Mitigating Harm ThroughCommunity-Based Ideas

Alright, hello everyone. Welcome to On the Park Bench, a public square conversation brought to you by the Congress for the New Urbanism. On the park bench presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in new urbanism and allied industries, providing an opportunity for the audience to engage in real-time. The webinar series is a platform for CNU members to engage, debate, and collaborate on the pressing issues of the day. Welcome to today's webinar. Mitigating harm through community based ideas with Audrey Winnick. Grace Chan McKibben and Emma Jasinski. And you can share your thoughts on hashtag on the Park Bench. At tiny URL. Dot com slash OTP feedback. And join us for upcoming webinars. On Tuesday, June 25, th join us for Authors Forum. Killed by traffic engineer. Join author Wes Marshall as he reveals to profession's shaky unscientific foundations. And points the way to safer healthier streets. Webinar will be moderated by Rob's Dudeville. You can register online at cnu. Org slash resources slash on the park bench. And join or renew your CNU membership. Be sure to get connected to a powerful movement to advance walkable urbanism and get the resources and tools to affect change as well as sharpen your skills in the architecture of community. Navigate to see new.org and select our member portal. And for now for today's webinar. Our speakers today include Audrey Wenick, is a senior director with the Metropolitan Planning Council. She's worked on transportation planning and policy for 20 years. Her current work is focused on advancing sustainable and equitable transportation. Improving transportation safety and boosting mobility for those of all ages and abilities. Under her leadership, NPC developed reports including reconnecting communities and toward universal mobility. She is a member of the Chicago Metropolitan Metropolitan Agency for Planning's Transportation Committee and on the advisory boards of WTS and young professionals in transportation. Grace Jan McKibben is executive director of coalition for a better Chinese American community. For nearly 30 years she has held senior leadership roles with many organizations in higher education, government, financial services, consulting, social services, and policy advocacy. In these roles, she led numerous programs that brought communities together and amplified voices and influence of marginalized communities. Most recently, she spearheaded the advocacy to create the 1st Asian-american majority award in the city of Chicago. She serves as secretary on the city of Chicago's Community Development Commission. Chair of the mayor's offices, Asian American Pacific Islander Community Engagement Council and as a member of the Illinois State Asian American Employment Plan Advisory Council. She's also a board member of the Illinois affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union and an advisory board member of Midwest Asian Health Coalition. Emma Jessinski is the senior community designer at Design Trust Chicago, an emerging multidisciplinary civic impact design studio started in 2,020. As a creative practitioner and a passionate cultivator of community. Emma has 12 years of experience in the design industry and nonprofit sector. She has filled roles such as architectural designer, project manager, and design director. Her experience ranges from international sanitation infrastructure projects to national multi family affordable housing programs and healthcare clinics to focusing on domestic violence shelters. She's a member of the Association of Community Design. Today's webinar will be moderated by seeing you President Mallory batches. And as a reminder, please use the Q&A function to ask questions as they occur to you. Let's start today's webinar. All right, folks, over to you. Alright, we'll get those slides into. Pull screen format. My name is Audrey Wenank and I'm so happy to be here today. Thank you to Lauren and Mallory and seeing you for inviting us to to chat today. And I'm also really pleased to be here with some great community partners. Grace, Chan, and Kibbon and, and we are really happy to tell you about some of the work we're doing. Here in Chicago. And I think, We might need to change the format of the presentation. I'm, I'm seeing, notes. Yes. Are other seeing notes? Yes. Okay, so let's change the presentation. So we just show full screen if possible. And if we need to leave it this way with the slides down the side we can. Yeah, let's just, with the slides down the side then. Sorry. You think we'd be, flawless with zoom by now, but it's always an adventure. And so we'll, we'll get those slides up and just, just a second. But what we're here to talk about today is. An effort that we undertook. In anticipation of the reconnecting communities program people may be aware of under the federal highway administration. That, we were, there, there have been many discretionary grant programs under the bipartisan infrastructure law. And. And the reconnecting communities. Program. For the 1st time funded projects to mitigate the harms of historic transportation infrastructure. And, I know you go, you're going to get the slides up there in just a second. And we'll show you the cover of our report where. Mpc as a nonprofit and advocacy organization could see that this opportunity for. Reconnecting communities, thank you, was on the horizon. And, we wanted to help our region get ready for that. And make sure that we were prepared to have a really strong application. In the Chicago region and hopefully get some. Is to help mitigate the harms. You can see the cover of this report, you know, a huge highway going through communities in Chicago and a train down the middle. And what we did was is do some analysis and community engagement that generated project recommendations and then we were able to work with the city ultimately on on a grant and I'll get into a lot more details on that. And so if we move to the next slide. What the report did that was really important for the Chicago region is document for the 1st time in a comprehensive way. The impacts that transportation infrastructure has on neighborhoods. And you can see in this photograph, this is a picture of, the Chinatown community in you know, in the south loop area of Chicago. You can see on the left side what it looked like in 1938 and there already was the freight rail infrastructure that's that big vertical swath in the middle. But then, you know, present day, you can see huge 2 huge highways. I 55 and I 90 were built right through Chinatown and that had massive impacts to the Chinatown community lost a lot of public space and there are a lot of negative impacts from all of those all that concrete. So if we move to the next slide. You know, we, we're, going through this, reckoning at the national level where we're realizing that, you know, it doesn't have to be that way. We've lived with this infrastructure, and we've grown up by highways. Those of us and, you know, Most of us alive today, have grown up with those highways, that were already built in the 50, 60, 70. And are used to, and have normalized their existence. We have, however, they have tremendous impacts on a community life. For example transit riders waiting in the median of that highway which is how the picture before and they incredible noise that is generated by, cars. It's, It's really stark in Chicago when you're on those platforms waiting for transit and you can barely speak to someone next to you, the amount of noise that's generated. The statistics show that sound levels regularly exceed 70 decibels, a level deemed harmful to human hearing. Generated by that traffic impact. If we look at air quality, you could see in this map in the center the prevalence of asthma. In the city of Chicago and you can see in red lines where the highways are located. And you could see that there's a lot of intersections between where there's asthma and where highways are located. There are many areas in Chicago with smart small particulate. Matter pm 2.5 in the 80th to a hundred percentile of national values. Again, that's mostly near highways. And then if we look at household income. Many healthy communities were severely damaged when highways were built in the Chicago area. And many neighborhoods have Never recovered from these. Paths, through communities where there were a lot of homes removed and there now are a lot of low income residents. And those highways have really disconnected communities. And the irony of the scale of highways in Chicago is that a lot of the people that currently live near highways don't even own cars and don't use those highways they just have the negative impact. So let's talk about. What we did with this report process. You know, we, socialize all this information about the harms of infrastructure and then we said to communities. How could we make this better? What are locations that you know, have, issues that are, have negative impacts and what are some solutions, that you would like to see in your communities. And so we, created a web-based tool and we also went out into communities and did some public engagement. We did a virtual open house. And, the photographs, the pictures you see here, some of the, different. Types of examples we gave to people of, you know, underpass parks or complete streets or highway caps to get people's, juices flowing in terms of ideas. And then we collected those ideas. From the whole region, although most of the ideas to come from the city of Chicago. And our team members Chris Johnson did a lot of GAS analysis. You go Garonado who's here with us today did a lot of the project analysis and Debbie Lou did engagement work for this project. And so what do we get? We, we received a hundred 20 ideas for community projects. That. You know, residents, Identified, we categorized these project types. And then we. Put them through a pre screening process. For those that would be suitable to apply for a reconnecting communities grant. Looking at the notice of funding opportunity and the criteria that they used and you can see the types of projects that people suggested, you know, transit, a ton of bicycle pedestrian complete speech projects, some parks. Underpass community space. Redesign of highways and ramps. And improvements to viaducts and we're gonna get into a viaduct. Project conversation. A little bit more today. And so One of the project ideas was working to mitigate the harms of the many viaducts that go that are in Chinatown. As I noted at the beginning, there already was actually rail infrastructure for many, many years, more than a hundred years that went through Chinatown. It's still there. It's a big overpass and that that creates a lot of viaducts. And The it's very wide it has multiple tracks and it creates long dark drippy wet viaducts that no one wants to walk through. But and is it creates a long barrier because there's multiple ones blocking multiple streets are creating this these conditions for multiple streets. So there were 8 there 8 viaduct locations on one side of the neighborhood and so we went through a process of looking at these locations and we'll talk more in more detail about that. The second. We, looked at the 8 viaducts. We, move to the next slide and scored those projects. Through our engagement tool, you can see the different. You know, the criteria from the NOFO, the notice of funding opportunity that comes from the federal government. There were different categories. And then we developed criteria. And we looked at data sets, as much as possible. Federal sets, data sets that the federal government would, might find credible and. And scored projects. In terms of which ones would be most competitive if we were to apply for a federal grants. If we go to the next slide, you can see that once we scored those, you know, the wide range of projects that we've received, the Chinatown viaducts. I scored very, very high. And this is a Justice 40 area. We prioritize communities that were historically transportation disadvantaged. And we looked at the environmental and the environmental justice tool, that the federal government used. You can see the rail yard, the elevated rail yard is highlighted in red. You can see the scale of that barrier in Chinatown. And, because Reconnecting communities is about connecting people to destinations. We looked at desired destinations for residents, looking at zoning maps and, and how this barrier disconnected people from key destinations. We looked at transit. Maps, where the buses go. You know, where is there any rail transit? And we looked at the CDC Chicago Department of Transportation cycling map looking at where dedicated bike lanes existed or were planned. And you can see some of the destinations here in this. In this map. In terms of the results of the scoring. The engagement tool. Provided us with geographic points where issues were experienced by the community. And you can see that you know this when we gathered all the information for this whole report we sometimes saw point projects at single points we sometimes saw issues along quarters so we define projects as either linear or as point projects. And then we saw a pattern. We saw projects as where they could be expected, that they were clustering along different corridors. These are different highways. Eisenhower, Dan Ryan, Skyway, these are different highways. There's a toll, a toll road. The metroelectric is a, is a transit corridor like a commuter rail, and then there are a few sort of projects that were not on any of these quarters, but it definitely highlighted, you know, how they're, they aligned and many way in many times with major highway. And then, Once we've finished the whole report and again, you can see the bordered in orange here, that was the actual report that my organization. Developed with these projects and then. We worked with the city of Chicago. To, help. Them develop an application for the federal funds. And you can see on the right side the reconnecting Chicago's West Side Communities Report. Which is, which was submitted actually twice. They did not get funded the 1st time. They happily did get funded the second time. And that that's No, that's different than the China town project. We're gonna get into some more detail on today, but just wanted to let folks know, that they're you know, this report that NPC did has generated a couple different outcomes, one of which is the city application and there will be funding to help with planning for connectivity across this huge highway that has transit to running down the median and has just connected some of the lowest income communities. In this in the Chicago region and there is a large effort that will be underway to reconstruct this entire highway and hopefully mitigate a lot of the harms. As part of that in our in our NPO, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning is actually setting up a project management office to coordinate all the projects in it and to coordinate. The cities, West Side communities effort as part of that. So we were, that was a win. Of course, the work has, lies ahead of us to figure out all those details. If we go to the next slide. One thing we, you know, what we really want to talk about today when we hear from Grace and Emma. Is another takeaway that we that we had when we were doing this whole project is sometimes they're really big projects like I just mentioned the, you know, future reconstruction of the Eisenhower Highway and all the associated elements of that. But many of the projects that were recommended were. Complete streets, bike walk, viaducts. In specific locations. And when we. When we thought about how we could move those projects forward. And when we talked with the city of Chicago. You know, we realize that It was really expected that the community develop the projects to a certain point. Before they could get any kind of resources. And, there the funding the federal grants are really competitive and so you have to kind of have an evolved a little bit of an evolved project with renderings, etc, to do an application and a lot of these other ideas. We're just ideas that work hadn't been done. And they needed to create a vision of this space. And so that's really what brought us to form this great team. And we were so grateful. You're going to hear from Emma in just a second. That she works for the design trust Chicago which provides pro bono design services and you know came to the party with grace and you know was able to help. Greece's community based organization. But we realize that, you know, this is a big hole and a big gap. In trying to solve these problems and you know we're happy to tell our story of you know how we've how we've been working through this so I'm gonna I'm gonna turn it over to Grace, who's gonna tell you a little bit more about the details of the viaduct work in Chinatown. Yeah, thank you so much, Audrey. So 1st a little bit about the organization that I lead, the coalition for better Chinese American community. We are a community based organization that works in Chinatown and surrounding areas primarily with the Asian-american community as our name suggests that we work primarily with the Chinese-american community. All the majority of my staff are, fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin and myself included. And, the We were founded in 1998 as an organization that amplifies the community voice through voter education and mobilization. So for the 1st decade or so, we worked on voter education. Mobilization, census outreach, and so on. And we started with planning, community planning really with the Chinatown vision plan that was completed with the Metropolitan Agency for planning with, I'm sorry with, CMAP with the Chicago Metropolitan, agency for planning in, 2,015. So we started with the Chinatown Vision Plan, which provided a high-level vision for all the different aspects of the community. Everything from transportation and circulation to education, business, small business development, and workforce development. But we're really not primarily community. Developers or planners and my staff is really small and in fact in 2,015 there were only there was only one full-time staff with a bunch of volunteers when I started as executive director in 2,019 we still only had one full time and I was the 1st executive director and and there's really no Nobody on staff that had, planning experience, but we've partnered with other organizations. We've partnered with, C Map again for parking. Management plan as well as partner with other organizations for a walkability report. So we've been active in improving the walkability and circulation in the neighborhood since 2,015. So what Audrey described this exactly what community-based organizations often face is that we have opinions and ideas from the community and we know that there is an issue that needs to be addressed but we don't really have the expertise or the experience to do the plan to do the design for for the pre-construction work so We've always, we've always had the experience of engaging with the local community residents as well as community organizations. So that's where we come in. That in this process, we led the part with reaching out to the community, we bring residents to give ideas and opinions. About how they want to improve the viaducts. The 8 viaducts are in various different conditions of disrepair. Some of them have lights that are broken. And dark. A lot of them have falling tiles or uneven sidewalks, but and even, yeah, and even sidewalks. Yeah, but they residents do rely on these viaducts to get to. To and from work or in their daily commute because it cuts up the community. So we have the. Experience of working with the communities and together with design trust Chicago we had engaged the community in several sessions that was one large engagement session where Residents came to give their ideas about how to improve the viaduct and what the opinions about the viaduct was and then after some ideas which generated they responded to design ideas. We ended up together with Design Trust Chicago picking just one viaduct to the 23rd street viaduct as a prototype to work on designs and the details and solicited ideas from the residents and then Design Trust Chicago presented the design ideas and I'm going to turn over to Emma to talk through some of the ideas that we generated and the decisions that were made. Thank you, Grace. So here you can see. Some engagement photos from Some workshops earlier last year in the fall. So, you know, really understanding how people are traveling through the viaducts. So, you know, talking about urbanism and, you know, what does that mean for the pedestrian for people in buses, bicycles, vehicle traffic. So really understanding what it means to be, you know. Transporting or mobile through these viaduct spaces. You go to the next slide. So we had the opportunity to kind of share different inspiration images with residents and community members. get their input and what they would like to see when it comes to the improvements and overall transformation of these spaces. So like Grace mentioned, We, focused on one viaduct that's kind of a case study, a test fit. We went ahead and, use 23rd street so earlier Audrey had kind of showed some images of so you saw kind of the peeled paint, a lot of puddling, you know, these are the viaducts of railroad tracks that are over a hundred years old. So. You know, what does that mean when we're revisiting and talking about repair? So kind of thinking about these spaces and not only like prepping and priming them for, you know, repairs but also how are we starting to like amplify and hands and also kind of transform. So in these images, you know, the community is not afraid of color, you know, culturally I think that's something within the Chinese, American community, you know, an opportunity to talk about, their culture and history and lineage. So, really inviting those colors and always wanting. Right lights, you know, that's something from just repairing the existing lights, making sure they're all working to, you know, something that's fun and even more of like a statement piece if somebody wants to rather than not traveling through the viaduct being like yeah let's go I wanna travel through the I'm gonna Go through the 23rd street viaduct. Incorporating way finding and in different elements, you can move to the next slide. So here's that bright kind of catching rendering we ended up developing a new vision for the and street. So as I mentioned, we finding, you know, welcome to Chinatown, really seeing this as a gateway rather than you know, a passageway that people are avoiding. Early on, Audrey highlighted, you know, all the various infrastructure that really This fractures and components that divide a community. We wanted to use this and see this as a connector and and that like viaduct does a bridge from one neighborhood to another or you know a residential space to a more you know business quarter. And then, you know, incorporating some of those. Dr. Decorative festive lights. Into these spaces. So if you go to the next slide. We can kind of. See our schematic site plan. So this reflects the what we're kind of proposing to do within this viaduct. This viaduct specifically was also slightly shorter so we thought, Hey, as far as maybe this is a good option to just as far as the scope start small and then work our way down to the larger more. Expansive, expansive viaducts. So to the south, we went ahead and closed the viaduct to vehicle traffic. So incorporating, you know, tables, seating, these are components that, We can do different outdoor activities. One of the things. Chinatown lacks is outdoor space. This is something as a result of all that infrastructure that public parks were taken away. So incorporating some of those components. Also adding bike lanes. And both the south and north side of the street. And then still having a 1-way vehicle passage to the north. And then if you go to the final slide. This image just kind of shows if you were walking and heading towards the downtown of China. And what you would see so you can kind of see those bright fun blockades closing off the self. CYCLUS. And then to the north, you have a car, you know, still allowing vehicles. Okay, I've come out through the downtown China town area. And again, really wanting to start in these spaces from. Repairing the existing infrastructure. And and then building from there so you know the lighting to paint colors weather you know signage or way finding is lit up or those are just using various bright colors. I think there's different ways to kind of scale up, but our team really wanting to, have a powerful, bright image. To showcase the possibilities of what the by that can be Yep. And I. Can pass it over to Audrey. Yeah, thanks so much. I'm out and grace. You know, this is just the last slide here. You know, there's still a lot more work to be done, but what we wanted to share is sort of the process from identity identifying. The problems identifying potential solutions getting to a place for your even positioned to apply for for grant funding for construction. Socializing this with, elected officials. Okay. We had, there was a meeting, some a lot of the pictures that Mo was showing, some of them were during a meeting where the elder the elder woman was present and there was a whole discussion about viaducts and and and rendering so getting these ideas socialized and building momentum this packet of renderings has been submitted to the Chicago Department of Transportation. So we're, you know, we're getting getting it socialized, with them. And then in terms of working on a funding source, there is Tax increment financing, TIFF is used often in Chicago. There's also, you know, these federal grants we might be able to apply for. We have had conversations with the, the special events, department in the city of Chicago. They fund art. It's it's very complex to build and maintain a project like this we have realized, because you have multiple owners, you have freight railroads, you have passenger railroads, you have Chicago, transportation, you there the department of community events. You have the older person. And, so just figuring all of that out is, part of the process. But now, we're positioned with a vision where there's from residents. There's visualization, there's pictures to show, and now the community is ready to. Apply for funding and hopefully get something built, but it's a journey and it's definitely. You know, we're definitely appreciative of. Groups like Design Trust Chicago, we just drop the link and you know they're a very unique organization that's been started and provides pro bono assistance and that's you know that's been a real key there weren't resources to pay for this pre design work and so sort of the matchmaking of helping these resources find their way to organizations like Races have been a big big part, you know, it's been a big win just getting everyone together and doing this project. These visualizations developed and then we're, you know, we're hopeful that we'll be able to find the financial resources to actually build a project as the next space. And here's our contact information. Thank you so much, ladies. I am Mallory Batches and I'm going to be running the moderation for the rest of this webinar here and just to remind folks that the QA function is down in the bottom of your screen. Go ahead and add your questions there. I have a few questions myself that I'd love to ask y'all. As, as we were getting to know each other before this webinar, I, let this group know that I actually grew up in the Chicago land area. And so I was excited about to hear more about this project because to hear more about this program because it's something that you know in I would argue probably anyone in any city across the country has their own localized sort of understanding of the separation that these infrastructure these different infrastructure elements have created and you know I can I can visualize the the different projects very clearly the opportunities very clearly in Chicago. So this is important work for the city for my hometown. But I wanted to start us off. With a question most of the folks that will be, tuning in to this webinar are going to be coming with a some participation in the New Orleans movement members, folks who are part of our audience who who keep up with our communications about the movement and about the work of C and you as an organization. And so I wanted I wanted to start us off by asking sort of a broad question of how the principles of normanism, you know, we, we, our membership, the, the folks who might self-describe themselves as new urbanists, they work at the intersection of design and policy and people, which is a little bit about what this entire program really, you've presented today. But I wondered if you could each talk a little bit about how these the the principles of walkability and sustainability and equity are sort of, you know, how you incorporate those principles into your work from obviously 3 different vantage points, 3 different leadership roles in a program like this and more broadly in the city of Chicago. No, no, I'll let you choose who would like to sort of start us off. Yeah, maybe I'll start off by saying, you know, I think sometimes we actually, CBCC just finished a strategic planning process last summer where we looked at where the areas of focus that we want to focus on for the next 3 to 5 years and we landed with, civic engagement and policy advocacy. So the engagement is something that we've always done, politics, the advocacy a little bit more recently, but the middle bucket is community planning and development and then also civic leadership development. So folks would be like what how does an organization that started out registering voters and getting people mobilized to vote end up in planning and development, right? I think it goes hand in hand because if we want to improve the lives of people in the community, we want to also improve their lift, their physical environment and the lift environment to build a healthy and thriving community you need. You need to have jobs, you need to have housing, you need to have, safe. Safety and transportation and circulation and be able to walk around your neighborhood without being worried. About sidewalks not being even or without worried about cars and being in the way of pedestrians and and and cyclists. I think these all go together. We all we also have a program that that works for the city of Chicago to plant more trees. I mean, so, so I think that it does inform how we think about community development. No. Give me back off that. So, I think, you know, we show, I shared the schematic site plan as kind of. What we are gonna move forward with, but I think when we're talking about new urbanism and like how we're. Moving through our cities, whether it's you know the walkability how we're being housed things like that from a design perspective. Who are the people occupying these spaces and who are at the center of that. So, there's so many different ways of moving through it, but who's kind of the majority and and so understanding you know at our 1st meeting too it's a lot of seniors who are walking through these spaces and it's not about the question is how are we getting cars through here? How are we getting people through here? So I think too it's really important when designing how we're kind of framing these questions because there's a lot of variables, there's a lot of components. But understanding who's at the center of it and then developing from there. So that's kind of where we landed with our specific test fit of more cycle is having this pedestrian repaired space and still allowing some vehicle but That's not necessarily the priority in this passageway. And then 2, there's always, we did kinda do different options of a more vehicle friendly or a more totally pedestrian. So from a design it's like who who's kind of the focus and what problem are we trying to solve and then reframing the question to fit that. Yeah. Yeah, those are those are such great answers. I don't know if I have time to add. But I'll just say, you know, that my organization, the Metropolitan Planning Council, you know, we've been around for 90 years in this region and we focus on sustainability and equity in the built environment. And you know, the history of transportation has been, one of really excessive focus on speed and efficiency and engineering and and think we've all realized. That is cost so much damage and we really do think about the lived experience. And so what we try to do is really lift up communities ideas and connect them to resources and and help you know help them. Move forward. There ideas. And so that this is an example of one of those cases. That's great. Well, it's sort of that leads me into, maybe the next question that I have here, which is, you know, obviously the the community based organization, sorry, a central part of how you were able to gain understanding. You know, even thinking beyond the Chinatown project specifically to the broader sets of, you know, these, these initiatives that in some total that are in the in the reconnecting communities report. You know, the role of community based organizations clearly is very important, but I wonder, Maybe you could talk a little bit about how or why that's the case. Both in the specific grace, but you know, I think, you know, in the more general as well. And, and maybe what lessons you've learned from that but also how do those organizational how do you support those organizational relationships you each have you know whether it's your own board your own staff your own stakeholders that you're responding to, how do you maintain those relationships between the communities, the community organizations, and then the larger design and or planning. Okay. Yeah, I can go. I mean, I can go first.st I mean, I think community based organizations. Many of them been have been around for a long time, you know, others are newer. They have often struggled with access to decision makers, access to resources. And so I think, you know, We're gonna my organization is one that sort of sits at the intersection of, you know, we're an independent nonprofit. We're not a government agency, but we. Occupy a space where we you know can work with government, work with community based organizations, work with business. And we try to be a connector, and also, you know, elevate the voices of community based organizations and have that help them navigate the very complex. And even to us, we're always learning very complex structures that exist in terms of like infrastructure that we set an average person sees. You know who they don't know who owns it and who maintains it and who pays for it and all of that stuff super complicated and just all working together to try to. I try to help figure that out and move forward and make and make it better. But the community based organizations are the ones that live with it every day and they know what they need. And so we need to let them help us, you know, tell us what they need. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I, Grace, anything to add? Yeah, I'll probably say. I'll probably say something from the community based organization, this point of view. Okay. I'm actually very interesting that, this week, National Capacity, which is a National Asian American Community Development Organization has their annual convention in Chicago and I'm running back and forth and so there are all these different communities that all these different organizations that serve primarily Asian-american communities, but that it could be organizations that primarily serve black communities like Latinx communities or any other. Communities that traditionally have not had access to decision-making as Audrey said. So we provide the cultural bridge, right? We understand the language and culture for the, for the community. So we can bring. We can bring Canterley speaking grandmas to the through the discussions. It's not something that they typically understand, some of the barriers that we face when we start having these types of conversations is there's sometimes these types of conversations is there's sometimes we start having these types of conversations is, there's, when we start having these types of conversations is, there's, sometimes residents would wonder why we're asking them for opinions because they'd be like, why don't you ask somebody who's trained in engineering or trained and designed or trained in urban planning. So I think that there the role of the community based organization is not only to act as intermediaries to elevate the voices of these people but really to empower them to let them understand that their voice and their opinions matter. And, and I think that that is a very crucial role. To play. We have a bit of a nuts and bolts question. This is coming from William Mullane and he says, what level of buy and have you been able to achieve from union Pacific? I having, I, my background is as an urban designer and I know that many times they're really great design ideas that the systems, you know, Audrey, as you have pointed out that the systems aren't necessarily, especially infrastructure systems aren't prioritized prioritizing those design outcomes. And so I'm wondering What, and maybe I might ask that a little more broadly to say, you know, that when you're talking about major cities with major infrastructure investments and the the sort of systemic demands that those infrastructure systems are bearing the There is some sort of inherent conflict between the immediate needs of a community. Any one community or neighborhood and the broader needs of the city and you know how does the buy-in of the agents of these systems play into that, how do you get that buy in? Yeah, you know, as always, it's complicated. I would say, you know, we, so a couple of things, you know, we have had had had initial conversation with Union Pacific and we have gotten, some information about their kind of their policies around viaducts. And so we shared that with Design Trust Chicago. So as they were developing the designs, they were mindful of designing something that would be feasible as much as possible. You know, for example, you know, can you adhere things to the walls of a viaduct when that Union Pacific owns the structure, right? Yeah. And so the answer is actually not really. Or like, you know, if you're gonna, if you wanted to paint. Art, you know, You probably want to have it something that you could, you know, can be removed for maintenance and things like that. So there those aspects of it that you need to take into consideration when you're doing design. There are also the aspects of railroads own a structure, but then the city of Chicago owns the roads. And so, and then the city of Chicago also, if we are to move forward with this is responsible for, would be responsible for maintaining the wall 1st before we could install art. And so there's there's like an order of operations, there's, then there's the maintenance question. If you were to install lighting who who would then be required to change the light bulbs when they burn out like those are things we've talked about at some length and so, we need to. We need to have future conversations with the Union Pacific in this specific case. There's also been a conversation going on about whether this asset might be sold to Amtrak. And so that's been in the background, and sort of waiting until that sorts out is another variable in terms of ownership and, and actually being able to move forward, greater speed and intention. So, yeah. Those are, I don't know if there's anything else you'd add in, Emma. Okay. Yeah, no, I think you did a great job, Audrey. Yeah, that early there's kind of a diagram that Audrey shared of the ownership. So I think too from kind of a design perspective, you know, oftentimes we're working or looking at site-specific or like a lot or a property, you know, this parcel of land. You know, this parcel of land. So, you know, this parcel of land. So, while these like, infrastructure passageways, they're still places, especially if you're living in a neighborhood or you're part of that community. You are at these stories. You have these experiences going through and seeing these as places, but oftentimes for you know people outside or the traveler they just see it as you know a passageway so there is this kind of interesting conversation or kind of how you're looking at this work of like, place at times. And then that kind of adds in this complexity of all the different people and ownership that touches it from Union Pacific. The private ownership to the actual street. The city. So yes, it is kind of like the procedures of how this work is getting done. We did see an example of a viaduct improvement in Chicago in the back of the yards neighborhood. Hmm. And we were able to talk to some, city officials about how that. Project went and it took a long time and But I think the impact, you know, it does become this piece of people are like, I'm gonna, I'm walking down that street instead of, you know. 2 blocks over or like wow it's actually this like pretty simple but beautiful mural with bright LED intentional lighting. I think another component of this work is. There is just like, and this is across all cities just like a level of remediation that happened that has to happen with all of this infrastructure in these sites. So, in addition to kind of scoping out and understanding the pricing of it of like, we want to do this and add this. It's also a baseline of just prepping and repairing the existing conditions. So that adds kind of a level of cost or just to think about in really being providing, fully, ged out and successful like project. Hmm. I have a question here that I sort of, I mean, may start with you, but I think, Grace and Audrey, you probably both have from each of your perspective something to add to this. It's a question about the the fact that cities and communities within those cities are facing a lot of challenges. And so, you know, yes, past harm and and separation from infrastructure, past infrastructure investments and and the damage those may have caused but there are crises around affordability. They're crises. The climate is a crisis that cities are having to contend with that loneliness and isolation, you know, the the surgeon general is is talking about the the sort of ramifications of that on public health and then there you pointed out in the report the the ways that the infrastructure itself is contributing to damage of public health. And so, you know, I think about it from a designer standpoint. Which is why I said, or maybe I'd start with you because, from, my point when I was a practicing urban designer, it often felt like those these competing challenges were almost you know existential in nature you're trying to balance so many things at once and so I'm sort of wondering in what ways were those sorts of challenges helpful to the design process to the community engagement? Process to the planning process. In what ways did you have to sort of keep a clear focus on exactly what the outcome you were seeking from this particular program was, you know, acknowledging that there, there need to be other programs to address. You know, many of these competing, challenges that communities may face. Yeah, I think that's a great question. And that's something that in my work within community design, you're also, you're always kind of, and I'm sure in everyone's work, recentering, what's the focus? Hey, all because you named many issues that cities are facing these days and to the you know, a lot of these spaces because there is a kind of a shelter component like on house population, things like that. But I think like 2 things to that that helps. I'm so grateful for my colleagues on this call and this has been a really amazing team. And I think like having If you're able to that's not always you know sometimes we're just stressed for capacity but like grace is talking about, you know, able to like mobilize residents and that's for specialty, you know, Audrey within the planning reaching out to these different agencies, this report. You know, having a team that everyone kind of has their role and is able to kind of, I feel like that's been helpful in re-centering or focusing is, you know, having a cross disciplinary team. And then also to that is you kind of mentioned this is a universal issue. This isn't unique to Chinatown. This is in many neighborhoods in Chicago across the US. So I think there's also this like ability to kind of coalition build around. Where at moments, hey, Grace might find some funding that it's like, you know what, we're pivoting and our focus is like. Affordable housing right now, you know, but like maybe in humble park or another neighborhood in Chicago. We've been talking and they've found some access and they can take our work. Use this viaduct information in Hubble Park. Yeah. Hmm. That's great. Anybody else have anything to add to that one? Okay. That was an awesome answer. I mean, I think I would just add just the ability to communicate the benefits. You know, a lot of times this project has . Like Many different bottom line benefits. Like it does it does contribute to sustainability. It's benefiting non motorized transportation. It's creating peace, places for gathering to build community and improve public safety. And so like a lot of these, I think that's the sweet spot is can you find, you know, relatively low cost things you can do in communities that you can do relatively quickly that actually deliver a lot of benefits. And that's a lot of, you know, that's why a lot of what's proposed here. That's great. Well, I'm mindful of everyone's time. I see we're right at the at the top of the hour. And so I want to thank Emma. I want to thank Grace. I want to thank Audrey for your wisdom sharing with CNU today. Folks know that they can find the recording of this, this webinar on our website and the on the park bench tab on the website and thank you all for joining us today.