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Conversations about Creating a Culture of Activity: Profiling the people, places, programs, and policies that help to promote a culture of activity within our communities.
Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:21:29
Michel Durand-Wood
So this is a postcard that I found from the 1940s, that has Elmwood Park on it. Elmwood Park is just like a normal, like medium sized, you know, like neighborhood park. It's, you know, walking distance from my house. I can tell you it does not look like this nowadays. You know, so but in seeing this, it had a lily pond, like flowers.
00:00:22:01 - 00:00:37:24
Michel Durand-Wood
And in doing a bit of research on, I found that, like, around that time, like that the city had I had a full time gardener that worked in that park, planted like thousands of flowers every spring, tended to them all summer, and it was just a really beautiful park. The back of this postcard, we had this, that.
00:00:37:24 - 00:00:55:18
Michel Durand-Wood
We're sorry. There's that, transit map from the same time where they talked about this, this particular part where they talk about like that, that is one of many parks like this in the city. Right? We had scores of these parks, and I was like, why? It's like, how come in the 40s, you know, we have all these beautiful, beautiful parks.
00:00:55:18 - 00:01:13:14
Michel Durand-Wood
How could we have for that? You know, 1940s were coming out of World War Two. You know, we just had the Great Depression. We had World War one influenza epidemic, like just all of these like natural disasters and all kinds of things came out, you know, time after time. And we're still paying a full time gardener in the park, work today.
00:01:13:16 - 00:01:31:10
Michel Durand-Wood
You know, we can't even fix potholes. We can't eat like this. And there's, you know, we're not even doing the basics. And the reminds something beautiful as this park, you know, it was it was, you know, shocking to me. Especially my next door neighbor. She's she's in our 80s, and she is she's lived here since she was seven, and so she's.
00:01:31:10 - 00:01:39:14
Michel Durand-Wood
Oh, yeah. Park, I remember in the 50s, you know, people used to take their wedding photos there, and I was like, what? Nobody would ever think of doing that today.
00:01:39:20 - 00:02:07:11
John Simmerman
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. My name is John Zimmerman and that is Michelle Wood from Winnipeg and the Elmwood guy behind the blog Dear Winnipeg and the author of the new book. You'll Pay for This. We'll be covering what inspired him to start writing about the financial status of his community, and how he got engaged, to be able to start making a difference on the ground within his Elmwood neighborhood.
00:02:07:15 - 00:02:33:01
John Simmerman
But before we do that, I just want to say, if you're enjoying this content here in the Active Towns Channel, please consider supporting my efforts by becoming an Active Towns Ambassador. Super easy to do. You can click on the join button right here on YouTube down below, as well as navigate over to Active towns.org. Click on the support tab at the top of the page, and there's several different options, including becoming a Patreon supporter of patrons to get early and ad free access to all my content.
00:02:33:05 - 00:02:40:07
John Simmerman
Okay, let's get right to it with Michelle.
00:02:40:09 - 00:02:44:07
John Simmerman
Michelle, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns Podcast. Welcome.
00:02:44:10 - 00:02:55:03
Michel Durand-Wood
Thanks, John. You so happy to be here. It's kind of it's kind of, it's kind of surreal to hear your voice, but actually speaking directly to me.
00:02:55:06 - 00:03:13:25
John Simmerman
And it's fun here, to to to be able to, to record these these days with that video connection. And so we feel like we've got a really good, connection personally here. I look forward to meeting you in person very, very soon. In about a month's time. We're recording this in May, and you and I are going to be together in June.
00:03:14:02 - 00:03:19:23
John Simmerman
This episode's not going to go out until much later than that, so. Yeah. Yeah, this will all be in the past.
00:03:19:25 - 00:03:22:09
Michel Durand-Wood
Exactly.
00:03:22:11 - 00:03:30:28
John Simmerman
That's great. Well, hey, I love giving, my guests an opportunity to to very briefly introduce themselves. So I'm going to turn the floor over to you.
00:03:31:00 - 00:03:57:03
Michel Durand-Wood
All right. Well, and my name is Michelle, that I would. I, live in Winnipeg, and I blog online, as the Elmwood guy, a dear Winnipeg icon. So I, that's where I write. My tagline is, a fun blog about infrastructure and municipal finance. And so, yeah, basically, I, something I started about seven, seven years ago, I guess, writing about my own city.
00:03:57:06 - 00:04:20:24
Michel Durand-Wood
But, very quickly, the, it became obvious the lessons were applicable to a lot of other places, to the point that my readership now is about 60, 65%, people from outside of, of Winnipeg. So throughout Canada, the US and Australia and Europe. So it's pretty cool to see, the people that, you know, are getting something useful out of it.
00:04:20:26 - 00:04:46:22
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, it is fascinating is such a bizarre world that we have now where, you know, as content creators, we can be producing this content and you just never really know where it's going to resonate. We assume that it will resonate with our quote unquote audiences where we live. But that's not necessarily the case. And I think one of the interesting things too about this.
00:04:46:22 - 00:05:11:11
John Simmerman
So if we if we actually pull, you know, this is the this is Winnipeg right here. So Winnipeg, you guys are, you know, a fairly decent sized city. I mean, you're you're in the top ten, largest cities in Canada. In the, the area there, you're just under a million people. My little blue dot there. I'm directly south of you.
00:05:11:13 - 00:05:18:27
John Simmerman
Quite a quite a ways away, directly south of you in in Austin, Texas. So, yeah, Winnipeg is just. Hey, due north. I can just.
00:05:18:29 - 00:05:21:08
Michel Durand-Wood
Yeah. Sometimes do north.
00:05:21:10 - 00:05:52:29
John Simmerman
In the same, same time zone and everything. Yep. So that is. But that is an interesting observation. I mean, I was sharing with you before we hit the record button that, 60, 70% of my audience is outside of North America as well. And, and I think it's because the things that we're talking about active towns and creating financially viable and stable places, these are universal concepts and universal things that resonate with people all around the world.
00:05:53:02 - 00:06:16:11
Michel Durand-Wood
Well, yeah, and especially in North America, because we've sort of been copying there's homework for, you know, at least at least 80 years. You know, we, we live literally, literally have copied our zoning, codes and, you know, copied our, you know, transportation, you know, engineering manuals is, you know, almost identical in Canada, in the US, basically identical throughout the US.
00:06:16:14 - 00:06:36:15
Michel Durand-Wood
And so, yeah, it's, you know, we've copied each other's homework. So we've sort of ended up with cities that are quite similar and faces, you know, similar struggles. So yeah, it's like like I said, I was writing for Winnipeg based on, you know, our, our struggles and you know, ways forward that we could we could, you know, address a lot of those, those struggles.
00:06:36:18 - 00:06:55:07
Michel Durand-Wood
And yeah, it did not take a long time for, for people outside of Winnipeg to be like, hey, wait a minute. I know it says Winnipeg, but I'm I'm literally I feel like I'm reading about my own city. And so, yeah, I, I, you know, I've gotten emails from people like, you know, in Texas, in Florida and Maryland and in Oregon and, you know, people who said, oh, man, I was so inspired by what you wrote.
00:06:55:08 - 00:07:10:20
Michel Durand-Wood
You know, I ran for I ran for council on my city, and I won. And, you know, it's really encouraging to see. So, again, the point for me was to like, help my own city. But if it only happens indirectly because other cities are doing things right, well then that's I do.
00:07:10:23 - 00:07:27:21
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. So you've been doing this for quite some time. We see the entire, you know, the, the, the blog log here and many years of, of doing this. What inspires you to to get started in doing this and what was your background.
00:07:27:24 - 00:07:48:17
Michel Durand-Wood
Yeah. So I mean, I don't have a background in planning, I don't have a background transportation, I don't have a background in accounting. I'm an entrepreneur. So I, I do have, kind of that self-starter spirit and roll up my sleeves and stuff. And I did have, you know, some, some, exposure to accounting because of that.
00:07:48:17 - 00:08:10:18
Michel Durand-Wood
And so I, I had some basic knowledge, but, yeah, I mean, it was kind of to two separate events. One was like 2006 or 7. There was, the community center in my, in my neighborhood had closed, permanently, due to lack of maintenance. And they were at a point where the, basically was gotten to be kind of unusable.
00:08:10:18 - 00:08:28:06
Michel Durand-Wood
They said, well, we're gonna have to shut it down. And that'll be and, you know, I was like, why isn't there money to fix this? I didn't make sense to me. And so that was kind of the first sort of laying the groundwork for questioning why my city wasn't fixing stuff, when I was paying taxes every year.
00:08:28:06 - 00:08:47:08
Michel Durand-Wood
And I didn't understand it. And then, yeah, a couple years later, I, I, was recommended the, the, the blog, that strong taxes writing by my brother in law and he says, yeah, you know, based on you know, you know, the conversation you're having, I think he says, I think you'll really enjoy it.
00:08:47:08 - 00:09:06:14
Michel Durand-Wood
And sure enough, I read it. I was like, oh, yeah, I totally it kind of pointed me to to where I should look because, you know, I mean, city and city will pay, you know, population 800,000. Our budget documents are financial documents. They're like hundreds of pages long, right? Six, 700 pages. So when you're like, where's it? Where's the money gone?
00:09:06:17 - 00:09:31:08
Michel Durand-Wood
It's not an obvious, you know, search to be like, oh, I'm gonna open this up and find find where the money has gone. But, you know, sort of the strong Towns concept of, looking at the development pattern and the infrastructure liabilities that, you know, grow over time. You know, with my basic accounting knowledge, I'm like, oh, okay, this is in a different place altogether.
00:09:31:08 - 00:09:48:20
Michel Durand-Wood
I have to look. And so that that helped me to kind of, you know, see whether that applied to Winnipeg and it boy did it ever apply. And so yeah. So for Tim to me, that just was, an eye opening moment. And then all of a sudden, once you see it, then you cannot see it. And so everywhere I was looking like, oh, yeah, they should we should do this, doing that.
00:09:48:22 - 00:10:12:23
Michel Durand-Wood
And it wasn't until 2018 we had a municipal election. And at the same time we held, referendum vote, a plebiscite vote on a particular question. And the question was whether we should open Portage in Maine, to pedestrians, Portage in Maine is like the premier downtown intersection in the city. It has legendary status, among the premier is.
00:10:12:23 - 00:10:37:28
Michel Durand-Wood
And even even thro Canada, people, people you know, will recognize. Oh, Portage. You mean. Yeah. That's in Winnipeg. So it's the premier intersection of our downtown. But for since 1979, it's been closed to pedestrian traffic. You're not allowed to cross the street as a pedestrian there. And that was part of, development deal where some fancy Toronto developer came in and promised to build two towers.
00:10:37:28 - 00:11:01:12
Michel Durand-Wood
And in exchange, they built an underground concourse, and, you know, to ensure that people would visit the shops that they would put down there that, you know, they would close, surface crossings. And so they did that in 1979, of course, only half of the development promises materialized, but it had been closed to pedestrians since 1979.
00:11:01:12 - 00:11:19:21
Michel Durand-Wood
So here we are, 2018, and we're holding a vote to open it to pedestrians. And so from my perspective, it was super obvious that of course we need to do this. I mean, we need to prioritize, you know, people in the core of our downtown. And that means at the very, at the very least, letting them cross the street.
00:11:19:24 - 00:11:38:04
Michel Durand-Wood
And so, yes, so to me, this is a super obvious, super obvious, vote, a bunch of people, you know, volunteers in the, in the city, you know, sort of banded together to sort this vote open campaign. And I was like, oh, wow, good for them. This is super cool. Glad that the God of this is happening.
00:11:38:06 - 00:11:59:28
Michel Durand-Wood
And then, yeah, the vote came and went and it was a resounding no, 65%, no, 35%. Yes. And I was like, what? And it really and yeah, that that was the thing that really stuck with me. And I was like, wow. Like, based on what I know about city finance, this is obvious. We should be doing this right now.
00:11:59:29 - 00:12:28:08
Michel Durand-Wood
In a sense, city finance sort of radicalized me to to urbanism and to to active transportation. Right. And so to me, I was like, wow. If people understood city finance a little bit better, we would all be urbanists, we would all be active transportation advocates, and we would all, you know, we would all know this, but but it came I think there's a that there's a, an infamous map that, a CBC reporter did after where they, where they mapped the, the.
00:12:28:08 - 00:12:49:06
Michel Durand-Wood
No, it's to the yes boats to see the sea concentrations. And, yeah, it was a very geographically split. Split? The people who lived close to downtown, were more on the yes side. And the people who lived further away suburbs, were more on the no side. And the interesting thing is, is, I mean, to me, I was like, oh, wow.
00:12:49:06 - 00:13:07:16
Michel Durand-Wood
It's people don't know. And so to me, that was the point where I was like, I need to help them know. And so I kicked around the idea for a little bit with, you know, friends and family ties, chatting about it. Now, should I do a YouTube channel? Should I do, you know, whatever. I ended up picking a blog, and that's purely for technical reasons.
00:13:07:16 - 00:13:29:18
Michel Durand-Wood
I was like, I don't have the right equipment to start recording a YouTube channel. I don't have editing software. And I was like, you know what? I have everything I need to do a blog. I'm just going to do that. It was like that next smallest step kind of idea. And I just, yeah, you know, put together a website real quick and then started, started writing and, yeah, it grew pretty quickly.
00:13:29:21 - 00:13:31:00
Michel Durand-Wood
Yeah. Yeah. That's it.
00:13:31:00 - 00:13:49:14
John Simmerman
And then fast, fast forwarding, you know, those first few, pages we were looking at, this was from the 2018, time frame. So, obviously this was prior to the vote and, and then boom, now we're at 28, 24.
00:13:49:16 - 00:14:01:06
Michel Durand-Wood
Yeah. The previous call from 2018, it had that map. If you scroll down a bit, there it is. Yeah. There it is. So that's how that's how they. Yes. No split up. Right. So yeah.
00:14:01:10 - 00:14:35:24
John Simmerman
Yeah. So so really I mean this isn't the same thing. But really this is kind of like the story that we're seeing in at the provincial level. There in Ontario. And you know, the control the, the, the province in Ontario wants to have over what Toronto does as a city. Toronto's building out this wonderful, protected and separated all ages and abilities bike network.
00:14:35:27 - 00:14:51:29
John Simmerman
And then the premier, you know, Ford comes in and says no, no, no, no, no. We want to make this easy for for the suburbanites to be able to come in and out and not necessarily stay and live. So it's very interesting.
00:14:52:01 - 00:15:20:21
Michel Durand-Wood
Which is a reasonable approach, but is is missing a big part of the conversation, right? As soon as you're not talking about things cost that, you know, you can't ask what people what their preferences are because their preferences are to be different based on what things cost. And that's why I said, like, if, you know, if more people knew about, you know, if more people understood municipal finance, you know, we'd all be urbanist and active transportation advocates because that's that's the, that's the key point, right?
00:15:20:21 - 00:15:30:10
Michel Durand-Wood
People want would they want we'd all we'd all live in mansions and take helicopter to work. You know, if money wasn't the thing. But money is a thing, and therefore we make different choices.
00:15:30:12 - 00:16:01:26
John Simmerman
Well. And and and you're not you and I, I'll talk about this a little bit too. In is that. And I cut my teeth in public health, in health care cost containment strategies. And from an epidemiological perspective and there's there's a different there's a difference between, what it costs to actually build something, the capital costs. And then the return direct return on investment, as well as the indirect return on investment as well as the knock on effects.
00:16:01:28 - 00:16:21:08
John Simmerman
And so sometimes the only thing that the people look at is like, oh, it's going to cost X amount to build a protected bike lane. After that we don't need that. It's like, wait a minute. No, no no no no guys that's like that's a dirt cheap pennies on the dollar compared to what you are supporting in what you are doing.
00:16:21:10 - 00:16:46:12
John Simmerman
And it has a much greater return on investment. And they're like, wha what are you talking about? How could that possibly be? So this is interesting though, now that we again, fast forward to 2024. So we saw that map of what happened in 2018. But now when we just look at it winnipeggers, the people right there in the city were seeing the support level flipping.
00:16:46:15 - 00:16:56:26
John Simmerman
It's now six and ten Winnipeggers are supporting this transformation. So a lot of a lot of education happened from 2018 to 2024.
00:16:57:00 - 00:17:19:17
Michel Durand-Wood
Well, and that's that's like I said like city finance to the rescue basically. Right. We we are now it's going to open by July. July 1st is the target date. They're, they're they're doing the construction work right now to reopen it to, to pedestrians. But what what got us to that was, was City finance. You know, you can't build an underground concourse.
00:17:19:19 - 00:17:37:24
Michel Durand-Wood
And it'll last, you know, it'll never last forever. That's what that's the nature of infrastructure. And so there was, a waterproof membrane inside the street that prevents the rain from falling into the underground concourse while it is now. It was first installed in 1979. It is at the end of its service life. There's water seeping in.
00:17:37:29 - 00:17:56:27
Michel Durand-Wood
It needs to be replaced. Turns it. Of course, it cost to do that is prohibitive, and we don't have the money to do it. And so faced with, you know, a financial decision about should we spend a lot of money to keep things the same, or should we spend a lot less money to just let people across the street guess what?
00:17:56:27 - 00:18:21:15
Michel Durand-Wood
The support support levels have flipped now, right? We're like two thirds, two thirds of people who are are now, supportive of opening it up. Because, yeah, city finance to the rescue. Right. We talk as soon as you start talking about money, all of a sudden people's preferences are different. And even in that survey that was up there, I think they said like 30%, 30% of people who voted no in 2018 have now come around.
00:18:21:18 - 00:18:41:01
Michel Durand-Wood
Right. And so that's a that's a big shift, right? Just just from money. Right. It's not like people change their you know, the reason they were saying in 2018 was, oh, they were worried about traffic or worried about safety. You know, those are the things that we're worried about. But it turns out they were really worried about cost, as most people are.
00:18:41:08 - 00:18:59:14
Michel Durand-Wood
And you need to, I mean, you talked about it a little bit, right? Yeah. When you're. Oh, a bike lane, it's going to cost Christmas. And people are like, oh, that's too expensive. But you're like, it's easy when we're talking about like city, city size numbers, especially in a city like like Winnipeg or bigger. You know, we're talking like millions or tens of millions of.
00:18:59:14 - 00:19:22:24
Michel Durand-Wood
So there's billions of dollars. Those those numbers don't mean anything anymore to people. So you need to, like, bring it back to what does it mean to me as a as a citizen, as a, as a taxpayer? What is it. What is that what does that impact on me? And if people can understand that, it's a whole lot easier for them to get on board with, you know, different, you know, policy choices that are going to change the status quo.
00:19:22:26 - 00:19:34:25
Michel Durand-Wood
Because they recognize that it needs to because either a they don't have the money to maintain the status quo or they don't want to pay the money that the SAT score requires. Right? So,
00:19:34:27 - 00:20:00:21
John Simmerman
So one of the your tagline, of course, is you're trying to to make this fun, and, and and interesting and I'm assuming you put a fair amount of humor in this to make this fun. And you're poking, poking fun at various things. So I want to pull a few images up and we can we can talk a little bit about that and, and kind of go from there.
00:20:00:21 - 00:20:14:28
John Simmerman
So, walk us through what we're looking at here on screen and describe it for our listening audience, too, because, we will have about 40% of our audience is going to tune into this, just auto audio only. So what are we looking at here?
00:20:15:00 - 00:20:46:15
Michel Durand-Wood
Well, yeah. So, I mean, just to give a bit of background. Yeah. If you're going to start a blog on municipal finance and infrastructure and you want people to actually read it, you're going to have to have some sort of a hook. Otherwise, you know, I'm not sure I could have gotten my own parents to read it. But, you know, so the idea I was really inspired by the likes of, you know, like Bill Nye the Science Guy or like John or in The Daily Show or like, I don't know if anybody knows the old Alton Brown Show.
00:20:46:19 - 00:21:08:14
Michel Durand-Wood
Goodie. It's, you know, they're all, like, fun and jokey and, you know, entertaining. But then at the same time, you're learning some really important stuff, right? So that was sort of my inspiration for tone. And so, yeah, so I got like, you know, of course it's a blog, so it's a written, written word. So of course there are like there are like language jokes in there.
00:21:08:14 - 00:21:26:28
Michel Durand-Wood
Obviously some of them are puns, some of them are dad jokes, some of them are like wordplay or whatever. Whatever you want. There's a bunch of a bunch of that kind of humor in there, but at the same time, you know, you get to throw in a little visual humor, sometimes just gags. So sometimes a little like meme meme type stuff or a little, you know, just something to drive home the point that you're trying to make.
00:21:26:28 - 00:21:44:02
Michel Durand-Wood
So this, this particular one that we're looking at is, is an actual I don't know if people know the astronaut, it's an astronaut meme where you get to two guys in space and one's one of them is holding a gun at him. And, you know, the guy is questioning his own existence. Well, in this one, they're they're questioning capital and operating spending.
00:21:44:04 - 00:21:59:21
Michel Durand-Wood
And so, yeah, I mean, it's it's you recognize the if you've seen the meme, you recognize it right away. You're like, and then it, you know, adds that layer of like, oh, what were we talking about in this particular article? Oh yeah. Capital spending. So it, yeah, yeah.
00:21:59:23 - 00:22:09:18
John Simmerman
Very funny. I had to chuckle when I saw this one. One, two. Why don't you go ahead and describe this for the listening only audience as well?
00:22:09:24 - 00:22:26:12
Michel Durand-Wood
Yeah. So, so Donald Shoup had come to Winnipeg around this time and my wife had both. But as tickets for my birthday to go to go see him and, go see him. Speaker it was really great, had a great time. And, and so then, of course, I was inspired to write an article about promoting, and, yeah.
00:22:26:12 - 00:22:41:03
Michel Durand-Wood
Because, you know, I do write about musical finance, but I'm not just in an abstract sense. I write about it in, in like how it connects to all of our policy decisions or, you know, the choices we make as a city. So of course, you have to talk about parking. Of course you have to talk about vehicle speeds.
00:22:41:03 - 00:22:58:29
Michel Durand-Wood
You have to talk about bike lanes. You have to talk about the infill development. You have to talk about all kind of stuff. So this is about parking. Yeah. This is, you know, I just I repurpose an anti-terror photograph and just change a couple of the phrasing, but. Yeah, like his smile said. Nice free parking spot. Her said, did I marry a communist?
00:22:59:02 - 00:23:06:17
Michel Durand-Wood
You know to me that I, I think that's fine. That's my kind of humor. I have no idea who else finds this funny, but apparently other people do too.
00:23:06:17 - 00:23:12:08
John Simmerman
So when did you do this? What year was this that you did?
00:23:12:08 - 00:23:16:00
Michel Durand-Wood
Yeah, this would have been like 5 or 6 years ago, for sure.
00:23:16:02 - 00:23:18:05
John Simmerman
Do you know if Don ever saw it?
00:23:18:08 - 00:23:22:24
Michel Durand-Wood
He did. He did? Yeah. Yeah, they sent it to him. And so, yeah, he thought it was pretty good.
00:23:22:24 - 00:23:41:19
John Simmerman
So I was gonna say, this is his humor. This is his sense of humor right here. He would have. He would have loved it. And I wouldn't have been surprised if it if it it made it into his slide deck at some point in time. And, and of course, we we did lose, Professor Shoop this year. He passed away in January.
00:23:41:25 - 00:24:03:02
John Simmerman
Really? Just a couple weeks after my episode with him. I think I recorded one of the last episodes publicly, with, Professor Shoop. So, wonderful to be able to, you know, pay homage to him once again. It is he. He is the one and only. He's the goat. He is the sheepdog.
00:24:03:03 - 00:24:19:18
Michel Durand-Wood
Absolutely, absolutely. Just, it's so many. It is so much insight into something that, like, is just in front of us every day. Right? So, yeah. No, it was it was neat. Yeah. We need to get his his approval on it. You know, after I read and he, he got to see it, he, you know, he said, yeah, this is really good.
00:24:19:18 - 00:24:31:01
Michel Durand-Wood
And then, and then after he went home from Winnipeg anyway, back home that I did get like, a new spike in California traffic. So clearly, somebody there had been sharing it. So.
00:24:31:04 - 00:24:53:22
John Simmerman
And he and I, he and I talked about this the two times that I had him on is that there is this, this definitive connection between all these seemingly disparate things that were like, wait a minute. It's like it's like finance and parking policies and and also, you know, housing and, you know, meaningful destinations within walkable and bikeable distances.
00:24:53:22 - 00:25:19:28
John Simmerman
And, oh, now we're getting around to again, that's all interconnected. And it's all part of, you know, what we're talking about here at Active Towns were to chuck in and the strong towns folks are talking about as, as well as we had Joe Cozy on and what Joe's talking about in terms of really looking at the return on investment, that we're seeing from a financial perspective on a per acre basis.
00:25:20:01 - 00:25:24:14
John Simmerman
So you're you're right there in that sweet spot of all of these areas as well. Yeah.
00:25:24:20 - 00:25:45:19
Michel Durand-Wood
Yeah. I find like the, the, the finance part is kind of the glue to me that holds everything else together. And to me when you, when you get that financial part, you understand and the rest of it falls into place necessarily like it has to be. You look at it well because of the money. It has to be this way, and because of the money, that has to be this way.
00:25:45:21 - 00:25:57:02
Michel Durand-Wood
You know, a lot of the pieces just sort of fall into place after that, which is to me, again, to back to that portage, the main thing that the reason it was so obvious to me was because of that financial piece. I was like, oh yeah, we have to do this, right? So yeah, yeah.
00:25:57:03 - 00:26:02:26
John Simmerman
Okay. Go ahead and describe, the image that we have on here for the, the listening only audience as well.
00:26:02:29 - 00:26:29:26
Michel Durand-Wood
Yeah, yeah. So this is, this is a still image of, from Pulp Fiction. And, this is, this is from a scene where, where, Samuel L Jackson. I mean, it's a pretty profanity laced scene. But I, you know, of course I made it, again, I I'm big into capital expenses, apparently, but, yeah, it basically says, say, capital expense again, I dare you.
00:26:29:29 - 00:26:50:20
Michel Durand-Wood
Yeah. This is. Yeah, yeah, this is from a poster. I did talk about, again, this was a particular, particular focus on municipal finance to get, get people to understand, certain concepts, but yeah, like it's littered with sort of these meme style images just to drive home a couple of points. So, and to keep it entertaining.
00:26:50:20 - 00:26:51:15
Michel Durand-Wood
Yeah.
00:26:51:18 - 00:27:19:14
John Simmerman
Yeah. And one of the interesting things too is when we look at operating dollars in capital dollars and the difference between them, you know, everybody's municipality probably handles, you know, the revenue generation in slightly different manner. And, and, you know, certainly like in the United States right now, there's a lot of people freaking out because they're not sure, especially for some of their capital projects.
00:27:19:14 - 00:27:45:26
John Simmerman
And transportation, whether the funding is coming or not. But, you know, as Chuck points out, sometimes, you know, those federal dollars that have strings attached to them and also can be a long term obligation because it ends up showing up as a liability on the sheets. If you're doing your, your, your books properly, most of them aren't.
00:27:45:28 - 00:28:22:19
John Simmerman
Most of them aren't, most of them consider them assets to the point where, oh, there's no long term obligation here, but there's that difference between capital dollars to build out the infrastructure versus operating dollars to actually maintain and keep them up to date and keep them, you know, moving properly, using the terminology that I like to use to from an active town's perspective, I see the world through a lens of, activity, assets being able to promote, you know, activity and healthy living.
00:28:22:24 - 00:29:07:02
John Simmerman
And so when I see, you know, hardware activity assets, I think of, you know, parks and pools and protected bike lanes and, you know, trails and things like this, these these are things where you can put a pin in a map and say that infrastructure is over there. We use the capital dollars to build that. And then the software activity assets that I think of when I think of of these activity assets are the policies and the programs and the, procedures in place in the, you know, education events and activation events and the ongoing maintenance and making things beautiful and wonderful and keeping them going and keeping them delightful, which brings us right back
00:29:07:02 - 00:29:34:03
John Simmerman
around to what originally got you prompted. And all of this is why is it so hard for for us to deal with, you know, keeping this infrastructure that we have up, you know, why are our parks falling apart? Why is the potholes not being filled, you know, that sort of thing. So I love to tell that story and bring it right back to, you know, again that world that I'm looking at in terms of are we creating an environment that encourages healthy, active living?
00:29:34:06 - 00:29:39:11
John Simmerman
And it brings us around to those two buckets of the the capital and the operating.
00:29:39:13 - 00:30:15:03
Michel Durand-Wood
Absolutely. And I think you it's a that's a really good way to put it that the capital capital is is that hardware aspect. Right. Whereas the, the operating is that software is ongoing. But I'm going to blow here my ear, capital dollars are just operating dollars from another year. They're, they're, they're the same. Right. And and you know, whether you are setting aside money over a years to build up a pot of money so that you can buy, swing, set a pool, a road, whatever it is, a bridge.
00:30:15:05 - 00:30:31:00
Michel Durand-Wood
You know, those are dollars that you necessarily are spending in your operating budget, right? There are many this dollars that you're bringing in as revenue through property price or sales tax or fees or whatever it is. But then you are not getting it in that year and you're putting it aside. So that's an operating dollars you just have not spent.
00:30:31:02 - 00:30:47:05
Michel Durand-Wood
Right. If you do it with debt, it's the same thing, right? If you borrow the money upfront, build the bridge that needs to be paid back. It'll be paid back in the in the future with operating dollars that you can't spend. Right. You'll bring in those dollars and you'll not spend them. And then instead you'll you'll use them to pay back that debt.
00:30:47:05 - 00:31:11:15
Michel Durand-Wood
So capital dollars are just operating dollars that you're taking from a different year. And so it's that kind of time travel aspect that, I think just as a society, we, we have not wrapped our brains around that. You know, when you build that, that bridge, when you build that road, that, that pipe, that whatever that you need to immediately, that it's going to have an impact on your operating budget right away.
00:31:11:15 - 00:31:34:12
Michel Durand-Wood
And just because you balanced our operating budget this year, which means, you know, you spent as much as you brought in, that's not good enough, right? Because you actually need you you need to you need to actually have some money that you haven't spent because you're going to need it later. Right? So that's that's kind of where, like we need to wrap our brains around that, that, that even the hardware stuff is just software later is actually.
00:31:34:15 - 00:31:35:21
Michel Durand-Wood
Yeah, yeah.
00:31:35:23 - 00:31:59:04
John Simmerman
And sometimes, you know, sometimes we, you know, cities get really, addicted to quote unquote, the free money when they get capital dollars in the form of, you know, federal money coming in and, and they try to leverage that and they're like, oh, yeah, this is a good deal. You know, it's a 9010 split. You know, where, you know, we have to come up with 10% or 20%.
00:31:59:04 - 00:32:34:15
John Simmerman
And then the feds come up with this. And so it feels like you're hitting the lottery and you're winning. You're winning. You're winning. It's like free money, free capital dollars. But to Chuck's point is, is that oh, but don't forget, that's a long term obligation. What are you doing to then making sure that you're setting and squirreling money aside for the long term upkeep of it, as well as the future replacement costs after, you know, that generation goes by, you know, because it's not going to last forever.
00:32:34:20 - 00:32:51:24
Michel Durand-Wood
So, yeah, yeah, I explained the same thing. You know, imagine I gave you a horse, right? And you're like, oh yeah, cool free horse. Awesome. Whose was going to turn down a free horse. Yeah. But then that horse to eat it needs to be, you know, has vet bills. It needs to be stable. You have all these costs.
00:32:51:27 - 00:33:13:06
Michel Durand-Wood
Eventually your horse is going to die and your kids are going to, you know, you know, request that you buy them a new horse, right? So all of that horse is a is a is a major cost. Right. And so as long as the benefits of the horse outweigh the costs you, I guess that's fine. But that's the part where we have not, you know, sort of evaluated that as to are we getting the full benefit of what it's costing us.
00:33:13:06 - 00:33:15:03
Michel Durand-Wood
As I said, it's right.
00:33:15:06 - 00:33:20:20
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. That's the the old joke is that there is no such thing as a free puppy. And same thing.
00:33:20:22 - 00:33:27:09
Michel Durand-Wood
Exactly. The horse free rode free, but a free bridge like there's no are simply.
00:33:27:11 - 00:33:32:02
John Simmerman
Okay, so now we're we're at Elmwood. Elmwood is your neighborhood, correct?
00:33:32:04 - 00:33:34:14
Michel Durand-Wood
That's right. The community where you where you live.
00:33:34:16 - 00:33:48:20
John Simmerman
And again, that was that sort of prompted you to, you know, get to understand this to is frustrations around why talk a little bit about Elmwood and talk describe this beautiful image that's on screen here. Yeah.
00:33:48:22 - 00:34:08:27
Michel Durand-Wood
So this is a postcard, that I found from the 1940s, that has Elmwood Park on it. Elmwood Park is just like a normal, like, medium sized new, like neighborhood park. It's, you know, walking distance from my house. I can tell you it does not look like this nowadays. You know, so. But it's seeing this.
00:34:08:27 - 00:34:26:29
Michel Durand-Wood
Is that a lily pond? Like flowers? And in doing a bit of research on, I found that, like, around that time, like that, the city had a full time gardener that worked in that park, planted like, thousands of flowers every spring, tended to them all summer, and it was just a really beautiful park. The back of this postcard really has, that we're sorry.
00:34:27:06 - 00:34:44:12
Michel Durand-Wood
There's that, transit map from the same time where they talked about this, this particular part where they talk about like that, that is one of many parks like this in the city, right? Had scores of these parks. And I was like, why? It's like, how come in the 40s, you know, we had all these beautiful, beautiful parks.
00:34:44:12 - 00:35:04:26
Michel Durand-Wood
How could we afford that? You know, 1940s were coming out of World War Two. You know, we just had the Great Depression. We had World War one, influenza epidemic, like just all of these, like, natural disasters and all kinds of things. Time out, you know, time after time. And we're still paying a full time gardener in the park, where today, you know, we can't even fix potholes.
00:35:04:26 - 00:35:26:06
Michel Durand-Wood
We can't eat like those. And there's, you know, we're not even doing the basics. Never mind something beautiful as this park, you know, it was it was, you know, shocking to me. And especially my next door neighbor. She's she's in her 80s, and she is she's lived here since she was seven. And so. Oh, yeah. Park, I remember in the 50s, you know, people used to take their wedding photos there, and I was like, what?
00:35:26:08 - 00:35:48:28
Michel Durand-Wood
Nobody would ever think of doing that today. You know, and like, we, we, you know, as, as neighbors, we do our best to keep it up. The city is not it is not what it used to be. And so, yeah, to me, that was kind of part of this idea of, you know, hey, why. Right. Why are we in 2025 and we're closing community centers, we're closing pools.
00:35:49:00 - 00:36:08:29
Michel Durand-Wood
We, you know, can't afford to maintain what we have. Whereas, you know, in the 1940s, we were we were doing fine. Right. And and in, in, in a, in a historically difficult context, economically right, coming out of, you know, two world wars and a depression or whatever. To me, I was like, this doesn't check out. And it was neat to see you.
00:36:08:29 - 00:36:32:25
Michel Durand-Wood
And in my research that I was like, when did we lay off that gardener? Like, when did we stop having a gardener park? It was the mid 60s, right? I was like, One infrastructure cycle after the beginning of the suburban development experiment and like, oh, that's so cool. But, yeah, again, just examining it from that financial perspective, this gives you so many answers.
00:36:32:28 - 00:36:58:14
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And this and and that brings us back around to what we were alluding to earlier in the work that Joe in a cozy, does and that, that Chuck talks about and and really it was that transformation that went that took place when we, moved towards a car centric design and away from the traditional development pattern.
00:36:58:16 - 00:37:12:28
John Simmerman
And so what we're looking at here on screen is, you know, the return on a per square foot basis. And, talk a little bit about the dollars here. What are we looking at with, with with the return here.
00:37:13:00 - 00:37:36:03
Michel Durand-Wood
Yeah. So this is basically your, your typical, modern grocery store with, massive parking lot. It's on almost two acres. Yes, I know in, in, in actual dollars is valued at like $2.26 million. But when you work it out on a per square foot basis, it's about 30 bucks, 30 bucks a square foot, which, you know, in the void, you're like, I don't know, is that good?
00:37:36:03 - 00:37:56:21
Michel Durand-Wood
Is that bad? You know, you need to compare it to, you know, this this little place kind of up the street. This one's closer down to my, close to my house. This is like a very small place. It's like 30 700ftยฒ. And this is currently is one unit, but as you can see, was was two you two commercial units at one point.
00:37:56:23 - 00:38:15:27
Michel Durand-Wood
And if you see a top there, there's kind of like, kind of a patio deck. Yeah. That's because there's two, residential units on top. So this is a very small mixed use building. It's built up to the sidewalk. No real parking. It's only valued at $360,000, but it's almost a hundred bucks a square foot, so it's like triple those returning.
00:38:15:27 - 00:38:38:11
Michel Durand-Wood
Triple the value that that, that other, you know, suburban style is, is generating. Again, is that financial aspect telling us that, like, you know, parking is essentially vacant land, right? Like a parking lot, not pay more tax than a vacant lot, essentially. And so this, you know, when you look at this two acres of property, what's generating value.
00:38:38:11 - 00:38:57:16
Michel Durand-Wood
But it's only that one building right at the end there. And then you couple that with what it has done to the built environment where, you know, look how far this is from the street, right? If I'm walking, I'm adding a lot of I'm making a lot more difficult for people to walk. I'm making a lot more, you know, necessary for people to drive here.
00:38:57:16 - 00:39:20:21
Michel Durand-Wood
Even transit. Transit will drop you off, like, right where this photo was taken from, right at the street. It makes this, you know, less appealing. And so you're sort of forcing people to, to, to use a vehicle. Well, that has impacts throughout the system as to what, you know, kind of roads we need to build, how many lanes we need, how many overpasses we need, and and then, you know, to the built environment.
00:39:20:23 - 00:39:39:22
Michel Durand-Wood
It's pushing all these buildings further apart like Donald Trump has has mentioned making it less walkable but also making the roads are longer, making the pipes longer. And when like in most cities, you're looking at about 85 to 90% of your infrastructure is just the roads and pipes, right? So if we're talking about we have infrastructure that we can handle, it's not the pools.
00:39:39:22 - 00:40:00:23
Michel Durand-Wood
It's not the, you know, swings the park. It's not any of that. It's it's the roads and pipes that, that are, that are causing, you know, the financial, crisis that your city is in. Yeah. This is this is, this is Henderson Highway. This is the same street again. This is not far from my house.
00:40:00:26 - 00:40:22:27
Michel Durand-Wood
This is closer to this is closer to the, the smaller building than that. Than the bigger one. But you can see here how we make certain investment choices now that, you know, once you get to this, idea that, like, well, now all people drive, because they have to because of how we've built things, you know, now we have three lanes on in, in both directions.
00:40:22:27 - 00:40:55:20
Michel Durand-Wood
So this is six lane, six lanes wide. So this isn't a huge, huge financial cost. For the city. And you can see sort of the highway style, guardrail here. That's because a lot of cars tend to leave the roadway here. So this is, you know, in a sort of an attempt to protect, you know, the pedestrians and the building or, but, what this what this does to these buildings here, this is like, you know, it's, you know, it's it's destroying value, right?
00:40:55:23 - 00:41:18:09
Michel Durand-Wood
To you having a highway style, a guardrail, four feet from your front door that doesn't add value to your property, that actually takes value away from it. Right? So so here are making infrastructure choices that instead of adding value, instead of making things more productive, we're actually making this building less productive, right? We're making it less valuable. So it pays less taxes.
00:41:18:11 - 00:41:39:27
Michel Durand-Wood
So, you know, this is just how it all fits together. And when you when you start walking around looking for the dollar signs everywhere, this is the stuff that jumps out at you. You're like, wow, look at this expense versus what we're doing to this value here. Whereas, you know, if you make it, you know, if you had if we added a bike lane, if we added, high frequency transit here, we are adding value to this property.
00:41:40:02 - 00:41:59:29
Michel Durand-Wood
We're making it more valuable, because more people can come more easily. Rich it can also make it more beautiful. You know, we can add street trees, we can add planter boxes, we can add seating in that kind of environment. All of that are public investments that add value to the private properties, which will pay more tax.
00:42:00:01 - 00:42:21:22
Michel Durand-Wood
Because of the because, because of all that added value, which is, a virtuous cycle, a virtuous financial cycle. I, you know, you have kids, you kind of hear yourself echoing back. And so whenever we walk down here and I hear my eight year old going, look how expensive all of this is, that I know I'm doing my job right.
00:42:21:25 - 00:43:05:05
John Simmerman
Yeah, I mean, it's it's amazing. You know, I can't imagine what this block, you know, probably looked like. You could probably get a photo for me of of what this looked like when, the building to the left was originally built. I'm not sure circa what year that that was constructed, but what we have now. Yeah. Is highway design speeds, highway designs, auto sewer approach to this where you you've just killed off any of the vibrancy and vitality that would happen if this was a people oriented place.
00:43:05:07 - 00:43:05:16
Michel Durand-Wood
Yeah.
00:43:05:18 - 00:43:09:05
John Simmerman
Supposedly when that when it was first built here.
00:43:09:08 - 00:43:14:16
Michel Durand-Wood
Yeah. Like this is. Yeah. That's kind of the idea. Like is this a place or is this on the way to a place? Right.
00:43:14:18 - 00:43:34:05
John Simmerman
This is definitely the way it is now has been transformed into, let's just, let's, let's build pipes and let's, you know, treat it like a sewer and the and the cars and the people inside them, we just want to shoot them through as quickly as possible. We really don't, you know, we're going to put barriers up here.
00:43:34:05 - 00:43:38:03
John Simmerman
We don't want them to we don't want to encourage them to stop and stay.
00:43:38:03 - 00:43:46:13
Michel Durand-Wood
So yeah, the buildings are saying this is a place. The infrastructure is saying this is not a place just on the way to a place essentially. Yeah.
00:43:46:15 - 00:44:25:06
John Simmerman
And and to be clear, to what we're talking about here with these six lanes, high speed designs and all of this, the whole point of the, the, the graphics that we were showing earlier, the, the images that we were showing earlier about the lack of return on investment on a per foot basis, square foot basis or per acre basis in in these terminology is again gets to the point that we were talking about earlier of why can't we afford to have that gardener anymore is because we're getting less and less return on investment, you know, to the city that we've built.
00:44:25:06 - 00:44:55:29
John Simmerman
And so we we've got all this money, capital dollars that we've put in to build this, and it's just siphoning off, you know, return. And we're not getting as much in tax revenue from the areas that it's servicing. And if we really look it's like a lot of these places again, don't look thriving. Many of these signs are actually even blank, and and possibly not actually contributing to the city coffers as well.
00:44:56:05 - 00:45:00:07
John Simmerman
Which brings us to the challenges that we have with fixing things.
00:45:00:08 - 00:45:20:24
Michel Durand-Wood
Exactly. Yeah. That well, that one strip of, of Henderson there is, is, we have, an area of a northeast Winnipeg Historical Society and they do a bunch of different historical research. And one of the things they have is on this one strip of, Grove, they, they have, you know, by decade they list all the businesses that were at all the, the various addresses.
00:45:20:26 - 00:45:40:16
Michel Durand-Wood
And you can see from, you know, 19, 1905, approximately when the neighborhood was started, you know, that number of businesses increasing, increasing, increasing through the decades up until it peaks about in the 1950s. And then it's a slow decline. We're we're I think we're about a half as many businesses today as we were in the 1950s.
00:45:40:16 - 00:46:10:00
Michel Durand-Wood
Right. And that's understandable. Right? We've eroded that value. We've made it less valuable, less, less, enticing. So yeah. And so, yeah, again, that is, a downward cycle that leads to this kind of stuff. Major sinkhole. This is in my neighborhood. It was a couple of summers ago. This this happened during a heat wave. So it, like, happened in, you know, one fell swoop just back, from the the heat, the to the concrete.
00:46:10:00 - 00:46:30:28
Michel Durand-Wood
So, yeah, I mean, this is, this is expensive to repair. This is. And this wasn't the only one that happened during that heat wave. Yeah. Throughout the city. And there's a lot of things that could make this less likely, and especially that we're looking at, you know, with, with, you know, climate changing and, you know, more heat waves and more intense weather.
00:46:31:00 - 00:46:50:03
Michel Durand-Wood
You know, we can expect more of this and more costs. Whereas looking at it again, from a financial perspective, what could we do? We could narrow these lanes, which would mean less pavement, which a would be less expensive be would slow traffic through design, which would make it better to walk in, with that safe space.
00:46:50:03 - 00:47:11:08
Michel Durand-Wood
You know, even if we took a couple of feet off, we could put in some solar cells, plant some street trees, which, again, makes it better to walk in, but also provides through that, shelter to the pavement. Right. That, relieves that thermal stress and makes our pavement much more resilient itself to to more of this this breaking.
00:47:11:08 - 00:47:29:03
Michel Durand-Wood
So you're, you're, you're you're spending really what are really you know, you're trying to save money, right? Like you're narrowing the roads, you're spending less on pavement, you're putting in trees which are cheaper than pavement and, or, you know, in, in sort of the goal of becoming more financially sustainable. But in the end, you're, you're making it more walkable.
00:47:29:09 - 00:47:39:25
Michel Durand-Wood
You're making it long term, more sustainable financially, ecologically, socially. And so, yeah, but, you know, it starts from that money part, right?
00:47:39:27 - 00:48:27:22
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it is interesting to a we're looking at a sinkhole, which you don't want to even call it a pothole because it's, it's way bigger than that. But I mean, this, this could, you know, potentially, possibly, partially swallow a small car. I would suspect that this got addressed relatively quickly, since it is in the middle of a motor vehicle traveling now, I'm making some assumptions here, but I would say that if this were to have occurred on a sidewalk or a bike lane or a on a multi-use path, it might not get addressed as quickly.
00:48:27:25 - 00:48:28:28
John Simmerman
Speak to that or.
00:48:29:00 - 00:48:51:04
Michel Durand-Wood
Or at all, actually, or at all that. Yeah. But and I think I do, I think I have a photo of, of a sidewalk example as well. But yeah, I mean there's plenty of examples where, where the sidewalk becomes unpassable and you can see, you know, line trace around the sidewalk onto the grass, right? So you can see the like, okay, this this has been here for a long time.
00:48:51:04 - 00:49:13:24
Michel Durand-Wood
Right. And then I think I have a foot. Yeah, that's the one. Exactly. This is, you can see it. This this piece of sidewalk has not been repaired a long time. And, luckily, my banes have, decided to take the next step. They can't address this, and. But that officer would be like, look, we are fixing this.
00:49:13:26 - 00:49:33:23
Michel Durand-Wood
But for somebody to to take this upon themselves, like, it's been like this for a long time before, you know, before it gets to this, and then for it to stay long enough that I can take a photo of it, you know, it is indicative of of the priorities that we are setting for ourselves, which, again, financially, make no sense.
00:49:33:23 - 00:50:00:17
Michel Durand-Wood
Like how much is fixing a sidewalk cost compared to fixing a roadway like, it's, it's it's not even in the same universe. You know, and so if we from a financial perspective, need more people to be walking, biking, taking transit because it's cheaper, we need to be able to, prioritize that in our spending. Right. And and, you know, in Winnipeg, we spend, I think, 20, 25, I think we'll spend $170 million on road repair this year.
00:50:00:19 - 00:50:19:03
Michel Durand-Wood
Right. And that's just a fraction of what we need to maintain all of the roads, like most cities. Just a fraction, but 170 million to do road repair, like we should be, you know, leveraging that we should there should not be a single road that we rebuild that goes back in the same way it came out.
00:50:19:06 - 00:50:47:16
Michel Durand-Wood
Right. We should be using that money to, again, narrow road, narrow lanes, add bump outs, widen sidewalks, add street trees. You know, fix sidewalks, that that's what we should be doing for every single dollar that we spend. Because we know that what we have isn't working. So we shouldn't, you know, spend that money locking in a whole other generation, a whole other, you know, life cycle of, of of that infrastructure staying the same like that's financially irresponsible.
00:50:47:19 - 00:51:21:09
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And, and and for you all, you know, north of the border here, you do have a different type of health care system. And you know this image that we're looking at on screen here of this sidewalk. And I'll describe this for the listening only audience, is that you had a sidewalk that had a similar type of sinkhole situation and the, the, the neighbors, you know, the, the folks there, McBain, they decided to put a piece of plywood over and then paint it and it says McBain bridge, tongue in cheek.
00:51:21:11 - 00:51:53:02
John Simmerman
This is great. But yeah, to your point, it's like we will come up with the money to repair a street sinkhole and but will, you know, when it comes to active mobility infrastructure that needs to be maintained and repaired, etc., then suddenly or poor where there's a sense of poverty? Oh, no. We couldn't possibly come up with the money to repair that sidewalk to your point, we came up with the money to to do it with when it's automobile infrastructure, but we don't.
00:51:53:04 - 00:52:38:20
John Simmerman
And again, the long term return on effect, the return on investment of active mobility infrastructure is going to far outweigh the investment in the motor vehicle infrastructure. And we don't have to go very far into the future to, to see that, you know. Yes. If we can get more people walking and biking and living a healthy, active lifestyle, we're going to see that return on investment in decreased health care costs over time, as well as a myriad of other, you know, add on benefits to transforming our built environment closer to the traditional development pattern away from auto centricity and auto dependency.
00:52:38:26 - 00:52:40:22
John Simmerman
But yeah.
00:52:40:24 - 00:53:13:09
Michel Durand-Wood
Well, and like fully like, say fully at the municipal level, at the municipal cost level, the return on investment is, is like orders of magnitude beyond where it needs to be. It's so huge. But like, to your point, in Canada, we have, you know, public health care system where our taxes pay for everybody's health care. You know, once you start adding in those benefits, and that return on investment at the provincial level and the federal level for us, you know, that's just, you know, you're just adding more, more, more return on there.
00:53:13:12 - 00:53:16:19
Michel Durand-Wood
There's no there's no argument against that. Really.
00:53:16:22 - 00:53:39:12
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. You all have a vested interest to try to get as many people walking and biking as possible. Full stop period, including getting away with the ridiculous helmet laws and all that kind of stuff. Because when you really look at the epidemiological data, the number of people who will will cycle are going to be greatly enhanced. If you get more people cycling and and you know, it's there.
00:53:39:12 - 00:53:44:09
John Simmerman
All right. What's what's going on here with these this couple of photos here. What are we looking at.
00:53:44:09 - 00:54:04:11
Michel Durand-Wood
So this is yeah, this is, talking to you earlier about, you know, one of the first instances where I noticed, you know, sort of the decline of my city where I was really like, wow, this is the Calvin Community Center site. Right by my house. So this is sort of like Google images, through the years.
00:54:04:14 - 00:54:22:24
Michel Durand-Wood
So this is, this I think the, the, the first one over there was 2006 or 2007 before they tore it down. This is after they tore it down. So just a big, big vacant lot. I think there's a. Yeah. So this is. Yeah, this was the Calvin Community Center. As you can see. It was old, right?
00:54:22:26 - 00:54:42:27
Michel Durand-Wood
It was built early on. And, you know, not not a lot of money poured into it over the years. They tore it down and then. Yeah, the city at some point tried to sell the land, declared it surplus. But then, yeah, some, some neighborhood activists banded together, said, no. You know what? This should still be a community amenity.
00:54:42:29 - 00:54:59:16
Michel Durand-Wood
We should still we still need it. We still need something. And so. Yeah. So they fought a long and hard battle to to at least have it turned into a playground. And there's a little skate. There's a skate park there, too. And so that's that's what it looks like essentially today. The trees are a little bit bigger.
00:54:59:16 - 00:55:14:28
Michel Durand-Wood
No, but but that that's the that's what we have now rather than a community center. So it's not you know, we still have the need for a community center, but at least, you know, we didn't completely lose an amenity. But but yeah, that was again a financial a financial battle right.
00:55:15:00 - 00:55:43:07
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's interesting to when we look at this concept of, transforming our built environment and transforming away from auto centricity and the fact that what you just described there was that some of the neighbors got together and said, no, we do need something here. Maybe it's not the same thing that we had, but we need something.
00:55:43:07 - 00:55:58:00
John Simmerman
And so you end up getting that transformation. Talk a little bit about the the Reimagine Elmwood sort of bottom up revolution and, and the ground up, you know, approach. Talk about this.
00:55:58:00 - 00:56:22:28
Michel Durand-Wood
Yes. Yeah. So reimagine Elmwood is is full disclosure, I'm, I'm the chair of Reimagine Elmo. But yeah, it's a coalition of neighborhood groups, that banded together a couple of years ago. It is 20, 20, 20. I think we started, that we we decided, that we needed to make our neighborhood better because nobody was coming to save us.
00:56:23:01 - 00:56:45:03
Michel Durand-Wood
So. Yeah. So it's it's like the Glendale Neighborhood Association, Elmwood High School, Riverwood Church, it was a a dozen dozen different, community groups and organizations that we just said, okay, we're going to work together and we're going to do things that we can. You know what is the next smallest thing we can do to, to address the, the issues in our neighborhood.
00:56:45:03 - 00:57:11:27
Michel Durand-Wood
So this is, again, that same street that, you know, Henderson that we've always been talking about. So we did this this was our first project we did. It was a one afternoon in July, budget of $400, and we made a bike lane meet some, made a added, pedestrian crossing. And then, yeah, we added a bunch of temporary seating and car boxes and, and we just had people use it, and we took surveys and said, what do you think of this?
00:57:11:27 - 00:57:33:17
Michel Durand-Wood
What do you like? What do you not like? And it was our first sort of foray into it. And then yeah, we just built from there and, and have every year added on to what we've learned, we've now still do temporary projects, but we also now started doing permanent projects based on the stuff that we've learned that we're like, oh, this was this was helpful.
00:57:33:17 - 00:57:58:24
Michel Durand-Wood
So this is yeah, this is our first permanent projects where we we started adding, this is big. We'll call them marbles, essentially. They're big fiberglass marbles that we, we got eight of them do a couple of different sizes. And then we had them painted by by community members and by community groups. And then we got permission to install them on the, on the median, on Anderson.
00:57:58:26 - 00:58:18:20
Michel Durand-Wood
A it's kind of a neighborhood beautification and pride of place. You know, for people to say, oh, yeah. Yeah, I helped paint that one or or, you know. Oh, yeah. This, you know, makes things look nicer. But two is also it adds a little bit of that sort of psychological edge friction for drivers walking through.
00:58:18:20 - 00:58:40:07
Michel Durand-Wood
Right. It's just an extra thing that they can kind of not quite see, that, you know, sort of tightens that feel division that makes them psychologically want to slow down even a little bit. Which is kind of a traffic calming as well. And again, not a big thing. It's not it's not a crazy like we're not touching the roadway at all or not doing anything.
00:58:40:13 - 00:58:57:24
Michel Durand-Wood
It's just a next small step, to add on. And this was, you know, a first step, but we, you know, since added a couple other things. I like this photo because it's at night, but only because, you know, this was installed, I think it was like late October, early November. So it gets dark pretty early.
00:58:57:27 - 00:59:23:16
Michel Durand-Wood
You know, when I pick it up. Might have been maybe 5 or 6 p.m.. It's not super late, but I just thought it. I just thought it was super neat because here we are installing this in the dark of night and it looks like super ninja. But like we had full hermit and everything. Like this is totally legit in the work we go, but yeah, yeah, it's a nice photo of all all of them together here, but yeah, they're just on this one strip of of Henderson.
00:59:23:18 - 00:59:46:28
Michel Durand-Wood
And so yeah, they've been there for, for two years now. So yeah, this is another aspect that we added is this Elmwood. Welcome to Elmwood sort of archways. This this is at the location where we had added, temporary crosswalk in that first project because there are two, two sets of traffic lights and they are, that they are 200m apart.
00:59:47:00 - 01:00:14:20
Michel Durand-Wood
And, and, what behavioral psychology shows is that most people are not willing to walk more than 50m, out of their way to, to get to a crossing, and therefore, you should have crossings, every 100m. That way, nobody's ever any more than 50m. And what we found exactly here, that's the reason we did our temporary crosswalk here, is that we find that at this midway point between your traffic lights at the 100 meter mark, between each, people cross here.
01:00:14:20 - 01:00:32:17
Michel Durand-Wood
Anyways, there's no crossing here, but people cross here. The Nissan didn't want us adding a crosswalk. They didn't. They were not in favor of it. So we're like, okay, well, we're not going to add a crosswalk or we're going to add stuff that at least visually, will tend to slow traffic here so that the people who do cross, are a little bit safer.
01:00:32:17 - 01:00:51:11
Michel Durand-Wood
Right. So here we are again, not edge friction and trying to add a bit of a sense of enclosure. We would have liked to do, you know, all the way across. But of course, if money is an object, and so, yeah, it's we're kind of faking that that enclosure, thanks to the tree in the middle of the, of the boulevard.
01:00:51:11 - 01:01:26:03
Michel Durand-Wood
So you can see that kind of helps visually and close that on both sides. So. Yeah. So, yeah, again, more traffic calming here just to get traffic to slow a little bit more, through design, and again, one little thing at a time, you know, we add one thing, one more. Yeah. So this is again and again also, they're beautiful to look at and they're, they're made out of, out of, steel, which is kind of a nod to, Elmwood, industrial past, but also they're inlaid with, wood, from an elm tree that used to step in Elmwood.
01:01:26:03 - 01:01:44:01
Michel Durand-Wood
So it's Elmwood from Elmwood. So, a lot of little things that. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Again, just to make that street more productive, more, you know, safer, more pleasant, you know, you can do things right away and, and, you know, just have to band together with your neighbors.
01:01:44:04 - 01:02:27:28
John Simmerman
Yeah. And very and very strong towns. You keep saying that next little thing, you know, what? Can you do? And, and I see that, you know, with that bike lane and with this particular project, all that you describe this, it's clear that you're do you are doing some things in the right of way, and you are getting permission to be able to do some things, talk a little bit about how you have established the credibility within the city so that the municipality is like, oh, this group of neighbors that have come together that are trying to make their place safer, more inviting, you know, how did that happen?
01:02:27:28 - 01:02:38:15
John Simmerman
How did you get the quote unquote permission to do this versus being these activists who are doing things in the dark of night? Yeah.
01:02:38:17 - 01:02:56:15
Michel Durand-Wood
So there's there's two parts to that. One is you said we're a coalition of a dozen groups, right? So we're not just like a few people. We are a lot of people. Right? We we are representing, and, you know, we from all, all walks of life. So we're a lot of people that are coming to the table.
01:02:56:15 - 01:03:00:05
John Simmerman
So when you say a lot, what do you mean?
01:03:00:08 - 01:03:06:09
Michel Durand-Wood
Well, so, I there's a dozen groups. So if I, if I to name them all, I don't I can remember them all.
01:03:06:15 - 01:03:14:01
John Simmerman
But you don't have to but I mean, are we talking, are we talking dozens of people or hundreds and thousands of people.
01:03:14:04 - 01:03:43:02
Michel Durand-Wood
Like. So our entire neighborhood is about 12,000 people. 12, 12,000 residents. You know, the organizations that are part of the group. You know, we're certainly we certainly bring at least, 1000 people, you know, as members to that. So it's a big it's big proportion of people, that, that are, you know, being brought to the table, through rep represented through these organizations.
01:03:43:02 - 01:03:45:28
Michel Durand-Wood
So that's, that's gets us in the door.
01:03:46:04 - 01:04:14:10
John Simmerman
Right? Exactly. Yeah. And this is this is the power. This is the power of what I talked about often on the channel is that if you want to see change in your neighborhood and to your streets, you need to start talking to your neighbors. You need to grow your coalitions. You need to partner with other organizations that have some like minded thoughts that are like, because you have to be able to send that message to leadership, city leadership that, oh, what's going on here?
01:04:14:10 - 01:04:32:16
John Simmerman
This is like this whole group, this coalition of group, these people who are reimagining Elmwood, they represent, significant voter bloc. Suddenly your constituency is is like, oh, yeah, we need to be paying attention to what's happening out here.
01:04:32:18 - 01:04:49:28
Michel Durand-Wood
Yeah. And we and we were intentional about making sure that we, you know, we're representative of the community. So we have the high school involved. We have the business coalition involved. We have, you know, neighborhood real residents association. You know, we have just a lot of groups. And so we are, you know, we can be representative a little bit.
01:04:49:28 - 01:05:07:28
Michel Durand-Wood
Right. And so, yeah, like I said, that gets it. That got us in the door. Is that right? After that, you know, we've been told no a lot of times, for a lot of different things. And so the, the main thing is, is when you are told, no, that doesn't mean stop from our opinion.
01:05:07:28 - 01:05:27:11
Michel Durand-Wood
It means find a different way. Right. And so if the answer is no, you know, we try to make it smaller or we try to make it temporary or we try to make it, you know, you can always change something about it that will make it more palatable. Right? So this was temporary. You know, this is a temporary trial.
01:05:27:13 - 01:05:47:22
Michel Durand-Wood
But, that we did for three months. So this is we set it up in August to October. But this wasn't our first project, right? We had already done the other one. That was an afternoon, like three hours, right? Three hours temporary, 400 bucks. This one we we scaled up, you know, is $2000 or $3000, and three months.
01:05:47:24 - 01:06:14:28
Michel Durand-Wood
Right. And so you you don't start at the top, right? We know we have to change everything. And we would love to change everything and make it all permanent and do it all right away. But you have to bring people along with you. And that includes not just city staff or city council, but it also includes some neighbors that maybe all don't necessarily know everything you do, or maybe don't have the same value, or don't you know you you have to, you know, do the work from the same circumstances.
01:06:14:29 - 01:06:32:15
Michel Durand-Wood
So you have to you have to bring people on with you. And so, sometimes that means taking smaller steps. Oftentimes it oftentimes means taking smaller steps. So you have to recognize that, like just because you've seen this happen at this scale or in, you know, somewhere else, in your own neighborhood, that may not be where you start.
01:06:32:15 - 01:07:00:29
Michel Durand-Wood
It might be. But, you know, you have to be willing to adapt. And like you said, scale it back to to what is literally the next smallest step you can take. You know, sometimes that sometimes it'll be a political, obstacle, sometimes it'll be a financial obstacle. And so you just need to be willing to just continuously adapt, which is what you're going to have to do anyways, because no matter what you put out there, no matter how well planned it is, there's always stuff you couldn't predict.
01:07:01:01 - 01:07:17:22
Michel Durand-Wood
There's always you're going to use it the quote unquote wrong way that you couldn't predict or like, oh, I did not expect that. Right. And so that's why that's the process. You learn from it. You're like, oh, okay, great. So that's how people use this okay. Now we know we can do it this way or, you know, whatever.
01:07:17:22 - 01:07:46:28
Michel Durand-Wood
So it's yeah, it is it is a lot about you know, once you're in that door, you expect to still get a lot of no and a lot of pushback. Because, yeah, like, we didn't get this. We didn't get here overnight, right? It took decades to get to the system we have now. It's going to take that amount of time as well to, you know, to, to, to, you know, fix, fix, fix what we broken essentially.
01:07:47:00 - 01:08:11:04
Michel Durand-Wood
And so, that, you know, rather than, than try these big broad, leaps of, like, we're going to go from here to a thousand, overnight. You know, you're, we're much better off doing, like, little tiny steps. That kind of get us get us there incrementally over time. Because a it'll bring people along. They'll be able to see, oh, the sky didn't fall.
01:08:11:05 - 01:08:26:27
Michel Durand-Wood
Okay, cool. Or a actually, not only this kind of fall, I didn't expect to like this, but I love it. Right? That kind of stuff where you bring people along, but also you can adjust as you go along too, right? Because we are. Yeah. You have to be humble enough to recognize that you probably will get it wrong.
01:08:27:00 - 01:08:41:05
Michel Durand-Wood
And and so if you're taking small enough steps that allows you to continuously adapt to that, that, that you get from people using it, from people seeing it, from people talking to you about it. And so, yeah, I think that's that's the important current thing.
01:08:41:07 - 01:09:13:09
John Simmerman
Yeah. So folks, dear winnipeg.com is the blog, the new book that is coming out. You'll want to go over to the city project, dot org the city Project dawg. And you've got two books, you've got the book that's coming out this year, and in that's titled You'll Pay for This. And then next year's book is going to be the winter of 2026, decolonizing, public spaces.
01:09:13:09 - 01:09:33:25
John Simmerman
Talk about your pay for this. What it what will what can folks expect from this book and, and I suspect that this might be rather than digging into your entire archive and weeding through a whole bunch of blog posts, you may have summarized quite a bit of your learnings into this first book. Now I'm making an assumption there.
01:09:33:28 - 01:09:36:04
John Simmerman
But yeah, talk about the book. Yeah.
01:09:36:06 - 01:09:57:09
Michel Durand-Wood
So so yeah. So the series, the City Project series, the publisher for this, approached, approached me last, last year, with idea. They said, we have this idea for these series of books that are small enough that you can power through in an afternoon, but each one of them deals with a different aspect of building thriving, successful cities.
01:09:57:09 - 01:10:20:13
Michel Durand-Wood
And and we'd like you to take the lead in, in editing this series. And also we'd like you to write the first one. And so the first book is my book. You'll pay for this, is on obviously municipal finance because. Yeah, like I said, the I find it's the glue that sort of puts everything together. And so, yeah, it's something that you can finish at, on a Sunday afternoon.
01:10:20:13 - 01:10:45:26
Michel Durand-Wood
Right. It's not a big time investment. The idea is that you can sort of get a taste for the topic and away with enough knowledge to, to, I guess to be dangerous, but, yeah. So, yeah, the first one is municipal finance to sort of lay the lay the basis for the rest of the series. Now, Jane Jacobs says the most successful cities are the ones built by many hands.
01:10:45:28 - 01:11:04:01
Michel Durand-Wood
This book series is the same way. It's one is going to be built by many hands. So the first book is mine, but then future books are going to each have a separate author on a separate topic. So the one that's up here is, decolonizing public places. City of Wise is, doing that one. We also have a third and a fourth book in the hopper.
01:11:04:04 - 01:11:20:23
Michel Durand-Wood
The third book, the title is going to be, that'll never work here. About, cycling in, cycling in a Winter city, by Patty Wiens is writing that one. So who who's who's been on a bicycle recently. So. Yeah. So we're excited for that. And then we have a fourth book coming up as well.
01:11:20:23 - 01:11:42:21
Michel Durand-Wood
And so yeah, the series will continue for as long as there is interest in it. But yeah, so far so good. Really excited about the feedback I've gotten on on your pay for this. People are excited. I'm excited. We're, as we're recording this, it's not yet out. Officially, it'll it'll be out officially in Canada May 20th, but then in the US and the rest of the world, June 24th.
01:11:42:21 - 01:12:03:20
Michel Durand-Wood
So by the time this is out, it'll be available. I'm sure. So, Yeah. Very excited to to hear what people think and, and, and hopefully, put that in as many hands as possible. We've already had, a couple of people read a preview copy, from, from some city administrators, not from my city, who said, oh, I'm buying a copy of each of this for each of the council members.
01:12:03:28 - 01:12:07:19
Michel Durand-Wood
Well that's excellent. That's so good to hear. So. Yeah. Yeah.
01:12:07:21 - 01:12:14:09
John Simmerman
Yeah, that's that's good stuff. This has been such a joy and pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.
01:12:14:11 - 01:12:16:07
Michel Durand-Wood
And thanks for inviting me. This was great.
01:12:16:13 - 01:12:31:00
John Simmerman
Thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you did, please give it a thumbs up or leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, be honored to have you subscribed to the channel. Just click on this subscription button down below and be sure to ring that notification bell.
01:12:31:02 - 01:12:48:01
John Simmerman
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01:12:48:01 - 01:13:05:22
John Simmerman
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01:13:06:00 - 01:13:23:21
John Simmerman
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