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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 - 00:00:20:12
Jordi Honey-Roses
In 2020. They, they did tactical. They were able to confirm that the that the grid can withhold the, the traffic and by removing lanes on those green axes. And then they went ahead and did that the tactical, intervention like this, this on the right here is, is the very beginning of the one we just saw.
00:00:20:12 - 00:00:29:07
Jordi Honey-Roses
And you can see what the vegetation growing out, it looks even much nicer. That was really in the beginning. There it is. It looks much nicer. Yeah.
00:00:29:10 - 00:00:49:06
John Simmerman
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Active channel. Channel? My name is John Simmerman, and that is Jordi Honey-Roses from Barcelona. And we are going to be talking about these super blocks there in Barcelona and a few other fun things. Let's get right to it with Jordi.
00:00:49:08 - 00:00:53:13
John Simmerman
Jordi, thank you so much for joining me in the Active Towns podcast. Welcome.
00:00:53:15 - 00:00:55:13
Jordi Honey-Roses
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
00:00:55:15 - 00:01:03:19
John Simmerman
Jordi. I love giving my guests an opportunity to, you know, share with the audience just a little bit about yourself. So who the heck is Jordi?
00:01:03:21 - 00:01:29:09
Jordi Honey-Roses
Okay, well, so I'm a research professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. And I'm a urban planner by training, and I've been here in Barcelona for about three years, and it's just been a joy to, lead a research team on all the transformations taking place in Barcelona. And now to have the chance to share some of that, some of that work, some of what we've been studying.
00:01:29:11 - 00:01:47:14
Jordi Honey-Roses
And I'd really like to talk about the super blocks, because I think that's the, transformation that has received a lot of attention, from around the world. And it's been, it's been really a joy to work closely with those who lead that transformation. And to talk a little bit about it, because it's an inspiring story, for sure.
00:01:47:17 - 00:01:58:06
John Simmerman
And tastic. That's great. Tell us a little bit about your journey. How did you make your way to Barcelona? I mean, I don't get the sense that you're originally from there, but maybe you are.
00:01:58:08 - 00:02:18:17
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah. Good question. So I grew up in California. I grew up into the Silicon Valley. And, but my mother is Catalan and my mother's from this region, so I spoke the language, and, I have family here, so I had I had a reason to come when I was invited, to make the make the transfer of the change from Vancouver.
00:02:18:17 - 00:02:33:11
Jordi Honey-Roses
I was in the planning school in Vancouver for eight years. And teaching in the master's program there is wonderful. Accredited program both in Canada and in the, in the United States. And the opportunity came up to come to Barcelona and I took it.
00:02:33:13 - 00:02:55:28
John Simmerman
Fantastic. Yeah. I'm going to pull up your LinkedIn page actually, right now, just because, you know, you and I have been connected for a while out on LinkedIn and you spend a fair amount of time doing that. And as I was looking at this, I'm like, oh, we did it from Northern California, just like me. And this. I grew up, right along the I-80 corridor in a little town called Lincoln.
00:02:55:28 - 00:03:20:00
John Simmerman
And I say little town because when I live there, Lincoln was all of about 4000 people, and I grew up on a ranch outside of the city. But of course, you know, when I graduated from high school, a lot of my peers either went to Davis or to Berkeley, up to Chico State. I decided to go to, you know, one of your arch rivals down, you know, because you were at UC Berkeley.
00:03:20:02 - 00:03:30:19
John Simmerman
I went down to USC, and so I did my undergrad at USC before moving on to Michigan for my masters. So, yeah. So you you grew up in the Bay area and then went to Berkeley. Yeah.
00:03:30:22 - 00:03:54:22
Jordi Honey-Roses
And then went to Berkeley and, spent time living in Mexico in the in the Midwest, in the East Coast and in Canada. And I love the Bay area. But as an urban planner, I now cringe because there's there's so much talent in the Bay area. There's so much intellect, there's so much wealth. There's such a vision for the future in terms of technology and yet and how spaces and cities are designed.
00:03:54:22 - 00:04:16:29
Jordi Honey-Roses
It's it's years behind. And so there's this contrast between, place with vision and forward thinking. And yet there's still a lot of work to be done in, in making the city safer and ready for active travel and inclusive and all the things that, that we want to happen. So that's that's an interesting, interesting story about the Bay area.
00:04:17:02 - 00:04:40:22
Jordi Honey-Roses
Lots of potential. Of course, I know that. I know they're working hard and they're doing they're making progress. But, you know, I was in Vancouver for eight years, and, and Vancouver is a city that's done a lot. And, also West Coast, has a great transportation system, as you know, 9% of of commuter trips are, by bike, which is wonderful for North American standards.
00:04:40:24 - 00:04:56:00
Jordi Honey-Roses
And, and they're, they're taking advantage of every piece of land to densify so it can be done in a North American in an earthquake. Right. Context. And it would be great to see the Bay area, make those bold, bold changes as well.
00:04:56:02 - 00:05:16:24
John Simmerman
Yeah. No, I'm really glad you mentioned that, too. I, I'm going to have an opportunity to make it back to the Bay area and do, some more profiles of that area. But you're absolutely right. I mean, it has a long legacy, especially Berkeley has a long legacy of some of, like, leading, you know, some of the thought leaders in this arena.
00:05:16:26 - 00:05:53:11
John Simmerman
But, yeah, I mean, other than some, like early 1970s sort of traffic calming innovations, especially right in the city of Berkeley, they really have a car brain mentality. Now, and it's really difficult to get things done, even though the on campus, you know, there's some thought leaders there, you know, and thinking of of of folks too, who live right in that area like Dan paralleled with off the coast, is based out of there and has done some wonderful things like the, the cul de sac car free car park light neighborhood down in Tempe, Arizona.
00:05:53:13 - 00:05:59:09
John Simmerman
But and then a long legacy, like with Donald Appleyard, who was right there in the Berkeley area. Yeah.
00:05:59:13 - 00:06:15:29
Jordi Honey-Roses
Right. Right. Yeah. You know, there certainly are certainly some, some great, some great leaders there. And, and but there's, there's the context that they're working in is, is difficult. So it'd be interesting to see how how it would progresses in the next few years. Yeah.
00:06:16:02 - 00:06:49:20
John Simmerman
Well in, in Berkeley itself as a place since you kind of from that that Bay area, it's kind of fun to see. And I had this conversation with, John Bowers, the mayor of Emeryville, when he was the mayor there. He's I think he's termed out of the mayor, but he he was we were talking about the fact that he's moving quickly to try to make it the streets, more people oriented and pushing the envelope and maybe even kind of shaming Berkeley for not, you know, keeping up with Emeryville, of all places.
00:06:49:22 - 00:07:09:17
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah. No, he's done great work there. I've been following him. And, and these are excellent communicator. Yeah. No, I would love I'd love to go there and see see this transformation because I haven't I haven't been there since I, since I was for my time in Berkeley. And I'm also there's I don't know if you've ever connected with, Luke born Heimer, who's in San Francisco.
00:07:09:17 - 00:07:35:11
Jordi Honey-Roses
He's an activist. And, he's also working on several campaigns. He did the bike bus in, in San Francisco. So working on in a car free, JFK, and several other initiatives turn on red. So there's, there's there's definitely things, a conversation taking place and, a new mayoral election. So so we'll see how that, how that turns out.
00:07:35:13 - 00:08:07:07
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, essentially just mentioned to Luke, let's pull up his, landing page for, for that episode. That was actually, episode 220 in season six. And I had both Roger and Luke on, and yeah, we sure did. We talked about some of the challenges, that are happening there. It and quite frankly, having a frank discussion about how, you know, some of the infrastructure challenges, like they, they take a good step forward and then come up with a really, you know, harebrained idea.
00:08:07:14 - 00:08:28:00
John Simmerman
We also had some really good stuff that, Clarence Akerson from Street Films had shot there. And so we profiled some of his work. On his most recent visit, I also wanted to to bring up the fact that. Yeah, I did have an opportunity to interview, Dale Bracewell way back in season three of, the podcast.
00:08:28:02 - 00:08:52:02
John Simmerman
Yeah, we really talked about his legacy there at the city, in Vancouver of really trying to move things forward. And we really talked about the fact that he felt that, you know, we needed to move forward with much more of a sense of urgency because he just didn't feel like the cities were being authentic about the true challenge that climate change is presenting.
00:08:52:09 - 00:09:08:14
John Simmerman
And, you know, he was there for quite some time. And a lot of the good stuff that you just mentioned about Vancouver, you know, he was at the helm and was really trying to push those things forward. And he just basically got to the point where, you know, he moved on and is doing other things with foresight.
00:09:08:17 - 00:09:13:19
John Simmerman
But yeah, really felt like we needed to move more quickly and with more of a sense of urgency.
00:09:13:21 - 00:09:46:22
Jordi Honey-Roses
That's that's interesting. You say that because, when I came to Barcelona, I did get the sense that there is, that there's a sense of urgency from the residents, the cycling community, the safe streets community that the, those who are involved in safe streets for kids, so I really have, have had that sense. And in fact, the chief architect of Barcelona's transformations in the last four years, does talk about that sense of urgency, of, you know, with, you know, climate change changing the temperatures that will we'll see in the summer.
00:09:46:22 - 00:10:06:27
Jordi Honey-Roses
And here in Barcelona, the air quality issues, you know, adapting to the climate change, those issues are really leading the, the, the transformations that we've seen, in the last few years. And that's been great. And maybe, maybe the sense of urgency in the Bay area in California, they're thinking about other, you know, you know, technological changes.
00:10:06:27 - 00:10:22:16
Jordi Honey-Roses
And they just don't have the bandwidth to to think about their physical, their physical space. But yes, it's interesting. I'm glad that they hear the deal. Was talking about that because I definitely have sense that as a key ingredient for, for making changes.
00:10:22:19 - 00:10:28:20
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. All right, let's stop beating around the bush. Let's talk super blocks. Yeah.
00:10:28:22 - 00:10:29:09
Jordi Honey-Roses
I would of.
00:10:29:11 - 00:10:40:10
John Simmerman
Pull up just a little video here that, you know, kind of is a little inter liberal introduction to this. So what the heck is a Barcelona superblock?
00:10:40:12 - 00:11:06:21
Jordi Honey-Roses
Well, it's it's an evolving idea is, an idea that captured, a lot of attention, about ten years ago in, in the city plan, they, anticipated scaling super blocks across the entire city, as being species of pedestrianized or pedestrian priority spaces in which just to go through. But it's not through traffic, you know, cut through traffic.
00:11:06:23 - 00:11:28:24
Jordi Honey-Roses
Unless you had a destination in that street, you have no reason to to go there. And but the idea has been evolving, and I think the planners have been really good at taking the basic ideas behind super blocks of, adding in green spaces, you know, prioritizing play spaces and prioritizing people. But it's evolved in all different forms.
00:11:28:24 - 00:11:51:16
Jordi Honey-Roses
And here what we're seeing is one of the the tactic, one of the earlier tactical intervention, interventions, when I, when I walk people through the streets, I like to try to show that evolution of the idea because it really has evolved. I talk about super blocks as being, really an experiment that prioritizes people. And and I use that word experiment intentionally.
00:11:51:16 - 00:12:24:15
Jordi Honey-Roses
Right. An experiment that learns and then adapts and develops new designs. Yeah. So, it's it's again gotten a lot of attention. There's this, you know, David Roberts did a wonderful article, from Vox. He did also, there's a video on Vox that really put it into the spotlight. And it's the most recent iteration has, you know, taken out several lanes of traffic and turned them into, pedestrian corridors for over three km at the Commerce stretch that the crosses the entire city.
00:12:24:17 - 00:12:51:03
John Simmerman
Wow. Okay. So that that's a that's a little bit of a departure from her original sort of concept, because the original concept was a nine block grid, hence the super block. And then the interior, those streets interior were these more people oriented places, ultra low speeds, if any speeds at all. And, and as you mentioned, I mean, hit play on this one more time.
00:12:51:05 - 00:13:00:29
John Simmerman
The lighter, quicker, cheaper materials in this first iteration of more of a tactical urbanism approach. Because you could like, you could deploy this really, really quickly.
00:13:01:01 - 00:13:25:10
Jordi Honey-Roses
Right, right, right. So the they started with several tactical. It's actually this is tactical version 2.0. There is, there is there's even more tactical, even lower cost iterations in other and other places. This idea in earlier experiments, you have to remember that what we're seeing here, for example, this was a vehicle intersection, right. So there's no people in this space whatsoever.
00:13:25:10 - 00:13:43:20
Jordi Honey-Roses
Right? So as a square that's that's been generated, this has been one of the more most hardscape squares, in fact, that has the least amount of green space. But it is done purposefully. So, that they do a farmer's market in this space. They have, you know, civic meetings have, you know, neighborhood meetings and such.
00:13:43:22 - 00:14:15:13
Jordi Honey-Roses
But this was a vehicle intersection, just two years ago. And Barcelona is looking for this intersections. It's filled with intersections as it's the new place for its green spaces because it simply, doesn't have a lot of green spaces. That's one of the fewest amount of green spaces per capita. It has, heavy air pollution and noise pollution in the in the center of the city because of these, these vehicles and the strategy has been to to rethink these, these streets entirely, different bright green space and, place for gathering.
00:14:15:18 - 00:14:34:28
Jordi Honey-Roses
One thing I like about this video is you can see lots of elderly, an age diversity here, which is, which is great. You know, you know, grandparents and kids and uncles and aunts and neighbors and, and it's really a space for people to come together when, again, this was just, made by by parked vehicles. I just two years ago.
00:14:35:00 - 00:14:37:14
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah. So. Right. Okay.
00:14:37:16 - 00:15:07:04
John Simmerman
So I'm assuming. Yeah. Both. Yeah. What I love about this particular video in comparison to the earlier video and for the listening only audience, you know what we're looking at now is clearly a little bit more permanent infrastructure. This is clearly not a quick build, sort of just sort of traffic calming and and traffic diversion. Now we're talking about trees that have been planted, as you just mentioned, there's a little bit more hardscape to accommodate those, the market approach to it.
00:15:07:07 - 00:15:25:07
John Simmerman
But we do see a greening to this area here. So bringing that heat island effect down a little bit by making sure that we get some trees in there that will eventually have a shade canopy, but also just help bring that temperature of, of this environment down as we're dealing with more extreme temperatures.
00:15:25:09 - 00:15:44:29
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah. And there's a there's also a stormwater element to this, intervention. In fact, it's it's underground. You can't even see it. It's one of the most expensive pieces. But they actually dug up all the soils, and they ensured that they were able to connect the stormwater so that it would it would provide water for the vegetation and the trees that were planted.
00:15:45:02 - 00:15:51:12
Jordi Honey-Roses
And again, that really expensive, really sensitive part of the project. That's not, not well, well appreciated.
00:15:51:14 - 00:16:05:24
John Simmerman
Yeah. And I want to do an overhead view here too and just be able to to appreciate what you're talking about here, you know, at tree level and being able to look down on that environment and the permeability of some of those pavers to.
00:16:05:26 - 00:16:24:19
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah. Yeah. Here, here this is a you get a little bit of a sense of the classical Barcelona intersection, which if you're familiar with a little bit of urban planning history, you might know that the word urbanism was coined by, by a by a planner here from Barcelona called Santa. He's the first to use the word urbanism.
00:16:24:21 - 00:16:57:06
Jordi Honey-Roses
Until then, was, urban planning was mostly dominated by architects. But he was an engineer, and he was, commissioned to develop what was called the extension plan in the 1850s that would connect the old city with the surrounding towns of Barcelona. And he created the iconic Stanford Corners, or cut corners. So if you look at that corner there, basically it's like a it's like a it's like a it's a regular square that has it as a cut corner at a 45 degree angle, creating very large, intersections.
00:16:57:06 - 00:17:19:09
Jordi Honey-Roses
And he did that with the idea of anticipating the fast moving vehicles, trains, trains had just been was the new technology of the 1850s. And as an engineer, he wanted to create intersections that created a lot of visibility so that fast moving vehicles could go by. What he didn't anticipate in his, in this block design was that vehicles would clog these spaces right.
00:17:19:09 - 00:17:50:17
Jordi Honey-Roses
And what happened is that vehicles move straight through the intersection, but pedestrians have to go around in this in this cut corner. And so it's very inconvenient for, for pedestrians and with the superblock design has done this invert that in which now, pedestrians go straight and cars actually go around. So those, those intersections have been, have been rethought with the, you know, the purpose of pedestrians and green space, first in mining and inviting cars, as, as guests essentially.
00:17:50:19 - 00:18:23:17
John Simmerman
Yeah. I want to pop into your, your presentation here for just a moment because I love this intro slide because it also gives an overhead, you know, even going even higher from a bird's eye view of kind of what, these blocks, in the building blocks and all of this looks like, walk us through some of that challenge because we're talking about a fairly dense city, but it's it's not a city of high rises necessarily.
00:18:23:19 - 00:18:34:17
John Simmerman
And it's also a city where, back in the good old days or the bad old days, cars kind of dominated many of these streets.
00:18:34:19 - 00:18:57:16
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah, absolutely. That was one of the the cities that has the most cars per, per capita, in Europe. A lot, a lot of the there's a tremendous amount of vehicles moving through the city as well. And and, and it's creating all sorts of all sorts of issues, air pollution problems, noise, you know, traffic safety.
00:18:57:16 - 00:19:17:17
Jordi Honey-Roses
So a lot of the issues that you, I'm sure you and your listeners are familiar with and, maybe we could go maybe go to the slides and I think I can walk you through some of the, the, the, the motivating factors that led to the superblock. Yeah. Transformation. Yeah. So.
00:19:17:19 - 00:19:18:09
John Simmerman
Yeah.
00:19:18:11 - 00:19:39:03
Jordi Honey-Roses
There's, in the city, there's absence of green space, especially in the extension, district. So unlike other cities that have large parks, Brussels just doesn't have any. And so that's why they're looking to their streets as their, their one place where they needed to add adding green. Maybe next slide. Another issue has been air quality.
00:19:39:03 - 00:20:01:10
Jordi Honey-Roses
So Basel has been in compliance with air quality standards from the EU. And they have they've been fined because they haven't met EU air quality standards. There's also been a lot of research that have been linking poor air quality with cognitive development of children. And so there's there's a major concern about the impacts in general learning, learning abilities for, for children.
00:20:01:10 - 00:20:04:02
Jordi Honey-Roses
So air quality has been a major, major driver.
00:20:04:05 - 00:20:36:06
John Simmerman
What's the what's the environment like from, from like a, you and I both have Northern California in common. I visited, Seville before. I know that that's like much further south. Very, very hot environment there. You mentioned the air quality issue. I previously I've lived in Boulder, Colorado and Denver area. We oftentimes get sort of a, an air quality issue, both in the winter and sometimes in the summer.
00:20:36:09 - 00:20:49:20
John Simmerman
What's what are the conditions that are exacerbating, the air quality issue, in addition, just to the polluting cars, is there also, a topography, challenge that's happening to.
00:20:49:23 - 00:21:15:07
Jordi Honey-Roses
So to some extent, there's the, there's the mountains behind Barcelona, although it's, it's enclosed. It's a coastal city. But there are mountains that are, that are that are behind it. There's the port and the airport, which are very close to the city center. So that's also a part of it. The air quality is worse in the winter when there's this thermal inversion that keeps, the air at, you know, within the city.
00:21:15:10 - 00:21:18:00
John Simmerman
It's kind of like Salt Lake City then. Yeah.
00:21:18:02 - 00:21:43:24
Jordi Honey-Roses
Right. Right. So that's that's typical. In the, in the summer, you know, you have you'll have the, the, the breeze, you know, the hot air rising, inland and then pulling in the, the sea breeze. But you don't get that in the winter. So you have very, very, very poor air quality during the winter. And it was interesting, you know, talking to, to the planners and the activists who had been pushing for the superblock idea for a long time.
00:21:43:26 - 00:22:20:21
Jordi Honey-Roses
It really was the air quality and health arguments that were the most compelling to bring, the public around and bring this, the city leaders around to, to invest into transforming their, their streets. It wasn't the climate change arguments. And it's certainly as part of the cost, which is what we use here. I mean, is that like, you know, you know, front line and some of the city planners, but in terms of communicating with the public, it was largely the public health argument that, and really didn't want to send to children that, we, you know, we're, we're hurting our, our children's ability development ability to learn.
00:22:20:23 - 00:22:40:13
Jordi Honey-Roses
We have, and we're in compliance. The EU regulations also to, you know, had, had an effect, you know, for the for the cities not being in compliance with the minimum air quality standards carried, carried a lot of weight. And I think we have to we have to change how we, how we organize our city, you know.
00:22:40:13 - 00:22:46:20
Jordi Honey-Roses
So that was that was a big, big motivation in getting the super blocks off the ground, which had been around for a long time.
00:22:46:23 - 00:23:03:27
John Simmerman
Well before before we go to to this next that kind of overview of the road hierarchy and what that superblock really looks like, because we we described it, you know, sort of audibly here. But I want to get a visual, but I want to linger just a little bit more on the fact that climate change is an issue.
00:23:03:27 - 00:23:44:00
John Simmerman
We've we've talked about it a little bit in terms of the sense of urgency, need to move forward and all of that. We even talk a little bit. You just mentioned public health. One of the things that as a public health professional myself, you know, somebody who's been working in public health, for the last 34 years, I know that even that message doesn't resonate as, is profoundly as conversations of around, well, what can you do for me today in terms of quality of life and what you know, and being, you know, more of a short term public health perspective like, like from that perspective versus a long term public health perspective
00:23:44:00 - 00:24:15:19
John Simmerman
of, you know, preventing, you know, cancer and preventing heart disease down the road. It's like, well, what can you do for me lately? And I think that's one of the beautiful things of this design, of being able to create places that are able to transform profoundly the environment, the block, the intersection. And you can, as a resident of that area, you can see right away, oh, this is so much better.
00:24:15:19 - 00:24:38:01
John Simmerman
This is so much higher of a quality of life. And then you start looking at, oh yeah, okay. This this impacts mental health. Physical health. It it addresses the climate change. It addresses the public health and all of that altogether. In other words, it's not we're not we're not trying to sell something on one thing like just climate change.
00:24:38:03 - 00:24:58:14
Jordi Honey-Roses
Right. It's there all these other additional benefits, right. The geeky terms, the co-benefits. Right. They're all these other you know, not only do you have a safer street, when you walk out your front door, you also have a place to, to, you know, to take your grandmother when you when you see her in the afternoon or you take her out a public square or a place for, for kids to play.
00:24:58:16 - 00:25:19:26
Jordi Honey-Roses
And, and it's also quieter and you have better air quality and you're meeting all these other, other objectives. Absolutely. And that, you know, that this, this this is the, the, the, the conventional model, right, where you have these neighborhood units, these squares. Yeah. You'll notice the small areas on the green, segment, you know, will move the allow vehicle movement.
00:25:19:26 - 00:25:50:22
Jordi Honey-Roses
So it's not that, cars are, are, are eliminated entirely. But by allowing by moving cars around, you don't have to through traffic. And then notice those four intersections there, and which you can rethink those spaces entirely. And that's and that's that that's been the great opportunity to create that the green spaces or the civic spaces in the, in the superblock model and, and and from this original model, the idea has been, has been evolving.
00:25:50:22 - 00:26:10:28
Jordi Honey-Roses
And I and I really commend the, the planners for not not insisting on just sticking to this, this entirely. And, and thinking about how they can quickly, implement the, the, this, street calming, pedestrian priority street design in, in and many streets as possible in the city.
00:26:11:01 - 00:26:18:28
John Simmerman
Yeah. When was the first implementation of, of the super near the super block.
00:26:19:00 - 00:26:36:26
Jordi Honey-Roses
So in 2016 is when they, they began in the grid. There were, street calming or traffic, management, strategies in, neighborhoods that had old cities were sort of old city street designs.
00:26:36:28 - 00:26:37:18
John Simmerman
Right.
00:26:37:21 - 00:27:01:12
Jordi Honey-Roses
In which they, you know, they rerouted traffic outside so that the, the old city would it would be walkable. But I feel that the things really began when they worked in that and, in the national grid and I think this is more relevant to planners in North America as well, because the, you know, the Europeans have been getting rid of vehicles and, old cities for years and pedestrianized gold medals streets.
00:27:01:14 - 00:27:22:21
Jordi Honey-Roses
And that's almost easy, right? That's almost too easy. Clearly, cars don't belong there. And and I've heard kind of say, well, what about a North American context? And, and I think that's why the super block transformations in the grid are really exciting, because you have street dimensions that are 20m from facade of sort. So this grid could be Denver or Austin or, San Francisco or.
00:27:22:21 - 00:27:42:12
Jordi Honey-Roses
Right, other other. So it's it's much more it shows, I think, with personal super blocks program shows that you can have radical pedestrianization and street dimensions that are very common in North America and other parts in other parts of the world. And so that's why I think this these more recent iterations are all the more, exciting, to see.
00:27:42:15 - 00:28:08:00
John Simmerman
I zoomed in just so I could, help the viewers, see a little bit better what you were talking about with those interior four intersections. Again, this is a nine block grid. We've we've got the external streets that are still, a little speedy. Are they still 50km/h, or have they been reduced to 30km/h? The the outer streets.
00:28:08:02 - 00:28:33:08
Jordi Honey-Roses
So these, these in particular have been reduced to 32 and they're, but they're also but the super block models and envisions treatment along all sorts of streets. So it's not only about the interior streets, it's also about, reducing speeds, adding, transit lanes and, and rethinking the streets as well.
00:28:33:08 - 00:28:55:26
John Simmerman
That's that's what I wanted to emphasize, too. Thank you for that clarification. Because on the grid here, it still shows it in the black. And I was like, oh, I hope it's not still 50km on those streets. Because they really should be 30. But the internal green local network, I love it. Ten kilometers per hour is the design speed of those, which makes sense.
00:28:55:26 - 00:29:23:29
John Simmerman
Now. Then when we see some of those video clips that we watched earlier, it's like, yeah, you know, somebody who has a need to get somewhere meaningful in their car can still access that, but it's not a flow through. This is not a place. And you see these arrows and you're like, literally realizing that the only person who would drive in there is somebody who has a true need to drive a motor vehicle in there.
00:29:24:01 - 00:29:50:21
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And, and in the most recent version of the, of the super blocks, which, which, which has not applied this, this great model by the way, they if they find a street coming along the corridor, but they, they, they, they use the, the materials of the, of the street where actually, sidewalk with your right sidewalk design, to get to really give the vehicles a sense that, they're walking in a pedestrian site.
00:29:50:21 - 00:30:11:02
Jordi Honey-Roses
So they've done some, as they there's a false they've used different sort of materials to, to emphasize British and priority and really give the vehicles the sense that, that, that they can they're allowed to go through. But it's definitely, you know, they're not they're not a party. And there's just so many people in our society. I mean, think about those videos that we saw, and I may there's maybe a few other pictures.
00:30:11:02 - 00:30:21:28
Jordi Honey-Roses
Maybe we should pull up some of the, the, the the photos of the before or after, or maybe we can walk through the evolution because you asked about the first, site.
00:30:22:00 - 00:30:45:06
John Simmerman
Yeah, let's do the evolution. But before we do that, let's actually talk, about the five rights to the city, because I think this is a good, a good platform for, for talking about this. Then we'll go through those the slides that have the evolution, of the different iterations, which is what you were just sort of alluding to, walk us through these, these five rights to the city and let me back this out so that we can actually see it.
00:30:45:08 - 00:30:46:28
John Simmerman
So there we go.
00:30:47:00 - 00:31:11:27
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah. So this is, this is, so I can't lay claim to this. This is, one of the, the visionaries of the super blocks and cellular reader. I recall seeing him just described the five rights to the city back in 2000, maybe nine or so, when he still, he was working for the cities. Ecology department, but he was and he had been advancing the idea of the super blob.
00:31:11:28 - 00:31:45:25
Jordi Honey-Roses
But but but people really didn't listen to him very much. I guess the Green Party did. And, and he emphasized how, a different rights to the city, the streets have been, overrun by our right for mobility, that the fact that, most of the street space was, was devoted to mobility had for me. We've almost forgotten that we have all these other rights to the city, rights to for leisure and recreation, for children to play, the right to exchange or to travel, you know, have markets, the right for culture.
00:31:45:25 - 00:32:07:08
Jordi Honey-Roses
Right, and, public art and, which, which person actually does really well, you know, public puppet shows and, and, and theater and also the right for, for democratic expression and participation, which also in a place with such great climate, it's also great to see whether it's a neighborhood, meeting or a school meeting which are held in the streets.
00:32:07:08 - 00:32:26:10
Jordi Honey-Roses
There's a lot of activities that are some of the, like, residents like to do on the streets. But if we give all the space to mobility into vehicles, then we lose the opportunity to do all these other things. And so the idea is to is to, is to balance our streets and, what we can do in them and certainly allow, allow for mobility.
00:32:26:12 - 00:32:54:25
Jordi Honey-Roses
But just rebalance it with all the, with our, with our other rights. And what was what's been fascinating. I, I grew up in California, but I family here in Barcelona. So I've been able to follow the evolution of the superblock idea for, for over a decade now. And despair was, it was fascinating to see how something that was was a conceptual idea was eventually, began to be seriously implemented in 2016, in the grid and then to follow how the ideas evolved.
00:32:54:25 - 00:33:12:23
Jordi Honey-Roses
And again, it's been it's been great to see how through different designs, different tactics, this idea has been has been moving and moving forward and in different ways. And what I, I'd like to do is give a sense, if you can't come to Barcelona, get give me a bit of a sense that it is changing. Right.
00:33:12:23 - 00:33:18:06
Jordi Honey-Roses
That they are they are trying to do different things and learning and learning from each iteration.
00:33:18:08 - 00:33:39:12
John Simmerman
You mentioned a couple things there. That, that I'll circle back around to. But the first I just want to give a plug for, my, my coffee mug here of streets are for people because these five things actually, you know, when, when I, when people ask me about my shirt. Streets for people where my hat streets of repeat my coffee mug streets are for people.
00:33:39:14 - 00:34:03:09
John Simmerman
They say, what do you mean? And why do you have that declarative statement is I say, look, streets have literally been around for thousands of years and, you know, the interloper, the automobile, the mobility point on this five points, you know, is, is something that has just kind of manifested itself through technology innovation over the last 120 years.
00:34:03:12 - 00:34:26:11
John Simmerman
What streets for for we could, you know, change that title from the five rights to the city to, you know, the five things that were it's what happened on streets before or the following. We had, you know, exchange cultural knowledge, expressions and participation, leisure and recreation and. Oh, yes, and also mobility. A lot of stuff happens on our streets.
00:34:26:13 - 00:34:47:10
John Simmerman
Chuck Moran from From Strong Towns talks about streets being the platform for society, for wealth building. It's it's where we come together or have traditionally come together over the years. And so, yeah, that's what I mean by that declarative statement that streets are for people because these five points, you know, have a long legacy of happening.
00:34:47:12 - 00:34:58:24
Jordi Honey-Roses
Exactly, exactly. You know, but I couldn't I couldn't agree more. And and we need to redesign those, these spaces with, with these values and with these ideas in mind, without a doubt.
00:34:58:26 - 00:35:41:08
John Simmerman
You know, and and not to belabor this too much, but this is not a war on cars or the ability from a mobility perspective, to get to meaningful destinations. You know, cars is a technology. They have their place, obviously, we just don't need them to overwhelm and dominate, and it needs to be something. And we see this in societies, whether it's in the Netherlands or increasingly now in Barcelona and other, other places where we're creating a healthier balance versus, you know, the car dependency and the speed that then has a negative impact, you know, dating all the way back to what we were talking about earlier, like in the in the Bay area, some of
00:35:41:08 - 00:35:54:12
John Simmerman
the early research that Donald Appleyard did on the negative consequences of fast moving traffic on sociability and the connectedness that people have with their neighbors.
00:35:54:14 - 00:36:10:22
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that that social connection is is a great part of, living in a city with a mediterranean climate. And California has that great climate and lots of cities, you know, have other opportunities to do that. Yeah.
00:36:10:25 - 00:36:16:04
John Simmerman
Yeah. Okay. Let's get to that, that evolution that you wanted to talk about.
00:36:16:07 - 00:36:32:07
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah. Well, I guess this is a this is a slide that I developed to answer a lot of a lot of questions. I get, you know, I get contacted by a lot of folks who are interested in learning about super blocks and, and, and when you put it on sort of a timeline, it makes a lot more sense.
00:36:32:07 - 00:37:01:25
Jordi Honey-Roses
And you can see how, how this is evolved from more tactical interventions and designs to more to more structural designs. And also they they also shifted away from that, from that nine block model when they, when they went to another part of the city, which was an important shift. But having seen it, developed, I think it was a really great, a great move, because they were able to extend the idea of, of, of production Priority Street across the entire, across the entire city.
00:37:01:28 - 00:37:06:02
John Simmerman
Which is what you mentioned earlier of that three kilometer strip.
00:37:06:04 - 00:37:25:29
Jordi Honey-Roses
Exactly. And so and in that way, that city residents in the grid could see what, if they didn't live on that street, they could see what the street could look like in the future, what the vision of the planners was for the future of the of the city, of the for or at least of the streets that live in the grid, right?
00:37:26:01 - 00:37:51:24
Jordi Honey-Roses
And medium getting to the end here. But there's a the city planner. Me the data tells us really great story about the architectural team that was was responsible for designing that that new street design. I'm now going to skip you to the end, but I think it's a great story. I want to I want to get it in there that that they that they really have a lot had a long term vision about what the future of the, of the Barcelona would look like, what the future of the grid segment would look like.
00:37:51:24 - 00:38:12:25
Jordi Honey-Roses
And they realized that they wouldn't be able to complete it all in the way that they wanted to, that they had a limited term. Right? They had a couple of years, and, and, and, and in that conversation. So the idea of, of what Anthony Gaudi did when he was building the Sagrada Familia, of course, Antonio Gaudi, great, Spanish Barcelona architect.
00:38:12:28 - 00:38:35:05
Jordi Honey-Roses
He also knew that he wouldn't be able to finish the Sagrada Familia, this great cathedral, his life, his end of life, masterpiece. And he feared that if he just did the footprint of the cathedral, he only get a few meters high, and then a few meters high could easily be pushed over. And so in order to make sure that someone else could continue, he built a whole facade.
00:38:35:07 - 00:39:14:06
Jordi Honey-Roses
He completed one vindictively seen. So it was raised. And that way he knew other architects would complete the other, other ends. And that's what the part of the reasons why, Debbie McKinney and his team shifted to doing an entire street that would cross the entire city and do it with structural, complete high quality materials because they knew they wouldn't be able to do the entire grid, but at least they would do a full segment with the high quality, intersections that were turned into two public squares with the hope that other other planners, other administrations, would be able to complete the entire project, in the future.
00:39:14:06 - 00:39:36:25
Jordi Honey-Roses
And I and I think that was a smart move, even if they, you know, at the expense of abandoning the neighborhood unit approach, which was thrust into, you know, in a moment of attention and shift the notion of super blocks from blocks to streets. Right. It's really about rethinking the streets and, and creating these, these quality green spaces for, for people.
00:39:36:28 - 00:40:00:11
John Simmerman
Now, you mentioned it earlier and you sort of alluded to it. It right there as well. Is that there's a limited time aspect of it. And sometimes and we've seen this also play out over the years that I've been following, the experience down in Seville, sometimes, who's in power, who's in charge has a tremendous impact.
00:40:00:11 - 00:40:20:15
John Simmerman
So you mentioned earlier the Green Party was in charge of it, added, talk a little bit about that because, yeah, we especially, you know, here in the United States right now, we're in an election season. This, this particular episode is, is being recorded in October on the 10th. But we've got a huge election coming up the first week of, of November.
00:40:20:20 - 00:40:39:04
John Simmerman
This episode's coming out and the elections will be done here. But talk about that in terms of the challenges of being able to transform cities and the realities of of changing administrations and changing political powers.
00:40:39:06 - 00:41:03:09
Jordi Honey-Roses
Right. Well, Barcelona was I was fortunate to have, a woman named Paula who the Guardian called, the world's most radical mayor and her administration for, for two terms. And I think that provided the opportunity for an influx of new ideas into to to help bring the super back to, to reality. The the the current transition is, so she was not she was not reelected.
00:41:03:09 - 00:41:29:23
Jordi Honey-Roses
And, I'll have a more moderate party is taken taken hold out. The hope was that the ideas behind this and for what would be seen as as good for anyone and good for everyone, right. And not not politicized. But it has been politicized to some extent. And my hope is that after a period of some, some distancing, which is I think we're going through now, that, it'll just be self-evident that this is, this is the type of city that we want to see and live it.
00:41:29:23 - 00:41:55:05
Jordi Honey-Roses
I mean, we've taken this, this videos that, that we, that we saw. And maybe you can see some of the before and after, show. I think there's before and after, images really, really speak for themselves. You know, we've the research has shown that residents overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly liked the transformation. They've also seen traffic evaporation and streets that are not part of the super box.
00:41:55:07 - 00:42:20:13
Jordi Honey-Roses
You know, that's the before and after. You know, when you go now, it's hard to imagine the three lanes of traffic that went through that intersection. And folks in Barcelona know that that's what it was like. But when, as I often take visitors to see, other intersections before, it's so they get the sense of what, what it was like, and again, for three kilometers stretch, it's pretty it's pretty traumatic.
00:42:20:15 - 00:42:45:05
John Simmerman
And I'm glad you mentioned that to about hopefully this is self-evident, that this is beneficial to everyone. And that's kind of the point that I tried to, to make with active towns is that in my mind, the way that I see the world, I see benefits across the political spectrum. You know, especially my background in, in, in behavior modification and in public health.
00:42:45:07 - 00:43:03:09
John Simmerman
And, you know, I cut my teeth the first 15 years of my career was all about health care, cost containment strategies. I'm trying to be fiscally conservative. I want to try to prevent as much that is preventable from happening, happening, which should resonate across the political spectrum because, you know, it's like, this is good for people. That's great.
00:43:03:09 - 00:43:24:09
John Simmerman
Yeah, it's also good for finance and good for money and good for, you know, profit margins, you know, especially working with fortune 500 companies the way that I did, because they had a vested interest to try to prevent, a heart attack from happening because it hit their bottom line of profitability. They'd like to avoid that. That's a good fiscal conservatism.
00:43:24:11 - 00:43:39:24
John Simmerman
So anyways, I, I'm I'm devastated when I see things get into these culture war types of situations and realizing, no, no, no, no. What I mean by active towns is this is good for everyone, regardless of where you're coming from, from a political police perspective.
00:43:39:24 - 00:44:01:24
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. And I saw we had a, superblock workshop with different researchers, and one of those presented was from the business school, and he presented fantastic work showing how those businesses on the Supervooc streets have done much better. And these Yelp reviews and also some statistical techniques, to, you know, to get at this question.
00:44:01:24 - 00:44:21:23
Jordi Honey-Roses
So it was really encouraging to see that there's a, there's a strong business argument, for, for changing these streets and making them more, more livable. So it's a health win. It's a green space win. It's a climate adaptation win. But it's also, a business win for the local, for the local, local, you know, shops and restaurants.
00:44:21:25 - 00:44:30:09
Jordi Honey-Roses
Because people enjoy strolling down those streets. It's, it's without a doubt is where it's where you prefer to go on, on a on the Saturday and Sunday afternoon.
00:44:30:11 - 00:44:59:15
John Simmerman
Which is hit which is good for business too. So from, you know, from at least if there's anybody that should be like really, really supportive to trying to create more people oriented places and streets that attract people. It should be the businesses in that area. A lot of people like they know my background as a public health professional, but they may not know that a third of my, coursework when I was, you know, you went to that other school on the East Coast, you know, the Michigan of the East.
00:44:59:15 - 00:45:25:22
John Simmerman
You went to Harvard, and I was at the University of Michigan in graduate school, and a third of my coursework was in the MBA program. There was a rationale from that because there was a compelling business, you know, case for trying to create places that are better for people, you know, as so many different levels. So I want to pull up the, the, the workshop, the we've got your, your your superblock.
00:45:25:22 - 00:45:30:18
John Simmerman
Barcelona. Research workshop. What is this all about?
00:45:30:20 - 00:45:50:02
Jordi Honey-Roses
Well, this is this is just a reference to, you know, I have a couple slides here if folks are interested in learning more. We did a workshop with researchers. It's on my blog, where for, sort of basically the latest on superblock, work based from a public health perspective, from the business perspective. I just mentioned, there's a study on the traffic and operation.
00:45:50:02 - 00:46:11:13
Jordi Honey-Roses
This was just in this summer. And I hosted that at the research institute. And then if you keep going, there's a few other, resources. There's a book, there's an English on the, by the city. This summarizes it very nicely. So it's a resource, really. I guess the go to resource. It's not easy to find as you search online.
00:46:11:15 - 00:46:15:20
Jordi Honey-Roses
So I wanted to provide folks with the, with the, with the link there so they could, they can.
00:46:15:27 - 00:46:20:02
John Simmerman
Make sure that we do that, in the show notes for this episode. Yeah.
00:46:20:04 - 00:46:41:26
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah. So it's a phenomenal book and, but it's not not easy to find. So I wanted to make sure that folks could find it if they're if they're interested in learning more about it. There's also an article that I, I did in the Journal of Public Spaces reviewed some of the sort of like, research. So that's, that's just another, another resource.
00:46:41:29 - 00:47:06:10
Jordi Honey-Roses
There. So here, you know, this is just within the last three years, right? So, here you see a major traffic intersection and that same space has been turned into, to, a public garden, right. What you have here is the confluence of two, superblock green axes. So you have the main one three, three kilometers long, and then another one, which is about a little bit over a kilometer long.
00:47:06:12 - 00:47:29:25
Jordi Honey-Roses
They come for particular land. So when you have these two axes come together, you they're able to take over the entire intersection and turn it. There's a great you know, challenge sort of play space there. This is definitely my favorite my favorite one. And when I take bring visitors I we always end here. But if unless you see that before photo it's just hard to even imagine what this place is like because it's just the change is just so dramatic.
00:47:29:28 - 00:47:46:23
Jordi Honey-Roses
And it shows that the person who really needs to look at its intersections to create new green spaces, because there there's not a lot of land elsewhere. And that's, that's the sort of that's what we'd like to be seeing in the next, the next few years. More of these, these green spaces created, at the intersections.
00:47:46:25 - 00:47:58:16
John Simmerman
Two questions here for you for the average resident in the Barcelona area, how popular has this transformation been?
00:47:58:18 - 00:48:24:03
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah, I know it's been it's been a good question. We probably had we had this a fellow named Samuel Anello who presented his work at the superblock research. He did he did some, some high quality surveys with through a survey company and he contracted out. And they there's unquestionably people are in favor. Residents are in favor of this of this transformation and even such, there's still hesitancy with, with the city government.
00:48:24:03 - 00:48:48:09
Jordi Honey-Roses
And it's largely because they think they want to give some time to to distance themselves a little bit, politically, from a project that the previous administration really took as their own. So I'm so hopeful that we'll see that the that, we'll see similar transformations. But we're still we're still waiting to see which direction the new, the new city government or some city administration will, will take us.
00:48:48:11 - 00:49:17:17
John Simmerman
My follow up question to the comment that you made earlier about how powerful it is to see the before and after is it seems like I'm going to make an assumption here. Maybe this is an assumption that's wrong, that there's not an image somewhere in each of these intersections that shows a picture, this picture before and after, or you don't even need to the before or excuse me, you do need to do before, but you don't need the after because they're standing in the after.
00:49:17:23 - 00:49:23:25
John Simmerman
It'd be great for for folks to be reminded while they're in that space. What that space used to be like.
00:49:23:25 - 00:49:27:17
Jordi Honey-Roses
This would be like, yeah, that would be great, right?
00:49:27:19 - 00:49:58:21
John Simmerman
That would be phenomenal. Because we we all know that we have these photos of of that being automobile focused and, and, you know, chock full of cars and loud motorcycles. I mean, it's easy as humans, we adapt so quickly to our changed environment and then we forget so quickly how bad it used to be. And so being reminded, oh yeah, this used to be like this.
00:49:58:24 - 00:50:30:00
John Simmerman
It also reinforces in people's minds, especially if they don't live in this area. Maybe they live in the part of the city that hasn't had any transformations, and they just have a really hard time believing that their intersection that's closest to them, that is a traffic sewer, could ever be transformed into this. But if they see that, oh, I recognize that lower picture in the intersection that's closest to my home, maybe we could change this.
00:50:30:02 - 00:50:46:21
Jordi Honey-Roses
That's exactly what's happening that anyone else who lives in the grid says, hey, I would love for my street to look like this, right? Because it is a uniform grid. So, so the dimensions are the same. So when you walk down the green axis now, you see that, you know, those dimensions are exactly the same in other places.
00:50:46:21 - 00:51:13:24
Jordi Honey-Roses
And so you can see what the feature of, of the, of the city may look like. Here's where you see the text. You see the tactical sort of steps before the final intervention. And maybe this is another important point, that the Covid pandemic was essential to allow this project to go ahead so quickly. There were some, there's some legislation that allowed for, rapid transfers, transformations in the public space.
00:51:13:26 - 00:51:33:27
Jordi Honey-Roses
So, you know, going through the basically going through some technical hoops. And so the city took advantage of that and, would remove one and, sort of began to remove lanes, traffic lanes. And so they only had one lane and they tested out, see how it worked. And, some of the political opposition criticize that. We just put it through our complaint down.
00:51:33:27 - 00:52:09:23
Jordi Honey-Roses
And, you know, they even use some what we called it, the new Jersey barriers. Here's a cement and and so they said, well, great. I'm glad you said that because let's go with the full structural design. And I think it was a really a great move that they had, you know, in 2020, they, they did the technical they were able to confirm that the, that the grid could withhold the traffic and by removing lanes on those green axes, and then they went ahead and did that the tactical, intervention like this, this on the right here is, is the very beginning of the one we just saw.
00:52:09:23 - 00:52:19:05
Jordi Honey-Roses
And you can see what the vegetation growing out, it looks even much nicer. That was really the beginning. There it is. It looks much nicer. Yeah.
00:52:19:07 - 00:52:42:22
John Simmerman
And again, since this is the same intersection and again, looking at the before and how powerful that image really is and saying, hey, these streets that have we have allowed to become overrun with motor vehicles, they can change. They changed when they allowed motor vehicles to take over and they can change again.
00:52:42:25 - 00:53:04:01
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah yeah yeah. No it's it's it's it's really it's really inspiring. And I hope you have the chance to to one day come and visit, because when you, when you see it, you're able to walk on these different streets and see. Wow, this is, really impressive. Impressive length of, you know, just the scale and scope is, is phenomenal.
00:53:04:01 - 00:53:25:11
Jordi Honey-Roses
So, yeah, if anyone is interested in commenting. There you go. This is a pro. I'll be running several programs in the, in November, but also in May. I'll be running a one week program in person if anyone is interested in. And joining us, we meet with the city planners that led this transformation. Last year, we met with the former mayor.
00:53:25:13 - 00:53:45:09
Jordi Honey-Roses
We met with two city council members who were involved, local organizations that the, the families that are part of the the School streets program and the, you know, funding for safer cities. And so it's, it's a great opportunity to connect, with, with the community that's been transforming the city and the source of great inspiration.
00:53:45:09 - 00:54:07:06
Jordi Honey-Roses
So if anyone's interested that they can, reach out to me and, or for any other reason as well. There you go. There's our, email, info at City Lab discord. We just our our Instagram account, city lab discovery and follow us there would be happy to connect and also on the research side as well.
00:54:07:08 - 00:54:30:10
Jordi Honey-Roses
Leading a research team, working on, cycling, a lot of work on cycling, some work on school streets as well. So happy to connect with anyone who's interested on, to talk about that as well. It's personal. It's a wonderful city to, to work on all these topics. It's really a lot of fun. And, it's been it's been great, to connect with, to be the bridge between folks on both sides of the Atlantic.
00:54:30:13 - 00:54:31:04
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah.
00:54:31:06 - 00:54:57:10
John Simmerman
Now, you just mentioned something there in school streets, and I know some of the earliest, conversations that you and I had back and forth, were related to the bike bus and the bike bus, you know, channeling what you had mentioned earlier with Luke and in being one of the early, you know, on the ground, instigators of the bike bus movements here in North America, there in the San Francisco Bay area.
00:54:57:12 - 00:55:26:19
John Simmerman
And of course, the bike busses was huge. The bike bus was huge there in Barcelona. Talk a little bit about, you know, to close this out here, about sort of that status of, you know, that that movement, the bike bus movement. And then also more importantly, I think, is the school streets movement and really making permanent changes to the built environment so that kids can be free range kids so that they can get around to meaningful destinations, on their own.
00:55:26:21 - 00:55:46:14
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah. Well, Bike Bus has been a phenomenal, but I want to watch as a PhD student, Jim's mom is doing her PhD thesis on on the bike bus and the bike bus volunteer. Our kids actually don't write bike bus because we walked. We walk to school. It's too close. Yeah. But we were, but with, Sam Balto, who's in Portland, and, he came to Barcelona.
00:55:46:14 - 00:56:07:00
Jordi Honey-Roses
We organized the first bike summit in Barcelona two years ago, and it was in Frankfurt. And then in, this April, it will be in Worcester and it will be April, I believe it's, ninth, 10th and 11th in the UK. And Rob Collier is organizing it. I'd encourage anyone is to connect with the bike, bus and movement.
00:56:07:00 - 00:56:27:07
Jordi Honey-Roses
If you're going to be in the UK in April, come join us. We'll all be there. It's a it's a very it's an inspirational group of volunteers and there's, there's an interest in connecting and sharing stories. I've also touched with the with the bike bus, organizer in Vancouver. And I know, I know, there are many, out there with our student with Gemma.
00:56:27:07 - 00:57:00:03
Jordi Honey-Roses
We did a global survey of, global bypass. We looked at average distances. So the average district distance, a bike, bicycle, was about to 2.7km. Seems like between 2 and 3km is the sweet spot of distance, because it's too short and you walk and it's too long is difficult for kids. We're learning about the average age because, for example, a bike, bus, average age for kids is a little bit younger than what you might anticipate, which is really interesting because a lot of bike training, goes to kids that are older, and a lot of bike research is on kids that are older, but yet the kids that are really enjoying and
00:57:00:03 - 00:57:23:24
Jordi Honey-Roses
soaking up, the joy of bike paths are younger. And so I think we need to be thinking about, in terms of cycle training through who our target audience is. And when you look at when you think about behavior change programs and what what are the elements needed? You need they need to be, consistent in time, then over repeated if it's social, then as a group needs to be experiential, right.
00:57:23:24 - 00:57:42:26
Jordi Honey-Roses
You need experience since bike bus has all those elements, has all the elements of of really transforming how these kids think about, transportation, they'll never unlearn that experience of biking in the center of the street, with their families and friends. So I'm very excited about bike bus and look forward to doing more, more work on that.
00:57:42:28 - 00:57:45:26
Jordi Honey-Roses
So if anyone wants to connect with me about that.
00:57:45:28 - 00:58:15:12
John Simmerman
Well, then I'd like to say that the bike bus is sort of one of those strategic little culture bomb things that can really help push cities, to have some sense of urgency getting back to that term, to change their built environment. Because ultimately, in symbol two and I have talked about this before extensively is that the ultimate goal is that we are able to create an environment where the kids can be doing this on their own.
00:58:15:15 - 00:58:39:13
John Simmerman
Yeah, because that's one of the things that, you know, when the Dutch see the you know, this with the Dutch, you know, with their mindset, they're like, yeah, you mean Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday for mean. It's every day because the kids just naturally, you know, as they roll down the block, you know, that their friends, you know, get on and they create and I video I've, you know, created many videos that are like this where it's like, oh wow.
00:58:39:14 - 00:59:09:07
John Simmerman
Is that like a bike bus. And so. Well, no, it's just a whole bunch of friends, you know, it grows as they go down the block as they're they're heading to school and they're able to do that. That's the ultimate goal of this, is that we're able to create that transformation. It is that culture bomb, sort of, you know, if we want to use the term orange peel a little, the hat tip to to Jason Slaughter that not just bikes, to try to, you know, change the mindset that it should be like this all the time.
00:59:09:09 - 00:59:28:29
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah, exactly. We want to change our cities. Ultimately, we want to see children, to be able to feel safe biking to school by themselves and and have. And if we can, if we can have fun while we what we do, what we ask for that, then all the better. And bike bus has taken off because it has that fun element, but also has that activism element.
00:59:29:02 - 00:59:39:01
Jordi Honey-Roses
Has a practical element. It brings together a lot of different, different, different reasons why to participate. Yeah. So, yeah. You know, I'd be.
00:59:39:04 - 00:59:41:23
John Simmerman
You mentioned School Street. So let's let's end with School Street.
00:59:41:24 - 01:00:03:23
Jordi Honey-Roses
Oh, streets. Sure. So, so I participated. I was invited by the city of Barcelona to evaluate their the public use of public space outside their school streets and as a research at the University of British Columbia. When I when I was first invited, I did a lot of work on impact evaluation and and planning and and I and I asked them, are you are you do you really wanted a, an academic to evaluate?
01:00:03:23 - 01:00:29:00
Jordi Honey-Roses
Because, you know, I, I really want to evaluate it using the, you know, the highest standards of evaluation. And they they said yes, absolutely. We, we really want to know this work. So we, we, we decided to use, assess, not only the schools that received the school streets interventions, but also comparable control streets. Right. Because, before after an assessment wouldn't be sufficient to really tease out the impact of the program.
01:00:29:02 - 01:00:52:21
Jordi Honey-Roses
And so for, for each neighborhood school street, we looked, we had a comparable control, which allowed us to do a difference in difference estimation on the impact of school streets and the use of public space. And we found increased use in children play more, diversity somewhere, where, girls playing. Yeah, etc. more elderly. And so we have really, really great, great outcomes.
01:00:52:23 - 01:01:12:18
Jordi Honey-Roses
And I worked with, Monica Wilder and, and many others. I asked school on that assessment. We're still working on getting our papers out. And our longest report is actually still in Catalan. So we need to get that out and English connected with some of the folks working on school streets elsewhere in Europe, notably Paris, of course.
01:01:12:21 - 01:01:37:26
Jordi Honey-Roses
Right. But we're working to get that get that research out because we had a great we have a really great, and compelling design research design, assessing that program. And one of the things that anyone comes across on and joins our program, we meet with the, the leaders of that of that, transformation. And then, and in those cases, you really have, streets that are but that remove traffic entirely.
01:01:37:28 - 01:02:05:07
Jordi Honey-Roses
And, and so you see even more bold well offers in the summer for full closure, but they also have sidewalk extensions, the multiple treatments. And, it's been and it's also exciting from we're also waiting to see where the where that where that program grows with goes with the new administration. We hope that it continues. We know I'm part of the the network of families schools and there's a big demand for for, for for more of those programs.
01:02:05:07 - 01:02:07:05
Jordi Honey-Roses
So we hope to see more of those soon as well.
01:02:07:08 - 01:02:48:05
John Simmerman
Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned Paris. Because that was one of the things that I was most impressed with this year in my return trip to Paris, was the to see some of the permanent street infrastructure transformations that took place under the school street program and, and really that powerful transformation of that space. I've had the opportunity to to look at and document a little bit, sort of the temporary school street, you know, interventions that take place with volunteers, you know, on the day of the morning of school and, and how they, you know, put some temporary stuff up to try to, decrease that through traffic and motor vehicles and divert motor vehicles
01:02:48:05 - 01:03:15:27
John Simmerman
away. But it's completely different when you see a high quality, you know, sort of like that final iteration of what the super blocks are looking like when you have really good, high quality transformations of the public space of what used to be a traffic sewer, used to be, drop off and pick up a nightmare. And you see that space transformed into people oriented space, kid friendly space.
01:03:16:00 - 01:03:30:26
John Simmerman
You know, I went by on a Sunday and a Saturday and saw all the kids out shooting hoops and doing some fun stuff because it was an extension of their home, an extension of their school. It's a playground. And it used to be a traffic sewer.
01:03:30:29 - 01:03:54:27
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And, and well, you know, in Barcelona, interestingly, my, you know, I saw a lot of those really nice permanent designs. But what we're hearing from the new city is that they might be thinking about the of course, they started with the easiest streets, right. The streets have the least amount of traffic. Yeah. And so actually, you know, they're they're picking the low hanging fruit and they're thinking they might be doing some temporary closure.
01:03:55:00 - 01:04:12:25
Jordi Honey-Roses
Design sort of like what the, what the in the, they're doing in the UK. And so it'll be interesting to see what Barcelona's version of that modality might look like in the next, the next administration. So so stay tuned for, for more from our school streets here. We hope.
01:04:12:28 - 01:04:52:21
John Simmerman
Well, and you just mentioned the UK. So I want to also emphasize too that, you know, some of the strategies that they're implementing, especially in the, the London in some of the London boroughs areas, there is this concept of combining the school street, with the low traffic neighborhoods sort of concept of, you know, let's, let's kind of transform some of these spaces and get some of these traffic diversions, bringing down the volume of motor vehicles throughout the entire area, not just in the block, you know, surrounding the schools, because that's one of the biggest things that the, you know, I talk about is, hey, let's transform entire communities into active towns, into
01:04:52:21 - 01:05:15:15
John Simmerman
places where all ages and abilities can get about. And then, just like we were referencing with the the bike bus, you know, we can create an environment where, you know, all ages and abilities across the entire spectrum of age and also physical abilities can be able to, you know, get around in their in their cities and feel welcome in that environment.
01:05:15:18 - 01:05:36:12
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah, that's absolutely the ultimate goal. And as long as we don't have that will still will still be, you know, you know pushing forward and bike bus is a fun way to to help make sure that we get, you know, super bike designs on all the city, all the city streets you know. But yeah, ultimately we want we want kids to be autonomous and to feel safe and parents too.
01:05:36:12 - 01:05:41:14
Jordi Honey-Roses
But, let them roam and enjoy the city with the same rates that we have.
01:05:41:16 - 01:05:59:18
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And for for those of you who don't have kids, maybe you just never had kids or you've you. The kids are out of the house. It's okay. You can do, you know, a bike bus, with a whole bunch of friends. One of the recent interviews that I did was with, Laura Mitchell in Minneapolis.
01:05:59:18 - 01:06:36:26
John Simmerman
And, you know, she shared some great photos of, like, entire groups of families getting together to to roll down some of the infrastructure or to get to a cafe to, to have dinner. And so, yeah, it's there's a lot of power in a whole bunch of people getting together to roll down and really activating the infrastructure that's in place as well as, you know, calling, you know, you know, setting up that, that expectation for the leaders of the cities that, hey, this is something that is truly appreciated by the constituency.
01:06:36:29 - 01:06:50:15
John Simmerman
And, and elections do matter. And, you know what? We need to start, you know, when you start listening to this community because they seem to want all these people friendly places. They seem to want streets for people.
01:06:50:17 - 01:07:18:01
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah. No, you're right there. You said you use the word power, but there's this energy, right? When you get when you get people moving on a, on a bike together or walking together and there's just this, this energy of all being there using the cycling infrastructure that, that, yeah. That's wonderful. And then when it's with kids, it's, it's even all the more wonderful because because they're there in the center of the street and they're with their friends, they're laughing and, you know, the city is theirs.
01:07:18:01 - 01:07:19:02
Jordi Honey-Roses
It's just so I.
01:07:19:05 - 01:07:25:07
John Simmerman
I would say the same thing also for the elderly, too, if you can have all generations there, and then you've got.
01:07:25:07 - 01:07:25:19
Jordi Honey-Roses
Somebody.
01:07:25:19 - 01:07:28:16
John Simmerman
Who may be in mobility devices and wheelchairs.
01:07:28:18 - 01:07:28:29
Jordi Honey-Roses
That.
01:07:28:29 - 01:07:38:29
John Simmerman
They light up. There's so much fun because of that power, that energy, because the, the word that you used, and we've used a couple times is fun and joy.
01:07:39:03 - 01:07:52:05
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yes, exactly. Yeah. Sam Balter says it's, the bike bus is like, surfing the wave of joy, right? It's like it's just you just. It's just wonderful. And you're all moving together.
01:07:52:08 - 01:08:09:15
John Simmerman
Well, I'm going to see, Sam in just a couple of weeks at the, Safe Routes, Partnership conference in Fort Collins, Colorado. So, I will be sure to mention to him when I see him that we had this wonderful conversation. Jordy, thank you so very much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast. This has been so much fun.
01:08:09:18 - 01:08:21:05
Jordi Honey-Roses
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. And, I appreciate the work you're doing to to get all this, all these insights and, knowledge out there. So thank you for for having me. Let me join you.
01:08:21:07 - 01:08:35:23
John Simmerman
Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Jordy. And if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, I'd be honored to have you subscribe to the channel. Just click on that subscription button down below and ring that notification bell.
01:08:35:23 - 01:08:54:10
John Simmerman
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01:08:54:10 - 01:09:20:02
John Simmerman
It really does mean so much to me. And until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers and again sending a huge thank you out to all my active Towns Ambassadors supporting the channel on Patreon. Find me a coffee YouTube. Super! Thanks! As well as making contributions to the nonprofit and purchasing things from the Active Towns store, every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated.
01:09:20:05 - 01:09:21:11
John Simmerman
Thank you all so much!