![Level Us Up ft. Adam Paul Susaneck [EP 89] - podcast episode cover](https://assets.metacast.app/images/episode/artwork/nPTcqSy5)
It am. We we are.
Ya having me.
We are joined by Adam Paul Susanet, who I want you all to know, cares a lot. All right, listen, y'all. Most folks are like, what's time? I need to be there, that's it. Adam was like, can I show photos? Can I show videos? I need them to get the information. And I really appreciate that. And Adam, I have all the photos. So I have all the photos. I have the video, I have the PDF, so I have whatever you want me to have for this conversation about for
this conversation that is segregation by design. Segregation by design, please topic. Yeah, okay, so I found you on the interwebs. Ever so often the algorithm does something useful, and the algorithm decided to send you my way. And as a black person in this country, you know, I'm all. I can't say I'm ever shocked, but it never ceases to disgust me the myriad ways that have been used to continue the the the operation of colonialism, of separation, of segregation,
et cetera. But I hadn't I didn't know about highways.
Yeah, yeah, well it's exactly that. The highways video, Well, the video is a good introduction to sort of segregation by design my project. So we can show that. Let's say that in a second. Okay, but yeah, the highways, it's it's interesting because they really do represent as they were designed. They represent sort of a continuation of this
project of writing white supremacy into law. It's you can see, you can see it sort of as a form of shifting shifting tactics, like after federal desegregation in the fifties, you know, with brown Brown b Board of Education, and then with the subsequent Civil Rights Act, a lot of the official barriers to or rather a lot of the
official legal mechanisms that upheld segregation were invalidated federally. So then what comes along is the highways, which are able to then draw that color line that was technically invalidated, but they're able to draw that color line in physical space in a much bigger way than it was before, and in places where it wasn't already, like the train tracks is a famous example. Right, So maybe let's show the video if that's okay, But unless you have a
follow up question, it is it is seven minutes. I don't know how we got time. Yeah, let's do it. I have time. It's it's a good introduction to to segregation by design. The project, Well, there's this one. This one's only a second, this one's only a few moments long.
Okay, so this video is showing us what.
Well, yes, so exactly, so, this is showing a highway being constructed through Detroit. And what this is showing is one of the sort of original sins of highway construction. So normally what I like to do is when I present this project, basically I talk about some of the problems posed by the problems we face with freeways today, sort of the history of how we got here, and some solutions for what we can do about it. And this is both one of the problems in the history.
One of the problems is that they were built through basically black and brown neighborhood specifically, so they displaced all these people. You can see all these houses being destroyed, and then for the neighborhood, for the neighborhoods that remain divided by these highways. Now there's significant pollution, both in terms of exhaust from the from the from the cars and the entire particular matter brake matter, and then noise pollution.
And that's another one of those images I sent. But we don't have to get to bogged down by the images because they're not I didn't send them in any particular order, which is my bad.
So I don't have the video you're talking about. I thought this was the video, But where can I get it? Is it in the emails?
Image just sent it? I think at it's I have the PDAs I sent it.
And I have the I have where you said this animation this image would be good, and images from this page would be good to show. I have all of those.
This is the one. Oh wait, no, that's playing on my here? I can, I can?
I can bring it up.
Basically, whoops that I just sent you here? It is.
Okay? Oh, but this is a link, not the actual video. Can I show the link?
How do I do it? Correct? It's a YouTube link.
I don't know how to do that on here. I can like bring a video onto screen, but I don't know how to show like a YouTube video.
You know, it's not a big deal. We can just we can just talk. It's it's basically, it's it's an example. The video is an example of of where these highways we're used to displace and destroy a black community in Los Angeles, specifically Sugar Hill. So for for a lot of these examples, and and the the pdf I sent that one has a bunch of pictures and we can
bring that up at some point. But for a lot of the examples I mentioned, if folks want to check out my website Segregation Bydesign dot com, it basically breaks it down city by city. Uh, and what I'm that there's a there's Detroit. So we're just flowing.
We're flowing right now.
We're just doing it. We're just doing it. Yeah, that's fine. So, Uh, what I try to show is, city by city, how highways were used basically to divide between black and white communities, uh in some cases, and then also destroy black communities in other cases. How they were used to basically write white supremacy into the built environment of American cities, and what the process is, how that happened. And what this is showing is an example in Detroit. So you can
see here Detroit basically before and after. In the project, I use a lot of aerial imagery basically to show what happened, so you can see in this example, I'll just talk through it. Paradise valley and black bottom. You can see in the before image in those white labels, So before federal desegregation is and did again in with some with things like brown b board, So this is fifty before the fifties. Basically, segregation is legal. Cities are allowed to say black people can live here and white
people can live here. It's by a variety of mechanisms, some which are official laws, some which are sort of real estate practices. Right, but yeah, so exactly, redlining is an example of something that's a law. But then there's something like then there's other things like restrictive covenants, which are basically so that's real estate. That's that's a sort of yeah, well h oo as are the descendant of restrictive covenants.
Ah okay, okay.
Yeah, So a restrictive covenant is a thing that's written into the deed of houses that says you can only sell to quote unquote people of the Caucasian race only. So that's that's an example of like a private Uh yeah, the Color of lat talks about this example exactly. That's an example of sort of private mechanism by which they upheld segregation. And then there's redlining, which is sort of the government legal way of doing it. But the results
of that is you get these black districts. You get these uh and these are the these are the historic districts like Harlem that we talk about, you know. And in this case in Detroit, it's Black Black Bottom in Paradise Valley and it's basically this linear cord or arrayed along Hasting Street, which you see there. So this community
is is constrained by segregation. But even despite that, in this in this case of Hastings and in Paradise Valley and Black Bottom and and so many other of these neighborhoods, despite the segregation, a really strong actually I mean a community, really strong community forms, but a strong economy forms too, yes, because within your community exactly. And and you see these
these corridors in this case Hastings Street. And if you if you go back to some of those other pictures that was sort of Hastings with John Lee Hooker with the guitar, that was Hasting Well that's that's yeah, that one, that's good one. The other one, the.
Butove picture is the thriving Hastings with the record stores and the porter market, et cetera.
Yeah, yeah, and the bottom is what it is now exactly. And and what's interesting about the Hasting case is so and and these these two images, the before and the before images of this one and then the other one, these are actually both album covers. So it shows that, yeah, this one. Uh so even at the time these were like there's a conception that this is like a special place.
I mean it's like one twenty fifth Street in Harlem, you know, right, it's it's uh, it's it's bil Street, yeah, exactly of commercial activity, but then also cultural production, you know. And and we get out of something like Hasting Street. You know Joe's Records where where John Lee Hooker is standing in front of there. That's where Aretha Franklin records her first album. And her dad was also very famous, Reverend and Hey or Key records his first stuff at
at Joe's Records here. And I actually got these images from so Joe Van Battle is the owner of Joe's Records here, his daughter Marcia Music. I got these photos from her, and she there's an she has an excellent blog post, it's like more than a blog post, an excellent piece on her website. The Detroit is all all
about her dad's experiences. So it's and and you see they route the highway right down the middle of the of the of Hastings there, so the highways okay, so to set the stage, yeah, it's it's so you see this before image, the nineteen forty nine right, So there's the Black Corridor that is basically a raid along Hastings that is policed and confined by segregation. The rest of
the city is largely white, it's largely working class. This starts to change after basically around the turn of the after the twenties, with the Great Migration, which I'm sure you're familiar with. But the Great Migration is a movement of six million black uh six million rural Black Americans from the South basically to northern and western cities. The largest you know, the largest destinations are like New York and Los Angeles, Chicago, but Detroit is also a major one.
And so this is happening. So Detroit is actually a really representative example. So you could I'm talking about Detroit here specifically, but this can this happened all over the place.
So there are more and more black people coming into cities and on coastal cities, there's more and more immigrants, So cities are becoming more more non white, and this, to some extent, kicks off white flight unfortunately, basically as the non white populations are rising in downtown and because that's where a lot of these people are moving, because that's where a chap housing is, and then b that's
where jobs are. So as the racial makeup of the inner city, what the inner city is changing, white people are basically moving out to the suburbs. And that's not because that's not because each and every one of them
is necessarily a racist. That's because there's a lot of financial incentives set up for them to do that, redlining being one of them, basically saying that you can't get a mortgage in any neighborhood that black people live in, which gives an incentive for people who can move out to move out.
Wow, I didn't know it was the reverse as well, Like, so they don't want white people living in black neighborhoods either.
Oh, precisely, exactly. Yeah, So there's push and pull factors basically that cause. So, Okay, I guess what I'm trying to set the stage here for is white flight, right, because this kind of explains then why this area is destroyed. It's not just purely I mean, it is largely racial mallege, but there's an economic logic behind it that I'm trying to set up. But basically, mostly white cities become largely non white, and there's various things that incentivize white people
to leave. There's sort of the push factor of the Great Migration, which is all these non white folks moving in, moving moving into downtowns. And then there's, especially after World War Two, there's the pull factor, which is.
How they created Israel. It's the same, it's the same mechanic mechanism. We're going to push you out of Germany and Europe with recent with anti semitism and fascism, and then we're going to pull you into Israel with incentives.
The history of that I'm not familiar with, but I think it's probably similar to how they Oh, I'm telling.
You, I mean this is a fact.
This is like this Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, this is a fact.
Like you're incentivized to go to Israel as a Jewish person because you are going to be given subsidiary subsidiaries. You're going to be given free healthcare, You're going to be given money for a home, money for school, et cetera, et cetera. And so there's the push and the pull in order to create an economic space that can be then utilized for whatever purpose or you know.
Yeah, exactly, it's it's about like clearing out of people to then create a space for yes, precisely. And we can and and uh, we can get to push pulling Jewish folks to because I'm I'm Jewish, but I'm not I'm an atheist. I don't we don't practice.
I mean, I don't care if you're atheists. I care if you're a Zionist.
Oh, I'm absolutely an anti zionist. Don't worry about that, I assumed because you don't. I have a joke that I said. I don't want to say it here.
But this is the place we all are are literal quote is by any joke necessary, so say.
It's like people, it's like I no, I don't want to say. But regardless, regardless, Adam chicken out of the job. I did chick it out of it. We can really get back to it later. But well, I just I do have a story about like birth right, we left, I went with a buddy and we left. But this isn't what Well, no.
So let me just tell you we're gonna eventually get to that, because the question I'm going to ask you is how did you become a kind of person, specifically a white person who cares about this, Like, we're gonna get to that because this type of work, it can't we can't just talk about this type of work in the silo of the work, because there's a certain type of person that pursues this knowledge, right, and then decides to expose this knowledge, And we need to as a
society lift up those people, but also lift up the scenarios, the education, the community that creates those people. So it's not just going to be So this interview is not just about your work. I want to know about why you choose to do this work as well, because I
consider it to be really important and necessary. So they draw this, they decide to do the white flight, push the white flight, and you're telling you're saying that, So I guess my white question before you go on is what is the government's goal in creating a nexus of white people in one suburban area and black people in one area beyond racism?
Economic development growth? So white flight? Right, So black people were formally confined to this area, but then legal segregation gets broken down as all these people are coming. So and this is also in combination with white people leaving right, so property owners downtown are not really happy about that. The you see downtown, I've labeled that there yes black bottom and paradise value right next to that, right next
to downtown, and that proximity is important. And this is again it's that you know, there's it's it's called the inner city for a reason. It's because these people were moving to a specific part of the city, which again is where the jobs and affordable housing was. And as and white people are leaving, the people, the people who own property in the commercial districts downtown are really really unhappy that now they're surrounded by this racialized inner city.
And there were and because this is the basically the underpinning of redlining in the first place, which is the idea that people of different races living in close proximity reduces property values. And that really boils down to the
fact that black people reduce property values. And this you can look at the writings of this guy Homer Homer Hoyt and Richard t. Eli from the University of Madison, Wisconsin, and they wrote a lot of the Basically the academic underpinning of redlining, and the idea is that black people being proximity reduces property values. So now suddenly the commercial core, the oldest part of the city is surrounded by non
white people. You know, in Detroit it's black people, and it's not just black people, but it is largely, but it's also Chinatown obviously in Los Angeles, is in many cities, and then in San Antonio it's Mexican Town, which is what it's called. It's it's not just black, but it is. It's it's they end up bearing the front of it.
Just numbers wise and historic animosity obviously, but urban so as desegregation ends, then urban renewal and highway funds come along and they use that money to kill two birds with one stone. So and you can see that right here. What they're doing is they surround downtown in a highway loop that protects it from these neighborhoods that have now become non white. Right, so it physically creates a division, because divisions can protect that property value. Think before we
add highways the railroad tracks. That's why it's the other side of the tracks, right or you know rivers like or flood zones. But these divisions, going back to that idea that proximity reduces property values. If there's a division, uh do, if there's a division, then it can uphold the property values.
So they're they're over there. See see they're over there. So the highway, even though it's literally just a structure, it provides this like a wall, so to speak, saying.
Okay, exactly and and and there's a great book. I have it here. It's not it's kind of like not show up, but dividing lines.
Yeah, but you're not in a warehouse with graded ceilings.
And you know this is actually this is actually my local train station. It took this photo the other day.
Oh wow.
Yeah yeah, yeah, you can see the train of the bank there. Nice.
But you're in Europe.
Yeah yeah, yeah. I'm doing a PhD over here, casual. I'm from South Florida originally, but and I work based in New York, so we go back, and I go back quite often. Greta Tonberg would be unhappy with me.
I just want to point out to you all that I am cosmopolitan and then traveled which is how I knew that it was Europe once I saw the blue and yellow train. All right, let's bring it back. So they build these walls of highway, and my question becomes, is this also utilized as like, oh, now the white flyers have like direct access.
Into the city precisely right, So, and that's what I'm saying when I'm killed too birds with on stone. So it divides and and then also creates connections to the whites only suburbs, which you better believe have restrictive covenants, and as a private practice, by the way, that stays on a lot longer than something like legal segregation, which is struck down in the courts. That's just that's why
that distinction is a little important. But so yeah, the highways that they divide, they cut through, they protect downtown, and then they provide white folks with direct opportunity rather with direct access to the economic opportunities downtown. So it's some to some extent, you know, it doesn't work that well, right, because a lot of jobs still end up going to the suburbs, and then we end up with kind of hallowed out downtowns. And this is why we end up
with spaces, right like that, So it divides. That's one use, but then there's also times where it just is designed almost to take up space, like is designed to remove the population they didn't want and then replace that with, you know, again a connection to the suburbs. So it just.
Takes up displacement.
It's Yeah, the displacement's intentional exactly because they those people being there reduced property values. And in some cases they build public housing. That's actually kind of rare, but they end up building far fewer units of public housing than using units they destroyed. And that's true everywhere. You know, this is that's definitely turned Detroit, It's true everywhere name of city, certainly New York. Right.
And even when they build a public housing, they don't like protect it, they don't support it. They i mean, they create kind of dens of criminality that they can use to them bring people back into the prison industrial crisis by creating public housing that they don't provide resources to.
Yeah, and precisely that exactly. And and and then also they will locate yes, very well said. And then they'll locate it in areas that are already largely black and already largely for uh and and this This happens especially in like New York and Chicago. And this explains why. You know, when you look at some of these before and afters, they just destroy a neighborhood and then replace
it with these tower blocks. Uh. And the result of that is that a what you do there is you replace a lot of owners with a lot of renters.
Practically, they can't we can't skip over that.
Well, that's a whole other element, because there's the there's the sort of good.
No, gone, no, please, you you're the guest.
Well sorry, I just feel like I'm like right, I mean, it's.
Uh, we're here to be lectured by fair enough.
Well, there's is the mechanism by which these properties get taken right through eminent domain. That's the term. And eminent domain isn't inherently an evil thing. Sometimes we do need to build linear things, you know, linear rights of way, sewers, pipes and roads. Yes, sometimes, but eminent domain where you're taking where you're just using it to destroy a neighborhood because it's reducing property because of reducing property values, because
of some racist pseudoscience. Yeah, that's no good. And by the way, there's an uh, well she actually just shut down the organization. Do you know a cavan Ward from where is my land? She still does one on one consultations. But Bruce's Beach, I'm all over the place here. Bruce's Beach, she was the she was basically the organizer behind that. So Bruce's Beach was an example of So I was the black neighborhood in downtown Santa Monica, the Belmar Triangle
and no, this is different. Sorry, this is in Manhattan Beach. It was a black neighborhood in Manhattan Beach, not in downtown Santa Fronica. She there was another there's the there's another case, Silas White up in Santa Monica, black neighborhood in Manhattan Beach. Property taken through eminent domain. Kevon Ward got it back to the family. Yeah, the Bruce family.
She did sell it off anyway, which made me live it.
But but that was their right. And I know, I know they sold at that time with full knowledge and no and not predatory because the first time was taken.
No, I know, I know, I know. It's just the principle of like just get it back and like.
Can we just Oh, I totally I definitely agree with that. But like there. But like the point was, it was theirs and they could do with it what they want. But ye know, I totally get it. How these properties are taken. How do they build a highway through there? How do they build a highway through there? They take these properties through eminente domain?
And can you eminent domain real quick?
So, eminent domain is the right of the government to take property for the public good, and they have to offer just compensation. They do have to quote offer quote unquote just compensation. So yeah, but they so, but they get to decide what the public good is and they get to decide what just compensation is. Sorry that the Columbia you did. Indeed, yes, with Manhattanville. I will try not to get distracted by comments. But that's a listen.
We're here for you. We we love all of your NeuroD going all over the place. We're all about it. That's our jazz.
There you are.
You are giving us intellectual jazz Detroit.
Domain. I appreciate it, Thank you very much. Excellent. Well, yeah, so iminent domain is the right of the government to take property. You know, think for again, building like a sewer, right, building a train, building, public transportation, and they have to offer just compensation, but the way that was actualized in practice for most of American history was very predatory, especially during this highway building era, where they would just send a letter to people with a low ball offer us.
And basically these letters, and you can see these letters, they make it seem as if you have to take the offer, which of course you don't. You absolutely don't have to take the offer. But there's there's a case in in Roxbury and Boston where a reverend's mom she owned a three unit uh apartment building in rocks in Nubian in a new and square and she got sent eight thousand dollars for it. What right?
And my dad also owned property in Roxbury, Boston and sold it. I don't know why. I know I didn't see any of that money, but I'm just like, why are y'all just giving away like the property?
Well, they make it seem there's like a big red stamp on it, and it says like they condemned. They make sometimes it's as condemned with the Robert Moses ones. Not not with this one in Boston. The Robert Moses he's the one who used the condemned. And I haven't talked about Moses yet, but I'll get back to him. But they send these letters, they make it seem as if you have to take it, and when you do,
that's it. It's gone. But that's that's the property owners, which is the minority most people in like Hastings, they were renters and it's just absentee landlords. So when the government comes along with these checks, they say sure, yeah exactly, because they they view it as a way to cash out of the slums. Basically, ah m, yeah, so and and one thing I didn't now, one thing I didn't mention. And then sometimes they clear out these neighborhoods and then
replace them with like office buildings. So sometimes it isn't yeah because this is right exactly. Sometimes, like in Miami, this is they cut down uh Second Avenue, which was the main commercial theurf of theref of there, and it was in the middle of overtown, but now Overtown is like on the left, and then they basically took part of it into downtown, built government facilities and and stuff designed to basically attract people from the suburbs. Because the
the building of the highways was also an effort. It was it was lobbied for by you know, chambers of commerce and mayors. You know, in the case of Hastings or of Detroit, it's Mayor Albert Cobo. He said, we can use the highway, he said, we can use the highways to stop the Negro invasion. He said, we can use public works to stop Negro invasion. Right, So they're
not even shy about it. No, especially in the South, especially like in Mayor Hartsfield and Atlanta, I twenty will be a line between you know, black and between white and Negro Atlanta. Yeah, and again sometimes they clear out the stuff and it's to sort of take that land and redevelop redevelopment to try to keep downtown attractive as it's becoming more non white and as white people are being incentivized to leave.
So there has been advocacy against this.
Yes, can we can we.
Talk about the advocacy that has been done against this and if there's been any success. I mean, just a side note, Like I love when stuff like this shows
up in like random TV shows. So like in the show Cooking with Chemistry, Like there's an entire b story with the black character who's her next door neighbor and who's her friend and is we're not her next neighbor, but she's her friend, and she's like fighting for the black neighborhood to not be disrupted by a building of either the ten or the one O one or something. And they did an entire and it was based on true story, and they did an entire goo ahead.
Well, no, no, that's the that's the video that I was good. That's the video that I sent is about that neighborhood, sugar Hill exactly. Yeah, we're all right.
So then talk about it because that was that's an example of advocacy. And I would love to just hear more because you made a point of saying, like, there have been people who have fought this, and we always have to make sure to acknowledge that, or else you just become so disenchanted and to moralize thinking that the power is you know, so overpowering.
Oh yeah, well, and one of the reasons I do this whole project is basically to show that infrastructure is the result of decisions and choices that we made, and not even that long ago in some cases. So even though highways seem like they're natural and really like the layout of cities seems like it's natural and almost like a mountain or a river. These things weren't built that
long ago, so we can totally change them. So a lot of what I talk about can seem kind of depressing, but it is also with the undertone or I'm trying to say that, like we can absolutely change these things because it's the built environment. We built it. So I'm an architect, as like, by great job. Yeah, this isn't my full time. I mean, I'm doing this is my PhD project basically, and it's very much related to what I do for work, because I work on sort of
reconnecting communities projects and that's sort of the solution. I mean.
But there's something very clear in stating these are decisions, right, because then that leads us to decisions are made by people and so people can be influenced, which is what abgnacy ends up being about, right, Like how to influence the people who are making decisions, to make decisions that are for the people versus for profit.
Yeah. Absolutely, and in the lessons in chemistry example, So that was the ten I think the Santa Monica Freeway, I mean, ultimately they weren't successful. That was the sixties. It was a very wealthy neighborhood, very wealthy black neighborhood in West Ada, in Los Angeles. It's Hattie McDaniel lived there, who was the first black woman to win an oscar Ethel waters Louis Beaver's who's a Broadway star. So it
was very it was like a wealthy neighborhood. So and what's illustrative about that about this point is it's it's not just that it was poor neighborhoods that were because because people could say like, oh well, no, it's poor neighborhoods around downtown that that are reducing property values, It's like no. Sometimes these were straight up like rich neighborhoods, as is the case in sugar Hill, because Sugar Hills like right off downtown or West Adams is sugar Hills
like a smart subpart of West Adams right off downtown. So it's the same thing. It's it's who's there, even if they're wealthy. You know, it dc like there was basically a plan to build. It never got finished. But you know there's a there's a highway that goes under the mall and then kind of pops up that was supposed to be a full loop that would have like built a wall right next to Howard, cutting Howard off
from the downtown area. Right as if Howard is lowering property values, that that got stopped because of successful advocacy. And it is often college towns that often are able to do that. But that's that's a different issue. What was I saying, Oh, advocates, Yes, so they they weren't successful in that case because that was the sixties. There was nothing they could have done really right. But today,
indeed there's there's move people recognize. I mean, I'm not the first person to say this or you know, I'm really just building off of sort of decades of people talking about this stuff. And then there's obviously the lived experience I've used. Sort of what I'm doing is communicating it through a like using the skills that I have as an architect and city planner to communicate it in a way that's accessible. Because this exists in books, but a lot of us don't read anymore, but that we should.
But then and and one of the best books about this for for New York folks, you know, is The Power Broker, which is a fifteen It's a biography of this guy Moses who is the He sort of originated this in a lot of ways. He's the one who came up with this use of highways to clear out neighborhoods, basically, use of highways not just for transportation, but to remove neighborhoods viewed as undesirable. That goes back to him in New York. Ah, and a lot of what he did
in New York gets emulated everywhere. So yeah, that's well, that's that's public housing show the cover. Sorry, Oh sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is he created this method and it got copy and pasted.
Yeah, so he yes. Basically the answer is yeah, he a lot of the highways he built in New York. So like the b QWI and the Cross Bronx in particular, they actually they predate the interstate system, but they become the model for the interstate. So the Cross Bronx, the Cross Bronks in particular, cuts through the South Bronx and divides the north, the northern more white part from the southern Puerto Rican black part. And it also it reinforces that division and creates it in a lot of ways.
So he's really the first to route highways, to use highways in such a way to achieve this dual purpose, and he's the one who lobbies for the creation of Yeah, and that's the demolition of San Juan Hill is an exact it is an exact example of like that's right up against that's right north of fifty ninth Street, right, So it's this Puerto Rican neighborhood that's viewed as potentially impacting the values of the Upper West Side and then down into midtown so level it especially, it's such valuable
land because of where it is. Yeah, you know, so it's this there's these conflicting aims, right, It's like Downtown New York is always a little different, but like Downtown's are becoming devalued, but there's still this recognition of incredible potential because of the centrality. So they're always demolishing stuff and rebuilding. You know.
So how did how did how did you get this way? How did you become a high Quada tee white? How did it happen?
Oh? My god? Well, I didn't talk much about advocates because they are but we can, we can talk about them. But for you know, for me, there's a couple of things I did. That book, The Power Broker is fifteen hundred pages long. I to some extent got tired of telling people to read that book does in the first place, Oh, it's the whole history of New York unfortunately, but you're from Miami.
I've got to get to the bottom of how you became this person? Are your periods?
Yeah, but the history of New York is the history of American urbanism. I know in New York is special in a lot of ways because it is different. But everybody emulates New York always it It's it's contradictory, right, New York is like the most European and San Francisco. But but you know, the every other city emulates what New York does infrastructurally and economically they try, but infrastructurally specifically. So yeah, the history.
Interested in city planning and infrastructure, you have to understand.
New York, yes period. Yeah, in the West and no, actually worldwide because you know in in well absolutely like the highway Mecha. I'm not as familiar with Chinese cities, but the limited access highway as we know it, which China has built quite a lot of has its origin the urban limited access highway. It has its origin in Robert Moses who is the is New York and and he took up you know, he didn't invent the limit. When I say limited access highway, I'm talking about like
the interstate. You know, it's cars only, it's it's there's no direct intersections with roads. That really goes back. That really goes back to the autobon in Germany, which is Nazis right, But that is a little different because that didn't go into cities. It's I don't necessarily have a problem between with with highways between cities. Uh, it's when you it's when you disrupt, It's when you cut into the middle, right exactly, because you don't need to have
automobile access to the middle of a city. That's what.
Well, why do you have a problem with this? Who are your parents? How are you raised? Why are you like this? Because this is real because people see this and they see how do I capitalize on this?
Right?
People see this through different Everyone sees these types of things through different lenses, and so you know, part of my work in decolonizing is trying to understand the different ways that folks are shaped to see things through a lens of community versus a lens of how do I exploit So why do you feel like you're somebody who sees lens, who sees through a lens of community. You've never been asked that question.
But no, no, no, no, well you know you're right, You're right. I really love cities. And I grew up in a So I'm from South Florida, so I think maybe I am being exploited. I just well, so I'll get to But I grew up in South Florida in a suburb, so like my you know, where recipients of like a lot of the white flight stuff that you know, became my parents parents move that they were white flight from the Bronx uh And I just I grew up in a suburb, and I it's really I don't like it.
I hate it's it's you know, it's I you can't go anywhere. It's it feels imprisoned and and and and just bland, and there's and a like spiritually devoid, you know, and a versus you know. When I went to college, I went to Berkeley, so I lived in uh a city for the first time. And it's just it's so fun. It's it's so and this is why I'm being like, I think where It's like, I just really like the life and culture of a city, and that that does require a certain and I think maybe I'm being an
architectural determinist. It does require like a certain built environment, which is density and walkability and people sort of being close to each other a city, you know, not so.
You identify racism because you like a city? Is that what you're trying to tell me right now? It's because how are you able to identify racism? How?
Well, it's more than just because well, it's more than just because I like the city. It's because anything that's like worth, anything that's culturally interesting or sort of exciting, is in the comes from the community that is made possible by a city. Yeah. No, I think that if if you just have everyone living in this spread out suburb, you don't you don't get any It's very it's you don't get much culture, you don't get much.
Am Why did you go to birth Ride and leave? You need to know this for yourself. Why did you leave Birthright?
Well, it was very very poorly planned, and it was also whitewashing the whole thing. Obviously I had to explain to people like what the green line was. But no, I think putting it is like I just like the city is a little bit is a little bit reductionist.
I know, that's my point. I don't think it's just that you're putting it that way. But the reason why I keep coming back to this is because this kind of work has to have love beneath it, It has to have meaning beneath it, beyond simply just the science of it or else it's just being done by roche. And so what I'm trying to understand from you is what drives this beyond simply just the like of a city.
Because the things that you've said in this interview, there are things that you've said in this interview that are very clear indicators that you have on moral ground around this. You have an ethical lens that you see this through.
Well. The way that we live currently urbanistically, which is the way we all live. You know, even if you're in a rural area, the way that we live currently is very extractive. Everything is about production, producing capital. Everything is just about and that's what all the suburbs that's like. So the suburbs, you know, there's a reason that that's what they pushed people to after World War two because
the war engine. I don't mean to get back to industry, but like the war engine had pulled America out of World War two, right or sorry, I'd pulled America out of the Great Depression, and once the war ended, you know, we really needed to keep that engine going. And long story short, it wasn't very difficult for GM to retool from making jet engines and jeeps to making cars. Right, it wasn't hard for GE to switch from making jet engines to making big appliances that you need for your house.
And then for developers it's a windfall, and for car companies it's a windfall. This is like the way that we have set up our system which has pushed people to live in this unnatural way because of racism, because it said this is a restricted way to this is a restricted tract, and so your property values will be safe.
Why do you have a problem with that?
Why you know it's not normal?
White people don't typically have a problem with racism. I don't know if you know that, But that's like not normal, Like we don't live in a world where majority white people see racism and say that's my problem, or where they see it and say I want to get to the bottom of that. I want to understand why they're doing that. They don't, and so the ones that do, I want to know that. I want to know that the chemistry.
Well, there's an obvious I mean, there's the moral imperative. But but.
You say that as if you have not seen the world we're in. We're watching a genocide and people are fine with it. So the moral imperative is something that is like a seed within people that either gets fertilized or it gets withered. And so I'm curious with you how it has considered, how has continued to be fertilized. And then you went to Berkeley, which we know is you know, it's not like you went to Liberty University. Well, you know the great Architecture program.
It's it's I in this realm. I feel like I can do something about it as an architect, as someone who is in the the built environment, because I think that the entire So the reason I'm like focus on on segregation by design is because the history of and not just history, but the present form of American cities, unfortunately driven by race, is the layout of our linear infrastructure and of our zoning. I mean our zoning code
goes back to racism. So for me, like it's it's like a rabbit hole tumbling down, Like why why is that highway there? Why does it curve there? Why does it it's because why does it go through that neighborhood and not that one? You know? Why are there seven highways and Boyle Heights but none in but like one on the west side right the ten? So oh, and why do I care about racism? Right?
Everybody's asking the question because you have yet to answer it. We're not really sure why you're not giving us the answer about why you care about racism. I don't even know if you know why you care about.
Racism because it's wrong?
Why do you think racism is wrong? Who taught you that?
That's a good question? I mean, I guess my parents.
You know, we've seen the opposite, right, Like, the environments that are shaping people who think this way have to be examined the same way that you. They have to be examined morally, the same way you're examining, you know, infrastructurally.
So you see what I'm saying. Oh, absolutely, so I know I think so yeah, And and and there's a great book so thanks for I think I this is this is the therapy session. Thank you very much. But there's a great book by Heather McGee called The Some of Us Ah. So the central metaphor of her book is basically public swimming pools. So yeah, yeah, So public swimming pools, they used to be very common. They used to be very common in American cities. Uh. And they
were segregated. They were whites on the right, so and and a lot of them they were like big beautiful are tips that it's they were like WPA stuff, so our deco, beautiful architecture really and again whites only. But then in the fifties, as as desegregation comes down from the courts, they say, to these local facilities, to these municipal public swimming pools, you have to desegregate. And rather than doing that, a lot of a lot of cities just drained the pools and demolish them. They got rid
of it. Buffalo, Saint Louis, Montgomery, Birmingham, the South, all of them. It's that they're got in Boston. And then after that you see the rise of backyard swimming pools, especially in places where it wasn't necessarily like the vernacular before. So what's interesting in that case is basically, in order to uphold white supremacy, we got rid of a public good and we privatized it. We made it only for
people who could afford a backyard swimming pool. And that is to some extent what we did with the American city with with education. Obviously, with education, we're telling us.
All things that we know except for the thing we don't know, which is why you care about this?
We sure, well, I guess I don't need to be here there, but we didn't.
Know about what you were talking about before. But you're here because.
I bring that. That's why it's interesting to me is because how that that zero sum is self defeating for everybody. I mean, I don't know. There's the moral imperative that I don't that I can't explained. I think it's it's self evident if you see a wrong that you have the capacity to do something about which I feel that I do as someone in the built environment, you do something about it. So I don't know, I can't explain that.
But the zero sum, if you want to put it in in a nature in a like a why do I care? From a self interest point of view. There's that zero sum game. We destroyed the whole idea. I mean again, I love cities. We destroyed cities, but we destroyed the whole idea of the public. You know, everything
that's public. The word public has become a dog whistle for but the word public has become a dog whistle for for for black you know, uh in where I'm from in South Florida, like, uh, you say you're taking public transit, you say you're taking try rail, and everyone's like, oh my god, you're going to get stabbed, Like that's what people say. It's like and that's that's racism obviously. But but it's this idea that of the public just being racialized, and that's you can't that's that's that's not
at that's a that's a decrepit society. That's that's uh, that's one where it's feudalism. You know, if you don't have a public it's it's when what the hell is that? So yeah, selfishly, I don't want to live in a society that's just divide and conquered by capitalists, which is
what which is why they've taken up that. You know, they themselves are racist, but why racism is such a useful tool, Uh because because I guess, Yeah, there's a lot of people very I mean, for there's a lot of people who are just more self who are who think that the gains that they will get from their protected mortgage are are more than everything that's lost by dismantling society. Yeah, you know, so I I care because I want to live in a society. Uh. And and
the logical endpoint of this is death. I don't know, is is a poverty and and uh nothing.
So one of the reasons I refer to myself as an artistic intellectual is because I I've gone through the graduate school program like I've gone through you know, academia, and so much academia does this thing where it sterilizes intellectualism by making it, you know, even if it's not mathematic, by trying to make it mathematic, right, like trying to castrate the personhood from it, the morality, the ethics from it,
et cetera, and put it in these bubbles. But we always see that what ends up living longer than most studies are the ones that are actually grounded in something more than just like the boxed version of something. Even though PHG programs want to do this all the time, right, They want to like break you down and make it like, no, this can be for everybody, So it has to have a very generic if either has to have a hyper
specific or generic point of view. And what I love about your work is that it marriages those two things in terms of the artistic intellectual, because it marriages the realities of the moral and the a moral and unethical with the actual skyship around city planning. And a lot of people won't see that, right, They just see it as these are the blocks that we live on, and
they were created and now we live here. But no, they were choices that were made, and even the scholarship around that and how it's discussed as a choice because there are others who would do the same work and frame it as innovation. You know, Ezra client is looking at the same thing and calling.
In abundance, right, yeah, which is kind of willfully ignorant of sort of basic city planning principles because its issue is like we are building houses, We're not building the right houses. It's just so I saw this awful. It wasn't that there were some elements though it was okay, but this article in the Times about like why we need sprawl and it.
Was about trash, so that doesn't surprise me.
Well, so it was about and there's some great people who work there. Written for them before.
I've been profiled by them twice.
There you go exactly, so it's like any yeah, but but lately, you know, I know that, and and the route.
Change and things, and you know, things happened like.
And are women ruining the workplace? I was, I was flying and that was like the only article that had downloaded, and so I read way too much of that before. I was like, what the it's like it was it was.
I mean, they just put out an article today, the case for overthrowing Maduro, Like oh my god.
That's what is the phrase for that? Like yellow journalism? That sounds racist actually, but like we're where.
But it's yellow because it's callow. I mean it's not it's it's it's not CALO's not the wor I'm looking for, but it's it's it lacks courage. I mean, it's being paid for. And I just pressed you one. I wanted to press you be because because I know you're going to be often come off of this and like have to go decompress and probably take a nap, But I wanted to press you because the work you're doing is the kind of work that people don't want done. And I know that you've already had to I'm sure argue
why are you doing this work? And I'm sure there's been people who've been like, this is not really am I wrong?
Uh yeah, no exactly. I mean there's always people that wonder why I'm doing it.
They're like, you're a blue eyed, good looking white man, you have blonde hair, you can do whatever you want in your dentimp shirt. Why are you caring about this? And there has to be it's like, I mean, for lack of a better reference, Lady McBee and Macbeth when she's trying to convince Macbeth to murder the king says, through our coverage, to the sticking place, and we shall not be moved. And that is the type of energy that has to be hadn't don't need allies, We need
co conspirators. And that only happens when people are morally driven with the work they're doing. So when you say, like, I mean, I don't understand, like you're asking me about something that just is in my body. That's actually very like comforting to me to hear someone say that, like, I'm not like this because I was taught or because my so my surroundings. You're like, I'm like this because I'm like this, Leave me alone, Amanda, I came on your show to talk about highways.
Well, I mean, I think it's natural to Oh is it just me? No, I was gonna say, I think it's natural to try to strive for a better world, the utopia.
I was like, did she just hang up on me on her own show?
I was like, is it just me? I was, And I was like, oh my gosh, I should have taken advantage of that better. I think everyone's just like it's I it's I think it's it's at least I think it's natural to try to strive for a better world. And and these are all problems. One of the reasons I talk about this in particularly, these are all such solvable problems. They're all there's and and they're so the
solutions are so precedented. It's like, remove the highway and build a lot of affordable housing and actually make it and redefine what affordable is. So its uh move that bar down because it hasn't kept up with inflation obviously, But that's if we do, if we do want to talk about solutions. That's that's one of the reasons I I I have some time. If you want to keep talking, I.
Would love to hear. And I hope that this also extends two like indigenous communities, because that's something we were talking about earlier. How Like on a global scale, we're seeing this exact effort being done through other methods, right, but the effort of like separation of displacement and using I mean, that's what this un that's what this Trump Plan and Gaza literally is. I mean, it's we're going to use development as a dog whistle for displacement.
Development is a way to salt the earth. Development is a way to literally replace and make sure replace what's there and make sure that what's there can never come back. That's like if you look at you know, Greenwood in Tulsa, the Black Wall Street, if you look at it now it's mostly parking lot. They literally salted the earth. I mean they paved the earth. And and that's exactly what
this Gauza plant is. Yeah, it's it's there's a great book about Los Angeles called City of Courts about them, it's about basically the development of La But there's a good book or a good part about the demolition of Bunker Hill. Uh. And he talks about how they clear out the street grid, they clear out everything. Uh. And they they remove public transit links and it's it's trying to they and they basically build a wall between La Plaza and Bunker Hill. So La Plaza is the sort
of an Alvera street. So he's talking about like they're trying to remove any articulation between a non Anglo past between you know, passe Los Angeles by literally, ah, removing the street connections, assaulting the earth and getting rid of it. So absolutely uh. And this has been done another place. Yeah, City of Courts.
Because they always want to know what the book looks like. City is this is this the book?
Yeah? And that's that's a picture of a uh yeah, it's a it's a it's a jail. Right, it's a federal jail, which is kind of unique.
But I'm gonna say, like, wait, a federal dale.
That's a bit contradictive, but it's like a holding. It's because it's for the whole West Coast. It's one of those things. But the the reason he uses that photo is because he's talking about you know, I talked about how they clear out these neighborhoods and replace it with stuff designed to attract white people back from the suburbs. Architecturally,
that takes the form of killing the street. So you get rid of storefronts, you get rid of you get rid of like human scale stuff on the street, storefronts basically, and apart and brownstones, brownstones, so anything that creates and allows for store for street life you get rid of because the street has become a sort of racialized thing
post white flight. So if you can get rid of the street and replace it with again parking lots or like a building that's just a big wall, that's what the city, that's what that is, or a entrance to a parking garage, that's golden. Because then then you've gotten rid of the connection to the street, and that's that's like in Minneapolis, they have a lot of skyways, like
overhead things that connect between buildings. Newark has this like and and they connect between office buildings so you net you can drive into your parking garage and you never have to even go down to the street. So there's another reason. And this is why, like I think maybe like it's my I care about it also because it's very bad design, and it's bad for like your brain, and it's bad for living. It's obviously bad for the environment. I haven't even mentioned that it's obviously very bad for
the environment. This way that we have, We used racism to leverage and create this way of living that is wildly inefficient for anyone but developers and card companies.
It's it's honestly, but because it's a cancerous mindset, right, like if we just keep expanding and developing and spanding and developing, like you know, there's no limit. And it's like, well, there is a limit. And then you have someone liking on Musk who's like, well, my goal is to take this money and go to Mars and create a new world on Mars. It's like we can't breathe, Yeah, we can't breathe on Mars. Are you going to build an atmosphere?
Because that's the type of shit that they want to do, Like they want to go and build an atmosphere and privatize breathing, Like that's the type of stuff that these.
People are on like that's why. Yeah, I know it's terrifying. It's like, uh growing up, you know, I'm a boy, so like video games, you know, sci fi, like Halo whatever, it's just in the future. Also in that series, space travel is run I mean, the un is not good, I know that, but it is public. But so like Space is run by like a public entity that's at least for good. And then in the other there's like Aliens, which that's all privatized and everything is like dark and dank,
and unfortunately that's what we're getting. I guess, so fuck.
I mean, have you ever watched The Expanse?
Uh? Yeah, I didn't finish it. I got to where they opened the portal. It was really good, though, Should I finish it?
You should? Yeah, you should. Had me in a choke hold for I've luckily waited to watch it until it was finished, so I binged it for a good three weeks. I lost a lot of my life to the Expanse, but it was worth every second.
Nice. Yeah, I mean, that's like That'll Star Galactic.
I was about to say, I'm about to do a rewatch. I'm literally about to do a rewatch about so I'd like to feel like I have a new consciousness and I'm like, am I Asylon?
Maybe it gets a little off the rails, but in interesting ways.
Yeah, to season four what Silon started being like what you mean, I'm a Cylon, That's exactly.
It's like, what's going on? And once once that guy starts his own religion, it's like, wait, weren't you a scientist? I don't understand.
And then they and then they like do Adam and Eve all over again?
But it's fine, it's fine. It's I'm watching a Chair Company right now. Everyone should watch that.
That's so I was going to say, do I need to stick to that?
Oh? I really I loved Tim Robinson, I adore him, didn't.
Have any idea where we were going. But I also did that with severance and deeply regretted this because then Severn turned out to be amazing. So I was in that episodes of The Chair Company where you feel like.
Oh, definitely, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I agree. I would say, keep watching excited. But back to solutions, by the way, so yeah, we just we can take out these highways and and unfortunately, you know the that's not going to bring back the community and in some cases taking out the highway could lead to gentrification.
So right then it becomes well, now that we don't have these highways, we need the rich class to have easier access to the to the city, so we bring them back.
Yeah. Well, and you think about where where the highways they're taking out are Again, it's the ones like right around downtown. So that's super valid highways. Right now, there's a discussion. Yeah, so in various cities there's been a discussion. You know, highways were the Interstate in particular, so the Interstate was built starting in the sixties. A lot of the main major structures have sort of reached the end of their useful life. That's why we see collapses of
bridges in like Minneapolis, and so they need there. A lot of them are in like desperate need of repair. So some states are actually using the opportunity to make some progress. New York is doing New York's doing pretty good. Rochester, New York, took out a part of a highway that separated the black neighborhoods from downtown interesting and replaced it with affordable housing. So it's very recent. We'll see how
it pans out, but it looks beautiful at least. Again, the issue is like affordable housing, what does that exactly mean? But it is subsidized housing. So it's the best we can do. I mean, I try to be realistic within within the current font confines. But so that's that's there's like removal is one option. This was a very underused highway. But then there's capping. So that's sort of what they did in Boston where they took an elevated highway and
put it underground. A yeah, with the big dig that's not always a great option because there are still a ton Yeah, because there's always there are still a ton of cars, and there still can be pollution.
Like in the soil.
Oh yeah, oh well yeah, there's that.
Water, the water table, all that stuff.
And it's also if you're digging a tunnel in the middle of a city, it should be for it should be for a subway, probably not for enough for a highway. Just in terms of efficiency.
Exhauce with it. You know what, We'll do this for five hours ATAM.
I do have a graphic. I do have a graphics showing the exhaust. It's the it was one of the first I sent it to the noise pollution and asthma rates in the Bronx, but you see it in the South Bronx, which is totally surrounded by highways. Sorry, she's got the South Bronx, which is totally surrounded by highways. It has every census tract in the South Bronx is in the ninety ninth percentile for asthma rates.
That's how I just went this keep going, yeah, because basically I realized that like if I just like move my cursor too fast and left, it just like kicks me out. And I don't know why it's doing that, and I don't know whose idea that was, but I'm gonna have to write a very strong letter, strongly word of email to stream Yard because that is not helpful. Let me see if I can find these asthma rates. Whilere you talking.
Not a big deal of the camp, but capping advocates, there's you know, the people who live next to these highways obviously know that there's there's negative effects, and then in a lot of cases, their parents were devastated by their neighborhoods being destroyed. So there's definitely a lot of advocate advocacy, is what I'm trying to say, you know, in the Bronx we're working on I've been in contact with the group there Loving the Bronx, who's led by Nilkam Martel, who we all want to run for city
council or something, but she doesn't want to. But she's basically single handedly pushed for this project to cap over I ninety five, the Cross Bronx Expressway, and it's it's gonna it's like a decade long project, but we're like five years into it, so it's moving. It's a massive project because it's like a seven mile long highway and it's it's not any highway, it's Eye ninety five in New York. But it's moving forward, capping over it, going
to build a bunch of parks. You know. The ideal would be to remove it and reconnect the neighborhood and then re route IE ninety five around New York. But then suddenly that's sort of like a national project. So that's that's one of the things that's so tough about these highways in terms of fixing them, is that they have very much local impacts, but they are part of a regional network that when you shift something, you need to change it things elsewhere.
I mean, I think this is also one of the things that is not considered in when we think about like socialist politicians being in position or socialist governance being in position, like this idea of threethinking how cities exist even and I don't I just don't think many of us think about the road like I don't really feel like I have been doing enough thinking about the way
that the roads and the highways are lined up. So can you just so the top one is noise pollution, in the bottom one is asthma prevalence.
Exactly, so that on the top one so and the top one you can see the noise pollution and that maps right onto the highways where those purple where those big thick purple lines are. That's as loud as a jackhammer. So that's incredibly loud. And there's tens of thousands of people that live in that noise shit they have to just they just can't open their windows, you know, and when they do, there's soot and it's it's it's not just because it's not just co two I mentioned, it's
like crap from the tires and the brake pads. Yeah, yeah, And that's the Bronx. So that's like one of the densest places in the United States. So there's the noise pollution. So that one that cuts across all the way is the Crossbronx. Uh and it connects to that bread those bridges on the other side. Uh So a lot of that's just through traffic. That's a different point. But what we're trying to do is.
Basically building up that Cross Bronx.
Yeah. But so what we're trying to do is basically build a cap over it. So sort of a big dig for the Bronx, but hopefully not as delayed.
Well, build a cap to run the highway, to run the Cross Bronx underground, you know, the Cross Bronx like Lincoln Tunnel tie vibe.
Yeah, but the Cross Bronx basically is underground. It's just in a trench with no top. Yeah, because there's we're just talking about building a top over that, which is something that's really common here in the Netland. That's actually one of the reasons I'm here in the Netherlands. So this is I'm involved in this project through work the Cross Bronx, and my PhD is is uh, basically looking at the impact of CAP thing on social and environmental
metrics around the CAP. So they've done it quite a lot here, so I'm looking to see did it work basically? Did it reduce pollution? Did it improve mobility? Did it did it gentrify? I'm trying to see yes or no. It's a bit different the context here, but a lot of the tools we can still use. And the answer is it's mixed. It depends how you do it. But that's what I'm That's what I'm trying to study and figure out.
Is how far into the DHD are you two.
And a half years? Oh?
You got tam.
I should be done in about a year because I have a lot of preexist I have a lot of pre existing work, you know. And then we'll see. Maybe I'll stay here. I might. I'm probably going to go back to New York, but we'll see here. What's up?
Don't come back here?
Well? Yeah, but I should. I feel like a phony talking about everything I'm talking about being over here. But that's.
What we have learned, y'all, is that Adam is about authenticity.
Well there, but there is a lot we can learn from here, and I don't I don't mean like necessarily in terms of like Amsterdam, but just the city that I'm in now, Rotterdam was totally destroyed and will so first of all, incredibly diversity. It's it's only about fifty percent Dutch. The rest is, yeah, the rest is immigrants, so it's mostly people from Dutch colonies, Dutch colonial legacy, so it's Indonesians, it's surnames Curassow. And then there's a
lot of Turkish folks that's not a colony. But so it's incredibly diverse here. It's the biggest port in Europe, so it also has like a history of diversity like New York, you know, big port city. Rotterdam rules, but it was unfortunately destroyed in World War two and so totally flattened and then rebuilt with American money and rebuilt the Marshall Plan. Rotterdam got the most of any city in the Marshall Plan, and we designed it. You know,
it wasn't totally on us. The Dutch were happy to do modernism too, but we we redesigned Rotterdam from the beautiful like Amsterdam like medieval city to a modernist American thing, you know. And and just like the American city before we destroyed it for highways and and and urban renewal. Rich people and poor people lived close together, you know,
immigrants and natives lived close together. And that was the same in the United States, right, but we we destroyed it, and and World War two destroys it here and and they try to institute a similar planning logic and they do. You know, Zoud becomes the south becomes the poor area, uh and and north and and and downtown becomes not residential at all. And they hate it. People the Dutch, they hate it because they that's not how they live,
you know, the the they're urban planning. You know, they had to make there's this joke, the Dutch joke, like, you know, God created the Earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands because the Netherlands is mostly unreclaimed land, so they had to like drain a lot of land. But so they they have a very unique way of urban planning. It's very specific and tactical and like about about efficiency. So then the Americans come in with this ridiculous spread out way of living that is based on racism in
our way back in where we live. Other countries adopted happily South South Africa, Belfast in northern Ireland. But the Dutch there there are plenty of racists. Don't worry.
But they oh, yes, we know about smart smart se Yeah.
Oh they're they're incredibly racist and they're they're they're big racist dufaces in a lot of ways. But when it comes up and planning, that's important to them. So they in the seventies they had a moment of like urbanism that we're sort of having in American cities now, recognizing that you know, car culture is exclusive, is damaging, blah blah blah. So they had that in the seventies and
they have since fixed Rotterdam. And Rotterdam is a city with bones, just like America because it was rebuilt in the image of America with this, but they fixed it. So we can learn a lot from Rotterdam. Amsterdam is beautiful, but it's medieval. We're not going to do that. But Rotterdam has big, old, wide boulevards and highways. But now we have beautiful wide boulevards with bike lanes and trams.
I see what you're saying about this, Okay, you're saying that you went to the place that is ahead of where we could be. Yeah, that's ahead of where we are as a model for where we can.
Become urban planning wise, you're checking out, is it legit?
I mean what I think what I think it's really important work because it also allows you to see, well, where are the ways it doesn't solve, and where is the way that it does, and how do we solve for the things that it doesn't solve? You know, which is you know, so much of America is anti intellectual, so it doesn't do that work. It just like bullies its way through things versus like well wait, wait, wait, somewhere else did it? And I know they're not American,
but they may have good ideas. I don't.
Yeah, no, there's it's that's American exceptionalism, right, it's we think where they And there's New York exceptionalism too, right, Like we can't we can't learn from other places, especially when it comes to like the subway. It's very frustrating, like there's we can't adopt best practices because you know, we're the subway. We of course we know how to do it. But yeah, no, I mean, and and you
do see the shortcomings. Absolutely, taxes are really really really no, I'm serious oh my god, and uh do you But do.
You feel your taxes in your lifestyle?
Yes, exactly, Yes, the trains work, the streets are clean, fair, but it's funny, yeah, basic things. I mean, I actually think that the Netherlands itself could learn a lot from Rotterdam because the rest of the Netherlands they say Rotterdam like how Americans say Detroit or Chicago, like yeah, it's racialized, yeah, oh absolutely, yeah yeah yeah, but but it's a beautiful place here.
And let's let's answer a question before you go becau as I see someone just throw one out. Si Williams says, question, does the way the grid of the infrastructure affect the flow of energy in our communities and or frequencies that affect our way of life? I mean it's like the function way of it all. Yeah, but you were seeing that it's the environment.
So yeah, well the grid. I really do want to answer that question. I always do this. I just want to say, just to put a bow on the capping and the removal. Thing that is great for making a better city, that is and making and it's better for the environment. It's not necessarily always the right thing for the community that we're trying to help because of this
issue of gentrification. So it's just me. I consider myself like an urbanist, Like I do want to improve cities, but we the way to do that isn't always just more big infrastructure. But uh, basically I'm trying to endorse community land trusts give some ownership back to the community. A community land trust is like as a you know, a nonprofit corporation, uh, where the community basically just owns a bunch of land and gets to decide what they want to do with it.
I mean, I mean, if it were if I mean it is essentially a socialist construct.
Do I consider myself a democratic socialist? Yes? Is that is a CLT socialist? I don't know, because it's uh like ideally.
It's within a capitalists Yeah.
Right, it's within.
Yeah.
Well, and I think as a democratic socialist. By the way, I think that cap You know, you can have a beautiful bubble of capitalism within the guardrails and the bubble within the guardrails of democratic socialism, and then you compete on things like uh, quality of service. Sorry, I'm thinking about example, like in Europe. It's not perfect here, but like the state owns the rails, and then the operators.
So there's a government operator, but then there's some private operators that then have to compete based on service, not based on something like the rails, which any private operator. No one can build that because it's too big. But like an example would be in the US, like if the government owned the cell towers, which is too big for any small company to possibly build. Only AT and T and Verizon can build something like that. And because they own the towers, and because only they're big enough
to do it, they can fuck you over. But so if somebody, like if there was a public agency that owned the towers, then you could rent it out to private operators who would then have to compete on Oh god, guess what service? Does that make sense? So I think it does.
It's true, like at the end of the day, it exists for now, but all they need is incentive to which is what these capitalists are trying to do, right, is to remove the incentive of even having this type of bubble and just making it all privatized in general. I mean, I'm more of a parent in my sentiments that wherever capitalism lives, there's always going.
To be.
The there's always going to be the possibility and the incentive for capitalism to grow, because that's all it does. I mean, it doesn't know how to stay in the bubble. It's counterintuitive to its existence. It's literally cancer. Like the mind state of capitalism is how do we grow without limit? So for now, that's why I like the concept of democratic socialism is I believe democratic socialisms, y'all are just folks who are just on the way to being socialists.
You're just not there yet, but you're on the way. I'll see you soon.
Well wait, okay, Well now I think they we're just getting into semantics.
Because democratic socialis are still they still hold a piece of capitalism in their eye, in their mind's eye.
Well okay, so I guess I was saying that competition isn't inherently a bad thing in terms of providing services.
And I would say that wherever competition exists, where in terms of the quality of services, know that the provision needs to be guaranteed.
But the but the.
Mean, there's there's like different versions of socialism that we've seen right where it's like there's portions of Richard Wolf did a really good podcast about this recently, where there's like portions of land ownership and service ownership that like you're talking about where it's like the government owned some of it, but then there's privatization, et cetera, et cetera. But then it ends up at a certain point becoming who's gonna.
It?
Always capitalism always requires there to be Okay, you're not letting us grow anymore. So that's what I'm saying. It's like, that's all I'm saying that at a certain point, they're like, we'll play along with this, but then if we get if the bubble gets too small, we're going to figure out we're going to try to figure out how to burst the bubble. So then I'm like, well, then how do we make it so that there is no bubble at all?
Yeah? Fair enough, And let's not say we can keep talking about that later. That's always a fun topic. But can can we bring the press the question back?
Sure?
Just because I did want to talk about the grid because it is kind of interesting.
I lost the question, but the question was how does the grid affect like the flow of energies of people in a city, Like I mean, it was kind of like a feng shueish kind of concept.
Right, like yeah, yeah, but the grid, I from a city planning perspective is American cities are really there, you go, are really grid e you know, we we love a grid, and I actually think that that's kind of cool. The grid. Yeah, it's very democratic, like small d democratic because unlike the European cities where there's like the center of authority, which is normally a church, so there's the church and then everything kind of emanates around from that and it's kind
of radial. The American city is all about the grid. Is all about the grid where there's no necessarily there's no point that's necessarily prized, and there's equal access to everything. So I like it grid. And that's why that's one of the things that's like tragic in the highways is that they just disrupt the city grid. They absolutely a limit. They get rid of that logic because the grid is all about like on the ground connectivity, not vehicular connectivity.
So and the highways just upend that and they destroy it and they inscribe a economic logic, which is, you know, prioritizing suburban access to the core. So the grid, I wish it would make a car that I wish it would make it come back in places where it's been disrupted. And you know, gridlock is something that is a product of cars, not people.
Agreed because like in Grenada, which is a very small island, you see like more cars than there is like land. It's all it starts to feel like that. Well then there are roads, right, So there's this gridlock for the sake of gridlock. Because the other part of this I can say this because I'm Caribbean, is it Folks typically want cars so they can get up and go, so they have control, so they can dominate, like when they arrive somewhere. But what's sitting in people? We're not on time,
So what is the point, y'all? What's the point and everybody having the car if you're not going to get there on time? Adam, thank you for not only being Adam was early, y'all. Adam's here a half hour before, so we've had two hours of Adam.
Paul SU's the next time, so much fun. We had a whole.
Spiritual session about morals and ethics. We then talked about everywhere from Rotterdam to Detroit, which is a journey I did not know we were going to go on, but I can assure you that everyone here is leaving today with so much more than they came with, thanks to you sharing your knowledge and the work that you continue to do.
So thank you, Adam, Thank you so much. You know, if you want to carry on the conversation, because there's some points that I I always do that you know, I.
Was like I should have said, We'll definitely invite you back. So make a list, make a list of the points that you feel like you need to add.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, next time, I'll be a little more. I'll send them in order. But if folks, can I do my can I do my plug?
Please?
Just so Segregation by design dot com. It's broken down by cities and then unfortunately Instagram is the place some of the most active so at segregation underscore by underscore, de sign check it.
Out, segregation.
Segregation under greg gaish. It's kind of funny. One of the terms for like the type of highway that the interstate is like limited access is a segregated highways.
I mean, do you put it in the name?
No, I know exactly when you think. There's so many spatial terms that are like explicitly racialized, like inner city, other side of the tracks, I won't keep going.
It's facts, and so once you started, when you started learning language of the United States, you're like, oh, all of this is racist. And I learned that the ice cream Truck song is racist. I was like, I give a I'm out.
And really racist.
It's like that one super dupery.
Yeah.
Well, enjoy your evening in Rotterdam, and thank you again for joining us.
Thank you that's so much fun.
Bye An, bye find Ye