October 28, 2025 • 45 mins
What if the biggest public space in your city isn’t a park—it’s the street right outside your door? We sit down with author and planner‑geographer David Prytherch to rethink roads as social infrastructure and unpack why “complete streets” is only the starting line. From the rapid legal and engineering turn that handed streets to cars a century ago to the community‑led experiments that reclaimed asphalt during the pandemic, this conversation traces the power dynamics that shape everyday mobility—and how to change them.
We dig into mobility justice in plain language: not just bikes versus cars, but who feels safe, who gets heard, and where public money actually lands. David lays out how pop‑ups, parklets, and open streets create a cognitive shift that policy can lock in, and why “messy shared space” often calms traffic better than paint and signs. You’ll hear practical, scalable ideas—default speed humps, daylighted intersections, neighborhood greenways, curb‑level plazas—and a frank look at bottom‑up versus top‑down delivery. Boston’s standardized traffic calming and Queens’ 34th Avenue transformation show two paths to lasting change, each grounded in data, culture, and community stewardship.
If you care about safer streets, small business vitality, public health, or equitable access, this episode offers a toolkit and a mindset. We share a reading list—from Peter Norton’s Fighting Traffic to Mimi Sheller’s Mobility Justice—and outline how cities can move from car hegemony to people‑first design without breaking budgets. Enjoyed the conversation? Subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with a friend or colleague who plans, pedals, or simply walks their city.
Show Notes:
- Further Reading:
- Fighting Traffic: the Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City by Peter Norton
- Mobility Justice: the Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes by Mimi Sheller
- Justice in the Interstates: The Racist Truth about Urban Highways by Ryan Reft, Amanda Phillips de Lucas, Rebecca Retzlaff
- Cyclescapes of the Uneven City: Bicycle Infrastructure and Uneven Development by John G. Stehlin
- Law, Engineering, and The American Right-of-Way by David Prytherch (free download here).
- To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Stephanie Rouse (00:12):
You're listening to the Booked on
Planning Podcast, a project ofthe Nebraska chapter of the
American Planning Association.
In each episode, we dive intohow cities function by talking
with authors on housing,transportation, and everything
in between.
Join us as we get booked onplanning.
Welcome back, Bookworms, toanother episode of Booked on
(00:39):
Planning.
In this episode, we talk withauthor David Prytherch on his
book Reclaiming the Road: Mobility Justice Beyond Complete (00:43):
undefined
Streets.
I think this is maybe roundingout our transportation series.
If you've been listening to thelast few episodes, we've hit
quite a bit on parking and othertransportation-related books.
But this is kind of taking theconcept of complete streets and
pushing it a little bit further.
The author isn't just makingthe case about mobility and
(01:04):
providing mobility for all roadusers, but also taking kind of
this justice perspective andensuring there's equity baked
into our complete streetsapproach.
Jennifer Hiatt (01:13):
And what a way to end our transportation
series, honestly.
I was really impressed with thefact that David was able to
pull almost all of the historyof transportation into the first
chapter of his book.
You know, we've been reading alot of transportation books
lately, and that history's kindof been pocketed.
But then when he pulled it alltogether and it was really able
to see from start to finish howthe transportation industry has
(01:35):
shaped America, it was prettyinteresting.
Stephanie Rouse (01:37):
Yeah, you mentioned how he really relied
heavily on Peter Norton's book,Fighting Traffic, which I went
back and looked, and it's it'san older book.
I think it was published in the90s and somehow has kind of
slipped through the cracks ofbooks that I've read.
It's uh one of his manyrecommended readings that I'll
have to go back to and checkout.
Jennifer Hiatt (01:54):
Yeah, I was also surprised by the fact that a
book from the 90s was still sovery relevant to today's
transportation theories, you'dthink we'd maybe have updated
some stuff by now.
Haven't evolved too much.
Let's get into our conversationwith author David Perchert on
his book, Reclaiming the Road,Mobility Justice Beyond Complete
Streets.
Stephanie Rouse (02:16):
David, thank you for joining us on Booked on
Planning to talk about yourbook, Reclaiming the Road:
Mobility Justice Beyond CompleteStreets.
David Prytherch (02:23):
Thank you so much.
It's so nice to be here,Stephanie and Jennifer.
Stephanie Rouse (02:27):
So Beyond Complete Streets is advocating
for streets as socialinfrastructure.
What changes would make ourstreets supportive of this type
of interaction in addition tospaces that support equitable
mobility?
David Prytherch (02:39):
So I am a geographer and a planner, and
both geographers and plannersthink a lot about spaces.
We do tend to focus on physicalinfrastructure.
That's often a tool that we'refocused on, but ultimately we're
trying to build better places.
And the street has beenengineered.
I don't know, in many planners,cities, that the people who are
really control of the city maynot be the planners, maybe
(03:00):
transportation engineers whohave engineered the street as
infrastructure.
But those of us who aregeographers and planners and
social scientists or communitymembers know the street is a
social space.
So, you know, my book tries toexplore that in some depth.
At one level, like you say,it's about the idea that even
mobility, there's a lot ofdiversity in mobility.
(03:21):
There are diverse peoplegetting around the city in
diverse ways.
And so at least beingaccommodating of different modes
of transportation, and that'sthe philosophy that underlies
the complete streets movementand the complete streets
policies.
But beyond that, you know, thatstill buys into the idea that
we are our modes.
But we are more than just ourmodes.
We're people and we relate toeach other in public space.
(03:45):
At one level, it's just abouttraffic, like not trying to bang
into each other, but weconverse with people and we we
make friends and we formrelationships.
And ultimately our communities,streets are literally at the
center of our communities.
We don't often see them thatway.
And often they're designed, tobe honest, more effectively as
barriers to community.
(04:05):
If you think of our some of ourstrodes and how the road
provides transportation butdivides people in places, to
think about a street as socialinfrastructure means thinking
about the social connections.
And I could go on with thisbecause at one level it's it's
really interesting.
It's about sharing publicspace, because the street is a
public space.
But you know, what I've learnedis when people become engaged
(04:27):
in the street, they start toform connections with each
other.
If you've ever been involved ina planning process to help
envision or redesign a street,the product of that process is
maybe a redesign of a street,but the process itself builds a
new community of people, maybe anew consensus about what the
street is and what the communityis about.
(04:48):
So I think viewing streetsthrough that broader lens just
opens us up to what we alreadyknow, which is streets are
social spaces.
Yeah, they're infrastructure,but they're not just
infrastructure.
Jennifer Hiatt (05:00):
We actually had a call workshop yesterday and we
were talking about Lincoln'sinfrastructure, and 40% of our
downtown area is publicright-of-way, and the majority
of that public right-of-way isimpact streets.
So you think about almost halfof the land mass of our downtown
is taken up by what we'reconsidering right now
infrastructure instead of socialarea.
(05:22):
That's a lot of space.
David Prytherch (05:24):
And if you walk through a town or you look at
any city from Google Earth, youstart to realize how
impoverished a use of space thatcan be.
You know, many of our streets,and I don't know, Lincoln, but
many of our streets are wayoverdesigned.
We allocate way more space thanis necessary.
And we're just kind of used tothat, seeing six-lane boulevards
(05:45):
that are mostly empty much ofthe time.
But if you start thinking abouttheir potential, you know, it's
not very satisfying the waywe've been using all of that
hyper valuable space.
And one of the other statisticsthat's really interesting is
that, but a lot of cities haveconcluded that when they add up
all the land that a municipalityis managing, you know, the
parks and the sewage treatmentplants, that the public right
(06:07):
away might be 80% in many citiesof the land that the city owns.
I think what a lot of citieshave concluded is maybe there's
a better way to use all of thisspace for a broader range of
uses, you know, especially whenthat that space is kind of
underutilized, a lot of parkingthat sits vacant.
Jennifer Hiatt (06:24):
Can you start the book with an excellent
overview of the history of thestreet?
I think maybe the most completehistory of the street that I
have seen in one book.
So I really appreciate it.
What are some of the historicaluses of streets that we have
lost as our streets have becomein fact conduits for cars?
David Prytherch (06:41):
Well, this is where I have to acknowledge and
tip my hat to some of the peoplewho have kind of helped me
understand that.
And Peter Norton is ahistorian.
But his book, Fighting Traffic,here's the bottom line.
For 99.99% of history, ourstreets were multi-purpose
public spaces.
Yes, they were devoted totransportation as a primary use.
(07:05):
I think we understood thatthat's what streets were for,
were for circulation.
But up until about 100 yearsago, it was always assumed that
that circulation was balancedagainst other things.
A, that there were differentforms of circulation, that you
could walk along the street, youcould walk across the street,
but you could also stop and talkto someone in the street.
(07:26):
You could operate a pushcart atthe margins and sell vegetables
that kids could play.
And there were certain normsaround that public space.
And again, this is where I haveto acknowledge Peter Norton
because he is the one who kindof opened my eyes to this, that
the idea of a street that's justdevoted to vehicular traffic is
a really recent invention.
(07:47):
We in the 21st century think100 years ago sounds like a
really, really, really long timeago, but it's not.
And so it was really a hundredyears ago, and his book is
wonderful for summarizing thatincredibly violent history.
Because what happened is thatdrivers, you know, we had had
this system, and yeah, therewere streetcars, and streetcars
(08:08):
ran over people and horses,carts.
It was a dangerous space, andthere was it was a shared space
of bodies in motion.
And that's always a little bitdangerous, and there were norms
and around that.
But it was the flood of carsthat happened after Henry Ford
kind of perfected the massmanufacturing of cars, where all
of a sudden these people,instead of circulating at three
or five or eight miles an hour,driving 25 miles an hour in
(08:32):
these vehicles that were heavy,and and it was literally carnage
on the American street in the1920s.
Hundreds of thousands ofAmerican pedestrians died in
that carnage.
And and the way that we as asociety sorted out like, what do
we do?
Should we give a street overthe car to pedestrians?
Ultimately, as we all know,Moterdom, which was a kind of an
(08:53):
alliance of transportationengineers and car companies, and
they decided, and we as asociety adopted those
assumptions that the street was,as it may be defined in the
Nebraska statutes as it is inOhio, that the street is for the
purposes of vehicular travel.
So in the 1920s, really, reallyquickly, really just in a
(09:16):
decade or two, we went from amulti-purpose space in which you
could walk across the streetand stop and chat and play into
a thoroughfare.
And the edifice of all that wasnot just the street, it was the
state statutes that defined thepurpose of the street, you
know, that it defined thepurpose of the street for
vehicular travel, it definedright away and gave right away
(09:38):
to cars.
It defined who had to yield towhom.
Following from that was a thisis my previous book, kind of
went into a lot of depth onthis, but tort law, like when
two bodies collide with eachother, with when a car hits a
pedestrian, who's at fault?
There's a body of case law thatis equally autocentric.
I mean, you can, as apedestrian, can get hit by a
(09:59):
car, and you yourself can beheld liable for the damages to
the bumper that hit you.
We created a whole trafficengineering paradigm around
those assumptions.
So here we are in 2025.
We've been living in thatsystem.
Anybody who's younger than 100years old, that's the only
system we've really known.
But that system is relativelynew.
(10:19):
It was created quickly.
And I think what that storydoes is it just reminds us, and
this is the title of my book, isreclaiming the road.
This is not a new claim forpedestrians to say, hey, I
should have a right to walk, youknow, not just along the street
on the sidewalk, but maybe inthe middle of it, is not some
new and novel claim.
That's reclaiming what thestreet was for millennia.
(10:41):
And it's only just in the lasthundred years that we became
kind of alienated from thesepublic spaces that run right up
through the middle of ourstreets.
So yeah, it's an interestinghistory.
And I appreciate I'm as ageographer, I also want to go
back for the context, but Ithink that context is not just
kind of informative, but it'spolitically relevant because
this is not some specialpleading for people in Lycra.
(11:03):
This is these are public spacesthat were designed to be shared
by all of us, and we can dothat again.
Stephanie Rouse (11:10):
So one early movement, just maybe over a
decade or so old at this point,is complete streets, an attempt
to reclaim the road for not justmotor vehicles.
I think a lot of peopleunderstand what this is and it's
kind of permeated the field,but what hasn't is this more
targeted focus on kind ofdiversity, equity, inclusion
within our public streets.
(11:31):
Lincoln does have a completestreets policy that was adopted
in 2013, but it's kind of yourstandard early version of what
complete streets policies looklike.
What would it look like forcommunities to update these and
be more inclusive?
David Prytherch (11:44):
Well, this is really an interesting and a big
challenge.
And this is where to have onefoot, as I do in geography and
in planning, but I think manyplanners were dealing with this
too, is that in the UnitedStates, simply to make a claim
that a street as aninfrastructure that we're all
paying for and that we all havea legal right to use should
provide us some measure ofsafety and accessibility.
(12:05):
Like it's a radical argument inthe United States, but it's
it's so commonsensical that it'sbeen really powerful that we
have thousands of communitiesthat have adopted complete
streets policies.
But as you know, it was reallyjust about equity among modes,
because if you think about thestreet as a transportation
space, as transportationinfrastructure, then that's the
(12:26):
way we we think about streets.
We have modes and our our statestatutes, it's a geography
that's defined in terms of modesand which modes get which
portion of the space and howmuch space each mode gets.
Our engineering manuals arepremised on that.
And so, yeah, it was just toachieve some measure of equity
among modes is complicatedenough.
(12:47):
And I don't know how it's goingfor you in Lincoln, but that
alone is a really uneven projectin the United States.
And it's going to take us along time to approximate that
kind of equity, but we've alllaid down a lot of bike lanes in
the last 10 years.
But what was interesting, andthis was brewing, I think, at
least in my left fieldperipheral vision, was some of
the claims that were maybecoming more from the social
(13:09):
scientists, from the criticalsocial scientists who were
saying, hey, you know, thosecomplete streets do great for
transportation.
But what about these otherequity issues that are tied up
in streets, like whether it'sidentity things like race or
gender, but also that streetsare part of broader equity
issues like urban change, whatworries about gentrification.
(13:32):
And so you could see that therewas at one level, the scholars
were saying, hey, we can'tisolate transportation from the
broader social issues.
And the designers, the plannerswere like, oh wow, I can't
speak for other planners, but Ithink some of the equity
conversations around 2020 caughtsome of us maybe feeling a
little flat-footed, which is wehad not 100% thought about maybe
(13:53):
we've been focusing on themodal piece of it and hadn't
thought about what were therelationships to and some of
those conversations were reallyhard.
Like, you know, I don't think Ihave a copy of at hand, but to
hear bike lanes be described aswhite lanes, like that was
really hard.
Like I thought bike lanes weregood.
I thought bike lanes helpedcyclists, and in many places,
cyclists are people who can'tafford cars.
(14:14):
Like I thought I was doing goodequity work, but then in a lot
of communities, people wereafraid about bicycle lanes
because of maybe it was aharbinger of gentrification.
So that was partly the book wasto try to sort through hey,
these feel like collidingprinciple schemes.
Like I thought the bicycle lanewas good, but now someone's
telling me it's bad.
And and really why one personthinks it's good and another
(14:34):
person thinks it's bad is it'sabout where they're coming from
in terms of how they're definingequity.
I guess my point is I had tofirst figure out what do we mean
by mobility justice?
What does that mean and allthese different axes that
combine to make a just street?
What does that mean in inpractical terms?
It's easier said than done.
It comes down to things likenot just viewing the street as
(14:56):
an infrastructure space, butengaging people.
This comes back to what we weretalking about before is the
process, I think, is really akey part of this.
It's like the street is stilljust a transportation space.
It's not going to fix housingaffordability.
We can't put too much weight onthe street to solve all of our
problems.
However, I believe as aplanner, the best way to do that
(15:19):
is to engage as many people aspossible.
That making our street space alittle more democratic and our
decision making a little moredemocratic, then we can start to
accommodate more diversevoices.
And then maybe we design thestreet in a better, more
democratic way that achieves ajustice socially and not just
kind of intermodally.
Jennifer Hiatt (15:39):
And one of the steps on the pathway of making
that more equitable road is thefact that you discussed that we
need to have a cognitive shift,not just a physical shift in the
road.
And I think, you know,planners, geographers, even some
transportation engineers thatyou talk to are there.
But how do we get thatcognitive shift to happen for
the general public?
David Prytherch (16:00):
We were talking before the podcast was
recording about, I think youguys have been involved with
some stuff about parklets andparking day.
And this is the power of thepop-up, and what I would call
the radical power of the pop-upis that what a lot of cities
know is that what we'reconfronting here is to make a
street not just more walkable,bikeable, bike lanes, that alone
(16:23):
confronts the hegemony of theautomobile.
And as we've learned in theUnited States, that stuff is
political.
The politics are pretty fierce.
You know, I mean, we're seeingit right now with like people
using their vehicles as weaponsagainst other people, the
hostility towards pedestriansand bicyclists.
You know, those politics arepretty intense because we have a
(16:45):
group of people who haveenjoyed hegemony over the
roadway space, you know, andanytime you confront the
hegemony of any group who'senjoyed privileges, they don't
love giving up their privileges.
So, what I think you can do isto do those things that enable
people to imagine a differentorder.
And this is the power of like aparking day where you can
(17:05):
convert a parking space into apublic space, even if it's just
for a day, sit on the asphalt ina lawn chair and be like, wow,
there's a lot of space here.
Like, what if we changed it?
This was the power of thingslike cyclovia or open streets,
some of these events.
Okay, we're gonna close downsome streets just on a weekend,
(17:25):
allow some people to walk andbike and rollerblade down the
middle of the roadway.
It doesn't instantly upend thesocial order at which cars are
at the center.
I don't know about you, but youknow, we do this in Oxford here
in Ohio.
We we close our streets oncertain Friday nights in the
summertime.
To walk down the middle of thepublic right away on the double
yellow line and stand there andtalk to somebody and maybe share
(17:48):
a beer, it gives you a taste ofsomething that's different.
Once you've had a taste ofdemocracy, you don't want to
give it up.
You know, when you have a tasteof civil rights, you don't want
to go back to that order.
And so I think the pop-up is away of giving people a stake and
like, wow, this could bedifferent.
It shifts your mind a littleways.
And I think then you can startto have conversations.
(18:10):
The other thing I think isreally important, and this is in
my book, I talk about how wewent from all these little
pop-ups before COVID that werevery limited.
You know, it was a few parkletsto all of a sudden there was
this push to reclaim the streetduring COVID.
We can talk about more of thatin a minute, but it gave people
a taste and a stake in theroadway.
(18:31):
Small businesses who would joinroadways have a pretty good
stake in them.
Neighbors have a pretty goodstake in them.
And once you give people astake in something, then they
are stakeholder.
I don't know what the origin ofthe word stakeholder is, but it
has the word hold in there, youknow, that once you have a
stake, you hold on to it.
And now we've got acounter-constituency to the
drivers.
(18:51):
You know, you've you've hadpodcasts like about street
bites.
The roadway space is acontested space.
So what we need is multiplepeople vying over it to achieve
something that's a little bitmore balanced, and that's how
you move forward.
Stephanie Rouse (19:03):
So you just mentioned how there's a lot of
communities that were pilotingthese kind of concepts before
the pandemic, even, but thepandemic really gave them
license to really go big with itand test them out.
And some of the communitieshave been successful at
maintaining those, those kind ofprograms, others have not and
have had to scale back or closesome of the programs.
What do you see as like themost effective approaches or
(19:26):
which communities were mosteffective at making these
permanent solutions?
David Prytherch (19:30):
Yeah, that was a really core part of my book
because I had seen that stufflike you have.
I mean, you guys work for aplanning agency.
I'm a city counselor here inOxford, and we had tested a few
of those things.
But I was really struck by thescale at which some cities, and
my book really, you know, itjust focused on nine major U.S.
cities.
So I can really only talk abouttheir experience.
(19:51):
But yeah, it was a moment.
I think many of us in in thepandemic, as as dark as the
pandemic was, we saw kind of awindow of opportunity, which was
like, wow, the world could bereally different.
Like the streets suddenlyemptied of cars, and and so it
provided a window, just like Iwas talking about that, even if
just sharing the street on aSaturday night during an event
gives you a window into how theworld could be.
(20:12):
Pandemic, when it came tostreets, gave us a window on how
the world could be.
You know, it was just a window,and the window started closing
pretty quickly.
When there were no cars on thestreet, it was easy to claim
them for public space.
But when people started wantingto drive back to work, and and
that happened, the pandemic feltlike it took forever, but it
happened relatively quickly.
But this is where planners, youknow, I think those of us who
(20:34):
are in planning believe in thepower of systems and we believe
in policies and we believe indesign manuals.
And and the street, of allthings, is as chaotic as it
seems from the outside, thestreet is one of the most
regulated, ordered spaces that'sengineered very specifically.
Yeah, I mean, people are goingto and fro, but the city has
(20:54):
pretty good control over that.
When I talk about the success,it was less about the open
streets or the slow streets thanit more, I think it was about
the policy shift thatcommunities went back, many of
which were already, for example,in the process of revising
their transportation andmobility plans.
Like there was already a bigmove, like cities were
reorganizing their public worksdepartments, you know, from
(21:15):
being bureaus of motor vehiclesto being departments of mobility
and infrastructure.
They were already starting tothink about equity.
So I think what the pandemicdid was just a catalyst for
really realigning the bigpicture plans.
You know, those of us inplanning love plans, but
ultimately it is about the rulesystems.
And so cities that went backand redesigned their street
(21:37):
guidelines to say, hey, like ashared street is a legitimate
use.
Or a lot of cities had beenoperating under the assumption
that speed humps wereimpermissible.
I mean, that's the engineerswould have told you about like
Boston, such a walkable city,but up until you know less than
a decade ago, their public worksdepartment thought that speed
(21:57):
humps were bad and couldn't bedone.
And so they broke through onsome things.
So yeah, I think thatultimately the power is in this
is what we learned a centuryago, where to effectuate a
takeover of cars of the street,you had to do it in law and
engineering and design.
All backed up socially, youknow, like people have to
support stuff socially for thefor the plans and the policies
(22:20):
to work.
But the big change was reallythe plans and policies.
So now it's not so satisfyingbecause it's not so quick, but
they start to weave these thingsinto the stuff that you're
familiar with.
But most people, you know,capital budgets, like slowly
doing a speed hump at a time ora project here at a time.
It's very uneven work.
And as we've learned in ournational politics, you know,
(22:42):
just because you thinksomething's going in a direction
doesn't mean it couldn't turnaround again and go in an
opposite direction.
So there's going to be a pushand pull and tug over this
stuff, and it's really hard toknow exactly where it's going to
go.
Jennifer Hiatt (22:56):
I think my favorite term from the book was
the idea of a messy sharedspace.
Sometimes think I'm kind of amessy person, so I appreciated
it that you referred to thatidea.
So, what is a messy sharedspace and what are the benefits
of all that mess?
David Prytherch (23:11):
Well, this is where to me, you know, a kind of
epiphany I had, which is thatwe tend to view streets as, you
know, the other term I use ispipes for cars.
I mean, we design them asconduits.
And you just think about thegeography of the street and all
these linear things, you know,that we have different paint
colors to mark the edge of theroadway in the middle of the
(23:32):
roadway, and and markings tochannel people around islands.
It's all designed very muchlike hydraulic engineering, in
which instead of watermolecules, it's people in bikes
and cars and trucks moving downthe street.
And that's the way we typicallythink of it, but that's not how
we think of a park.
And so to me, we've longrecognized that parks are public
(23:55):
spaces.
And so the literature on publicspace and geography and
planning and other disciplineshas often focused on parks and
plazas because we we understandthose things to be public and we
understand they're they will bemessy.
We understand that they will becontested.
They're the places where peoplewill go to protest.
We understand there will betugs of war between public uses
(24:16):
and private uses.
Like, do we let a concessionerset out cafe tables in the
middle of the plaza?
How much do we charge them?
How do we juggle all thesedifferent uses?
There's definitely systems tothat.
I mean, classic, if you've everbeen to a European plaza, I
mean, they have rules that aregoverning the food deliveries
can happen and taxi drivers candrive to hotels on the plaza,
(24:38):
but they've got speeds and thosecafes you're sitting at, there
are rules around those.
But they are messy spaces, youknow, because they are public,
they're shared by people andthey are unstructured.
Yeah, parks have pathways andthey have different rules and
stuff, but like the really greatparks, they're just different
than a street.
And so I think when you startthinking about the street a
(24:59):
little bit more like a parkwould be, then you have to
realize, like, okay, well, we'regonna have to juggle these uses
that like we are maybe aregoing to introduce some public
uses.
Like this was to me like thenovelty of, okay, well, we used
to have parklets and they werejust public spaces, but now
we're going to let someone leaseout the street space.
How much do you charge forthat?
You know?
Those are really superinteresting conversations that
(25:22):
the people I interviewed in thebook were wrestling with.
What's the per square foot costto lease out the public
right-of-way?
Again, we've been doing that onthe sidewalk, which we also
assumed the sidewalk was publicspace.
But I think my book tried topush the envelope a little bit
and I use the metaphor of thecurb a lot because we would
think about parks, plazas, andsidewalks as being public
(25:42):
spaces, but the asphalt, we justlike our gaze, like our public
space gaze ended at the curbbecause we assume that the
roadway that was asphalt, andasphalt, that's the engineers
control that.
But I think what pandemic didwas we introduced messiness on
the roadway.
And it's messy these days.
I mean, you throw inmicromobility, you know, you've
(26:02):
got people zipping along onscooters and people in
wheelchairs, and it's a verymessy space.
And a hundred years ago, theycreated a place to try to create
order.
And I think we when you've gotbodies in motion going to and
fro, you need some rules becauseotherwise some people run over
other people.
But I think that accepting acertain amount of mess and
(26:24):
assuming that this is a socialspace and people are going to
work it out.
The rules in engineering can'tgovern human behavior 100%.
Like maybe there are otherdesign cues that can help make
people behave.
If you think about a greatplaza, there are not a lot of
markings there.
There's not even a lot ofsignage.
Yet somehow in that Jane Jacobsway, there's a choreography of
(26:45):
it that is just beautiful andorganic and rhythmic and somehow
it's it works because forreasons other than clear rule
systems.
Stephanie Rouse (26:57):
I feel like that's kind of what complete
streets approaches or changesthat we're trying to make to the
rigid structure of streetdesign is going towards of
bringing back the visual cuesthat encourage drivers to slow
down and to pay attention andhaving trees bordering it, which
were obstructions adjacent tothe roadway.
We had to take them all outbecause it was dangerous.
(27:17):
And like bringing buildingsback towards the street to again
define the space and helpencourage motorists to drive
more safely.
And so it's it's encouraging tosee those kind of changes in
the strict engineering fieldbecause they've tended to be so
rigid about the rules that havereally shaped the way our
streets have looked.
David Prytherch (27:35):
It is really interesting because I don't know
about you, but I just thinkthere were certain things that
we bought into.
And one of those was is likeI'm a big multimodal advocate,
and so I'm a believer in bikelanes because you could carve
out a space and dedicate it andengineer it for bikes.
And I think bike lanes arereally, really great.
But what the book really taughtme was that maybe sometimes
(27:58):
it's not about separating theusers through dedicated spaces.
Maybe it comes through throwingthem all in together.
And that's where, yeah, you'reright.
And and the classic example ofthat are slow or shared streets
techniques.
And this is the the beauty andthe genius of the Dutch voonf,
(28:18):
like the shared street, whereno, instead of clearing the
street of obstructions,introduce obstructions to the
street.
Let there be some parked carson the side every once in a
while, chicanes or trees orstreet furniture or kids
playing.
It's a crazy kind of idea, butif you have shared or naked
streets, we have some on campusright outside my building.
(28:40):
It's like the absence of theinfrastructure.
Now we have pedestrians walkingup the middle of the roadway,
and the cars somehow fall inline and go slow and defer to
them.
These are the second orderthings that people don't really
understand in the public, whichis like, oh, if I have speeding,
what we should do is havepolice enforcing it or this or
(29:01):
that.
But no, the police can't beeverywhere.
What you need is an environmentwith cues that encourages the
kind of behavior that you want.
And I find that that stuff isjust like you're saying it's
counterintuitive.
The engineers were like thetree was a bad thing, like a
tree could be crashed into.
We need to get the pedestriansout of the street so the cars
don't hit them.
Well, no, actually, what if weintroduce obstructions and we
encourage people to walk or playor bike in the middle of the
(29:23):
street?
You get these really, reallygreat outcomes.
The other really, really greatoutcome is that it turns out
that we have a lot of streetsthat can be converted into
shared streets in a way in amuch lower cost way, either to
parking or capital dollars, thantrying to introduce bike lanes
on some really busy thoroughfarewhere maybe a cyclist doesn't
want to be anywhere.
(29:43):
So that's the beauty of thebike boulevard.
And ultimately, many of us liveon these local streets or local
collectors, and we don't reallywant the busy traffic anyway.
You know, in my own communityof Oxford, we're still one of
those communities that justdoesn't really do traffic
calming because we think thespeed humps are going to mess
up.
The snow plows and we worriedabout fire trucks.
But that to me was really kindof the big epiphany is that wow,
(30:06):
you just look around all thesestreets could be at relatively
low cost converted intosomething that hits on so many
other things other than justmoving cars.
Stephanie Rouse (30:14):
You have all these great case studies from
all over the US within yourbook.
And in that, a theme that keptcoming up in each one of these
was this push and pull between abottom-up versus a top-down
approach to all of theseprograms.
And I feel like planners havegenerally understood that
bottom-up is better.
We want the communities to haveownership of these projects and
to be able to weigh in versusus just coming in and telling
(30:36):
them what to do.
But that kind of backfired in alot of these projects during
COVID because communities thatdidn't have the resources or
didn't have the time weren'tteleworking, weren't able to
take advantage of the programs.
And it was the wealthiercommunities that were.
So what do you think is theright approach here?
David Prytherch (30:52):
It was a really interesting outcome that kind
of challenged some of theassumptions that in my book I
try to define what a just streetwould be and an equitable
street.
And clearly from a proceduralequity point of view, we believe
that more engagement is better,that bottom-up is better.
But this is the lesson ofequity in a way that's kind of
(31:13):
hard to grapple with.
But what they found is whenthey would have programs that
were, for example, by request,like speed humps by request or
slow streets by request or openstreets by request, who has the
wherewithal to request it?
It's people who are already inthe know.
And so what they found is, youknow, to this day, if you look
(31:35):
on NYC, whatever open data is,and see where the open streets
are in New York City, they'reclustered in the highest income
neighborhoods.
Because those people, A, havethe political wherewithal, they
know who to call, they know howto speak the language that we in
government speak.
You know, they they know how tonavigate those systems.
It comes down to things like aI could write a whole other book
(31:57):
about the role of businessimprovement districts, in which
businesses have the resources toband together to advocate for
themselves.
So many cities lackingresources are letting their
business districts, businessimprovement districts, do the
planning downtown.
But then there are otherneighborhoods that don't have
such things.
And the other part of it is totalk to platters, is that those
kind of privileged neighborhoodsare also a real drain on staff
(32:21):
time.
You know, they're the kind ofpeople who will call you up.
It was a great quote fromClaire Eberly, who works for Los
Angeles Department ofTransportation.
She would say how some of theneighborhoods that were kind of
privileged would draw so muchstaff time, and the other
neighborhoods were like, tell uswhen it's done.
And so I think what a lot ofcities have done is try to
strike a balance.
And what they've done is to usedata, the power of GIS, using
(32:45):
equity criteria, however they'redefining it, whether it's age
or race or income or access toschools or whatever.
And they're trying toprioritize which areas really
need it based on the data andmaking some of those decisions
in a data-driven, plan-drivenway.
It doesn't mean it's notdemocratic.
(33:06):
I mean, as you guys know, thisis the nature of land use
regulation sometimes, which isyou do a comprehensive planning
process which is super open andconversational, and we want your
input, we want your input, butultimately it might get
translated into a zoningregulation that's not that
voluntary.
And engineers know this.
(33:26):
Uh, you know, in roadways, Ialways joke that like if it were
up to bottom-up participation,we wouldn't have an interstate
highway system.
Like, if you want to create anetwork that punches its way
across space to connect point Ato point B, you cannot give
every landowner veto power overthe thing.
This is why we have eminentdomain.
Sometimes, I mean, if you lookat the eminent domain statute in
(33:49):
Nebraska, it may say, but likein Ohio, private property rights
are sacrosanct except whensubservient to the public
welfare.
So what planners are trying todo is figure out what the public
welfare is, and that's as messyas the street.
It's some combination ofuniversal principles.
We believe everyone should haveaccess to something, some
degree of data driven, these arethe places we believe deserve
(34:12):
the resources.
Yes, there's going to beparticipation.
What I learned is it's a messybusiness there too.
But I would say even thoughthey pull back a little bit from
the COVID engagement withpublic transportation, planning
and engineering has not been ourmost democratic sphere of
public decision making.
I still view it as a fairlyblack box process of how roads
(34:36):
get designed and engineered thatdon't open up a lot of space.
So I think much as cities havepulled back, I think the bottom
line is we could still use moredemocracy in our streets are
designed rather than less, evenif we have to safeguard against
people with resources justpulling more resources to
themselves to the detriment ofcommunities that are less
(34:56):
empowered.
Jennifer Hiatt (34:58):
I was just talking with one of our
residents.
We're doing a bridgereplacement project, and she
made the comment that she hadattended a public input session,
I guess, to talk about aroundabout.
And when she was asking anengineer questions, the engineer
said, It's not actually up fordiscussion.
We're just here to show youwhat's going on.
David Prytherch (35:19):
And how often does that happen?
And this is where those of uswho are listening as planners,
you know, this is why the peoplewho work in community
development departments, forwhich we spend so much time in
board meetings.
And, you know, my communitydevelopment director in the city
of Oxford, he supervises, Ithink, three or four boards.
He spends so much time inmeetings.
Guess how many boards theengineers answer to?
(35:41):
Zero.
And and they like it that way.
And that's a whole otherhegemony thing, which is, you
know, who would like to haveabsolute dominion over your
domain?
And the engineers have enjoyeda pretty for good reasons.
They do highly technical thingsthat are they're not for all of
us to understand.
Roadway geometry iscomplicated.
I wouldn't hope to try to doit, but partly it is they have
(36:05):
just enjoyed uncontestedhegemony over the decision
making and the process with alot of resources at their
disposal, and the public'smessy.
Like the engineering manuals donot make much accounting for
neighborhood opposition or thesubtleties of culture.
That's why I think a lot ofcities have tried to create a
(36:26):
more interdisciplinary approachto transportation.
This is why we've pulled someof that decision making out of a
public works department and putthem into more of an
interdisciplinary sphere.
We have those same things here.
And I don't think that's goingto change instantly, but maybe
we can make it a little moredemocratic.
Jennifer Hiatt (36:43):
And speaking of all your excellent case studies,
what were some of the moresurprising or successful
examples of communitiestransforming their streets?
David Prytherch (36:52):
Well, this is perhaps the less sexy one, but
what was really interesting tome was to talk to Boston,
because Boston is a city that'sa very walkable city, very
dense, you know, they've gotvery narrow streets with um a
lot of car parked cars.
And what was kind of, I guess,ironic is they had begun a
process of doing these slowstreets plans where they did a
wonderful process of going inneighborhood by neighborhood,
(37:15):
engaging people in charrettesand all that stuff that we, you
know, as planners just reallylove and believe in so
fervently, making very kind ofcontext-sensitive decisions
about how do we slow streets by,you know, daylighting
intersections or adding newcrosswalks or all that good
stuff.
But ironically, what they foundis that was a slow business and
(37:37):
it was costly.
So what Boston did, and I feelsweird because it is, is they
actually went the other way,which is they just said, you
know what, there are a lot ofdifferent techniques, but the
speed hump is the single mosteffective technique.
You know, the bang for the buckis is highest with the speed
hump.
And as long as we engineer itto be a standard feature, we're
(37:59):
just gonna do it.
And we're not going to have acharrette to ask you whether you
want it on your street, youknow, they say just in the same
way we would stripe a crosswalk,which doesn't require committee
to do, they make a decisionabout speed humps.
Again, it's kind ofcounterintuitive because again,
we love all that hands-onplanning.
But if you're a city likeBoston that has public safety
(38:21):
issues, you have a limitedbudget, and you're trying to do
the most thing that you can,it's it's not super innovative,
but it was a very effectivestrategy that they could scale
up.
And so now they just say it'skind of a universal feature.
If you live on a local street,expect a speed hump at some
point.
That of course is not as fun.
I mean, I think that the openstreets, the most kind of like
(38:42):
organic and cool one was 34thAvenue in Queens in New York,
which was an open street thatunlike some of those other ones
that were, you know, that I wasmentioning were done in
Manhattan or Brooklyn, higherincome gentrifying areas.
This is a very diverselow-income immigrant
neighborhood that those placeswere hit really hard by COVID.
(39:03):
You know, those were the placeswhere people died because they
were in dense housing.
And so those neighbors kind oftook charge of this street at a
time when people didn't evenknow how to administer these
things.
Remember, with COVID, it wasreally hard because we didn't
really want people to have massgatherings.
So there are mixed feelingsabout having people in public,
and and they were like, well,the police should manage this so
they can keep people socialdistance.
(39:24):
And it was like, okay, thatlooks like a crime scene, not
like a public space.
So they basically handed itover to the people, and the
people organized themselves.
And this again, that if they'vedone really, really cool things
infrastructure-wise, andthey're now in the process of
after having closed the streetwith barricades and all those
interim strategies, they aregoing through a permanent
(39:44):
redesign of the street as aseries of rooms of pedestrian
plazas linked by slow streets,and they're they're going to
redesign the street in that way,which is itself just super
cool.
But the beauty of it was thepop-up nature.
I visited that neighborhood ona beautiful fall day, and
there's some pictures in thebook.
Yeah, they had done stuff likebarricades at major
(40:05):
intersections, but it was astreet that looked like any
other street.
There were cars parked alongit, but it was strung up with
tables with small vendors likeyoung people who made earrings
out of polymer or, you know,people, artists, strung along
the side of the roadway on cardtables.
And yeah, there was abarricade, but it was it was
those little cues that wereenough to enable a person to
(40:27):
feel safe.
The cars went slow.
And while I'm there, someoneliterally started a couple
started dancing in the middle ofthe street because they could,
and it was joyful.
And again, the infrastructurewas not just physical, it was
this organization that nowexists, this 34th Avenue Open
Streets Coalition of people whowere empowered in their street,
(40:48):
who programmed the street withEnglish as a second language and
closing swaps and food banks,and it's this super vibrant
public space that, yeah, NewYork Department of
Transportation kind of was theframework for it, but the people
just took it over.
And it it just was veryempowering.
Yeah, the the street can onlysolve so many problems, but when
(41:11):
you can take a street and nowit's a place for kids to play or
for English as a second line,you know, it's a space of social
integration and and smallbusiness ownership and and
people dancing in joy.
Like it's I love and uh trafficengineering as much as an
ex-person, but it's it gave me alot of hope about the future of
the city through such thingsthat were at one level radical,
(41:32):
but also not super costly.
It was just empowering.
Stephanie Rouse (41:37):
So, as this is booked on planning, in addition
to your book, which we recommendall of our listeners check out,
what books would you recommendour readers also check out?
David Prytherch (41:46):
There's so much to read, and based on who you
have hosted, like well, I won'tcover some of the stuff that's
kind of in the popular planningliterature, but uh, you know, I
do recommend, I'm gonna hold uphere, Peter Norton's book,
Fighting Traffic, The Dawn ofthe Motor Age in the American
City, is an incredible story ofhow our streets were taken over
and turned into vehicularspaces.
I think you hosted MimiShellard at some point.
(42:08):
Her book on mobility justice,the politics of movement in an
age of extremes, is really,really, really good for
understanding what mobilityjustice is.
I had an opportunity to reviewa book that I thought was really
cool was Justice in theInterstates, the racist truth
about urban highways.
I think we all was understoodthat highways were done with a
certain amount of insensitivityto racial diversity.
(42:30):
But it turns out in the Southin the 1960s, they plowed
highways specifically so theycould take out the houses of
civil rights leaders.
So the highway is a tool thathas not always been used for
good.
John Stalin's Cyclescapes ofthe Unequal City talks about
bicycle infrastructure.
So if you want to get a dose ofthat kind of incomplete streets
(42:51):
argument about how thecomplicated racial and social
things that are tied up inthings that we believe are good,
like bicycle lanes, that's agood one.
And though it's selfish, but Iwould encourage it because you
can download the PDF, my ownbook, Law Engineering in the
American Right of Way, Imagininga More Just Street, not because
I'm trying to sell any morecopies.
You can download it for free.
(43:11):
But it was my way of makingsense of traffic law and
engineering to understand justhow auto-centric it was, and
maybe invite us to think aboutrevising those systems to make
them a little more equitable.
So much good stuff out there,but that's just a taste, you
know, to help people understandsome of these conversations that
lie behind my book and that mybook seeks to build on.
Jennifer Hiatt (43:32):
And it is okay to promote your book for more
sales.
That is kind of the point ofthe podcast.
David Prytherch (43:38):
Oh, yes.
So so there is this otherrecently published book uh
called Reclaiming the Road, um,Mobility Justice Beyond Complete
Streets, published by thewonderful University of
Minnesota Press.
It's rooted in scholarlydebate, so it's right at the
cutting edge of some of thereally complicated conversations
about mobility justice.
So it's a good tour of some ofthat scholarly stuff, but it
really is written.
(43:59):
I hope planners read it.
I hope advocates read it.
I hope people in neighborhoodsread it.
It's meant to be readable.
And so, yeah, I encouragepeople.
And for once, in in theacademic world, it's priced at a
price point.
An average person can actuallyafford it.
It's like $27.
Yeah, I it was my way of makingsense and really complicated
things that were happening inthe city in the last decade and
(44:19):
hopefully pointing our wayforward towards something
different and better.
So I hope it gets into thehands of people because there's
too much roadway real estate todevote just to traffic and
parking.
We have to reclaim more of it,and I think our cities will be
better as a result.
Stephanie Rouse (44:34):
Yeah, it was a really great read.
I I can attest to that it wasdigestible by someone who's not
baked into the transportationindustry.
So really appreciate you takingthe time, David, to talk with
us about your book, Reclaimingthe Road.
David Prytherch (44:46):
Jennifer and Stephanie, thank you so much for
the podcast.
I really enjoy it.
It was so wonderful to havethis conversation.
And a shout out to the NebraskaAPA.
Jennifer Hiatt (44:56):
We hope you enjoyed this conversation with
author David Purchart on hisbook, Reclaiming the Road:
Mobility Justice Beyond CompleteStreet.
You can get your own copythrough the publisher at
University of Minnesota Press bysupporting your local bookstore
or online at bookshop.org.
Remember to subscribe to theshow wherever you listen to the
podcast, and please rate,review, and share the show.
Thank you for listening, andwe'll talk to you next time on
Book Town Planning.
You're listening to the Booked on
Planning Podcast, a project ofthe Nebraska chapter of the
American Planning Association.
In each episode, we dive intohow cities function by talking
with authors on housing,transportation, and everything
in between.
Join us as we get booked onplanning.
Welcome back, Bookworms, toanother episode of Booked on
(00:39):
Planning.
In this episode, we talk withauthor David Prytherch on his
book Reclaiming the Road: Mobility Justice Beyond Complete (00:43):
undefined
Streets.
I think this is maybe roundingout our transportation series.
If you've been listening to thelast few episodes, we've hit
quite a bit on parking and othertransportation-related books.
But this is kind of taking theconcept of complete streets and
pushing it a little bit further.
The author isn't just makingthe case about mobility and
(01:04):
providing mobility for all roadusers, but also taking kind of
this justice perspective andensuring there's equity baked
into our complete streetsapproach.
Jennifer Hiatt (01:13):
And what a way to end our transportation
series, honestly.
I was really impressed with thefact that David was able to
pull almost all of the historyof transportation into the first
chapter of his book.
You know, we've been reading alot of transportation books
lately, and that history's kindof been pocketed.
But then when he pulled it alltogether and it was really able
to see from start to finish howthe transportation industry has
(01:35):
shaped America, it was prettyinteresting.
Stephanie Rouse (01:37):
Yeah, you mentioned how he really relied
heavily on Peter Norton's book,Fighting Traffic, which I went
back and looked, and it's it'san older book.
I think it was published in the90s and somehow has kind of
slipped through the cracks ofbooks that I've read.
It's uh one of his manyrecommended readings that I'll
have to go back to and checkout.
Jennifer Hiatt (01:54):
Yeah, I was also surprised by the fact that a
book from the 90s was still sovery relevant to today's
transportation theories, you'dthink we'd maybe have updated
some stuff by now.
Haven't evolved too much.
Let's get into our conversationwith author David Perchert on
his book, Reclaiming the Road,Mobility Justice Beyond Complete
Streets.
Stephanie Rouse (02:16):
David, thank you for joining us on Booked on
Planning to talk about yourbook, Reclaiming the Road:
Mobility Justice Beyond CompleteStreets.
David Prytherch (02:23):
Thank you so much.
It's so nice to be here,Stephanie and Jennifer.
Stephanie Rouse (02:27):
So Beyond Complete Streets is advocating
for streets as socialinfrastructure.
What changes would make ourstreets supportive of this type
of interaction in addition tospaces that support equitable
mobility?
David Prytherch (02:39):
So I am a geographer and a planner, and
both geographers and plannersthink a lot about spaces.
We do tend to focus on physicalinfrastructure.
That's often a tool that we'refocused on, but ultimately we're
trying to build better places.
And the street has beenengineered.
I don't know, in many planners,cities, that the people who are
really control of the city maynot be the planners, maybe
(03:00):
transportation engineers whohave engineered the street as
infrastructure.
But those of us who aregeographers and planners and
social scientists or communitymembers know the street is a
social space.
So, you know, my book tries toexplore that in some depth.
At one level, like you say,it's about the idea that even
mobility, there's a lot ofdiversity in mobility.
(03:21):
There are diverse peoplegetting around the city in
diverse ways.
And so at least beingaccommodating of different modes
of transportation, and that'sthe philosophy that underlies
the complete streets movementand the complete streets
policies.
But beyond that, you know, thatstill buys into the idea that
we are our modes.
But we are more than just ourmodes.
We're people and we relate toeach other in public space.
(03:45):
At one level, it's just abouttraffic, like not trying to bang
into each other, but weconverse with people and we we
make friends and we formrelationships.
And ultimately our communities,streets are literally at the
center of our communities.
We don't often see them thatway.
And often they're designed, tobe honest, more effectively as
barriers to community.
(04:05):
If you think of our some of ourstrodes and how the road
provides transportation butdivides people in places, to
think about a street as socialinfrastructure means thinking
about the social connections.
And I could go on with thisbecause at one level it's it's
really interesting.
It's about sharing publicspace, because the street is a
public space.
But you know, what I've learnedis when people become engaged
(04:27):
in the street, they start toform connections with each
other.
If you've ever been involved ina planning process to help
envision or redesign a street,the product of that process is
maybe a redesign of a street,but the process itself builds a
new community of people, maybe anew consensus about what the
street is and what the communityis about.
(04:48):
So I think viewing streetsthrough that broader lens just
opens us up to what we alreadyknow, which is streets are
social spaces.
Yeah, they're infrastructure,but they're not just
infrastructure.
Jennifer Hiatt (05:00):
We actually had a call workshop yesterday and we
were talking about Lincoln'sinfrastructure, and 40% of our
downtown area is publicright-of-way, and the majority
of that public right-of-way isimpact streets.
So you think about almost halfof the land mass of our downtown
is taken up by what we'reconsidering right now
infrastructure instead of socialarea.
(05:22):
That's a lot of space.
David Prytherch (05:24):
And if you walk through a town or you look at
any city from Google Earth, youstart to realize how
impoverished a use of space thatcan be.
You know, many of our streets,and I don't know, Lincoln, but
many of our streets are wayoverdesigned.
We allocate way more space thanis necessary.
And we're just kind of used tothat, seeing six-lane boulevards
(05:45):
that are mostly empty much ofthe time.
But if you start thinking abouttheir potential, you know, it's
not very satisfying the waywe've been using all of that
hyper valuable space.
And one of the other statisticsthat's really interesting is
that, but a lot of cities haveconcluded that when they add up
all the land that a municipalityis managing, you know, the
parks and the sewage treatmentplants, that the public right
(06:07):
away might be 80% in many citiesof the land that the city owns.
I think what a lot of citieshave concluded is maybe there's
a better way to use all of thisspace for a broader range of
uses, you know, especially whenthat that space is kind of
underutilized, a lot of parkingthat sits vacant.
Jennifer Hiatt (06:24):
Can you start the book with an excellent
overview of the history of thestreet?
I think maybe the most completehistory of the street that I
have seen in one book.
So I really appreciate it.
What are some of the historicaluses of streets that we have
lost as our streets have becomein fact conduits for cars?
David Prytherch (06:41):
Well, this is where I have to acknowledge and
tip my hat to some of the peoplewho have kind of helped me
understand that.
And Peter Norton is ahistorian.
But his book, Fighting Traffic,here's the bottom line.
For 99.99% of history, ourstreets were multi-purpose
public spaces.
Yes, they were devoted totransportation as a primary use.
(07:05):
I think we understood thatthat's what streets were for,
were for circulation.
But up until about 100 yearsago, it was always assumed that
that circulation was balancedagainst other things.
A, that there were differentforms of circulation, that you
could walk along the street, youcould walk across the street,
but you could also stop and talkto someone in the street.
(07:26):
You could operate a pushcart atthe margins and sell vegetables
that kids could play.
And there were certain normsaround that public space.
And again, this is where I haveto acknowledge Peter Norton
because he is the one who kindof opened my eyes to this, that
the idea of a street that's justdevoted to vehicular traffic is
a really recent invention.
(07:47):
We in the 21st century think100 years ago sounds like a
really, really, really long timeago, but it's not.
And so it was really a hundredyears ago, and his book is
wonderful for summarizing thatincredibly violent history.
Because what happened is thatdrivers, you know, we had had
this system, and yeah, therewere streetcars, and streetcars
(08:08):
ran over people and horses,carts.
It was a dangerous space, andthere was it was a shared space
of bodies in motion.
And that's always a little bitdangerous, and there were norms
and around that.
But it was the flood of carsthat happened after Henry Ford
kind of perfected the massmanufacturing of cars, where all
of a sudden these people,instead of circulating at three
or five or eight miles an hour,driving 25 miles an hour in
(08:32):
these vehicles that were heavy,and and it was literally carnage
on the American street in the1920s.
Hundreds of thousands ofAmerican pedestrians died in
that carnage.
And and the way that we as asociety sorted out like, what do
we do?
Should we give a street overthe car to pedestrians?
Ultimately, as we all know,Moterdom, which was a kind of an
(08:53):
alliance of transportationengineers and car companies, and
they decided, and we as asociety adopted those
assumptions that the street was,as it may be defined in the
Nebraska statutes as it is inOhio, that the street is for the
purposes of vehicular travel.
So in the 1920s, really, reallyquickly, really just in a
(09:16):
decade or two, we went from amulti-purpose space in which you
could walk across the streetand stop and chat and play into
a thoroughfare.
And the edifice of all that wasnot just the street, it was the
state statutes that defined thepurpose of the street, you
know, that it defined thepurpose of the street for
vehicular travel, it definedright away and gave right away
(09:38):
to cars.
It defined who had to yield towhom.
Following from that was a thisis my previous book, kind of
went into a lot of depth onthis, but tort law, like when
two bodies collide with eachother, with when a car hits a
pedestrian, who's at fault?
There's a body of case law thatis equally autocentric.
I mean, you can, as apedestrian, can get hit by a
(09:59):
car, and you yourself can beheld liable for the damages to
the bumper that hit you.
We created a whole trafficengineering paradigm around
those assumptions.
So here we are in 2025.
We've been living in thatsystem.
Anybody who's younger than 100years old, that's the only
system we've really known.
But that system is relativelynew.
(10:19):
It was created quickly.
And I think what that storydoes is it just reminds us, and
this is the title of my book, isreclaiming the road.
This is not a new claim forpedestrians to say, hey, I
should have a right to walk, youknow, not just along the street
on the sidewalk, but maybe inthe middle of it, is not some
new and novel claim.
That's reclaiming what thestreet was for millennia.
(10:41):
And it's only just in the lasthundred years that we became
kind of alienated from thesepublic spaces that run right up
through the middle of ourstreets.
So yeah, it's an interestinghistory.
And I appreciate I'm as ageographer, I also want to go
back for the context, but Ithink that context is not just
kind of informative, but it'spolitically relevant because
this is not some specialpleading for people in Lycra.
(11:03):
This is these are public spacesthat were designed to be shared
by all of us, and we can dothat again.
Stephanie Rouse (11:10):
So one early movement, just maybe over a
decade or so old at this point,is complete streets, an attempt
to reclaim the road for not justmotor vehicles.
I think a lot of peopleunderstand what this is and it's
kind of permeated the field,but what hasn't is this more
targeted focus on kind ofdiversity, equity, inclusion
within our public streets.
(11:31):
Lincoln does have a completestreets policy that was adopted
in 2013, but it's kind of yourstandard early version of what
complete streets policies looklike.
What would it look like forcommunities to update these and
be more inclusive?
David Prytherch (11:44):
Well, this is really an interesting and a big
challenge.
And this is where to have onefoot, as I do in geography and
in planning, but I think manyplanners were dealing with this
too, is that in the UnitedStates, simply to make a claim
that a street as aninfrastructure that we're all
paying for and that we all havea legal right to use should
provide us some measure ofsafety and accessibility.
(12:05):
Like it's a radical argument inthe United States, but it's
it's so commonsensical that it'sbeen really powerful that we
have thousands of communitiesthat have adopted complete
streets policies.
But as you know, it was reallyjust about equity among modes,
because if you think about thestreet as a transportation
space, as transportationinfrastructure, then that's the
(12:26):
way we we think about streets.
We have modes and our our statestatutes, it's a geography
that's defined in terms of modesand which modes get which
portion of the space and howmuch space each mode gets.
Our engineering manuals arepremised on that.
And so, yeah, it was just toachieve some measure of equity
among modes is complicatedenough.
(12:47):
And I don't know how it's goingfor you in Lincoln, but that
alone is a really uneven projectin the United States.
And it's going to take us along time to approximate that
kind of equity, but we've alllaid down a lot of bike lanes in
the last 10 years.
But what was interesting, andthis was brewing, I think, at
least in my left fieldperipheral vision, was some of
the claims that were maybecoming more from the social
(13:09):
scientists, from the criticalsocial scientists who were
saying, hey, you know, thosecomplete streets do great for
transportation.
But what about these otherequity issues that are tied up
in streets, like whether it'sidentity things like race or
gender, but also that streetsare part of broader equity
issues like urban change, whatworries about gentrification.
(13:32):
And so you could see that therewas at one level, the scholars
were saying, hey, we can'tisolate transportation from the
broader social issues.
And the designers, the plannerswere like, oh wow, I can't
speak for other planners, but Ithink some of the equity
conversations around 2020 caughtsome of us maybe feeling a
little flat-footed, which is wehad not 100% thought about maybe
(13:53):
we've been focusing on themodal piece of it and hadn't
thought about what were therelationships to and some of
those conversations were reallyhard.
Like, you know, I don't think Ihave a copy of at hand, but to
hear bike lanes be described aswhite lanes, like that was
really hard.
Like I thought bike lanes weregood.
I thought bike lanes helpedcyclists, and in many places,
cyclists are people who can'tafford cars.
(14:14):
Like I thought I was doing goodequity work, but then in a lot
of communities, people wereafraid about bicycle lanes
because of maybe it was aharbinger of gentrification.
So that was partly the book wasto try to sort through hey,
these feel like collidingprinciple schemes.
Like I thought the bicycle lanewas good, but now someone's
telling me it's bad.
And and really why one personthinks it's good and another
(14:34):
person thinks it's bad is it'sabout where they're coming from
in terms of how they're definingequity.
I guess my point is I had tofirst figure out what do we mean
by mobility justice?
What does that mean and allthese different axes that
combine to make a just street?
What does that mean in inpractical terms?
It's easier said than done.
It comes down to things likenot just viewing the street as
(14:56):
an infrastructure space, butengaging people.
This comes back to what we weretalking about before is the
process, I think, is really akey part of this.
It's like the street is stilljust a transportation space.
It's not going to fix housingaffordability.
We can't put too much weight onthe street to solve all of our
problems.
However, I believe as aplanner, the best way to do that
(15:19):
is to engage as many people aspossible.
That making our street space alittle more democratic and our
decision making a little moredemocratic, then we can start to
accommodate more diversevoices.
And then maybe we design thestreet in a better, more
democratic way that achieves ajustice socially and not just
kind of intermodally.
Jennifer Hiatt (15:39):
And one of the steps on the pathway of making
that more equitable road is thefact that you discussed that we
need to have a cognitive shift,not just a physical shift in the
road.
And I think, you know,planners, geographers, even some
transportation engineers thatyou talk to are there.
But how do we get thatcognitive shift to happen for
the general public?
David Prytherch (16:00):
We were talking before the podcast was
recording about, I think youguys have been involved with
some stuff about parklets andparking day.
And this is the power of thepop-up, and what I would call
the radical power of the pop-upis that what a lot of cities
know is that what we'reconfronting here is to make a
street not just more walkable,bikeable, bike lanes, that alone
(16:23):
confronts the hegemony of theautomobile.
And as we've learned in theUnited States, that stuff is
political.
The politics are pretty fierce.
You know, I mean, we're seeingit right now with like people
using their vehicles as weaponsagainst other people, the
hostility towards pedestriansand bicyclists.
You know, those politics arepretty intense because we have a
(16:45):
group of people who haveenjoyed hegemony over the
roadway space, you know, andanytime you confront the
hegemony of any group who'senjoyed privileges, they don't
love giving up their privileges.
So, what I think you can do isto do those things that enable
people to imagine a differentorder.
And this is the power of like aparking day where you can
(17:05):
convert a parking space into apublic space, even if it's just
for a day, sit on the asphalt ina lawn chair and be like, wow,
there's a lot of space here.
Like, what if we changed it?
This was the power of thingslike cyclovia or open streets,
some of these events.
Okay, we're gonna close downsome streets just on a weekend,
(17:25):
allow some people to walk andbike and rollerblade down the
middle of the roadway.
It doesn't instantly upend thesocial order at which cars are
at the center.
I don't know about you, but youknow, we do this in Oxford here
in Ohio.
We we close our streets oncertain Friday nights in the
summertime.
To walk down the middle of thepublic right away on the double
yellow line and stand there andtalk to somebody and maybe share
(17:48):
a beer, it gives you a taste ofsomething that's different.
Once you've had a taste ofdemocracy, you don't want to
give it up.
You know, when you have a tasteof civil rights, you don't want
to go back to that order.
And so I think the pop-up is away of giving people a stake and
like, wow, this could bedifferent.
It shifts your mind a littleways.
And I think then you can startto have conversations.
(18:10):
The other thing I think isreally important, and this is in
my book, I talk about how wewent from all these little
pop-ups before COVID that werevery limited.
You know, it was a few parkletsto all of a sudden there was
this push to reclaim the streetduring COVID.
We can talk about more of thatin a minute, but it gave people
a taste and a stake in theroadway.
(18:31):
Small businesses who would joinroadways have a pretty good
stake in them.
Neighbors have a pretty goodstake in them.
And once you give people astake in something, then they
are stakeholder.
I don't know what the origin ofthe word stakeholder is, but it
has the word hold in there, youknow, that once you have a
stake, you hold on to it.
And now we've got acounter-constituency to the
drivers.
(18:51):
You know, you've you've hadpodcasts like about street
bites.
The roadway space is acontested space.
So what we need is multiplepeople vying over it to achieve
something that's a little bitmore balanced, and that's how
you move forward.
Stephanie Rouse (19:03):
So you just mentioned how there's a lot of
communities that were pilotingthese kind of concepts before
the pandemic, even, but thepandemic really gave them
license to really go big with itand test them out.
And some of the communitieshave been successful at
maintaining those, those kind ofprograms, others have not and
have had to scale back or closesome of the programs.
What do you see as like themost effective approaches or
(19:26):
which communities were mosteffective at making these
permanent solutions?
David Prytherch (19:30):
Yeah, that was a really core part of my book
because I had seen that stufflike you have.
I mean, you guys work for aplanning agency.
I'm a city counselor here inOxford, and we had tested a few
of those things.
But I was really struck by thescale at which some cities, and
my book really, you know, itjust focused on nine major U.S.
cities.
So I can really only talk abouttheir experience.
(19:51):
But yeah, it was a moment.
I think many of us in in thepandemic, as as dark as the
pandemic was, we saw kind of awindow of opportunity, which was
like, wow, the world could bereally different.
Like the streets suddenlyemptied of cars, and and so it
provided a window, just like Iwas talking about that, even if
just sharing the street on aSaturday night during an event
gives you a window into how theworld could be.
(20:12):
Pandemic, when it came tostreets, gave us a window on how
the world could be.
You know, it was just a window,and the window started closing
pretty quickly.
When there were no cars on thestreet, it was easy to claim
them for public space.
But when people started wantingto drive back to work, and and
that happened, the pandemic feltlike it took forever, but it
happened relatively quickly.
But this is where planners, youknow, I think those of us who
(20:34):
are in planning believe in thepower of systems and we believe
in policies and we believe indesign manuals.
And and the street, of allthings, is as chaotic as it
seems from the outside, thestreet is one of the most
regulated, ordered spaces that'sengineered very specifically.
Yeah, I mean, people are goingto and fro, but the city has
(20:54):
pretty good control over that.
When I talk about the success,it was less about the open
streets or the slow streets thanit more, I think it was about
the policy shift thatcommunities went back, many of
which were already, for example,in the process of revising
their transportation andmobility plans.
Like there was already a bigmove, like cities were
reorganizing their public worksdepartments, you know, from
(21:15):
being bureaus of motor vehiclesto being departments of mobility
and infrastructure.
They were already starting tothink about equity.
So I think what the pandemicdid was just a catalyst for
really realigning the bigpicture plans.
You know, those of us inplanning love plans, but
ultimately it is about the rulesystems.
And so cities that went backand redesigned their street
(21:37):
guidelines to say, hey, like ashared street is a legitimate
use.
Or a lot of cities had beenoperating under the assumption
that speed humps wereimpermissible.
I mean, that's the engineerswould have told you about like
Boston, such a walkable city,but up until you know less than
a decade ago, their public worksdepartment thought that speed
(21:57):
humps were bad and couldn't bedone.
And so they broke through onsome things.
So yeah, I think thatultimately the power is in this
is what we learned a centuryago, where to effectuate a
takeover of cars of the street,you had to do it in law and
engineering and design.
All backed up socially, youknow, like people have to
support stuff socially for thefor the plans and the policies
(22:20):
to work.
But the big change was reallythe plans and policies.
So now it's not so satisfyingbecause it's not so quick, but
they start to weave these thingsinto the stuff that you're
familiar with.
But most people, you know,capital budgets, like slowly
doing a speed hump at a time ora project here at a time.
It's very uneven work.
And as we've learned in ournational politics, you know,
(22:42):
just because you thinksomething's going in a direction
doesn't mean it couldn't turnaround again and go in an
opposite direction.
So there's going to be a pushand pull and tug over this
stuff, and it's really hard toknow exactly where it's going to
go.
Jennifer Hiatt (22:56):
I think my favorite term from the book was
the idea of a messy sharedspace.
Sometimes think I'm kind of amessy person, so I appreciated
it that you referred to thatidea.
So, what is a messy sharedspace and what are the benefits
of all that mess?
David Prytherch (23:11):
Well, this is where to me, you know, a kind of
epiphany I had, which is thatwe tend to view streets as, you
know, the other term I use ispipes for cars.
I mean, we design them asconduits.
And you just think about thegeography of the street and all
these linear things, you know,that we have different paint
colors to mark the edge of theroadway in the middle of the
(23:32):
roadway, and and markings tochannel people around islands.
It's all designed very muchlike hydraulic engineering, in
which instead of watermolecules, it's people in bikes
and cars and trucks moving downthe street.
And that's the way we typicallythink of it, but that's not how
we think of a park.
And so to me, we've longrecognized that parks are public
(23:55):
spaces.
And so the literature on publicspace and geography and
planning and other disciplineshas often focused on parks and
plazas because we we understandthose things to be public and we
understand they're they will bemessy.
We understand that they will becontested.
They're the places where peoplewill go to protest.
We understand there will betugs of war between public uses
(24:16):
and private uses.
Like, do we let a concessionerset out cafe tables in the
middle of the plaza?
How much do we charge them?
How do we juggle all thesedifferent uses?
There's definitely systems tothat.
I mean, classic, if you've everbeen to a European plaza, I
mean, they have rules that aregoverning the food deliveries
can happen and taxi drivers candrive to hotels on the plaza,
(24:38):
but they've got speeds and thosecafes you're sitting at, there
are rules around those.
But they are messy spaces, youknow, because they are public,
they're shared by people andthey are unstructured.
Yeah, parks have pathways andthey have different rules and
stuff, but like the really greatparks, they're just different
than a street.
And so I think when you startthinking about the street a
(24:59):
little bit more like a parkwould be, then you have to
realize, like, okay, well, we'regonna have to juggle these uses
that like we are maybe aregoing to introduce some public
uses.
Like this was to me like thenovelty of, okay, well, we used
to have parklets and they werejust public spaces, but now
we're going to let someone leaseout the street space.
How much do you charge forthat?
You know?
Those are really superinteresting conversations that
(25:22):
the people I interviewed in thebook were wrestling with.
What's the per square foot costto lease out the public
right-of-way?
Again, we've been doing that onthe sidewalk, which we also
assumed the sidewalk was publicspace.
But I think my book tried topush the envelope a little bit
and I use the metaphor of thecurb a lot because we would
think about parks, plazas, andsidewalks as being public
(25:42):
spaces, but the asphalt, we justlike our gaze, like our public
space gaze ended at the curbbecause we assume that the
roadway that was asphalt, andasphalt, that's the engineers
control that.
But I think what pandemic didwas we introduced messiness on
the roadway.
And it's messy these days.
I mean, you throw inmicromobility, you know, you've
(26:02):
got people zipping along onscooters and people in
wheelchairs, and it's a verymessy space.
And a hundred years ago, theycreated a place to try to create
order.
And I think we when you've gotbodies in motion going to and
fro, you need some rules becauseotherwise some people run over
other people.
But I think that accepting acertain amount of mess and
(26:24):
assuming that this is a socialspace and people are going to
work it out.
The rules in engineering can'tgovern human behavior 100%.
Like maybe there are otherdesign cues that can help make
people behave.
If you think about a greatplaza, there are not a lot of
markings there.
There's not even a lot ofsignage.
Yet somehow in that Jane Jacobsway, there's a choreography of
(26:45):
it that is just beautiful andorganic and rhythmic and somehow
it's it works because forreasons other than clear rule
systems.
Stephanie Rouse (26:57):
I feel like that's kind of what complete
streets approaches or changesthat we're trying to make to the
rigid structure of streetdesign is going towards of
bringing back the visual cuesthat encourage drivers to slow
down and to pay attention andhaving trees bordering it, which
were obstructions adjacent tothe roadway.
We had to take them all outbecause it was dangerous.
(27:17):
And like bringing buildingsback towards the street to again
define the space and helpencourage motorists to drive
more safely.
And so it's it's encouraging tosee those kind of changes in
the strict engineering fieldbecause they've tended to be so
rigid about the rules that havereally shaped the way our
streets have looked.
David Prytherch (27:35):
It is really interesting because I don't know
about you, but I just thinkthere were certain things that
we bought into.
And one of those was is likeI'm a big multimodal advocate,
and so I'm a believer in bikelanes because you could carve
out a space and dedicate it andengineer it for bikes.
And I think bike lanes arereally, really great.
But what the book really taughtme was that maybe sometimes
(27:58):
it's not about separating theusers through dedicated spaces.
Maybe it comes through throwingthem all in together.
And that's where, yeah, you'reright.
And and the classic example ofthat are slow or shared streets
techniques.
And this is the the beauty andthe genius of the Dutch voonf,
(28:18):
like the shared street, whereno, instead of clearing the
street of obstructions,introduce obstructions to the
street.
Let there be some parked carson the side every once in a
while, chicanes or trees orstreet furniture or kids
playing.
It's a crazy kind of idea, butif you have shared or naked
streets, we have some on campusright outside my building.
(28:40):
It's like the absence of theinfrastructure.
Now we have pedestrians walkingup the middle of the roadway,
and the cars somehow fall inline and go slow and defer to
them.
These are the second orderthings that people don't really
understand in the public, whichis like, oh, if I have speeding,
what we should do is havepolice enforcing it or this or
(29:01):
that.
But no, the police can't beeverywhere.
What you need is an environmentwith cues that encourages the
kind of behavior that you want.
And I find that that stuff isjust like you're saying it's
counterintuitive.
The engineers were like thetree was a bad thing, like a
tree could be crashed into.
We need to get the pedestriansout of the street so the cars
don't hit them.
Well, no, actually, what if weintroduce obstructions and we
encourage people to walk or playor bike in the middle of the
(29:23):
street?
You get these really, reallygreat outcomes.
The other really, really greatoutcome is that it turns out
that we have a lot of streetsthat can be converted into
shared streets in a way in amuch lower cost way, either to
parking or capital dollars, thantrying to introduce bike lanes
on some really busy thoroughfarewhere maybe a cyclist doesn't
want to be anywhere.
(29:43):
So that's the beauty of thebike boulevard.
And ultimately, many of us liveon these local streets or local
collectors, and we don't reallywant the busy traffic anyway.
You know, in my own communityof Oxford, we're still one of
those communities that justdoesn't really do traffic
calming because we think thespeed humps are going to mess
up.
The snow plows and we worriedabout fire trucks.
But that to me was really kindof the big epiphany is that wow,
(30:06):
you just look around all thesestreets could be at relatively
low cost converted intosomething that hits on so many
other things other than justmoving cars.
Stephanie Rouse (30:14):
You have all these great case studies from
all over the US within yourbook.
And in that, a theme that keptcoming up in each one of these
was this push and pull between abottom-up versus a top-down
approach to all of theseprograms.
And I feel like planners havegenerally understood that
bottom-up is better.
We want the communities to haveownership of these projects and
to be able to weigh in versusus just coming in and telling
(30:36):
them what to do.
But that kind of backfired in alot of these projects during
COVID because communities thatdidn't have the resources or
didn't have the time weren'tteleworking, weren't able to
take advantage of the programs.
And it was the wealthiercommunities that were.
So what do you think is theright approach here?
David Prytherch (30:52):
It was a really interesting outcome that kind
of challenged some of theassumptions that in my book I
try to define what a just streetwould be and an equitable
street.
And clearly from a proceduralequity point of view, we believe
that more engagement is better,that bottom-up is better.
But this is the lesson ofequity in a way that's kind of
(31:13):
hard to grapple with.
But what they found is whenthey would have programs that
were, for example, by request,like speed humps by request or
slow streets by request or openstreets by request, who has the
wherewithal to request it?
It's people who are already inthe know.
And so what they found is, youknow, to this day, if you look
(31:35):
on NYC, whatever open data is,and see where the open streets
are in New York City, they'reclustered in the highest income
neighborhoods.
Because those people, A, havethe political wherewithal, they
know who to call, they know howto speak the language that we in
government speak.
You know, they they know how tonavigate those systems.
It comes down to things like aI could write a whole other book
(31:57):
about the role of businessimprovement districts, in which
businesses have the resources toband together to advocate for
themselves.
So many cities lackingresources are letting their
business districts, businessimprovement districts, do the
planning downtown.
But then there are otherneighborhoods that don't have
such things.
And the other part of it is totalk to platters, is that those
kind of privileged neighborhoodsare also a real drain on staff
(32:21):
time.
You know, they're the kind ofpeople who will call you up.
It was a great quote fromClaire Eberly, who works for Los
Angeles Department ofTransportation.
She would say how some of theneighborhoods that were kind of
privileged would draw so muchstaff time, and the other
neighborhoods were like, tell uswhen it's done.
And so I think what a lot ofcities have done is try to
strike a balance.
And what they've done is to usedata, the power of GIS, using
(32:45):
equity criteria, however they'redefining it, whether it's age
or race or income or access toschools or whatever.
And they're trying toprioritize which areas really
need it based on the data andmaking some of those decisions
in a data-driven, plan-drivenway.
It doesn't mean it's notdemocratic.
(33:06):
I mean, as you guys know, thisis the nature of land use
regulation sometimes, which isyou do a comprehensive planning
process which is super open andconversational, and we want your
input, we want your input, butultimately it might get
translated into a zoningregulation that's not that
voluntary.
And engineers know this.
(33:26):
Uh, you know, in roadways, Ialways joke that like if it were
up to bottom-up participation,we wouldn't have an interstate
highway system.
Like, if you want to create anetwork that punches its way
across space to connect point Ato point B, you cannot give
every landowner veto power overthe thing.
This is why we have eminentdomain.
Sometimes, I mean, if you lookat the eminent domain statute in
(33:49):
Nebraska, it may say, but likein Ohio, private property rights
are sacrosanct except whensubservient to the public
welfare.
So what planners are trying todo is figure out what the public
welfare is, and that's as messyas the street.
It's some combination ofuniversal principles.
We believe everyone should haveaccess to something, some
degree of data driven, these arethe places we believe deserve
(34:12):
the resources.
Yes, there's going to beparticipation.
What I learned is it's a messybusiness there too.
But I would say even thoughthey pull back a little bit from
the COVID engagement withpublic transportation, planning
and engineering has not been ourmost democratic sphere of
public decision making.
I still view it as a fairlyblack box process of how roads
(34:36):
get designed and engineered thatdon't open up a lot of space.
So I think much as cities havepulled back, I think the bottom
line is we could still use moredemocracy in our streets are
designed rather than less, evenif we have to safeguard against
people with resources justpulling more resources to
themselves to the detriment ofcommunities that are less
(34:56):
empowered.
Jennifer Hiatt (34:58):
I was just talking with one of our
residents.
We're doing a bridgereplacement project, and she
made the comment that she hadattended a public input session,
I guess, to talk about aroundabout.
And when she was asking anengineer questions, the engineer
said, It's not actually up fordiscussion.
We're just here to show youwhat's going on.
David Prytherch (35:19):
And how often does that happen?
And this is where those of uswho are listening as planners,
you know, this is why the peoplewho work in community
development departments, forwhich we spend so much time in
board meetings.
And, you know, my communitydevelopment director in the city
of Oxford, he supervises, Ithink, three or four boards.
He spends so much time inmeetings.
Guess how many boards theengineers answer to?
(35:41):
Zero.
And and they like it that way.
And that's a whole otherhegemony thing, which is, you
know, who would like to haveabsolute dominion over your
domain?
And the engineers have enjoyeda pretty for good reasons.
They do highly technical thingsthat are they're not for all of
us to understand.
Roadway geometry iscomplicated.
I wouldn't hope to try to doit, but partly it is they have
(36:05):
just enjoyed uncontestedhegemony over the decision
making and the process with alot of resources at their
disposal, and the public'smessy.
Like the engineering manuals donot make much accounting for
neighborhood opposition or thesubtleties of culture.
That's why I think a lot ofcities have tried to create a
(36:26):
more interdisciplinary approachto transportation.
This is why we've pulled someof that decision making out of a
public works department and putthem into more of an
interdisciplinary sphere.
We have those same things here.
And I don't think that's goingto change instantly, but maybe
we can make it a little moredemocratic.
Jennifer Hiatt (36:43):
And speaking of all your excellent case studies,
what were some of the moresurprising or successful
examples of communitiestransforming their streets?
David Prytherch (36:52):
Well, this is perhaps the less sexy one, but
what was really interesting tome was to talk to Boston,
because Boston is a city that'sa very walkable city, very
dense, you know, they've gotvery narrow streets with um a
lot of car parked cars.
And what was kind of, I guess,ironic is they had begun a
process of doing these slowstreets plans where they did a
wonderful process of going inneighborhood by neighborhood,
(37:15):
engaging people in charrettesand all that stuff that we, you
know, as planners just reallylove and believe in so
fervently, making very kind ofcontext-sensitive decisions
about how do we slow streets by,you know, daylighting
intersections or adding newcrosswalks or all that good
stuff.
But ironically, what they foundis that was a slow business and
(37:37):
it was costly.
So what Boston did, and I feelsweird because it is, is they
actually went the other way,which is they just said, you
know what, there are a lot ofdifferent techniques, but the
speed hump is the single mosteffective technique.
You know, the bang for the buckis is highest with the speed
hump.
And as long as we engineer itto be a standard feature, we're
(37:59):
just gonna do it.
And we're not going to have acharrette to ask you whether you
want it on your street, youknow, they say just in the same
way we would stripe a crosswalk,which doesn't require committee
to do, they make a decisionabout speed humps.
Again, it's kind ofcounterintuitive because again,
we love all that hands-onplanning.
But if you're a city likeBoston that has public safety
(38:21):
issues, you have a limitedbudget, and you're trying to do
the most thing that you can,it's it's not super innovative,
but it was a very effectivestrategy that they could scale
up.
And so now they just say it'skind of a universal feature.
If you live on a local street,expect a speed hump at some
point.
That of course is not as fun.
I mean, I think that the openstreets, the most kind of like
(38:42):
organic and cool one was 34thAvenue in Queens in New York,
which was an open street thatunlike some of those other ones
that were, you know, that I wasmentioning were done in
Manhattan or Brooklyn, higherincome gentrifying areas.
This is a very diverselow-income immigrant
neighborhood that those placeswere hit really hard by COVID.
(39:03):
You know, those were the placeswhere people died because they
were in dense housing.
And so those neighbors kind oftook charge of this street at a
time when people didn't evenknow how to administer these
things.
Remember, with COVID, it wasreally hard because we didn't
really want people to have massgatherings.
So there are mixed feelingsabout having people in public,
and and they were like, well,the police should manage this so
they can keep people socialdistance.
(39:24):
And it was like, okay, thatlooks like a crime scene, not
like a public space.
So they basically handed itover to the people, and the
people organized themselves.
And this again, that if they'vedone really, really cool things
infrastructure-wise, andthey're now in the process of
after having closed the streetwith barricades and all those
interim strategies, they aregoing through a permanent
(39:44):
redesign of the street as aseries of rooms of pedestrian
plazas linked by slow streets,and they're they're going to
redesign the street in that way,which is itself just super
cool.
But the beauty of it was thepop-up nature.
I visited that neighborhood ona beautiful fall day, and
there's some pictures in thebook.
Yeah, they had done stuff likebarricades at major
(40:05):
intersections, but it was astreet that looked like any
other street.
There were cars parked alongit, but it was strung up with
tables with small vendors likeyoung people who made earrings
out of polymer or, you know,people, artists, strung along
the side of the roadway on cardtables.
And yeah, there was abarricade, but it was it was
those little cues that wereenough to enable a person to
(40:27):
feel safe.
The cars went slow.
And while I'm there, someoneliterally started a couple
started dancing in the middle ofthe street because they could,
and it was joyful.
And again, the infrastructurewas not just physical, it was
this organization that nowexists, this 34th Avenue Open
Streets Coalition of people whowere empowered in their street,
(40:48):
who programmed the street withEnglish as a second language and
closing swaps and food banks,and it's this super vibrant
public space that, yeah, NewYork Department of
Transportation kind of was theframework for it, but the people
just took it over.
And it it just was veryempowering.
Yeah, the the street can onlysolve so many problems, but when
(41:11):
you can take a street and nowit's a place for kids to play or
for English as a second line,you know, it's a space of social
integration and and smallbusiness ownership and and
people dancing in joy.
Like it's I love and uh trafficengineering as much as an
ex-person, but it's it gave me alot of hope about the future of
the city through such thingsthat were at one level radical,
(41:32):
but also not super costly.
It was just empowering.
Stephanie Rouse (41:37):
So, as this is booked on planning, in addition
to your book, which we recommendall of our listeners check out,
what books would you recommendour readers also check out?
David Prytherch (41:46):
There's so much to read, and based on who you
have hosted, like well, I won'tcover some of the stuff that's
kind of in the popular planningliterature, but uh, you know, I
do recommend, I'm gonna hold uphere, Peter Norton's book,
Fighting Traffic, The Dawn ofthe Motor Age in the American
City, is an incredible story ofhow our streets were taken over
and turned into vehicularspaces.
I think you hosted MimiShellard at some point.
(42:08):
Her book on mobility justice,the politics of movement in an
age of extremes, is really,really, really good for
understanding what mobilityjustice is.
I had an opportunity to reviewa book that I thought was really
cool was Justice in theInterstates, the racist truth
about urban highways.
I think we all was understoodthat highways were done with a
certain amount of insensitivityto racial diversity.
(42:30):
But it turns out in the Southin the 1960s, they plowed
highways specifically so theycould take out the houses of
civil rights leaders.
So the highway is a tool thathas not always been used for
good.
John Stalin's Cyclescapes ofthe Unequal City talks about
bicycle infrastructure.
So if you want to get a dose ofthat kind of incomplete streets
(42:51):
argument about how thecomplicated racial and social
things that are tied up inthings that we believe are good,
like bicycle lanes, that's agood one.
And though it's selfish, but Iwould encourage it because you
can download the PDF, my ownbook, Law Engineering in the
American Right of Way, Imagininga More Just Street, not because
I'm trying to sell any morecopies.
You can download it for free.
(43:11):
But it was my way of makingsense of traffic law and
engineering to understand justhow auto-centric it was, and
maybe invite us to think aboutrevising those systems to make
them a little more equitable.
So much good stuff out there,but that's just a taste, you
know, to help people understandsome of these conversations that
lie behind my book and that mybook seeks to build on.
Jennifer Hiatt (43:32):
And it is okay to promote your book for more
sales.
That is kind of the point ofthe podcast.
David Prytherch (43:38):
Oh, yes.
So so there is this otherrecently published book uh
called Reclaiming the Road, um,Mobility Justice Beyond Complete
Streets, published by thewonderful University of
Minnesota Press.
It's rooted in scholarlydebate, so it's right at the
cutting edge of some of thereally complicated conversations
about mobility justice.
So it's a good tour of some ofthat scholarly stuff, but it
really is written.
(43:59):
I hope planners read it.
I hope advocates read it.
I hope people in neighborhoodsread it.
It's meant to be readable.
And so, yeah, I encouragepeople.
And for once, in in theacademic world, it's priced at a
price point.
An average person can actuallyafford it.
It's like $27.
Yeah, I it was my way of makingsense and really complicated
things that were happening inthe city in the last decade and
(44:19):
hopefully pointing our wayforward towards something
different and better.
So I hope it gets into thehands of people because there's
too much roadway real estate todevote just to traffic and
parking.
We have to reclaim more of it,and I think our cities will be
better as a result.
Stephanie Rouse (44:34):
Yeah, it was a really great read.
I I can attest to that it wasdigestible by someone who's not
baked into the transportationindustry.
So really appreciate you takingthe time, David, to talk with
us about your book, Reclaimingthe Road.
David Prytherch (44:46):
Jennifer and Stephanie, thank you so much for
the podcast.
I really enjoy it.
It was so wonderful to havethis conversation.
And a shout out to the NebraskaAPA.
Jennifer Hiatt (44:56):
We hope you enjoyed this conversation with
author David Purchart on hisbook, Reclaiming the Road:
Mobility Justice Beyond CompleteStreet.
You can get your own copythrough the publisher at
University of Minnesota Press bysupporting your local bookstore
or online at bookshop.org.
Remember to subscribe to theshow wherever you listen to the
podcast, and please rate,review, and share the show.
Thank you for listening, andwe'll talk to you next time on
Book Town Planning.
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