Urban Visionary: We Need to Redesign Our Cities

How do our physical spaces shape the way we live, connect, and thrive? In this episode of This Anthro Life, we delve into how design and the built environment impact today’s biggest challenges—climate change and social division. Featuring Vishaan Chakrabarti, architect and author of The Architecture of Urbanity, we explore how rethinking our spaces can foster joy, connection, and inclusivity.

Discover why our housing and public spaces matter more than ever in rebuilding our social fabric. From suburbs to cities, and rural America to bustling urban centers, this is a conversation about the role design plays in creating a better, more sustainable future.

Follow Vishaan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vishaan-chakrabarti-faia-a004b9113/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Most of us. We walk around and we imagine that
the physical environment that we're in has sort of always
been here. It's just sort of an a Priori kind
of idea. Suburbs are super new. Really, suburbs didn't come
into fruition until after World War Two, and they were
built very much by design Federal Highway Act, Mortgage Intratroduction
GI Bill, and then all sorts of other things that

(00:20):
racialized them, like redlining. I mean, I am not saying
all suburbs are racist, and we please stipulate that. All
I'm saying is that the origins of the suburban story
were very much about a certain white middle class that
government was designing for and our economic system was designing for.
In fact, I think a lot of the anger the

(00:42):
again in Maga is about the fact that government. It
wasn't that people weren't on government welfare. They were, It's
just that that welfare served a certain group of people,
and there is a desire to go back to that hell.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Everybody, welcome to this anthe life as always with your
host Edam Gambo. Really excited to be here with you today,
and we're diving into a topic that I think is
both super important and really really interesting for how we
might think about what we can do with the future.
And this is of course around like the lived and
built environment and basically how the spaces that we build
will shape what kind of society that we can be
here or it could be right. And so I'm really

(01:24):
thrilled to be joined today by Vishon Chakrabarti, who's the
founder of the Practice for Architecture and Urbanism or Powell.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
As well as the author of a really awesome new.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Book call The Architecture of Robanity, Designing for Culture and
Nature and Joy. And it's interesting because, like a lot
of the conversations that we see happening online and around
folks like about cities like get stuck between these two
technical areas. One is kind of on the idea of
like do we have the right metrics and the right
kind of carbon capture things that we're thinking about and
other things about that cities are either just like wastelands
or like the problem for climate change because there's so

(01:54):
many people, there's a lot of pollution, all these elements
kind of coming together, but you approach this problem differently.
And I think that it's important right that we can
actually think about design in a thoughtful way that can
kind of help usall some of these biggest challenges that
we have coming, you know, from things like social isolation,
climate change to I think importantly helping create more joyful
in connected communities. So as an apologist that I like

(02:14):
this idea and this approach.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
So let's let's kind of talk about that.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Like, the one of the things that really caught my
attention early on in your work is this idea of
like cities as an area that we can create positive
social friction. And I love this idea because oftentimes we
think about that friction feels like a bad word or
something that we don't want. But then you know, on
the other side, I'm like a frictionless experience might be
a little bit too slippery, and we might think about
that in terms of Amazon's you know cart from product

(02:41):
to buying is a little bit too frictionless that I
end to buy too many things sometimes. So somewhere in
between ite and the right kind of friction, especially social,
seems important. So what is this this kind of concept.
I think it's a really important kind of anchoring piece
for us to think about. What is it that cities
can do for us in this kind of space of
creating this positive social friction.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, well, thanks for having me out, and it's great
to be here. So the book is about, you know,
what design and the built environment have to do with
I think the pressing challenges of our time, and to me,
the ones that are the most pressing are climate change
and social and political division. Obviously, we just came out

(03:19):
of a very very tough election, very divided country, and
so this idea of social frictions I think really timely
and poignant to talk about, because you know, a frictionless
world is sort of one where everyone agrees with you, right,
And so a lot of social media algorithms are out

(03:41):
there putting us in our silos with other people who
agree with us, and so we experienced sort of less
and less friction until like the algorithm decides to like
tit one of us against the other in some like
anger filled you know, social media rage. And so I
think collective physical environments. And I'm going to use that

(04:03):
kind of wonky terms with the cities because the book
is really trying to define urbanity very expansively, not just
as big cities, but even small villages, even rural main streets. Right,
that what the space of collective environments do is they
bring us together face to face, and we then have

(04:24):
to you know, confront people who look different than us,
pray differently differently than us, vote differently than us, and
you know, to me, the distinction between community and urbanity
is community is often the way with people who are
very like minded find common cause together, and there's nothing
wrong with that. But urbanity is this idea of being

(04:48):
confronted and ultimately celebrating difference. Right that if you see
a person in a borca, maybe they are way less
scary in person than they are as like this kind
of thing to be feared online. Right. And similarly, so

(05:10):
like a lot of our work as a firm is
in the industrial Midwest, and it's literally like a lot
of the cities where the red pixels and the blue
pixels meet, and we create a lot of public space
in those cities. So I've seen people who are clearly
you know, in one political camp and clearly in another
political camp, and like I've actually helped create space where

(05:32):
they're dancing together. And like that to me is really
really important in the times we live in and coming
out of the aftermath of this election, and so you know,
I was really glad to get this invitation because you know,
I don't think the fields outside of design take anthropology
think that much about correct me if I'm wrong, think

(05:55):
that much about design and the built environment is something
that's really influential on how people behave. But I think
that there is a strong case to be made that
in a world of social media and a world of AI,
and a world where technology and algorithms are actively sort
of messing with our heads and doing things with our

(06:15):
sense of solidarity as a people, that the built environment
can kind of do the opposite. The built environment can
provide a kind of societal glue in terms of again,
like you know, we need to rebuild rural main streets
in this country. Rural main streets have been decimated, and
that's something we can talk about. But even in our
big cities, we need better and more public space that

(06:40):
feels safe and places where we can really celebrate difference
and that that celebration, in turn is an act of joy.
And I think it's really important to lean into that
because I think you're right, a lot of the literature
around cities is either kind of technocratic or completely misses

(07:01):
the environmental argument by saying, well, they're heat islands and
there are lots of people and they're polluted. No, no, no cities,
When people especially like live in apartments and use mass transit,
we have a way lower carbon footprint per person. They're
actually very environmental friendly. Even a small village where people
can just walk around more as opposed to getting in

(07:21):
a car to get a quarter of milk has substantial
environmental benefits. And so there's a lot we could talk
about here about what the environment can do. And I
just find that most policymakers academics don't really pay attention
to this aspect of society at all. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
No, it's a good point, and I think you're right
that there's kind of a it's just like a there
right that literally it's the place in this right where
we are, but we don't often kind of reflect on
that in terms of how is our activities behavior shaped
by like how are we in certain spaces?

Speaker 1 (07:54):
Right?

Speaker 2 (07:54):
And it's funny because like a lot of folks might
also approach this from the perspective of like, okay, if
I'm beginning to think about built the environment in space,
like both I can I think about, like how am
I about to walk around a sidewalk.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
Some people might come at it from the like Jane Jacobs, you.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Know, neighborhood's eyes on the street kind of perspective of
like how can we all be in a neighborhood space together.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
And build that.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Others might come from it from a kind of I
guess the consumer oriented lens worth thinking about like Howard
Schultz from the former CEO of Starbucks idea of like
third space in terms of like what can a coffee
shop it be? That's not work, that's not home. But
you know, I kind of think also the important way
of how you're approaching this too is that we're we're
kind of missing things before just going from these these
two angles only, and that I love this idea that

(08:33):
urbanity doesn't have to be in a city, right, that
like it's it is about like when we think about
productive frictions too. It is like I think you talk
about that it can be in like rural villages, right,
it can be in these other much smaller spaces. And
so that's something that it's important for us to take seriously.
And what I appreciate that your work does too, is
that you approach this kind of like an anthropologist, right,
you are saying, how do we bring all these disparate

(08:53):
perspectives and viewpoints of how we approach solving a problem together,
because we can't solve them as silos. That's actually part
of the that's actually part of the problem, right, we
keep siloing our thinking into into one arena. And so
in this case, like the question of housing, I think
is such an important piece ford of like how we
are able to live together?

Speaker 3 (09:11):
Right?

Speaker 2 (09:11):
And you know it might be either the masaceust in
me or the I don't know, the social scientists, but.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Also how you walk us through in architection of rumanity
to think about like a lot of how did we
get to some of these challenge points right in terms
of like auto focused car culture, the rise of suburbs, right,
and like you know, in a lot of practices that
were like redlining in terms of like doing racial segregation
intentionally in cities to split out split out groups. And
so I'm curious, like as you think about like some
of these historical trends now for folks that haven't checked

(09:39):
out the book yet, like walk us through I guess
to some of these, like how we how we have
like gotten ourselves to this point of challenge in terms
of like how we've been setting up cities since the
fifties really, I mean obviously before that too, Yeah, like
what took place here?

Speaker 1 (09:51):
And so at the first half of the book is
really about how we got here. And I think the
important thing to understand is for your listeners especially, you
said something that's really critical, which is most of us
we walk around and we imagine that the physical environment
that we're in has sort of always been here. It's
just sort of an a Priori kind of idea. Right.
Suburbs are super new. Really, suburbs didn't come into fruition

(10:14):
until after World War Two, and they were built very
much by design, Federal Highway Act, Mortgage introtroduction GI Bill,
and then all sorts of other things that racialized them,
like redlining. I mean, and people sometimes get the wrong
hear the wrong thing when I say that, I am
not saying all suburbs are racists, and we please stipulate
that all I'm saying is that the origins of the

(10:38):
suburban story were very much about a certain white middle
class that government was designing for, and our economic system
was designing for. In fact, I think a lot of
the anger the again in MAGA is about the fact
that government. It wasn't that people weren't on government welfare

(10:59):
they heer is just that that welfare served a certain
group of people, and there is a desire to go
back to that. And then you know, sixties civil rights
movement happens, the definition of public expands. It wasn't until
nineteen sixty five intol African American women had the right
to vote nationwide, and so yeah, yeah, I mean that's

(11:22):
the year I was born. I mean, I still I
find that it's astonishing. And so our definition of public
doesn't really include everyone until the late sixties, and by
that point they're you know, and so this mentality around
government spending. So, you know, a country that only ten
years earlier had passed the biggest federal infrastructure bill in

(11:47):
the country, the National Highway and Defense Act, that built
our interest at highway system. None of that was seen
as government waste, none of it was seen as like profligate.
And by the time you move into to Lyndon Johnson's
Great Society programs, suddenly it's all like we've got to
starve the beast. You know, it's all the government waste.

(12:08):
And so the point is, no matter where you sit
with that politically, the important thing to understand is that
the physical environment we have today was a consequence of
policy and a consequence of design, and there have been
lots of failures in terms of that. We created, basically
with suburban living, the most carbon intensive, racially, socially and

(12:33):
economically segregated form of human habitation in the history of
our species. And you know, we actually have this idea
that it's about the American dream. That's not true. The
American dream was defined in the nineteen thirties had nothing
to do with houses and cars. That had to do
it equal opportunity. And so what could a new version

(12:57):
of the American dream look like? And this is actually
important internationally because that old version of a house and
a car to cars along set up a definition of
success not just for Americans but for people around the world.
And so like two billion people entered the middle class
around the world since the nineteen nineties, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Turkey.

(13:20):
Those people, many of them emulated the suburban life as
their kind of definition of success, and so the planet
is really straining under the resource demands of that, you know,
David Wells. Wells talks about the fact that most of
the we associate climate change in greenhouse gases with the

(13:41):
industrial revolution, most of the most pernicious stuff has happened
since the first episode of Fleinfeld Eric, and he talks
about this, right that, like, really, this is a pretty
recent phenomena in terms of how intensively we started using resources,
mainly driven by expanding houses and expands and cars. But
the other thing we did is we made all that

(14:03):
stuff really unaffordable. We locked in a certain set of
benefits for people my age, right and basically made it
exclusionary to generations that are younger than me. And so
we you know, everywhere we wrote this article. My firm
POW wrote this article in the New York Times about

(14:24):
how to create more housing across New York City, and
it was extraordinary the global response to that article. And
what I basically discovered is that there's an affordability crisis
of housing everywhere, like in almost everywhere in the world,
in almost every size community in America, from small towns

(14:46):
to villages all the way up to the big cities,
and so to me, the important aspect of being able
to say we designed for one kind of you know,
settlement pattern, it means we can design for another right.

(15:06):
And so means we can design for another right. And
so if people want to live in multi family housing,
they want more walkable environment, aggressive say so, but there's
data right like, so you can the most walkable environments
in the country are the most popular, and they're increasingly
the most expensive. So that's where people want to live.

(15:27):
It's just more convenient. That's true of red states, it's
true of blue states. So how do we produce more
of that? How do we make it more affordable? Because
we know it's more ecological and I believe it's more joyful.
You know, there's a great book called The Good Life
that talks about, you know, human health and longevity and

(15:51):
basically says that if you control for a bunch of variables,
that what really leads to human health and longevity is
the strength of one social connections, right, which leads me
as an architect to think about, well, what are the
kinds of environments that create social connection? And so like,
Towards the end of the book, I talk about housing

(16:11):
and housing prototypes that could build more neighborliness, basically build
more of a sense of community again amongst different people,
but that's much more affordable and in a way that,
again I think would be joyful and just turn down
the political heat that we seem to be experiencing right now,

(16:32):
because everyone, regardless of your political camp, are feeling the
stresses and strains of this right and so I think
we're at a really good moment to reconsider how we've
been living, what our definition of success is, whether we
need to kind of retool the American dream so that

(16:56):
it is more inclusive and more environmentally friendly, less segregated,
and more joyful. I think that's an interesting conversation to have,
and I don't think it's a particularly partisan conversation. I
think it's something that most everyone wants to get involved
with at some level. Mm.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Yeah, I agree, I think that, and I think it's
that's I think part of the power of this approach
is that we often get caught either in an abstract
conversation and or as like a boogeyman thing that we're
trying to like, or a straw man we're trying to
fight against. Typically, when it comes to you know, political division,
but then we think about both what do we share
and that can literally be the shared environment, but then

(17:37):
also what is it that we are having trouble sharing
and how is it related to our belt environment too?
You know, because it's like this interesting piece that when
we think about like what is like a public space
that can actually help foster you know, kind of cultural interaction,
like interaction with nature, interaction that's joyful with folks.

Speaker 3 (17:55):
You know, Oftentimes we might think of like a.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
Park, right, so we can all all kind of like
congregate in a space together. But I'm kind of curious
like as we think about that, because like that's that's
like a super baseline example, right, And so actually I'm
glad you brought up that that kind of housing example too,
because the kind of the Goldilocks size of density that
you kind of talk about towards end the book. Do
I think it's really compelling way to have us kind
of think about one, Like, I totally agree. I think

(18:18):
it's important point for us to recognize like that another
world is possible because we built this one, and it
like it doesn't mean because we built this one that's it, right,
And as we kind of think through that when it
comes to things like housing and dwelling as something that
like both is it should be afforded to.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
Everybody as a right.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
Then on top of that, like to live with dignity
at thest like another another key piece here that I've
also seen you write about, and that it's important for
us to kind of think, you know, we kind of
talk about both the home as that kind of place,
and like there's there's two angles that are kind of
percolating in my head here, and like the one is
the kind of public spaces that we share, like parks, sidewalks, uh,
you know, maybe a shopping flosy kind of area, and

(18:53):
the other one, of course is like the dwelling, like
like the home, and how we've set these both up
Like one you're kind of pointing towards here too, that
like the suburbs is one of those places that like
having like the auto automobile focus and like in the
single family home or like this radically new experiment in
the human story, right that we've like decided we didn't
like we haven't had We've not had the suburbs for
a long time, right, And so that's like being a

(19:14):
built in fracturing of how we lived together separately, and
then on top of that, like how are we thinking
about public space and in terms of you know, who
has access to it? And that's also comes to our
affordable housing kind of crisis question too. So as you're
you're thinking about this and like and maybe we can
talk about the kind of the research you did around
the how to we like build the homes for for

(19:36):
a million a million New New Yorkers As we think
about that, like you kind of bring up this idea
of the Goldilocks dimensions of a building, right because we
kind of think, oh, if I need to have like
either you know, affordable housing or new housing, it's like
immediately people tend to think of And I did it
first too, before I was looking at your work, like
you know, seventy five story building, not the top, but
just like you know, like a fifteen story building, and
like you have this kind of incorrect idea of like

(19:58):
what the size actually has to be, and like this
Goldilocks you know dimensions you kind of talk about, like
is three stories that's not at all crazy to think about.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
You know?

Speaker 1 (20:07):
Yeah? Yeah, So I mean, look, fifteen stories might be
absolutely appropriate in downtown Boston or you know New York
and Philadelphia, San Francisco. Most of the countries are much
lower scale, and we need to be super sensitive to that.
The three story thing, really it's a consequence of the
building code. Basically, the building code says you can build

(20:27):
a three story building without an elevator as long as
the ground floor units are accessible to a wheelchair, and
so as soon as you have so it's a step function.
As soon as you have four stories, you need an elevator,
and that changes everything because you need one elevator, you
need two elevators, and then you need fire stairs, and
then you're pouring a bunch of concrete. And then the
only way the developer can like even break even is

(20:49):
building a fifteen story building. And so that's why that
Goldilocks module and the Goldilocks reference is something between a
single family house and a tower basically, right, So it's
wheat spot in between. And the beauty of that and
the reason it's important for this idea of social connection
positive social friction is you're right, a park is one

(21:11):
example of all of that. But the reason this housing
lends itself to that it is really two things. One
is if you basically just got a single stare that
connects all the apartments in a building. It means people
run into each other on that stair you know, if
there's an elderly neighbor that you haven't seen for a while,
you get worried. There's something about it that's much less anonymous.

(21:33):
And you know, we used to there's a picture of
the book of like these really beautiful forms of density
we built all over the world, Rome tel Aviv, Mumbai,
which was basically, you know, like twenty apartment units wrapped
around a staircase and one single elevator that was in
a case. All of that's illegal today because of fire

(21:54):
code and wheelchair code and for legitimate reasons. But we
we you know, we regulated ourselves out of some really
beautiful Basically, most of Europe has built in that kind
of density, and most of it's illegal today in terms
of building code, which is why everything has to revert
to skyscrapers when it gets bigger. So this three story

(22:15):
thing does build community just by having that single stare.
The other thing about it is it's a building block,
and it's really a prototype. It's not a design, but
it's a building block that allows you to organize streets
or courtyards or other forms of sort semi public space,
which all of our great cities have, right, which is like,

(22:38):
you know, you come off a big street, then you're
on a small street. Maybe you walk through a little
courtyard or a use to get to an apartment. And
that hierarchy of public space is very important to people's
sense of their community, their neighborhood, what scale they relate to,
who they run into at the grocery store, the dry cleaner,

(22:59):
all of that stuff really matters. It makes people feel connected.
We have a loneliness crisis in the country right now,
and you know, and I just want to like, we
can talk about the suburbs, but to me, the you know,
the suburbs that are close into cities, right the Lexington, Massachusetts,

(23:21):
and the Montclair, New Jersey, and all those places are fine,
and like some of them have some mass transit access.
So what worries me much more? Like I just finished
my sixth cross country trip and like, again I go
back to this election and how disconnected I feel people

(23:43):
are on the coast, whether they live in the cities
or the suburbs, from what's happened in rural America and
why there is the level of anger at both parties.
At both parties, we've decimated rural America right through policy,
through design, you know. And so like most of rural

(24:05):
America had main streets, and those main streets were where people,
where older people saw each other, where teenagers flirted, all
of that kind of stuff. The main streets then got
replaced by shopping malls, you know, through the seventies and
eighties and into the nineties. So the main streets, all
the stores became vacant, right, and so everyone hang out

(24:27):
at the shopping mall, but at least there was some
kind of societal space in the shopping mall. Then big
box e commerce came along and said, oh, we don't
have to build all of that social space that's in
a shopping mall. We can just have a big box
store and a bunch of asphallt.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
Right.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Yeah. And so when you go through all of that,
which you notice is there is now no social fabric anymore.
There's no social glue that's pulling people together. I mean,
I'm sure people can still go to church or go
to a dance something, but that's a destination. It's not
just a place where people hang out. We did this

(25:05):
project in Columbus, Indiana, which is just a canopy over
an intersection, but it was an invitation for people to
use that canopy to close the street to cars and
do festivals there. And there have been all sorts of
very different ethnic events, you know, Pride Week and Mike

(25:26):
Pences Indiana, you know, all of this stuff that happened
there just by virtue of trying to create an invitation
of some public space on a space that's normally used
by a car. And so, you know, this is one
of my main takeaways from going cross country that we've
ripped away all the physical places there are no there

(25:51):
are no parks per se, right. You know, sure some
of the bigger cities across the country and parks, but
just a regular small town, it'd be hard pressed to
find a park, a playground, you know, in some cases
even a sidewalk, right. And so what you're then doing
is you're relegating people to their basements and glowing screens

(26:14):
where they find community. And that, of course is algorithm
driven in the most dimissive form of finding community. And
so I think that like this is now you know, look,
obviously I wish the other person had won, because she
was talking about three million new housing units, and I

(26:34):
think there would have been a really interesting conversation about
what kind of housing and for whom and could it
form more community fabric. I'm still hopeful that even the
things that are flowing out of Biden's infrastructure bill will
you know, provide some powder for us to go out

(26:55):
and build some of the kind of societal fabric I'm
talking about. But that, to me is the physical challenge
needs in front of us that would over time, help
to seal some of the riffs that we're feeling in
our country because there's just no place to go to

(27:15):
be together.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
No, and that that's like a that's it's it's it's
a stark reminder, right that we have to understand where
we're looking for one right, And I can kind of see,
like where are these stories? I recently I was speaking
with Brian Reisinger on the podcast, and he is a
he's a fourth generation Wisconsin farmer and and you know,
and just wrote a book about like basically his family's

(27:40):
story over the past one hundred years, you know, and
like basically this to your exact point, that the ultimate
decimation of kind of like rural America and how that
is on one had led to like, yeah, this is
like this deep anger at like both political parties right again,
it's not just not just a one off or like
one party kind of anger. But recognizing this is this
is a really important point too, of like, as like
the physical space of towns have changed, right, and that

(28:02):
oftentimes if you're in royal community you're more spread out.
But then where do you come together? Right for these
kind of you know, get togethers. And that's an interesting
piece I thought about in terms of like a church
as a destination space versus necessarily just like you might
just happen to be there, right, you know, because it's
like it's more and more of a timed event kind
of thing.

Speaker 3 (28:20):
You know.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
It can be a general public space too, of course,
but like that's an important thing for us to recognize.
Two of Like, even if we say, well, there's this
area people can get together, it's like, but is it
what kind of character does it has in terms of.

Speaker 3 (28:29):
Like how are we getting together?

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Well? Again, this is the distinction in my mind between
community and urbanity. If it's a destination space, you know,
if it's a church, it's people who pray together and
there's that's great, but it is not gonna bring people
of different faiths together, right for the most part. Right
it it's it's so you know, like a Mason's lodge,

(28:50):
whatever it is. Those are people who are finding common
cause and they you know, great. But the thing is
what real public space does is it creates places of serendipity,
places where you're going to run into people that you
didn't plan to run into, and see people you didn't
plan to see. And again, especially like you know, the

(29:14):
country is much more diverse than people think, you know.
And so like take this Springfield, Ohio thing, right, Like
you know, like the real story is they're legal migrants.
People wanted them in the air because they needed workers. Now,
how do you create spaces that people can interact so

(29:34):
that community understanding can take place between you know, the
populations that there and newcomers, right? And that I think
is a really American story, right, Like this is kind
of like the foundations of this country that we don't

(29:55):
just hang out together in tribes, right, but that we
actually are a big polyglot nation. And so and I
really believe in that. Look, I've I grew up outside
of Boston and experienced a tremendous amount of racism. And
I've experienced a lot of that kind of stuff on

(30:16):
both coasts, and yet in my six cross country cross
country drives, have experienced a lot less of it. You know,
the country is an amazing place. And even though people
may harbor whatever views they harbor, when you're face to face,
and this is the whole thing about this positive social
friction idea. You know, people can be so repugnant online,

(30:40):
but when people are face to face, it's a different interaction.
And I would argue that good social inhibition depths in
and because it's steps in, it's you know, there is
organically some sense of like if I was I was

(31:03):
in a pretty rural town in Utah and there's a
place called New York Pizza. I had a slice of
pizza in there, and I said, you know, I got
to tell you, the pizza is really good. And I'm
from New York City and so you know, I'm talking
to the woman behind the counter who has never been
to New York City. I assure you, and like that

(31:27):
stuff is really important. That's what gives you some definition
or idea that you actually share this idea of America
and this idea of a country, right, And so I
just think that there's a lot of work to do here,

(31:47):
you know that, Like there's just so many different you know,
where we want this competition to expand the rock and
Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and rock and role
is kind of like, you know, there's only a few
bipartisan things left in the country, you know, it's sort
of like pizza, rock and roll and maybe NASA, right,

(32:08):
Like there's like, you know, so this again is a
space of social interaction, and we were able to create
this kind of jam space, this lobby that people could
come to without having to pay for a ticket, and they
can hang out in. Young people can hang out in
make music together. And again you'd get a lot of

(32:31):
walks of life through that space. And so I think
there's just an example after example that you can look
to where we could create this very positive sense of
urbanity even in very small places.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
That's a great point.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
And so part of it too, it makes me think,
is like how are we thinking about the built environment
spaces and like we can take something as quote unquote small, right,
or like individual as a home and thinking about how
we're building that in terms of multi family housing or
you know, a bigger example that can either be you know,
a train station, thinking of like like Pennsylvania Station. I

(33:08):
was thinking of the work that y'all have done on
planning in that space, and also in like rock role
Hall of Fame is a good example too of like
there's a paid way to go into the building, but
then also like you also have a public space kind
of in the in the entry area too, to hang
out and have that kind of serendipitous space. And I
guess as we think about that too, it's like I
love this idea of kind of intentionally designing for serendipity, right,

(33:30):
like having these kind of chance encounters with folks that
you may have not planned to see. But then that's
like where like the magic kind of happens, you know,
And it's like I'm also thinking about this from you
like the the I guess the other weirder example of
like Burning Man that's like designed around serendipitous occasions and
just you know, wacky coming together, but it's got its
own class issues, right, But like you know, so how
do we think about that like in terms of if

(33:51):
like what does it mean to kind of design for serendipity,
if we're kind of thinking about this in a space.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Well, so you mentioned Penn Station, and for your listeners
who don't know, Penn Station, it's the most horrible place
in the United States. It's it's you know, it's this
underground train station. It's the busiest transportation hub in the
Western hemisphere. Very confusing, right, Well, it was designed for
one hundred and twenty thousand people a day. It handles
about six hundred thousand, and so it's incredibly congested. There

(34:19):
was a beautiful old station there that had been torn
down years ago, triggered the nation's landmarks laws, and now
we're left with its mess, and a number of us
have been trying to fix the mess. But I compare
it to Grand Central Station, right, not very far away, glorious, right,
And this is the way I'm going to try to

(34:39):
answer a question about how you designed for these things.
You can look at the train stations, right, like, so
it's supposed to be functional, to Penn Station was designed
to be this functional thing. You get off the subway,
you race to your commuter train, and like, if you
look at the people at Penn Station, they all look miserable.
They're all staring down at the floor. They're not looking

(35:00):
at each other eye to eye. There is no real
serendipity because you're just like bumping and grinding your way
through the thing. Grand Central is a ballet. When you
look at Grand Central and there's hundreds of thousands of
people moving through there too, but there's big, lofty ceilings,
there's natural light coming in. There's almost no signage because

(35:23):
the architecture tells you where to go. You don't need
the signs. But to me, when I'm always amazed by
is I walk from Grand Central Station all the time,
and they're always tourists taking pictures from different vantage points,
and you know they are observing the ballet, like there's
people taking video, and there's this way in which everyone's

(35:45):
moving around each other and not bumping and grinding into
each other like pland Station. And what that does is
it gives everyone the room to kind of exhale, and
so you can look up and when you look up again,
you see people who think differently than you. That and
I know people might think, oh, New Yorkers, like everyone's
the same. That's not true at all. I mean, not

(36:06):
just in terms of like racial or social diversity, but
also political diversity. You know, if you look at the
numbers that came out of this last election, you know
it was much closer than people think. And so you know,
to me, the contrast between the two stations kind of
tells you all that you need to know about, like

(36:29):
what makes for good public space and what makes for
terrible public space. And you know, the distinction between those
two things in terms of cost is is so deminimous
compared to the uplift the sense of positive experience that
you get. And again, same thing in small towns where

(36:54):
you can have a bus station, you can have a park,
you can have just a main street and just a
little bit care of that says that there's this idea
that we care about ourselves, that we have a sense
of society, and that therefore we can get along and
can bridge our differences. And I'm just you know, it

(37:15):
may sound all very naive, but we can have to.
We're at a cultural moment in this country where we
have to kind of go back to ground zero and say,
hang on a second, what is the country about. I mean,
to me, the one piece of good news that came
out of this election was that it was not close,

(37:37):
and that meant that those who lost have to kind
of look in the mirror and have to kind of
understand that this is the country that they live in
and that there needs to be some sense of humility
about what we missed. I'm going to say we because
I'm just going to include myself in that, right, And

(37:58):
to me, a very good starting point is how do
we come together with people who think so fundamentally differently
than us and find common cause? And I think you
need a platform for that. I think you need space
for that. I don't think social media is going to
do it.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
Yeah, one hundred percent would agree with that too, and
that it's we we've been algorithmically driven or drooped or
whatever we want to say verb wise of just like
what is it that we're paying attention to?

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Right?

Speaker 2 (38:30):
Or I guess we're sarah to genergic. What's the words
sarrasin energic and the you know, our brains are saying, hey,
this is good.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
I'm not smart enough to know that word.

Speaker 3 (38:40):
I don't either, so we're so someone knows that word.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
But you know, again, don't mean hit from like wanting
to look at our phones, but realizing that like that's
actually a huge fuel of our kind of isolation crisis,
right that we looking down versus up, and like it's
it's amazing. It's a great great contrast of like Penstation
and Grand Central Station to realize like how are we
actually physically being in a space and like is it
in like does it inspire us to look up? Or

(39:02):
like you know, make I want to take pictures of you,
like the like the kind of bault of the seedlings
and or yeah, it's just like watching how how it's
like the flow is happening, right, and there's something that's
like really alluring of that too.

Speaker 3 (39:12):
But just seeing that kind that kind of human that
human flow piece.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
This makes me think too that like one of the
other contrasts, I really think that's important. And then also
I like that you explore is the the idea of
like one of the challenges and the something that you
put words to the thing that I'd just seen before
I hadn't thought too much about, but that like a
lot of downtowns just looks the same across the world, right,
there's like a very similar skyscrape or architecture that.

Speaker 3 (39:37):
You can just envisions. Oh that that's what a downtown
looks like.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
And as we think about like being intentional about our
built environment how it shapes how we interact with one another,
there's this interesting piece of like keeping like local cultural flair,
but then also kind of putting you know, what are
great standards that we can use across different places, you know,
in spaces and kind of globally, and so how do
we kind of think about that that idea of like

(40:03):
keeping the kind of local cultural flavor of you know,
buildings and spaces, but then also like letting us kind
of think about different scales of buildings. So it's like
we don't have just kind of the similar or saving
exact kind of downtown construction, but recognize that like we're
e were trying to build a certain space that we
can have things that we know work I guess, like
whether it's using digenous materials or it's you know, kind

(40:26):
of being intentional about it if it's a bigger building,
I suppose, you know, don't. I'm kind of back and
forth trying to think about about this idea of like
what does it mean to do that, Like how do
we keep like efficiency requirements and safety regulations in place
as well as keeping like local culture as part of our.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Building The process book talks a great deal about this.
I mean, I think we need to sort of step
so really, since the advent of commercial air travel and
then accelerated by global technology, technological services, communications, and so forth,

(41:04):
you know, we obviously went through this period of mass
globalization that included the ability to mass produce all sorts
of building materials and so and actually the globalization of
the real estate industry, and so you had a lot
of you still have a lot of big firms that
are international firms now that build with a lot of

(41:24):
the same materials, to the point where you know, our
built environment is indistinguishable, you know, and I hear this
all the time. I'm a very pro growth, pro city person,
but it's hard to be pro urban growth if the
urban growth is so soul crushing. You know, this stuff
all looks the same, It's got the same chain store

(41:46):
at the bottom of it. It just you know, and
you don't even know where you are anymore. I would
argue that we've been experiencing for a while now, but
with the pandemic and now you've got a president talking
about tariffs like we're we're moving to I mean, I
don't think globalization is going to completely stop, but we're

(42:09):
transforming what it was to be. You know, like NAFTA,
all of that stuff was a different period of globalization.
And I think part of that is coming from a
real yearning people have to make sure that local histories
and narratives and cultures are somehow bulldozed by this universalist

(42:32):
kind of mentality that tries to make everything the same.
And architecture is both a mirror and a window into
what's going on in society, right and so it you know,
it both represents kind of that banala globalization, it's also
kind of, I think a window into the potential for

(42:54):
a different future. And so like our Domino project in Brooklyn,
you know, is very much about being rooted in local
history and culture and heritage and also looking forward to
a kind of different reality in a different time. And
I think that duality of having that bosan kind of

(43:15):
liminal condition of being able to say, you can be
both of the larger world, but you have to pull
people with you alongside you in terms of history and
narrative and culture. And I think this is really endemic
to our species. I think it's something that's really important
to us. And so what I and the book talks

(43:40):
about this a lot. What I've just sensed a great
deal of in that globalizing of cities is this kind
of on nui, this tremendous sense of loss, right, where
people just feel like their environments are getting bulldozed in
favor of something that like is kind of unrecognized and

(44:00):
kind of banal and awful. And it just doesn't have
to be that way. And so that's meant to be
a clarion called in my industry, not just the architects,
but the real estate developers and the just all the
people who are responsible for this, the government officials to
just care more about the environments in which they're building,

(44:22):
to build things that are just more materially sensitive, you know.
So like in our firm, we have a whole set
of criteria that we put any design through to say,
you know, is this design connective for people connected to
this place? You know, if you can pick up the
building and move it somewhere else and it still makes sense,

(44:45):
we've failed, yeah, right, And so uh and this is
a hard challenge, but it's a good one, and so
we do a lot of this. You know, at Princeton
we're building a building and it's very contemporary, but we're
building it out of materials that will absolutely resonate with
the historic fabric of the campus. There are ways of
doing this right. It just requires attention and intention, you know,

(45:12):
and and so look, this isn't going to solve the
world's problems, but I think people feeling more connected to
their culture and their climate and there you know, they're
they're just general environment. I think again lowers the amount
of political tension political resentment. Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Yeah, I think that's a that's right, and that's it's
an important piece that Like again, I love the idea
of saying, how do we both provide and bring attention
intention too to the building space? Isn't I wanted to
like I don't know if I read Path two past,
but I want I want to provide a little space
to like get a sense from you, like from your

(45:53):
six cross country trips, like how I guess what do
you what do you think that the the left mist
answer like what like what are they not seeing that?

Speaker 3 (46:01):
Like that?

Speaker 1 (46:03):
That?

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Like I think and I will say like that being
there like showed you like that they can show any
of us. Like if you spend time in a place
with like attention intension, like what do you what did
you see that's like kind of caught your attension of
like what should we be thinking about for the world
that we want to build?

Speaker 1 (46:15):
So my son and I pull an airstream and so
we're in you know, sometimes we're in national parks. Sometimes
we're in trailer parks. And when you're in the trailer
parks and you're going through especially the industrial in Midwest, uh,
you know, which I've heard is politically kind of important,

(46:38):
you really see a lot of pain and desperation, right
And and so for the people out there who somehow
think that this election was just only driven by racism
or misogyny, I think they're just missing something enormous about
their fellow citizens. You know, there are many count that

(47:00):
voted for Barack Obama twice that went for Trump. And
so it's just too easy an explanation. I find. Sure
is some of that fueling some of the anger out there,
of course, but I just think it's not the line's
share of it. I think what the left miss is
the extent to which inflation, and let's not forget hyperinflation
is what elected Adolf Hitler. I mean, inflation is an

(47:22):
insidious thing, particularly for the working class living paycheck to paycheck.
But I think there's a larger thing that is about
this globalization thing. And unfortunately, as an immigrant, you know,
I feel this like immigration is too much of the
channel for this anger. But this started again with both parties.

(47:47):
So in the nineties you had NAFTA, right, which basically
did outsource a lot of jobs. Then in the two
thousands you had the wars, and you had the subprime
mortgage cis. And what I don't think we at all
feel on the coasts is the disproportionate impact those things

(48:08):
had on the middle of the country, their sons and
daughters that went off to war. It's you know, you know,
New York City at the depths of the subprime real
estate crisis lost about twenty twenty five percent of its
real estate value, which bounced back inside of eight or
ten months. Whereas people lost their homes, they live in

(48:31):
trailer parks because they lost their homes. The trauma of
that doesn't go away in a year or two years
or four years. So the remaking of the GOP by
this man has to do with the fact that George W.
Bush's GOP failed the middle of the country in ways

(48:53):
that are just massive and still unaccounted for. And then
of course people didn't feel like the people who created
that crisis paid anything for their misdeeds, right, And so
the system does feel rigged to people. And then there's
one other piece I'd just like to say that's very
true of both coasts, which is there's a huge private

(49:14):
equity apparatus that went in and then picked the meat
off the bones of the carcass. So the last pharmacy,
the last family owned store, got you know, consolidated into
big box and changed stores and e commerce and just
decimated the landscape. And so, you know, there were earlier

(49:35):
times when I took my son through some of these
towns and he'd say things like it just looked like
some sort of bomb had gone off. And this isn't
the richest country in the world. People who are very
well aware when they watch Seinfeld and Friends and section
of the city that there's this whole other life going
on in their country that they have no pardon. Yeah,

(49:56):
And I just I think that we have really lost
touch with that and so and and then gotten you know,
involved in a lot of you know, these people are
not focused on what pronouns to call people, and so
so it's just you know, there's there's it's it's important

(50:19):
to stand up for equity and lack of bigotry and
you know, and be a party of progress. But at
the same time, it has to include everyone. And that's
I think what we missed. I think we fundamentally missed
how much pain people were in, how desperate they are
for change, and the fact that anyone who who reeks

(50:43):
of establishment is going to be painted with that brush, right,
I think that's what we missed.

Speaker 3 (50:49):
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I think it is.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
It's it's it's important kind of both because at the
same time too, it's like we want to encourage people
that just like just to point fingers saying, oh, it's
this or that, right, because I think, as you want,
if we said to that, like, there's there's a lot
of nuance there that we have to recognize, right, and
and that like it's not about painting broad strokes of
one one group or one story.

Speaker 3 (51:08):
Like we understand that there are elements of that in there,
but it's like.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
When we go back to the topic at hand, the
places that I saw that were more physically coherent or
more socially coherent. There was less distress in those places,
the places that still had an intact main street or
intact downtown, right, because again there's just this sense of
togetherness and social bond and looking out for each other

(51:35):
as opposed to those towns that were just again just
kind of decimated.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
Yeah, that's I think that's a great point too.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
Is there like a way to help I guess also
because when you think of urban design, I guess, well
urban if we think of design and architecture, like we
tend to then jump to the urban, right, like the
actual city space.

Speaker 3 (51:52):
But it's like, how do we how can we help
kind of like bring.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
More design movement to rural spaces too, right 'banity right,
the kind of in between, Like how do we do that?

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Well, we try to do it a lot. We're trying
to work in as many of those kinds of places
as we can find that where people you know, people,
I got to say, people are just astonished when you
show up. You know, they just they think of themselves
as flyover country. They think that like we're all just
out to ignore them, and so showing up is half

(52:24):
the battle. Yeah, and not just to canvas for elections,
but you know, to really be there in some sort
of set, in some sense of solidarity, right. And you know, look,
the fact is these places need investment, right, they need

(52:45):
jobs back. You know. I do think that a lot
of the the infrastructure build the Chips Act, the things
that float out of the Biden Harris administration are going
to do a lot of good things in the kind
of communities that we're discussing, including rebuilding social fabrics and infrastructure.

(53:06):
I don't think the maiden Harris administrations is gonna end
up getting a lot of credit for that stuff, but
I do think that is going to be helpful. But
a lot of it, beyond money and resources in public policy,
is just attention of just feeling like, you know, we're
all in this together. And you know, again, a lot

(53:27):
of the work we do is trying to do that.
It's just you know, a lot of my peers are off,
you know, designing crazy spaceships in Saudi Arabia, zero interest
in that. You know, there's a lot of work to
do here, right, and I think all of us in
different disciplines can really think about that, like it is
a privilege to be somewhat successful in this country. You know,

(53:50):
my parents came here with thirty two dollars and so,
you know, I think one way of paying it forward
is to just pay attention to a lot of the places.
By the way, not all these places are in the
industrial Midwest. Some of them are in a town, you know,
two towns over from you. Yeah, right, And so that's
also very important to think about. And so I you know,

(54:14):
I'm kind of cautiously optimistic that like, you know, maybe
we just got a big wake up call and we
need to now pay attention. Mm hmm.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
No, I think that that's a great that's a great
place for us to then say, let's let's put our
attention there, because I think that's that's.

Speaker 3 (54:29):
Uh, what is needed.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
And I think honestly, it's like as we like dilate
in and it's like that's what a lot of people
want to They want to both be seen, to be
heard and to hear others, right like that that is
that the sense of connection that we can get in
recognizing that like in part it might be some that's
a few undred miles away. Other ways it might just
be yeah, it's just down the road, right, it's a
town or two over. So I think that's that's uh,
that's really great. So I appreciate you sharing that. And

(54:51):
so you want to say thank you for joining me
on the podcast today. It's been it's been actually really
fun to talk with you, and I appreciate you sharing
your insights and excited to get the book into the
hands of listeners.

Speaker 3 (54:59):
So so yeah, I mean, keep doing the great work.
I mean is always.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
I'd love to keep the conversation going in the future
because it's it's important to kind of broaden these these pieces.
And I appreciate how you connect a lot of the
different elements together. And then we kind of we can
begin from one discipline, but we have to kind of
see social problems require social fabric, and fabric is sewn together, right.
I can't just say it's this one one approach.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
So I appreciate your disciplinary right on.

Speaker 3 (55:22):
All right, cool, Well, thank you again for joining to me,
and it's pleasure great, Thanks very much for