of it you start seeing which i love the marco polo along the edge to make it a destination a musical pool does not have to be like a municipal pool it can look like any resort that you see when you go on vacation and it's been so popular there you see the the snow cone just melting just to show that it's cool uh we got our horticultural staff to put in plants we got a lot of the furniture donated by various companies and now capacity is going through the roof where we have to put people online to queue up just to get into the pool and i can go on and on here's a police officer from baltimore the cornhole and then there's just the beautiful example of what looked like a very bad place there's a marco polo again for a very low cost we're thinking differently about how do we make these spaces more equitable attract more people and offer people more dignity in what is an amazing amenity for people to enjoy over the summer so a result of all these initiatives we've now completed 48 of the 67 of the community initiative parks and we'll now have improved 70 acres of parkland that look like the one i showed you in the south bronx we also work the local community create these fence groups and 82 percent of the 48 now have a friends group there were stewards that helped care for these parks and i can tell you the good news is we're not seeing any vandalism when you respect the community with quality material they expect you respect you back in return and we're seeing great stewardship on all of our parks that we've renovated and now usership compared to other parks have increased by 50 that means more people getting to know one another more people getting healthier both physically and mentally and more kids have a great safe place to play i want to quickly talk about diversity because again those terms are often mixed up i could tell you what diversity is not and diversity is not meeting your eeoc hiring requirements or making sure that you have a person of color on your contract to get the project uh it's not a marketing ploy diversity very often is used as like oh we just need to have one person that one token planner to get the job that's not what diversity is uh so that's something i want to be clear what diversity is is the value of different perspectives working with different cultures race income disability it's not black white it's all the above diversity is a socially morally responsible thing to do it adds value to the decision-making process because you have more perspectives more voices as part of the playing process to me it is the ethically responsible thing to do as design professionals and as planners and clearly as we see demographics changing it's our future so it's about the value of different perspectives not just race religion gender sexual orientation age generations it's all of the above and so i make sure we do our work uh we look at the demographics of the community we do this analysis and make sure that these voices are represented we don't want to plan for who just shows up at the public meeting we want to do our additional outreach once we do our demographic analysis to know that we're actually hearing from those diverse voices because it does produce a much better outcome here's an example of what i mean that same playground latvia playground it's in a mixed community we did an outreach session this one tended to be hispanic asian and black at our visioning session everyone seemed to just go to their own table and do their uh recommendation for their design we did our engagement but the most powerful thing happened when we started to report out the young african male that you see there in the maroon shirt he was the first to present and when he got to present i watched all the women at the table with the asian women and they were tensing up because i guess they were going to hear them say there's going to be basketball and all these active sports the first thing that young man said was that they walk through that playground every day and they notice the asian women and men doing tai chi the first thing the society must include is a plaza for the asian americans to do tai chi and you could have heard a pin drop it was that beautiful moment by adding that diversity in the room produced a much better outcome here is the design that we came up with uh and you'll see the leaves at the top i'll show you a closer picture and that represents all the different voices producing a much better outcome yes the basketball was there but this is a very inclusive diverse play space uh so it went from this and now it's completed uh this is what it looks like uh nice overhang for people who want to do tai chi whether it's raining or whether it's sunny that's the plaza that they design with the leaves for people who do tai chi and i stated this is covered space if people wanted to either picnic or do tai chi so this is a great example of what diversity looks like i want to click quickly shift gears to inclusion because again that's the other term that's also always intermingled with equity inclusion needs to be included and not to be excluded uh it's for all people in the design press process for all people in community engagement and avoid designing exclusive parks in public space when i go into a certain neighborhood and see bocce and ping pong it's like time out or no basketball or no areas to eat we as designers can design a space that feels exclusive i don't feel welcome there whether the food that they offer or how the space is designed and as designers we have to understand the culture the spirit the attitude and have a full community engagement not just outreach to understand the soul of this community so people do not feel excluded and i've been to places the minute i walk in i don't feel welcome here it's like what are you talking about just to design elements what's placed in this public space i don't feel welcome we want to plan spaces for all because parks and public spaces are democratic spaces designed for all this is one example i was in akron ohio this is a metro park system and there was a history through the design where people just did not feel welcome and i actually had a therapy session and explained to people that the african-american women who were older that came there with a lot of anger it wasn't about the current planning process it was a 30 years of anger they were holding in that they were hearing at this public meeting are being planned and planned and no progress had been made they wanted to make sure that they were heard because far too often planners and designers were tone deaf and they were trying to tell them how this design would address their concerns when they wanted to go far deeper and it did not include some of those design elements now i took this picture and a hat tip to cnu i was so blown away by this example this is when cnu had their congress in detroit and i happened to walk by and saying wait a minute there is a basketball court in downtown detroit this was probably the most powerful image that i've seen in a long time why detroit predominately black city is on its way back campus marsh park decided to put a park in the heart of downtown and they had the audacity to put a basketball court in the center of downtown what that spoke to me is that this city is on its way back and you are urban youth you matter we're putting you center stage most places will take a baseball court and say oh no way we put that in our downtown in fact it's hard to put basketball courts anywhere most will take the rims down if there's one shooting or one game activity detroit said you matter we're putting you in the center of the downtown and i asked people and they said no there had been no issues no instances and to me is absolutely beautiful uh they used a creative court technique which we're using more and more in new york city to show that you actually can have basketball and turn around to be something that's inclusive and embraces in the community this is the one we did in the lower east side this is now very popular with tournaments we're now hiring hiring artists to do the sports coding and now we're replicating this throughout the city it's a way of having basketball that's inclusive shows people that are welcome and they're not on the outskirts or we don't take the rims down because one incident happened to occur and our parks are destinations for culture this is afropunk the most popular festival i think in the world they happen to have them all over the place and every year photographers come just to capture all the different outfits but it's rich in culture that's what public space does it brings in that culture it's diverse it's beautiful this is an astoria park every year the indigenous population come here we have this amazing festival that's what park spaces are all about or picnics family unions food i've been to so many parks and people who are playing for parks like saying no we don't want picnic table we don't want to have any barbecue areas people come together around food and it's something we have to think about as we plan for public spaces eating gatherings benches is all part of it and this is something that i'm so excited about and i'm hoping more and more places will embrace the eating part of public spaces i'll end with this one about another example of being inclusive this is in green uh greenville uh north carolina uh there was a project where that decimated neighborhood through urban renewal you can now see uh the building of the church the stark church that was burnt down and now the city was ready to start to create a park at this location but there was so much pain based upon renewal to the black neighborhood and the church that so just happened to catch on fire that there was a lot of wounds and healing the community had to go through the community reached out to xena howard a well-known black female architect perkins and well and went through this process with the community of doing this design the right way this is a story unto itself but it wasn't just putting up black art to say we've checked that box they wanted to go deeper and understand exactly spiritually culturally what did the community feel about this public space and now this one is under construction and as you can see from the line from uh the former parks planner perkins will brought people through the journey they listened and were able to transform the community's words and ideas into a design it was inclusive it was engagement and now the people there feel welcome this is what the design looks like and i believe this park is under construction and now a true asset and the gathering place where people can really feel the spirit from the past but now they're ready to go forward i'm going to end on this one because now as i said uh both black lives matter and covet colliding into one we had brianna taylor here in new york we had christian cooper who was a black birder who approached the woman in the park and it could have gone sideways and could have ended who knows how what would have happened but it was not a good predicament when she was accusing him of potentially creating harm to her later that night george floyd uh uh was killed and really set off uh really from the social isolation from covid to what had happened to george floyd christian cooper and brianna taylor set off a chain reaction we all know about and public space seemed to be a major place where people wanted to express how they felt uh being in parks i felt it was very important that i have a conversation with my black staff i put out a statement expressing how i felt that personally it was a scam ripped off of a wound i've been suppressing my feelings of being black my entire prayer where i had to check my black identity at the door and so this was a painful letter i had to write to staff would eventually we made public but we had these reflections to talk to our staff about how they felt a lot of my friends and what allies kept saying what can we do i said before you ask what can i do first ask someone how do they feel and that was our first effort is that we had these reflections about how staff felt about what was going on and it became clear this was june that he wanted to show solidarity with the black community as did i and so we realized juneteenth was around the corner a day of celebration and we decided to rename a portion of one of our parks downtown that happened to be the site of a lot of protests and we renamed it juneteenth grove uh it so happened it was god destined spot because we did a couple of things i wanted to have it uh symbolic so we planted 19 trees and we wanted to paint 19 benches it so happened the entrance of the space literally had exactly 19 benches and so we painted it the pan african colors as you can see right here we unveiled it on june 19th and this became a space which is a space for protest for reflection for celebration and we are now looking at all of our park spaces that were named uh of for questionable individuals so we're now going to rename some of our parks and our buildings after local national or global black leaders and we'll announce it on november uh second which is black solidarity day uh this was a whole team effort uh this is karina smith she was one of the individuals on that reflection call we came up with the idea i had the honor uh because since it was juneteenth and it was really representing the day that we were emancipated i prayed the roots go down to touch the past and the branches above to the future so i want to say a prayer for all the ancestors that had passed before us and that was a tree that i helped plant so it was very meaningful for all of us a lot of tears that day and it really showed our solidarity and this is what we mean by really thinking very differently being inclusive and providing a public space for a variety of reasons rather than just putting up a work of art or a plaque this was a whole group that put it together so we're very diverse it was a very very moving day you could now see the sign june team grove and now is a place that people come uh just to take pictures just to spend some time there to pray and connect with the past so as i close we must create more equitable diverse and inclusive public spaces for all people and i want to underscore we have to make sure it is for all people thank you thank you mitch uh that was really wonderful and a really um uh uh touching uh story and and you know installation that y'all have done there at the end that you've uh highlighted and um we have some good questions i want to remind everyone that uh the q a button is at the bottom of your screen um if you want to submit a question and there's there's a question here that came in early and and i'm thinking about you know your your most recent comments there mitch at the end of your presentation um the question is about the issue of fairness and fairness in the moment versus fairness over time and um you know asking about talking about the distribution of resources over time even if you only talk about like say since 1910 or something um and and how that level of fairness can be better imbued into you know public spaces public facilities um and people's experience of that fairness or lack thereof can be you know celebrated and reflected upon in public spaces as well well it's very hard to go back to 1910 but we went back 20 years and doing the analysis to me is the first step i remember when i was in north carolina i helped a council member in greensboro for capital budget everyone paid taxes i mean some paid higher than others but everyone paid taxes yet her district was not getting any of the capital dollars and if you're a planner or you want to ask the question you want to make sure if everyone's paying taxes to create an entire city community or town to be a healthy place you should look at the capital dollars to make sure it is distributed fairly a lot of people say oh let's do downtown because that's the economic driver but people live in neighborhoods people want those amenities to make neighborhoods livable so the first thing i'll do is anytime you have a capital plan make sure it is distributed equally the same thing goes for maintenance whatever you deploy you can't have one neighborhood that's maintained better than the other so fairness should be across the board how you hire how you train how you promote how you distribute resources and then the public spaces you know i i said in the pre-call urbanists and plans are taking a lot of heat right now from a lot of the black lives matter that is racist you don't care you've been sensitive biking is anti-black these are things we have to listen and not be toned up to understand what it is the concern is with vision zero if we have enforcement they're targeting people of color if you're in a public space they feel as if you're targeted you know if you have a nice white couple sitting on a bench they look great you have three black teenagers they're loitering so i think it's just our perception about how we treat people in public space i want to eliminate that word loitering entirely it's all based on how you perceive someone so look at fairness how we approach how we plan public spaces how we plan the resources be it capital for maintenance and how we treat people in public spaces i'll be honest there are some places i go to i look at the food options i want comfort food this stuff is so fancy i'm sorry i don't this is not for me this is some elite group of people and so it may be subtle but that's what i mean by being welcoming for all if we have concessions i want to make sure there are food that everyone could enjoy or a number of concessions where people have options versus something that is so high-end and so expensive it's like this place is not for me so these are things we have to think about it's going to be hard going back to 1910 but at least we look at the immediate future to find out how we can be more fair more equitable and more inclusive as we go forward yeah well and related to that someone asked a question here about uh they live near prospect park and the prospect park alliance pays for a lot of operations and small neighborhood parks seem to be more neglected by comparison relying on the budget to support those facilities and and i wonder if you could talk a little bit about that that sort of challenge of you know it's like when i mentioned to my mother that i was gonna be moderating and she said so he looks over central park and i said well yeah and you know a whole lot of other parks and um you know how do you how do you in your role help support and lift up those many many many you know much smaller facilities so a little news flash about the person that's about prosperity park cross park is a hybrid uh about portion of this maintained by the prosper park alliance and a portion is maintained by the parts department so it's a joint relationship but we do benefit from our conservancy partners at rey's pond they help care for it but about about more than half the park is maintained by park staff what we try to do is work with our part stewards we work with volunteers uh we're down about 1700 employees uh and people are coming to parks more than ever during cove uh and so it's been tough keeping up with the maintenance operations and the litter cleanup so we're launching a campaign for people to help us but now we have impact days where we want the public to come out and help uh but for now our parks always me to exceed the ratings this summer's a bit different uh because we're down about 25 percent of our staff but we do rely on conservancies to help care for the parks and we now are relying more and more on volunteers during kovit which is down so many we want these parks to be beautiful but we make sure all parks are maintained to the same standard we have inspection ratings we have inspectors that go out twice a year and any part that fails we have to call the supervisor and to find out what's going on we want to make sure all of our parts are treated the same regardless of where they're located whether there is a conservancy or there is not a conservancy my goal is to make sure all the parks look great that's great well and you mentioned uh kova 19 and and you know being down on staff but i i want to bring that a little broader in in some of the realities of code 19 and obviously equitable management of open space of public space is a particular challenge uh because of the pandemic and so i'm sure you've learned a lot of lessons your your um staff has learned a lot of lessons through this but are there key lessons that the pandemic has shown a spotlight on that planning needs to be bringing into the future much beyond the pandemic you know things that this sort of unveiled uh that we should have been doing all along well for one there's no question that people saw the value of parks in a very different way um parks are always there i used to joke around because it's like why can't parks get funding like other city services and i said you know one day we should shuttle the parts down for people to know the value little did i know that dream kind of came through with covey because when everything started shutting down every major gambling places parks remained open and our parks employees were coming to work and so people started calling them havens of pope i call them sanctuary insanity uh it was the only place you can go to feel alive during covet and so people now understand that it's a little bit sad that now with the budget shortfall we had such huge revenue losses that we cannot sustain the parts that we have in the past but people now are looking at parks very differently and now there are a lot more allies and advocates saying we have to do more for our parks because of the role they serve not just for recreation but also for mental health and so that's i think one takeaway the other one is that a lanier parks uh the high line had a challenge reopening i'm guessing chicago 606 and others there were challenges to how you can social distance on these linear parts and as a runner i would freak out when somebody's running by with a mask on popping and puffing or on a bike so you know should we start looking at the widths of some of our bikeways and walkways so that people can socially distance the high line now is the time entry you can only go one way versus going back and forth so i think going forward the passive parks really helped quite a bit uh and people could social distance but all our other amenities playgrounds basketball courts you know skate parks it became a challenge so we're not going to change our approach but i think the one here i'm going to look at is some of those more constrained paths and linear parts where you don't have the ability to keep that six foot distance and a lot more hand sanitizing a lot more you know comfort stations where people can wash their hands so that to me may be part of our future as we look to parks like having them more strategic where people at least wash their hands or you know that's something that we are taking a look at um we have another question here uh that is a little bit about the technicality of how you described how the parks funding works but um the question is why was it impossible to require that any contribution to a specific park conservancy have a specific portion say 15 uh shared with the parks not supported by a conservancy what's what's the inhibition to that well one is this is a city asset and so this should be borne by the taxpayers and so i told the mayor we've got to put our money where our mouth is and the mayor agreed the good news is the conservancies were on board and i sat down with them we were able to get a contribution of five million per year for three years so they were able to contribute close to 15 million dollars and they support equity they understand parks are for all and so they're doing their part central park is open to everyone it's not just the exclusive residents who live around central markets open it everywhere crosstalk park all the other parks so they were on board with the equity they helped us out caring for some of our uh other parks central park for example helps us with the historic fallen train parks of our staff on the unbelievable turf management that they do the high line is helping with gardening and public art so each of our conservancies stepped up but i just felt it wasn't unfair if i'm a contributor and i'm giving to central park it's for central park it's not for another park and lo and behold central park created this um other program to help other parks and they got people private donors to give to that initiative to help other parks throughout the city so new york's will step up and give but if i give you money for something and then you take it for something else i don't feel that's fair if you ask me to help other parks i'll do that and that's just what some of our private donors did but the bottom line is the conservancies were on board these are public assets the public needs to take care of and shouldn't rely solely on the private sector unless the private sector like central park wants to do value added improvements to their part i think that's fine so it's like tithing but even with tithing it's voluntary that's a good analogy um so we have a question here um and we'll you know this this starts to get into a lot of different topics really but the question is how should we be designing public spaces and public places to make everyone feel safe and you know this gets to the question of policing um there's there's you know inherent policing there's there's you know and there's personal you know personal policing community policing there's a lot of different aspects there's the design that police's people's behavior right and so i wonder if you could talk a little bit about that aspect of that issue of safety as it relates now the safety safety cuts across a lot there's safety about do i feel safe in this public space is it well-lit are there good sight lines and so that's something that for us is absolutely important we have this initiative called parksville borders to make sure that parks are transparent they're open they have good sight lines they're well they're well lit but then safe in terms of me as a person of color do i feel safe in this space that's a combination of enforcement and that's the work we're doing community policing that like i said earlier if there are three black teenagers sitting on a bench uh are they safe to be there without being viewed as being loiterers or people being intimidated by their presence that's more community education and the perception of how people perceive danger if you see a group of young black youths do you feel safe or do you feel in danger and that's more of an education or either our parks enforcement or police who do they approach uh for what rule there was a big debate that far more many people who were black were being approached but not wearing a face covering than those who were white and so when people feel safe can i go there without being harassed by enforcement agents and that's really not on the planner side it's more on the law enforcement side and that work is underway there's better cooperation now we have committee members meeting with the police about what is a safe space uh and so that's just an ongoing conversation so it's law enforcement but it's also the designer uh are you designing a space that is welcome for all uh i told you about bike lanes and other things that was new to me but i have friends like saying oh these urbanists are always fighting for bike lanes but here i am in new york city they get stopped for violating the vision zero rules and so i'm not comfortable with all these bike lanes it's not something that i believe is for our community so that's the debate i let urbanists and some of the black lives matter advocates work out uh but those are some of the issues i'm talking about well and and related to that we we have a pretty uh pointed question of if you wanted to weigh in on your feelings of scepted and if that's you know uh our like i said uh sometimes people want to throw out the baby with the bath water the parks without borders program uh was built on some of the september principles uh we had parts that i didn't put in this presentation but you literally could not see in the park the whole hit the success of bryant park a lot of drug dealing high walls high fences high bushes they were moved and now there are better sight lines yes it's a very high-end part but the point is is that the drug activity went away they put good uses to push out the bad uses they lowered the fences and removed some of the barriers so you can see in it's the same principle for a lot of our parks they're now safer a woman wants to be able to see through to see her sense of safety and so through our park supporters program we're moving fences we're lowering fences removing those barriers we're making parts more accessible and we're making sure they're active so that they actually feel safer now that's just a portion of the september principle some are using kind of the evil twin side of the september to say it is destructive but our parcel borders have been highly successful making parts safer uh and so as a result people just feel better putting benches now on the sidewalks because parks closed sidewalks never closed but it puts eyes on the public space and people feel safer so i'm a supporter of parts of september i'd love to get a debate to understand why people are opposed to it uh so like i said very often um people take that one perspective and they push it to say this doesn't work i've been doing september a long time and i see the value of some of the principles not all and parkside board is one example where it's been extremely extremely successful i understand um we have a we have a really good question here uh coming from miami beach florida and the the question is what can concerned residents do to pressure for change in municipalities that just operate on the decide announce and defend mode um you know even cities like miami beach this person is suggesting people don't seem to understand or care the concept of inclusion and design occurs at the whim of the latest stakeholder i don't know how to answer that question i mean people vote and you have to make this absolutely mandatory uh everyone pays taxes either you're a renter you're paying taxes to your landlord so yes if you're a renter you're a citizen and you count that's not just about homeowners so this is something you have to demand parks public spaces are for all and some will have to tell me are you part of all or you're not part of all that's the case to privatize it and then give the taxpayers a refund you have to demand this from elected officials or you put someone else in office the the future of our cities as we become more dense they're going to be more fierce competition for the public realm the more people want to use the public realm and you have to design it in such a way that it is inclusive for all i can get the whole conversation about the homeless because homeless actually come under for all but that's a whole separate conversation but you have to pressure your elected leaders that you want an inclusive system for all that all feel welcome and that is something you just have to demand as they do here in new york we have many many allies that are pushing for more inclusivity there was a situation at prostate park where this gentleman kept taking pictures of these mexicans were having a barbecue and a section of prospect park that wasn't allowed i took a look at it he said do something about it and i did i allowed that area now to be to have picnicking and barbecuing and that's not the answer the man wanted he wanted to be exclusive and my feeling is if they're coming there why do i want them to march a mile across the park to an area that i felt from an equity point of view that area should have been more inclusive to people that live closer to that part of the park so you've got to be daring you have to push for it and if you believe in uh being inclusive uh then you speak up and tell your elected officials we're taxpayers we demand this um well and this is a little related to that but i had a question for you you brought up the you brought up sustainability and the overlapping you know sort of aspects of social and environmental and economic uh sustainability and interconnectedness there and you also had a slide about stormwater capture landscaping and and you know time that to the fact that there are mental health benefits from greenery and so you know some of these things are are interrelated but i'm wondering how important is it for your office to the the communication and engagement aspect of that sort of connectivity plays into your ability to work with local community to get the local community to embrace you know new designs or new new installations how does how does communication and engagement work in that well first my all cnu speech i used to look at those three circles and i would tell people that no one's serious about the equity and i felt get rid of it because you do the economy and the environment and no one really paid attention so i felt that they were not being sustainable because they only did two of the three uh but our principle is that we believe in community engagement not outreach engagement that is fostering a relationship with the community getting to know them just like you're dating someone to be engaged you want to foster that relationship to get to really understand them you can't do that on a google map you have to go there feel the community talk to them understand the local culture for every park design we do we have a community engagement process which means the presenters talk less and listen more to me the communication is about listening and hearing those stories i shared you the picture about metro parks uh that woman that was there for 30 years said it was the best meeting she's ever had because for the first time people were listening to her and not being defensive because she came off as being confrontational and now they ended up with a very good park design otherwise people end up tone dead so we have public engagement we make sure as many generations are there the kids are great their imagination for park planning still is hard to to me but from treehouses to ferris wheels to parachutes to whatever it is but we make sure that they're involved as well we have interpreters if we need it we really want to make sure we're listening that's the main thing about public engagement is that you're listening and observing i'll walk the neighborhood to watch how people behave and then confront them people says oh these tall buildings are blocking out all the light in our park and i go to a park and every person is running under a tree for shade so you know we we gotta talk about this you know is it really the building but if shade is important you know shadows do move i'll never forget what the woman said there's a shadow and shade are two different things i'm like i've never heard that one before to be there the same but you really have to spend time to get to know the community and if they don't show up look for them don't just plan for who shows up at the meeting if you truly want to engage the public do your homework and reach out to them and so i imagine that's that's all the more difficult since march of this year and have you have you have you found that um you know that have you found i mean i i suppose municipalities are facing the the fact you know all over the country that they have to invent new ways of you know being able to connect with citizens and finding ways to listen yes it's we've got to do we have to do uh some construction is on pause but those projects move forward you know zoom seems to be taking over the planet uh it's not the same but if we want to approach and move forward we have to hear from the community yes it's a lot harder there's no question about it so we're hoping you know once this pause is lifted once we have a vaccine that people are comfortable with we do want to go back to normal be absolutely right this is the challenge for everyone and i'm open and willing to hear if someone has the best practice but it's tough it's really well yeah i i have to believe if new york city finds it a challenge every other municipality is going to feel the same um so i have one last question here that it's a little bit of a philosophical one that i thought i would close on which is that the person suggested they really like the formulation of equity is just and fair that that you presented in in your slides but how do you respond to those who say as a lot of parents do i have a child i think i've said this before uh to your child of life isn't always fair and and how do you respond to that within the context of a you know of a city and and all of the residents within it i think they're talking about those circumstances which is certainly outside your control when it comes to a city where you have a budget and a staff where you're caring for it uh to me is a lot more definable clearly there are certain things that happen you know there's a storm that comes through and your house gets hit not the house next door why did that happen uh or unfortunately if someone comes down with a you know a disease or an ailment you know life is not fair i think those are things i can understand to say you can't control it when it comes to budgets when it comes to resources when it comes to planning those are things we can control and we should adopt this approach of being fair and just uh you just have to have that mindset and philosophy just to be clear i'm just not fair about how i plan how i treat my staff how i treat my wife how i treat my friends to me it's a value i embrace across the board so it's not hard to me it's not a foreign concept whatever i do i want to do a level of fairness and i want to make sure it is just so that's my personal philosophy i encourage others to adopt the same and when you apply that to you know equity driven plan whether it's parks or for cities you certainly will get a better outcome and people respect you a lot more because you know it and you understand it and someone says wait a minute i'm in this neighborhood i haven't seen any investment in 20 years yet i'm looking at this neighborhood why are they getting all the benefits and ours hasn't changed that's a fair question and that's something in my world i believe all of us as urbanism planners we need to address and speak out that's really um i certainly agree mitch um and a a great way to to close the webinar i think i just i want to thank you so much for your time today um and for your insights and and this you know amazing work you're doing in new york city um i want to let everybody who's listening know that a recording of this session will be available on cnu.org within the next 24 hours and to remind everyone to please join us on september 25th for bring back main street with small-scale manufacturing the who the why and the how with the ilana prus and um and i want to thank mitch one more time for sharing his insights with us today it was a pleasure getting to talk with you thank you valerie take care thank you everyone for joining us certainly enjoyed it great thanks so much