On the Park Bench - Pandemic Toolkit

hi everyone welcome to cnu's on the park bench we're just getting going now and we're waiting for folks to join in coming in from the waiting room so we're just going to give it a little bit more time before we get going so for those of you just joining us um we're just giving it a couple of minutes before we get going um it the most of us are now well aware with zoom it takes a while to get everybody in from the waiting room so i'm just going to give it a few more seconds all right here we go so hi everyone i'm lynn richards uh cmu's president and ceo and i am just absolutely thrilled today to be moderating on the park bench um around the pandemic tool kit with susan henderson and hazel boris on the park bench we launched on the park bench just about a year ago at the start of the pandemic to provide a virtual format for members cnu members partners and allies to engage discuss and debate pressing issues around the pandemic since the start we have now kept it as kind of a weekly webinar series um to push out and to um uh and to provide a platform for additional discussions so i wanted to just a few announcements we have launched the call for session proposals cnu 29 design for change um the session proposals are now live so you can learn more at cnu.org backslash cnu29 they're live until february 5th so please get those in um also we're accepting applications for the charter awards um that's live until february 9th uh you can go to cnu.org backslash charter awards all of this is on our website so let's just let's just get started because i i'm so excited about this i've had the the pleasure of working with hazel boris who's the president of place makers and susan henderson who's the principal of place makers almost um from my very month um in office susan now is a as is part of the national cnu board and hazel is a close uh close advisor the three of us have had a lot of conversations over the last seven years about what are the best ways to code to get the outcomes that we're looking for and i love that they have just taken the pandemic with both hands and have worked to crowdsource the pandemic toolkit as guidance for local governments and what they can be doing now in the midst of the pandemic so with that as the introduction i'm going to hand it off to hazel who will tell us all about this thank you lynn and it's really great to be here i appreciate being on the park bench with you all even if it's only virtually so thank you all for showing up you know the placemakers pandemic response compendium which you can find by going to https forward slash bitly forward slash pandemic placemaking uh is an open source editable by anyone um google sheet and as you can see here it was edited 27 minutes ago so it is open source for everyone and as people make those edits we just ask them to turn them red so that we can go find them and incorporate and really the pandemic response compendium was because so many of you on today's call and and not on today's call both have been doing really amazing work around the world and so we wanted to start accumulating those best practices in one place and so here you know you'll see an action and what that action is the tool to make that action happen what category it's in what method to create that tool the key points whether it's pre-vaccine post-vaccine and long-term whether in in the whole cnu charter for the new urbanism operating system whether it's happening at the block street and building the neighborhood district and corridor or region and then examples of these sorts of actions in practice around the world and links to them so kind of when we started this it was to survey all of you and the best practices that you were creating and it was also quite frankly just a way to fight the depression that comes with that overwhelming feeling that the pandemic is a massive event that has irrevocably changed all of our lives and how can we focus on the biggest little thing that we can do and the biggest little thing ben brown and scott boyen love to say that of of really making a difference at home so from this compendium because most of you are not nerdy engineers like me we made something more um approachable perhaps and even though the the compendium has 39 actions that are are arranged from except for the first one which is the hardest but after that it's arranged from the the easiest to the most complex we cut it off at 22 because we really felt like most cities and towns or states and provinces could do the first 22 by themselves without necessarily hiring an outside consultant and from there we just wanted to really focus on what places can do on their own um and and be able to make a difference so i'm gonna go through the first three actions then i'll hand it off to susan um and then we'll kind of pass it back and forth a little bit so while this pandemic tool kit that you'll be able to find com how we teach pandemic to uh knows yes how we teach pandemic toolkit um so or just placemakers.com forward slash pandemic dash toolkit and and then if you click here explore in english or pandemic toolkit launch it then that takes you to this spark page and so from here you know we're just really looking at what are those actions that should be taken action one first section two second etc to make a difference in the time of the pandemic and most of these actions are focused in on policy and regulation and of course the first one is to prioritize equity and justice because we understand that so many communities that have been historically overburdened with health inequities are just even more so during the pandemics so uh we we point to all of the black boxes are clickable hyperlinks so we point to this document planning for health equity advocacy and leadership or feel that susan and i and about 70 something other planners worked on together as a policy platform to re reaffirm the imperative need for public health and design professionals to work together during this tough time so even though this is maybe the hardest of all the actions we really feel like the focus should be there first on equity and justice before moving to the other biggest little things because number one is not a little thing in any in any stretch of the imagination action number two is to enable outdoor dining and how you would do that are by making changes to zoning and policy for code amendments and applications is how most cities around the world are dealing with it but some cities are taking it a step further so we kind of on some of these do a one-two punch like here's the way most people are doing it and and then here are ways that really kind of out their cities are are enabling this action so for instance langley washington who we've been working with quite a bit instead of going through this coven 19 temporary patio registration form that most cities are doing that that that deal with general safety requirements right-of-way requirements for expansion either into the sidewalk parking lane travel lane and or a city park and the insurance and indemnity and deductibles that go along with that if i am a restaurant and move my first table outside what what am i indemnifying and what levels of insurance am i willing to have what are the reduced parking requirements what are the winter requirements for heaters shelters snow clearing and air ventilation so so that's kind of the standard way most cities are doing it but then the langley washingtons of the world are saying instead of me being a small business who's already strapped for money and resources and time i don't have to fill out this application and submit it to my city and pay some fee or whatever all of the hurdles usually are instead langley just drafted a council proclamation to allow all of this without any application or any fees but clearly stating all of the rules that most people are doing in their temporary registration form so you know different ways to go about changing zoning and policy to enable these speedy uh responses and most cities have done uh most communities have done really good in in a fair weather situation but if you're like winnipeg and it's uh the third coldest big city on earth this is at the forks uh where the red river hits the cineboine river and every most every year there's a pop-up restaurant here um called raw almond where people come outside get dressed up and warm clothes and actually eat on the ice of the frozen river with a lot of different local chefs so how can we take some of those ideas that are already happening in other winter cities and and translate them for for a time of covid so often that comes down to creating outdoor cafe design guidelines to help say exactly what is allowed where and further expedite that process so with that i'm going to just stop sharing and pass it on over to susan thank you hazel um so instead of going through every single one of the um of the of the actions what i intend to do is sort of summarize um the big the the why and the how and so as hazel mentioned earlier almost every one of these actions under interventions it will give you it starts with with the normal way of doing things that many cities are already implementing very successfully and the langley way we call it which is um how do you do it as lean and quickly and sustainably as possible and so for things like um hazel mentioned outdoor dining there's also a need for outdoor shopping learning even places of worship that are moving into parks and open space and so how do you get those um enabled as quickly as possible and um so a lot of our motivation in building the toolkit was tied to our experience um in the very beginning with lean urbanism a number of years ago now and then more recently in the last uh four or five years with the project for code reform that that lynn dreamed up and cnu has been implementing and so with each of those as hazel mentioned so so um eloquently it's about the biggest little thing and and the big idea here is to give local governments the easiest way to get to the best solution as quickly as possible and so we focused very much on simple text amendments now another thing that hazel did that i was one of her biggest challengers to begin with was she started to get into the realm of general best practices that that many cities are already doing to some level like in-home occupations um but because they're limited in size in most places my point was this is a general code reform issue it's not a pandemic issue hazel's response was oh yes it is a pandemic issue because of the amount of physical distancing that you need for it to be healthy all of these square footage restrictions that are tied to most home occupations make it very difficult to to have anyone in your home in a safe manner and so one of the interventions here is to um eliminate the um the square footage uh restrictions that are already in place another thing that that we also debated was the issue with adus because once again i was saying this is just a zoning best practice and hazel very strongly advocated for the fact that it's an economic recovery best practice and that many many municipalities across north america already have adu regulations but the big issue is how do you make them actually implementable and with the project for code reform in our recent work in vermont a big piece of this was tied to affordable housing and how do you make their state level mandate for adus actually achievable and a lot of that is tied to the parking requirements that usually accompany adu regulations size restrictions setbacks and even ownership occupation requirements and so as cities and and counties are looking toward ways in which they can begin to recover things like this are going to be critical for the economy because with a meaningful adu you can subsidize your mortgage not only that directly tied to the pandemic is elder care as we've all learned there's been this debacle of commercialized elder care in which our seniors have become incredibly susceptible to pandemic outbreaks and if one can care for aging parents on one's own property then that begins to uh address that issue as well now um i will i will just say that the one thing uh scrolling on to to issues associated with transportation we've seen lots of pop-up bike lanes we have seen this is shared space but we've also seen um i mean temporary use sorry um we've also seen lots of open streets and in fact i want to click on this one link because it's really powerful mike lydon from street plans collaborative has established this database of open street and parkway waterfront um activity what is being done how long it is how long it's intended to stay open whether or not it will be permanent it's a fabulous resource if you're considering this in your local jurisdiction because you can begin to see globally what what other cities are doing and even in your own state if you need to have that hard discussion with your with your transportation engineers and so i will just say that we we realized that a lot of the really progressive work that's been done at the transportation level was in the within the right of way um the the big push is going to be how do we sustain this and and we can look to what other cities are doing but i'm going to segue now to the issue of implementation because um many people have asked us well what are you doing with with the tool kit and i would say hazel's been really successful in having these conversations with local government and provincial government in canada and so some of the ideas that have come up is to at the provincial level for example at least in canada the government can make recommendations write white papers establish protocols in which they begin to uh provide resources for uh the the term there is rural municipality here in this country it's uh county and so whatever the rural jurisdiction is that don't that so often lack resources that you the the provincial or state government can provide a template and that's very similar to a lot of the work that project for code reform has done at the state level from a larger coding perspective another thing is and and i think this is a final big takeaway for me and then i'll pass it back to hazel is that um it's shocking how often our elected officials don't realize the power of land use law particularly in this context when it comes to using public space how much is available to them and how much of it is controlled by the planning department and um we were discussing this with one canadian planning director who who he understood immediately what was at his disposal to begin to deal with it but most of the problem solving have been handed off to economic development and so for for those of you who are public planners to be able to advocate to your elected officials about how much control really lives within zoning and subdivision and transportation planning and how effective that can be when it comes to pandemic recovery and with that hazel back to you awesome thank you so one of the uh implementation ways that that some friends and of mine and i have been playing with over the winter holidays and because we couldn't travel we got to stay home in our gorgeous city of winnipeg and we built this serpentine maze so this is another spark page that you'll find under placemakers.com how we think so it's just a blog post and it just looks at pop-up parks in a time of pandemic and because we've talked a lot about you know the number one contributor to well-being once your basic needs are cared for is really sociability and during the pandemic that's the one thing that we've all been missing the most and so the pandemic toolkit tries to safely add sociability back into our life by these 22 actions and so you know one of those actions allowing temporary uses increasing access to nature increasing access to learning so uh seven of my friends total and those were the four of us who who were maybe the most uh frequent diggers of the maze came together and created this little place on our frozen river that became a celebration of us just making it this far really and also we put movable chairs that allowed people to um sit and and gather but only five people at a time because we've been in lockdown since november 12th and we are only allowed to gather outside and we are only allowed together five people at a time so the helix shape the figure eight shape of the maze is encouraging people to uh naturally distance from each other we used discarded christmas trees to repurpose and create some micro climates and to reduce some wind tunnels we you know tried to really look at all of the winter city best practices from a design guideline perspective we did southern facing sun pits lined with coniferous trees to block the wind and there's deciduous trees overhead that let in the sun and um and we also over here we tried to redirect the skaters skiers and sledders onto their own paths that they have that are groomed for them and encourage people just to walk in the maze itself so we were having you know multimodal conflicts here another way we engaged our community was to have a poetry contest about uh win winner winter there we go and the winners uh get frozen into ice and and put along the pathway as kind of a distraction and also a way for us to connect with each other because we kind of very much miss each other and we did a lot of you know freezing of bright berries and flowers into these ice containers that we used five gallon buckets as forms that we borrowed from a bunch of friends to create the space and so really when you're thinking about implementing the pandemic dual tool kit this is action number four enabling outdoor learning via the use of parkland action number nine expediting temporary uses and action number ten increasing access to nature via pocket parks and as part of learning some of our local band and choir teachers are talking about using this space as a good way to physically distance and still be able to practice together and uh others are talking about teaching snoga my my yogini has has you know promised to come and do that with us and and so it's been very fun but another reason here you can see the sun pit in action we kind of aimed it between two tall buildings along the riverbank to make sure that these five chairs that are gathered here um have have some warmth but still that the trees block the wind and just a short 40-minute leisurely walk along this groomed trail you get to our city center of downtown which is actually just around the corner this way and here you have a trail that gets groomed every night for skating another trail that gets groomed every day for fat biking walking kick sledding kick sledding with dogs all sorts of things and then the trails that are harder to see are here and here which are two ways uh for cross-country skiing that get machine groomed and that's thanks in part to the women peg foundation which is canada's oldest community foundation and they are underwriting all of this this year because they understand that really having this sort of a place where we can naturally physically distance because when their linear parks encourage that sort of physical distancing that it becomes a place where people can stay active stay healthy stay engaged but in a way that they're they're less likely um to transmit kova to each other they are still required to be um of the six foot physical distancing unless they are of the same household so with that i will stop sharing and pass it back over to lynn thank you so much hazel and susan this was just this was just excellent so i have a couple of questions that i want to ask you but before i do i want to remind all the participants to go ahead and to send your questions in the q a in the bottom i'm also monitoring the chat so if you can't find the q a you can also do it in the chat which reminds me a lot of questions have come in about the links um so all of the links that susan and hazel used are all now posted in the chat so we'll save that and to take that all around but all right so first question is um i'm a glass half-full kind of person and yes the pandemic has been absolutely awful um but i have also noticed that cities have really tried to maximize a lot of urbanist characteristics um we have seen an acceleration as you said of open seats an acceleration of of street level um dining and whatnot so what do you think will stay when we return to more normal times what do you think is going to stick that's a really good question lynn and you know we've already been talking about uh what this toolkit how it changes and morphs over time because already it's morphing oh and i forgot to mention that um and i'm gonna actually steal back the screen in a second after i answer this because several of my co-authors for the different languages are on this webinar with me and i need to take a second to tell them thank you but one of the ways that this is going to morph is it eventually will get a new name because it's really an incremental urbanism sort of tool kit and yes right now it's all parsed into what allows for physical distancing what allows for pandemic preparedness and response that are that's in alignment with most medical regulations but also it's really important to understand that so many of these actions are also very essential for um for just great urban form and uh and so with that i am gonna ah you know what i'm just gonna quickly reshare my screen to say um or maybe i don't even have to reach share my screen i just want to thank the people who are on the call right now that are helping with all of the different languages so right now the pandemic toolkit is available in english spanish arabic and portuguese and the ball is in my court to get the spark pages updated for hindi thank you d ruth sadini who's on today's call who is one of the two people who are are have created the hindi translation for us also i notice marina coorie is on today's call and she and olive have created a french translation for us there's another translation happening in turkish and another one in bangladeshis so we've just really been grateful that this notion of roll up your sleeves and do something great and urban together isn't just a u.s canada sort of volunteer response to this um challenge but it's really been global um what has and i and um susan susan and hazel i want you guys both to answer this what have you what action that cities did did you find most surprising and or what was your favorite action well i and lynn this goes back to all our work together on pcr but um the thing i love the most is the incredibly visionary um uh council proclamation from the little town of washington of langley washington and the fact that they basically empowered small businesses and restaurants to use the public right-of-way um and and essentially when you moved your table out front or when you moved moved the rack of merchandise onto the sidewalk that was the point at which you triggered this agreement um with the city and that's all you had to do is show up and and you were approved and it's like well that says that is as lean and effective as it possibly can can be and and you know of all of the tools we've seen and there have been some fabulous ones and the open streets project has really been incredibly inspiring because of how you know the years of red tape that that has cut through that normally is required to do any sort of a street adjustment but um because of need uh cities responded and and that's fabulous but i love the simple solution you know especially when it's so powerful so kudos to langley those two were my favorite as well um so i guess my third on the list is just one that was over the top kind of out there and i put it in the chat just in case people want easy access to it and it's lithuania's capital vilnius which is basically operating as a giant outdoor cafe because restaurants are now permitted to set up tables and plazas and in streets so the whole place just turned into a uh you know of really taking over the public realm uh with private life all right so going to the questions that people have sent in this is from jonath jonathan katz so here in the u.s we've also we have often had an issue of covet-friendly places that have been inaccessible for people with disabilities and older adults how have you addressed this in the context of winnipeg or more broadly how has this been addressed in the cities that you've been studying i'll answer the winnipeg context first and it's so hard um you know one of our biggest budget lines is snow removal snow movement and and and it it's definitely takes a massive commitment once we built the serpentine maze at hugo dock here in winnipeg the city realized that people were coming down stairs that they hadn't cleaned all winter with walkers and canes because of the high residential density surrounding us and that they could see what we were doing and they wanted to come check it out and so after a number of us asked the city a number of times they did bring out a large crew with jackhammers and ended up jackhammering out frozen ice and mud to get him off the stairs and to get uh easier access so there's no pat easy answer it's just kind of focusing in on um you know how to increase that access i feel like the places like copenhagen who you know say that the bike lanes have to the high traffic bike lanes have to get cleared before the streets get cleared we don't have that sort of political will being exhibited in north america yet but i think that eventually if we got there you know that sort of accessibility would really be what you need to to make a difference for active transportation um what this is from our good friend marina kearney hi marina have any cities or towns experience significant hardship with any of these proposed strategies i thought it was a nice follow-on to the accessibility question i you know i'm not aware of that it's interesting it's it's really interesting it's a great question marina because i haven't done those searches you know i haven't looked for um problems resulting from pandemic regulations but but that that's a really good study and it's something we need to look at i can imagine especially to segue from jonathan's question you know we were discovering more and more issues associated with health and well-being or directly tied to accessibility issues and access and and um i would assume that all of those add a cost burden to cities they just do because we haven't designed as we should have over the years and um but as far as liability i'm sure that will play a role eventually because we like to sue um but that's one reason that langley wrote in the requirement for insurance and indemnification is to begin to you know practically address that issue but but that's a great question and i think we should we should research it especially together um this is a question from kate reba if i'm interested in engaging in an ad hoc outdoor space how do you recommend engaging with municipal staff to get approval or buy-in did you do that in winnipeg for the serpentine maze we did only because i really didn't want all of the other massive winter city activity that was getting ready to come up the river i didn't want to get bulldozed and so before we even did anything we went ahead and created just a very rudimentary plan and sent it to the city and got their approval you know and so i get so much tactical urbanism is asks for forgiveness instead of permission but we decided on this one to definitely ask for permission also because you know it's in a potentially dangerous place where we wanted city buy-in to to say i mean on their website every single day they say whether or not each port of the river is safe for walking on and we wanted to make sure we were under that umbrella instead of just going out there on our own so we definitely got approval for ours i think every city is a little different and and how they go about that but we just felt more comfortable in this situation um uh a question from raphael uh mija ortiz um what does the tool kit provide any direction or guidance on proposed infrastructure um to support these opportunities for net connectivity he was mentioning specifically wi-fi but i could easily see how his question could be modified around street connectivity you know the linear parks you know all the different ways that municipalities are envisioning and imagining how their cities can work differently or better hazel i'll let you answer that but i need to get i'm scrolling through the toolkit again but there was something about wi-fi connectivity towards right near the end um and so it is like all about creating kind of a broadband um safety net and in some places if you look at the compendium some places that has been very tactical like people driving school buses around with temporary hot spots broadcasting that for certain hours of the day that is advertised in advance so that people can get online we end up with so many people who um receive donations of laptops for um for certain uh challenging situations but don't have any internet to go with it so that we've seen that intervention a lot we've also seen just you know creating funding sources to be able to tap in to existing uh broadband sources that every place is very very different with respect to how they solve that one but it is one of the action one of the first 22 actions it's number 21. but outside of wi-fi so you so you answered the question specifically for wi-fi but i think that it's that it's a really essential question when we're looking at infrastructure improvements particularly on street street trees not no streets open streets um you know the kind of bike path lanes like all of the different ways i've seen um at least in the dc area on the the suburb the suburban communities as well as the downtown areas seek to accommodate more of this you know public realm traffic um there will be a need for infrastructure upgrades i believe if it continues so have you run into that in in any other areas any other places besides wi-fi and it's okay to say no no i mean i think that mike lyden's compendium is the best resource to look at i mean he does talk a lot about that point and especially in the places who are making their interventions permanent on a much more a much smaller level you had mentioned street trees but before you went on to the the larger street infrastructure we've noticed in some places people creating tree stewards so just enabling members of the public to go out and and plant trees with within the design guidelines or water the trees and care for the trees so that's also something that we're seeing a lot more through this process as well um adam adam dodginson asks given the need to enhance equity and inclusion how can we work with more marginalized communities so in the city centers but also in the suburban areas what have you all found you list this as your very first action item which i think is absolutely appropriate but you know a lot of the examples that we've seen are more in well-resourced areas versus underserved areas adam that's such a great point and there's absolutely no easy answer to that which is i think one of the reasons that so many of us worked this summer to try to to start creating some frameworks through feel one of the things that we've noticed a lot is that you know porting the public the private realm out into the public realm is all fine and good as long as you're not using a tent and sleeping bags so it's like the public realm becomes accessible during a time of covid but for whom and that's a huge problem so um we've had that problem here in my city a lot as as tent cities start springing up along the riverbanks and they are are slowly moved to other places i think one of the things that we've noticed that is so effective are those one-on-one relationships and the cities who are able to create kind of ambassadors who go check on the people who are who who are sleeping out of doors and and struggling right now especially the the people who are newly experiencing homelessness and so so in our city they check in with sometimes nothing more than a granola bar and a face mask or a hot cup of soup and you know just to say hey you know can we start the conversation and later try to move toward towards safer places but i think enhancing equity and inclusion i mean we just daylighted what a massive challenge it is and and i think it's going to be something that is a slow relationship building that is you know doing small actions that establish trust and then being able to take the next step to a larger action and just to segue off of that back to the conversation we're having earlier about um accessibility for people with mobility challenges and whatnot as you know as we have seen taking over the public right away for private enterprise like restaurants and and retail you know we are limiting the um the width of access um even even if though most cities are requiring a certain maintained clearance for pedestrians um we're limiting access for people who have mobility challenges and so every way in which you know you're making things easier for one demographic you might be making it more challenging for another and and i think we're becoming more and more aware of the fact that that there are many people we we haven't historically thought about as we did our work in cities and we just have to be a whole lot more intentional about looking at the community as a whole yeah adam goes on to ask about the tension here around gentrification that many of these actions that we have seen cities engage in could lead to um greater desirability in some areas or greater investment in some areas we've been talking about infrastructure investments we've been talking about um you know again how these places can change and and what is that tension so i think susan answered it well that we just need to be aware and intentional about it but i wanted to give you an opportunity if you wanted to expand on that about the tension between what we're doing gentrification and and how that might be considered at odds with a broader goal of equity and inclusion you know i think that's one of the reasons that ancillary dwelling units and ancillary commercial units are so important right now for people who either are land owners and their and their largest asset that they have to leverage is their mortgage so if there is a way to get more out of that mortgage they're they're going to be more likely to be able to stay put of course we know that renters are the ones that are most at risk for displacement associated with gentrification and so once again you know changing the rules to allow mixed use even even within an apartment setting and also those rules that take away that the maximum home size allows are the maximum number of residents who are within one dwelling those will also be i think the four actions within the pandemic toolkit that are best at staving off the displacement associated with gentrification i don't you know we could probably spend the rest of our time just talking about that one point that it's not the gentrification that's so worrisome it's the displacement um associated with it so in as much as it can be for us by us by any of these communities then it's more likely to not involve displacement um mary vogel asked earlier and i wanted to dive in on on some of the others but but this question i think makes is good for now um she talks about the vultural capitalists um who in in any type of situation you're going to have people who try to maximize um or otherwise uh take advantage of of a situation um in this case you know uh grabbing up property wherever they can particularly as we move into foreclosures and evictions um after all housing is treated as a commodity and can be bought and sold for a profit rather than a social good do any of your actions kind of address this countering vol vultural capitalism or have you seen this come up in any of the smaller incremental actions um in your research of what cities are doing no that's you know and i answered mary in the text in the q a that that really is a large end of what needs to be looked at especially as associated with housing and equity but um the tool kit was looking at the smallest increment of change and so those are bookends on things that need to be addressed but that wasn't the end that we were focused on because that that's a very large systemic problem but it will require you know changes to financial structures and to um into policy and lots of things that take much more time than a quick text a minute yeah um john asks and this is i think mostly for hazel but both have you come across john coleman have you come across a creative marketing or outreach piece that encourages persons to brave colder temps or inclement weather to dine outside what's the core messaging content you know this comes up hazel i grew up in upstate new york and and while not certainly um as frigid is where you are you think of minneapolis where everybody is outside all all of the time i think if you're living in these areas it's like you go outside because it's beautiful embracing anyway so i'll let it john uh i'll let you answer john's question about you know marketing in the colder temps such a good question when i first moved to winnipeg 12 years ago from florida they said that walkability stuff it doesn't work here and uh and so not just because of me but because a whole lot of people who are really working on active transportation through the winter they don't say that anymore at all um and so i think that it's more than just a marketing and outreach piece that needs to happen i think there's so many so there's two layers to the answer i think and the first layer is just the the urban form so when intersection density is high or the the size of the blocks that people have to walk are low there's way more places to turn around and and get from point a to point b more directly and more quickly and then when there's a mixture of compatible uses within a neighborhood structure so when it's five a five minute walk to the majority of your daily needs there's plenty of places to duck in and warm up as you go on your useful walk because there's you know it's it's really taking the time to suit up for the weather to take that first step out of my house that's the biggest you know barrier to really daring to live outdoors year-round and so as an anecdote i was working with hazel in winnipeg one february and we had an rfp that was due and the the fedex was like a mile and a half away and so we bundle up and walk in minus 30 fahrenheit and um on the way home it because she lived in a fab fabulous historic neighborhood where there are all these little shops sprinkled you know along the path er you know would stop and buy a cookie and would stop and buy a coffee and would stop and look at shoes and you know and you got home feeling perfectly fine because you had enough places to stop and root but those are all bigger zoning questions right that's that's not as tactical as the pandemic toolkit so what's next i'm not saying that the pandemic is almost over but as we move into vaccinations you know you're almost beginning to see a glimmer of what could be considered light at the end of this tunnel i don't know if we're ever going to get back to a before time but what are you all um looking at to do next with this like what's next on your on your research agenda for this so we were looking at the 22 actions that would help rebuild budgets the quickest possible household budgets local business budgets and municipal budgets as quickly as possible so we said what barriers can we take away to rebuild those budgets and from our perspective even once we're fully vaccinated we have heard immunity and suddenly physical distancing and masking aren't as important as they are right now we still need to take all these actions we can remove our a lot of these actions we can remove the covert related parts of them but this is really about like susan said earlier helping cities understand how much money they're leaving on the table by having these suburban auto centric only able to drive places sort of policies and regulations in place and if we remove those regulations that opens up a whole lot of value that we can then capture and right now we're going to need that especially you know over the next maybe three to five years as budgets are really um stretched i i like that so we're going to host you um in the fall of actions on how to rebuild municipal budgets so there you go that that's how you can take this and kind of and kind of grow on it okay so um we got one other question that came in on the chat which i think is a good one um and and then we'll close out let me see if i can't find it oh you're finding it can i just say one more thing lynn i noticed nadine batar is on today's webinar and she's also one of the translators she translated the pandemic toolkit into arabic and so she's joining us at 10 pm her time from abu dhabi so i just wanted to say thank you nadine you rock she's the first person who asked if she could translate it into a different language which kind of blindsided me like wow okay that's cool so thanks nadine um uh so this is from hiram pack what issues if any are you finding from fire marshals and small outdoor eating shelters you know fire marshals have have always been so supportive of new urbanism well you know that's a good question hazel you should answer i don't know if you know anything about deer and almond and their and their experience because they did have an enclosed structure i think one of the biggest problems we're seeing with enclosed structures i mean they help tremendously in bitterly cold climates to make it tolerable but they don't help when it comes to pandemic transfer so you know there's a trade-off in whether or not a place is actually enclosed but hazel yeah i mean i think ventilation is the the biggest challenge now along with like hiram says the uh the fire marshals here for dear and almond there was an engineer on board as well as an architect who helps design those spaces every year we're certainly trying to make the pandemic toolkit more nimble than than that necessarily but you know especially now with with the need to ventilate you know that would be a great design a manual to work through i don't have that at the moment um this has been great and it's always such a pleasure to to talk with all of you is there anything that we haven't touched on that you wish that you had said it's awesome to see you all even if it's your names only in the in the participant list i was so great to see people i haven't talked with in a long time and lynn thank you for bringing us all together as as you always do oh my gosh it's any time to to get together to chat with with all of you so um uh we will be posting a video of this recording within 24 hours on our website again don't forget to submit your um your projects for the charter awards and your session ideas for cnu 29 and our next uh scheduled authors forum is coming up in a couple of weeks with brian o'looney talking about the increments of neighborhood with interviewers todd zimmerman and matt bell so um you can register that on our website we'll be adding more of course uh webinars if you have ideas for webinars please let us know but hazel susan it's it's always so much fun to hang out with you and we get to talk about coding like the best hour fabulous all right bye all and thank you everybody for participating and being part of this uh the most active chat and questions is what really makes it such a great webinar so thanks everybody and we'll see you next time bye bye bye bye