 Hello. Everyone got eerily quiet, which must mean that you're ready. So welcome. Thank you so much for coming tonight to hear me talk about a work conference, which I have some questions about your Wednesday evenings. I was honored to be invited to represent Longmont at the 2022 edition of a city lab in Amsterdam. So what we're going to do tonight is start with kind of an overview, big picture, general themes and things like that, what I observed and took away from the conference. Then we have a few sessions with some wonderful contributors that'll help us get into some more of the specifics of the themes of that conference and some of the connection to our local context. Pointing out some of these connections of local issues to global ones, of one issue to another, is part of how we examine whole systems and find solutions that advance one or more of our collective priorities. So here's a conference. I'm going to let you look at this picture for a while while I start with a seemingly unrelated story. OK. So a little bit down the road, or the rail line, perhaps as the case may be, I once upon a time had an opportunity to study abroad as a college student in Germany. And most weekends, I would take the train to another city, explore maybe a castle or a festival. And one weekend, on my way to visit friends near the border with the Czech Republic, my purse was stolen. So passport, driver's license, bank card, everything. Two important things happened as a result. First, I had to file a police report in a language that I spoke, but not natively, in a system that wasn't familiar to me in the spiritual home of bureaucracy. With that police report and a photocopy of my passport, I went to the consulate to have my passport replaced. And I remember speaking to the folks at the counter who were not at all certain that I was going to get a valid passport back at the end of this journey. So I went home. And a few weeks later, I got the big envelope. And I opened it to find a valid passport enclosed. And on the final page, there were some notes. This is a replacement for a lost or stolen passport. The bearer is abroad on a diplomatic mission for the United States government. Obviously, I was tempted to test the boundaries of my new diplomatic immunity. But a little bit later, I reflected on how this came to be. I thought about that State Department employee in the back room, no lights, just sweating, trying to figure out how to check the boxes needed to get that through and allow me to return safely home. So despite that experience, I did not immediately enter public service. Instead, I returned and graduated with a degree in economics, mathematics, and German literature, preparing me to do what? Grad school. So in grad school for economics, I learned more about math, more about theory, and about the history of economic thought. So from the humble origins in moral philosophy to current day policy recommendations. One of the economists whose work I encountered in this time was Thorsten Veblen. I swear this is going to all come back. So Thorsten Veblen is the father of institutional economics. His best known work is 1899's The Theory of the Leisure Class, can't even say it, which includes some phrases that you're probably familiar with. Conspicuous consumption, vested interests, and frankly, presages the concept of the influencer more than 100 years before the invention of Instagram. What's unique about Veblen's work is it isn't focused on markets, but instead on the interplay of economic and social forces. When Veblen talks about institutions, what he means are not hospitals, schools, or government buildings, but rather habits of thought. Institutions are how we know how to navigate the world. What do you do when a property crime is committed? What is the German word for triplicate? What steps do you take when somebody dies? So institutions and maybe words that are familiar to folks in other disciplines are algorithms, they're programs, they're the standard operating procedures for our lives. You'll notice there's a really tight relationship to culture. So in pre-industrial societies, we would navigate all of these things based on our social relationships. As the size of human settlements grew, we had to formalize a lot of these personal practices into business services, into law, and in the kind of institutions you probably thought of when I first said that word. And all of this brings us to the role of the city in our lives. So what is a city? What do you think a city is? Nobody wants to talk back to me, huh? Sorry, I spoke for too long. Well, the Oxford Dictionary says that a city is a large town. So real small boulder size of a large boulder energy. So it's super helpful. Some other dictionaries have more helpful definitions. Miriam Webster has a few possibilities, including an inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village, a little better. Usually large or important municipality in the US, governed under a charter granted by the state. This is important, the ability to self-govern. And then the one that I love the most that says a city is the people of a city. So the city is people, people are the city. And we're living here together, doing something collectively or many things. We need the opportunity to self-govern, because there are so many of us that we can't rely just on our personal relationships to navigate life. We're too diverse to be able to depend on the idea that we all have the same habits of thought regarding the way that we can harmoniously live together. So code enforcement, zoning laws, building permit requirements, those are all ways that we can formulate those habits of thought and share them with others. So then we have all kinds of fantastic city services here, right? So obviously, law enforcement, public works, classic public goods, yes, the economist excited about that. Some really interesting monopolistic services, which the city provides, because it's not feasible to do so otherwise. And you can view the other services, human services, recreation, parks as being related very much to economic development. A supportive, beautiful, fun-filled city is one where people want to live, and businesses want to operate. If a city needs tax revenue in order to continue to provide essential services, then that's important. So we have that. So speaking of capitalism, Michael Bloomberg has given 9 and 1 half billion toward a variety of programs through his Bloomberg Philanthropies Foundation. Among other areas of focus, the Bloomberg Philanthropies make a suite of investments in cities based on his observations and experiences as the mayor of New York City. Long months participated in one of these programs called What Works Cities, which, hey, so we were certified this year through this program at the silver level. And this is a program that's about the use of data and evidence in local governments. So yay, go us. So what that silver certification means is that we have implemented more than half of the best practices that are identified in the rigorously researched program. Long months' involvement in this program is how I was invited to attend, to be one of the approximately 500 attendees at the 2022 edition of the City Lab conference hosted in Amsterdam. So the Bloomberg Philanthropies, in partnership with Aspen Institute, hosts a conference called City Lab where mayors, innovators, artists, and more come together to find solutions to the most pressing challenges facing cities around the world. So the conference, what's the best part of any professional conference? The parties. Food, OK, yeah. I would say, yeah, the parties, the people, right? Getting to meet people that have the same interests that you have, that are grappling with the same issues. Hearing about approaches that you might be able to adopt in your own context. And using well-trodden ideas in new contexts is innovation. We rarely, rarely need to create things from whole cloth. So hearing about that is a huge piece. What else? What do you love about a conference? Swag, yes, I'm so glad you said that. OK, I have to say something about this. So this conference had, hands down, the best swag I have ever seen. Everything was really beautifully on theme, the visual identity of the whole conference. It was tied into one of the Bloomberg programs, one of the many, supporting asphalt art. So around the corner, from where the conference was held, there was this installation, right? And they used this piece by an artist called Kenor. And it was the entire conference, like the wall art, the carpets, the signs, the bags, the badges. Here, so here's a sign. Here's the inside of the plenary session. This is a DJ. I don't know what's going on there. The outfits, the outfits fit the theme. I don't know what was happening. So it definitely swags. So I got this water bottle. There you go, asphalt art becomes water bottle. And then an umbrella that also had some of that great visual identity in there. And the famously soggy Amsterdam. So that was really great. And I'm sure many of us have attended conferences that could have been held absolutely anywhere in the world. You go into a dark room, you talk about big ideas, and you emerge a couple of days later just having not seen the sunlight for days could have been anywhere in the world, right? So one of the things that I think was really great about this conference and about City Lab as a 10-year-old sort of practice is that they really try to showcase the successes and the really specific context in which the host city is operating. So the way that they do that is by, first of all, using multiple locations throughout the city, but also by having field trips and those kinds of activities be part of the field trips and tours be part of the conference program. So some of the field trips that were available were to the Van Gogh Museum, the Anne Frank House, the Vogue Future Lab. So I'll tell you a little bit about the field trips that I had the opportunity to go on, feeling very elementary school with my water bottle and my umbrella. The first one that I attended upon arriving was a canal tour. Here's a beautiful canal in Amsterdam, which was given by a member of the city of Amsterdam's Planning and Urban Design Department, as well as a hydrologist. So really talking about the relationships of land and water. So here's me on a boat. You're welcome. This is actually secretly just a slideshow of the time I went to Amsterdam. And here's a houseboat next to me. So really thinking about the nautical history of Amsterdam, as you can see over on the right-hand side here. And interestingly, for an infrastructure nerd to hear about the development of the locks and canals and how they were built over time with different features to account for tidal forces and things like that. Very, very interesting. Also discussed the impact of sea level rise. Here are wonderful hosts for the canal tour, as well as kind of a view of the really low-set canal boats in the historic area of what would you call that, the waterfront. So they talked about the impact of sea level rise. And the idea that within 200 years, the entire city of Amsterdam will relocate. They don't expect to still have human settlement right there. So yes. So canal tour, great way to get a feel for a unique feature of Amsterdam. On the second day of the conference, I had an opportunity to join a cycling tour, which is its own 20-minute talk a little bit later tonight. Don't worry, we'll talk about bikes. And then finally, on the final day of the conference, I was able to visit an institute for applied urban technology called the AMS Institute, which is Advanced Metropolitan Solutions. So it's part college classroom, part think tank, part maker space. The institute was created on the basis of a design contest that was sponsored by the city. And it's a joint effort of three universities. So Delft University of Technology, Wageningen University, and MIT. So public-private partnership, where they have a 10-year contract to research and propose solutions to urban issues identified by the city leaders and residents. They're primarily focused on areas that would sound familiar, if you are familiar with our sustainability program. But so energy, climate resilience, urban mobility, food systems, digitalization, and circularity. So this is the outside of the building, which is the only picture that I apparently took. So I stole some from their website as well. So looking at scalable solutions, really serving as an incubator for possible longer-term things that can be replicated in other cities around the world. So some things that I had an opportunity to see there were some student presentations about building materials and circularity, as well as this very cool contraption called a rowboat, which is an autonomous water-based vehicle. And here it's shown with moving some cargo, but they also were really thinking about that as the urban transit in places where we have canals and rivers as part of the urban landscape. So very cool. Oh, now I've gone too quickly here. All right. No, I'm totally missing something. OK. So components of the conference that were actually indoors. So in a lovely historic hotel in Old Amsterdam, the conference program had a few components. The mornings began with informal coffee chats. Here we are talking about environmental justice. It's very exciting. Different topics of interest. And then that was followed by a plenary session that looked like this, which was basically a series of 15-minutes talks on different topics, not too dissimilar from the format that we're following this evening, so using ideas in new contexts. These were followed by breakout sessions of about an hour that were panel discussions that dived a little deeper into some specific topics. So this is a panel discussion on accessibility, so thinking about how we can make our city more accessible, so both for folks of all ages and abilities. So this is also a great opportunity for some big announcements. Mr. Bloomberg introduced the new Bicycle Infrastructure Funding Initiative, the first plenary. And I immediately send an email to our transportation planners. So that was really great. Also heard a little bit more about that in a breakout session after that. Then the winners of the 2022 asphalt grant initiative were identified. These are some lovely pieces that have been funded through that initiative, I think, in 2021. Some great asphalt are also here in Longmont, right? If you haven't seen the basketball court over at Athletic Field Park, it's really similar materials. And you can get a feel for what that looks like in sort of a similar scale. So without recounting every single one of the plenary speakers, I want to give you a little bit of a flavor of what we heard there. Some speakers inspired our commitment to public service, talking about the role of cities, which I spent a long time talking about that, right? We heard about how city leaders support their residents in protest and what the role of a city is in times of war. We had the opportunity to participate in the walk with Little Amal, who was a 12 foot tall puppet representing the refugee experience. We learned about the coming impacts of increasing heat, as well as sea level rise. We had a DJ for some reason. I don't know, that kept coming up. We considered our opportunities to prioritize public health in a post-pandemic world, including the mental health benefits of incorporating beauty into the urban landscape. We heard about storytelling. For cities, about cities. And representing the community in art. We met chief data officers from several cities. Oh, there's another beautiful piece of art. We met chief data officers from several cities and talked about how digital transformation could help us engage with the communities our cities become smarter. So what is a smart city? You probably hear a little bit about that. In the simplest terms, a smart city is a city that's self-aware. This can include any number of implementations of sensors, technologies, et cetera, up to and including digital twin technology, which was a thing we also talked about. So that can be a way for providers of city services to understand more about the recipients of those services and the conditions on the ground or in the air or in the water throughout the city. They can also be ways for residents to learn about the city and to interact with it, to provide feedback and interact ultimately with each other. This is an area of opportunity and one that we're making progress on all the time. Our cities' technology services, as well as, obviously, our homegrown next light, are really enabling a lot of these opportunities as we go. So a few takeaways as we come to the end of this first piece here. There were city leaders in attendance from six continents, including every major city that I can think of. I met folks from Mexico City, Tel Aviv, Cairo, Berlin, Washington, DC, Wellington, the one in New Zealand, not Northern Colorado, Kansas City, London, and also Boulder, Colorado, and all the way to Amsterdam just to run into some Boulder folks. To be perfectly honest, I wondered a little bit what I, a practitioner from a city of just over 100,000, could have to offer to this incredible ensemble of public servants and thinkers. Turns out, all the work that we've been doing, the climate emergency, systems-based solutions, equity focus, it's all the same. Every city in the world is talking about these same topics. And frankly, they are jealous of, well, mostly, next slide, the municipal electric utility that we have, which puts us in a position to make progress on climate goals and other things in a way that other cities can only dream of. I did really enjoy getting the question, like, what are you doing about the digital divide? I was like, well, we have a locally owned fiber network. So we are all working to shift the same habits of thought. And in many ways, because of our size, we're more nimble, and we can experiment and adapt. Of course, we also have limited resources, but that just means we're scrappy, right? And also, the staff here at the city, I'd put up against any team anywhere. World-class expertise, really fantastic. So some of you may know this. But in 2022, I've had an opportunity to form a new department in the city. Strategic integration represents a change in the way the city does business. It's a centralized set of resources to help all the varied services throughout the city accelerate the integration of citywide priorities and approaches. What are those? So we work on sustainability, data and analytics, geospatial data, technologies, working on project management, where it's unifying themes that smooth the path between the experts in the services that are being provided here and then the people that they serve. This includes shifting the habits of thought of city staff and leaders to include new considerations, new processes, new tools, some of which are technical in nature and some which are not. It might just be a way of thinking about something, human-centered design or a checklist. But incorporating those new tools, which in turn helps us shift the habits of thoughts of residents about how services are provided, how we use water and energy, how we move, literally and figuratively, in our community. We have the opportunity to be that bureaucrat in the back room, sweating, looking at the whole picture and thinking about all the tools that we can possibly use to connect point A to point B and get us where we need to be. In conclusion, I'm delighted to continue my work as my diplomatic mission for the United States government. By attending this conference, I'm so proud to see how Longmont stacks up with cities throughout the world in the ways that we're seeking to make our city more welcoming, more collaborative, and more sustainable. I promise not to read you anything else. All right. So I'm excited to invite Lisa Knobluck to join me for our next portion, which is not on a PowerPoint. So Lisa and I will have a quick conversation here. Lisa is the sustainability manager for the city of Longmont. She holds a master's degree in sustainable business and communities with an emphasis in sustainable community development. She has over 12 years of experience working both locally and internationally, developing and implementing systems-based strategies that improve community resilience and sustainability, enhance social equity and economic vitality, and build local capacity. That's a lot of things. Lisa has extensive experience in engaging a wide variety of stakeholders in the community development process with an emphasis on equity and inclusion in city planning and decision-making. So we are going to take exactly 15 seconds to sit right there with some microphones. We'll be back. It's a seamless transition, right? Can you hear us? Does this work? Yes. OK. Informal. Hello. Hello, everybody. Good evening. Nice to see you all. All right. Are these coming through on the speakers? OK. Yes. OK. Good. Hello. Good evening. So, Lisa, tell us, what is sustainability and why is it an important focus for a city and a city government? Yes, thank you. So sustainability is a big word. It means lots of things to lots of different people. I'm going to try to keep it succinct, which is not my strong suit. So if I go off on a tangent, I'm sorry. As Becky read my bio, there's lots of things associated with my background and the way I view sustainability and the work that we do in the city. But in a nutshell, when folks hear the word sustainability, oftentimes people think mostly of the environment. And sometimes it's used synonymously with environmental conservation, which is definitely a critical component of sustainability. It's a core tenet of sustainability. But taking the broader look at the term sustainability itself and its roots, the definition really comes from what's called the Bruntland Report, which is a report that came out of the 80s with a commission that came together to define principles of sustainable development. And the definition really in its simplest form is meeting the needs of the present generation without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their needs as well. A secondary component of that, which is often not referenced, is also extending the opportunity to all to fulfill their aspirations for a better life. And so really at its core, sustainability is about people. It's about creating communities and cities that enable people to have access to the resources they need, not just to live and to survive, but really to thrive. And when we look at breaking down what are those resources and what are those needs, those really fall into three high-level categories of social equity, economic vitality, and environmental stewardship. So when we look at the needs and resources that we need in order to thrive and have quality of life on a day-to-day basis, we think of obviously our basic needs, food, water, shelter, our social needs around connection and community and a sense of safety and belonging, our economic needs, so access to high-quality education, which leads to good jobs and opportunities for advancement, so we have the economic means to pay for all of those needs that we have. And then the environmental component, which really is the foundation of a lot of that, we don't think about it as often in that way, but the environment really sustains us, both in having the clean air and the clean water that we need, the ability to grow healthy food that's not contaminated, and then also it provides a lot of the natural resources that drive our economy. And so sometimes, as you see in the sustainability plan, which I'll talk about a little bit later, sometimes you can look at sustainability as sort of this collection of topics, but the important part of sustainability is that we view things through a systems lens, and we understand how different systems, as Becky talked about some in her intro, how those systems interact with one another and understanding that we really can't make decisions in one area that don't have impacts or implications in other areas. And so sustainability is also used as a framework for decision making so that when we are trying to create those outcomes and meet those needs, not only for the present generation, but for future generations, we look through those lenses of equity, economy and environment to help us try to arrive at solutions that really have positive outcomes across those three areas. So not a nutshell answer, but I have yet to find what I, ooh, there's a little bit of mood lighting there. That's a turn it up a little. So looking at, or I was gonna say, I have yet to find what I think is a really good graphic to represent sustainability. Sometimes you see the concentric circles or the Venn diagram, I feel like those are not adequate to really to encapsulate what it is we're talking about, but hopefully someday I will find something. The most visual I get is color-coded spreadsheets, so that's not my area of expertise, although I do like a good color-coded spreadsheet. But to your second question of how is it important to cities and city government in particular, for a lot of those reasons that Becky talked about, some of the things that are exciting around things like art and innovation, but some of the things that maybe are not so exciting like land use and building codes and all of those sorts of things, city government is really a phenomenal place for us to create those sustainable communities. And because we know that one thing that may work in one community doesn't work in another because we have different local contexts, we have different needs, we have different communities, cities are really a place where we can do so much in terms of sustainability and creating sustainable communities. And Longmont is in such a unique position by having our own municipal electric utility broadband. We have control over things that other communities don't and so as Becky said, we're really in an enviable position with regards to meeting our climate goals. Obviously there are some bigger things that really need to take place on larger scales than cities, but cities are really primed to make those decisions and have really beneficial outcomes for our communities. I'm so impressed that you remembered all the parts of that question. And that was a really good answer. So can you tell us a little bit about Longmont sustainability program? Maybe you talked about how we're in an enviable position, we're meeting some goals, talk a little bit about those goals and the program overall. Yeah, sure. So some background to the sustainability program. So back in before 2008, 2010, the city had a sustainability coordinator that was working on a sustainability plan that was mostly focused on internal operations. They did some really great work. They got some money through the era, era. If any of you will remember that during the recession, there was an influx of federal funding that helped us do a lot of things for city operations. And then there was some change in leadership at that time in the 2010 era and a lot of the sustainability work, external work got shelved. There was some folks internally that really kept things moving and were able to do some good stuff. And then really in 2015, there was folks from the community who came forward and really put pressure on the city council at the time to reinstate the sustainability coordinator position and finish the city sustainability plan. And so I know some of you all in the audience were involved in that effort and paid attention to that effort. And so I was brought on at the time a temporary capacity initially to finish the city sustainability plan. Given my background as Becky talked about being in sustainable community development, we took that more in a direction of being a community wide sustainability plan and really focused a lot on those triple bottom line components. And so obviously the environment is a big part of that but the plan has 10 topic areas, everything from air quality and water and waste and the things you would anticipate but also things like community cohesion and resilience looking at how does equity and justice play into our work? And when we are doing the community engagement process we heard a lot of that of accessibility, affordability making sure that we're developing plans and policies and programs that really meet the needs of everyone within our community. And so that's really the foundation of the sustainability plan itself. You can see it online, it's a good 166 pages or so if you wanna read through all of it. But the sustainability program really came out of that process as having somebody internally to make sure that we were implementing what came out of that plan. And because of the breadth of that plan really working to coordinate across the organization, all the folks in different departments doing the technical expertise in all of those areas of transportation, water, energy, waste keep us all on the same page and moving towards achieving our sustainability goals. And some of those big goals are 100% renewable commitment to transitioning 100% renewable by 2030, reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, 66% by 2030 and 69% by 2050 which is a different conversation to get into those numbers. Things like waste diversion, water conservation there's a number of goals wrapped up in those pans those are some of the big ones and some of the priority areas that still continue today. And then throughout the last number of years we've built the sustainability program from one person to now we have a team of six within the sustainability team itself. And then we work with folks across the organization again in those other specific topic areas that have technical expertise in those areas. So we run a couple of programs internal to our team. We have the sole program which supports residential sustainability the sustainable business program which works with the commercial sector. We have the equitable climate action team and then we also do a lot of internal support work as well so helping other folks in other divisions and work groups understand how to apply sustainability to the work that they do. Am I missing anything? I think that was all of the things. So you talked a little bit about equitable climate action team. And I know that in 2019 that the city council I think it was 2019 declared a climate emergency. Can you talk a little bit about the work that came out of that emergency declaration that included the ECAT and where we are today? Yeah so in 2019 again with support from folks from the community our city council declared a climate emergency in October 2019 and passed a subsequent resolution that called for the convening of a climate action task force bringing some folks together from across the community to identify actions that the city could implement to accelerate our work in climate action and address the climate emergency and called for that group to develop a report out of that process. That happened to coincide with a process that we already had happening known as the just transition planning process. So after we declared the commitment to transitioning to 100% renewable by 2030 we wanted to make sure that that was done and adjust in an equitable way. And so we were pulling together folks from what are called frontline communities which are those that are most impacted by the impacts of climate change. So we were working on pulling those folks together to help us understand how we can do that transition in an equitable way. And as those two things coincided we were actually able to run those two groups concurrently and so the climate action task force was really focused on those, what are those big ideas that we should do to address climate action and the just transition plan committee was focused more on what you could say, the how, how do we do that in an equitable way? And those groups had some interaction with each other and then all of those recommendations came together to become the climate action recommendations report that was brought to city council and approved in July of 2020. And then we've been working on the implementation of the actions that came out of that plan ever since, so. So about that climate emergency, what are some of the risks that Longmont faces from the changing climate? Yeah, so that's a great question. So there's kind of two aspects to climate work. There is what we call the mitigation side and so that's doing all of the things that we can to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions. And the big three areas for that for Longmont is electricity, the emissions that come from electricity, the emissions that come from natural gas use and then the emissions that come from transportation. And so we have a number of things underway to try to reduce Longmont's emissions from those sources as well as others. The other side of that is what's called adaptation and that's really recognizing that climate change is a global issue. Even if Longmont were to reduce our emissions 100% by 2030, it's likely that we are still gonna face some of the impacts of climate change. And we need to be able to adapt and protect our community from those impacts. And so one of the recommendations that came out of the Climate Actions Recommendations Report was looking at understanding the public health impacts of climate change and to start developing plans to address those and making sure that we're protecting our community not only as a whole, but who's most at risk in our community and how do we make sure to prioritize protecting those folks? And so we've been working on developing what's called a climate risk and vulnerability map that looks at those different risks and who's most vulnerable to those risks. And what we're seeing out of that, thankfully, not sea level rise, that's one of the things that we don't have to worry about here, although perhaps migration from other places that do, that's a real possibility for us. But really the big ones are extreme heat and an increase in extreme heat. Another corollary component of that is poor air quality. And so those two things often occur together, both because of the ozone issues that we have on the front range that increases with heat and then also, of course, wildfires that happen often at the same time, creating smoke and air quality issues. Extreme cold is something that we're probably not going to face as much, although as we've seen in the last months, that's not off the table. And then, of course, increased risks of flooding and wildfires as well. So those are the primary climate risks that our community is facing. So one of the chats that we heard at CityLab included chief heat officers from some large cities from Athens, Miami, Freetown, and Cite Sierra Leone, and LA, what do you think about this emerging role? I think this is an incredibly important role and something that we're seeing pop up in a number of different cities, because as different areas of the world are gonna experience the impacts of climate change differently, we know on the whole warming is happening and extreme heat is something that's facing a lot of communities, even those that haven't faced extreme heat in the past. So if you all paid attention to some of what happened in the Pacific Northwest last year with the heat dome where they were seeing temperatures of 115. And then imagine places that already have extreme heat. Today are gonna suffer that more intensely in the future. And so having an explicit role that looks at not only how is your community itself going to experience extreme heat, but what are the many ways that your community needs to understand how do you protect people from that? So I think it is and is going to be a pretty important role for many communities. You spoke in the previous question about how different members of the community are gonna face differing consequences. Can you say a little bit more about the factors in how residents are going to be affected? Yeah, so there's a number of factors, obviously from extreme heat, for example, because that's really the number one thing that we are facing, you know, all of us regardless of any number of characteristics once heat hits a certain point, we're all gonna be impacted by that. However, not everyone has access to cooling. So, you know, talking about folks that perhaps live in homes that don't have air conditioning or swamp coolers or any other sort of cooling resource, those homes often tend to be older and less efficient. Anyone that has, that is either a very young person or an older person, especially with any kind of underlying respiratory conditions, those sorts of things, outdoor workers, other factors like just as we see from the climate risk and vulnerability map, there's parts of our community that have higher or lower tree canopy which has a pretty big impact on the heat that those neighborhoods experience. Some of the data that we've seen in other cities can be as high as 10 to 12 to 15 degrees difference just because of tree canopy and green space in one neighborhood versus another. And so there's a lot of factors that play into how people are not able to withstand impacts of extreme heat. You know, obviously economics is another one, even if you have air conditioning, some folks can't afford to run that air conditioning in the summer time, especially if you have a less efficient home and whatnot. So there's a lot of pieces that go into that. So Lisa mentioned a couple of times the climate risk and vulnerability map and you all are going to be treated to a world premiere. Woo! Yay. So Lisa, I don't know if you wanna come over here and drive kind of through the map and tell us a little bit about the process of hey, there were on heat vulnerability, I'll let you navigate. All right. But maybe let's, yeah, I'll trade you to hit the button on that one. So this is not published or final yet. So there's some things in here that you'll see. But so this is the climate risk and vulnerability map. It should be live in the next couple of months. As you can see, it has those climate exposures that I talked about at the top. So extreme heat, extreme cold, poor air quality, flooding, fire risk. And then there's a summary of all of the indicators. And this is the story map version. So it kind of walks you through each of these things and talks about what do each of these issues mean? Why are they important to Longmont? Why should we care about them? And then the map itself shows you essentially a vulnerability score, sorry, by neighborhood. So for extreme heat, so this talks about what is extreme heat. And then let's see, it pulled off all of the things. If you look at the summary of indicators, which I won't pull up now, it shows you all the things that went into calculating that extreme heat score. But then you can click on different neighborhoods and it'll pull up the information around their overall heat vulnerability. And you can see the neighborhoods that are in darker, orange, I guess you would call this, burnt orange, are more vulnerable to extreme heat and those in the lighter colors are less vulnerable to extreme heat. And then as you scroll down, it goes through, we have some climate projections. So in 2030 and 2050, if the same conditions exist then as exists today, so we can't change all of the factors that went into that, but you can see what do we anticipate the impacts to be in terms of extreme heat. I can jump over to air quality. So we can scroll through kind of what do we mean by air quality, some different components, some resources, and then, oh, where'd the map go? Oh, there we go. And then you can see the map similarly as well. And then the other thing, yeah, so then here's like the factors that go into the air quality binding. And then there's also, let's see if it'll open for us. What we call, lovingly, the Choose Your Own Adventure map. So we first started with this piece and then realized it's really overwhelming to folks that don't wanna dig deep into the data to figure out how to toggle on and off all the different pieces, which is why we created the story map version, which was some feedback that we heard from the Equitable Climate Action Team. So this map has all of the different layers that you can turn on and off depending on what you wanna see. And then you can also input your own data. So if you had something in particular that you wanted to see alongside of these data sets, you could add that as well and create your own map. And the purpose of this is not just to understand what are those climate risks and who is most vulnerable for those risks, but to really inform us as decision makers, as leaders, folks within our own organization, what do we then do about that? How do we prioritize and understand policies and resources really focus on those neighborhoods that we know are gonna get hit hardest by some of these impacts? And then how do we use that information internally for decision-making as well? So if we're looking at prioritizing certain types of infrastructure improvements or whatnot, this is a great tool for us to really understand what particular neighborhoods might be facing and how we can prioritize and resource things appropriately. I just got excited listening about it. Can you say a little bit about what's next or what we hope to see happen with this tool as it's rolled out? Yeah, absolutely. So really again, that purpose is not just to identify those things, but really to inform our decision-making as an organization and be another tool for us to say, how do we prioritize policies and resources and things like that? Because we know that extreme heat is the biggest impact we already have programs that we're setting up for this year to start looking at extreme heat. Two of those are community heat mapping campaign. And so starting by looking at some of those neighborhoods that are at most risk and are not at most risk, sending out folks in the middle of the summer on a really hot day with heat sensors to do real-time heat mapping, to understand what are those differences in different neighborhoods and then also use that as an entry point to start talking about what are neighborhood-driven cooling solutions? So we know that one thing might not work in one neighborhood as well as another or a lot of cities are starting to put in cooling centers, but then we're starting to see as people aren't using those cooling centers, so understanding what are those barriers? And so as we start to identify those programs and policies to address extreme heat, we wanna know from the community what are the things that are gonna be most effective to them. So that's one component. And the other is a demonstration program that we're doing in partnership with Longmont Power and Communications and Housing and Community Investment to pair energy efficiency and building electrification. So if folks are familiar with how building electrification works, it's transitioning away from appliances and things that use fossil fuels to electric. One of those things being a heat pump, which even though we call it a heat pump, it also provides cooling. And so targeting low-income households coming through the Housing Rehabilitation Program, by doing deep energy retrofits to really address the health safety and comfort components and then bringing in building electrification to add cooling for heat resilience. So those are two things that are coming out of just the findings from this for this year and then we'll continue to build on that over time. Cool, hot, heat, I don't know. Well, you heard it here first, so definitely get on that heat mapping exercise for our citizen scientists. Thanks, Lisa, for sharing all the amazing stuff that the Sustainability Program is doing. Thank you. Okay, I definitely know what I'm doing with microphones. Okay. So we're so lucky to have Lisa, who I think you can see her deep expertise and real passion for this work. So one of many members of the city team that's making it all work. Okay, we promised you pictures of bicycles. So now we're in a session called Think Outside the Car. So as I mentioned, one of the tours that was available to us as part of this conference was a tour of bicycle infrastructure, which obviously was a big draw. So as you can see, it started very early. Here's me with a bicycle, I was there. So many of us gathered kind of early here and our tour guide here is Meredith Glazer, who's the leader of the Urban Cycling Institute at one of the universities in Amsterdam that I now cannot recall. But she has a class called Unraveling the Cycling City that really talks about the development of cycling culture in Amsterdam, as well as the infrastructure that's needed to support that culture. So the very first place that we biked out to as the sun was still rising was this lovely intersection here that is a, well, I'm gonna show you a video. So here's one photo of it, unfortunately, kind of in a vertical format, but we took some bike paths, separated bike lanes and things in order to arrive here, but what's interesting about this intersection is that what do you not see? Well, cars, but that's mostly just because it was early. What else? Traffic lights. So this is a non-signalized intersection. And so, I would like for you to see how the traffic flowed through this. And so please ignore the word, see, now there are cars. Count how many modes you see. Suddenly it got quiet. So people moving smoothly through the intersection, but you don't see in that one that I might have a different video of, but didn't get that link in here. Is there also a street car that runs through the middle of it this way? So, I mean, so, what modes did you observe there? Pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, cars, trucks, yeah, like so cargo, people, all kinds of things are happening there, right? There's commuting, there's kids on their way to school, there's people on a street car, and it's all harmoniously happening in this intersection, which I think is so great. And what our tour guide had to say about this was that first of all, the signals were first just turned off as an experiment, right? They were like, let's just see what happens. Like we'll communicate with the public about what we expect. We're gonna turn the signals off and see how it goes. Because the philosophy is, if you need a sign, it's bad design. So, I just think that's really such an amazing example of what can happen when people understand how those interactions should go. So, in that test of turning that signal off for a month, they had no serious collisions or anything that resulted in injuries, and so they decided that the experiment was a success and they removed all the infrastructure and people have been happily using that intersection since. So, that's a fascinating thing. So, here are just some different pictures of, as we're kind of moving through the city, the different things that we're seeing, a lot of bicycles just everywhere, right? So, we've got bicycle parking here. Something you may notice is the overall speed throughout the city of Amsterdam is at about 30 kilometers per hour. And that was really a discussion about how you reduce the severity of potential conflicts is by reducing overall speed. And the other thing that's important about that is providing sort of a parity in how long it takes to run daily errands in a vehicle in a car versus a bicycle. So, there's a couple of things kind of at play there, which is kind of interesting. So, here's a picture also of a, so this is a dedicated bike lane, the red carpet, they call this one, which in general, that indicates where bicycles can safely travel. And at most intersections, so if you were watching closely in that video, you saw that the bicycles had priority. So, the red carpet goes first, and then kind of all the other modes move around. Actually, just kidding, I think pedestrians probably have very, very top priority as should be. So, here's a lovely picture of a street car. Something though that we talked about was that, I think that there are a lot of myths about why cycling culture works in Amsterdam and then won't work here. And one of them has to do, I think, with public transit. Turns out that, let's see if we've got, oh, just kidding, I'll come back to that. So, this is another sign that indicates on that red carpet, this is actually a street where cars are allowed but are considered guests. So, they move carefully through those bicycle areas and yield to those modes as they're going. Okay, so this is a picture of Amsterdam in the 1970s. So, it's not that the culture there has always been cycling centric. It's not that the design standards have always been what we see today with the narrower streets, the ample bicycle parking. Other components of that, or even the materials are different, right? So, there's a lot of cobblestone and things in the older area and that's not the way that it's always been. So, in the 70s, they essentially undertook a Vision Zero initiative, although they had a much more compelling name for it, which was Stop Child Murder. So, I don't really get people on board with your mission. So, this is a really similar street and you can see the differing, the materials, you can see how that's like a similar space is used and devoted to different modes of transit, but you can also see that some of the area that could possibly be used for pedestrians is now bicycle parking. So, all that to say, it's not that there are no conflicts around the use of the built environment for bicycles. It's just some of those conversations and conflicts are a little bit different and have been happening for the last 50 years instead of, however long we may have been working on that. But back to the streetcar conversation, one of the things that we heard was, a lot of people think that the reason that cycling culture works is because there's also this kind of backbone of public transit. Turns out that that streetcar system was not always there. That's a newer addition and certainly after the days of the child murder. But, so the intercity connections of the heavy rail have always been there and there's a lot of kind of like benchmarks around people living within a 10 minute bike ride or a 20 minute walk of the inner city connections, but that kind of last mile, like the more intracity transit is a newer addition that only came after people had more generally adopted cycling as a way to move within the city. So, really interesting kind of what follows, what in that. So, here we are standing outside of a school really kind of showing how the cycling infrastructure is made for accessibility to folks of all ages and again, just bicycles parked everywhere. It was really great to see a variety of neighborhoods and of ways that bicycles could move throughout the city depending on what type of commuting you were doing or what type of errand you needed to run. And then the way that, so the school is like this part, maybe, I don't know. But there are a lot of really integrated uses happening here. People live in and around this area. Actually, our tour guide was like, oh, I used to live in that apartment and I was, I moved there over the summer and then suddenly one morning in September there was all this screaming outside. The school had started. So that I think also has something to do with the efficacy of moving through the city and the bicycle. This was also a really interesting one and contrasting this particular plaza with the 1970s picture of all the cars in Amsterdam. That's actually something that she showed us a picture of. Here's what this street used to look like. And now, here's what we have. A couple of things about that. So design standards changed significantly and she talked about the pedestrian plaza, kind of narrowing the area for cars, incorporating the trees and the plants here. And also talked about the interplay between the corridors for transportation and then the housing that's behind here. So historically, housing in this area was, it's always been social housing. But then when there was this change in the streetscape that there were some concerns, right? Do you know what the concerns were? Not so much accessibility from like a physical standpoint, but gentrification. Yeah, exactly. That the neighborhood transformed in such a way like it was so much more, there was a lot different traffic moving through here when it became a more attractive place to be. And so having, fortunately, that the social housing components there, they were able to kind of make sure that they did not have wildly rising rents, but that's a different thing than other ones. So again, just bicycles everywhere, bunch of bicycles along the canal. They often have to send barges through the canals to collect discarded bicycles, which is sort of interesting. Anything you notice about the bicycles themselves? Not always, yeah, they're not always locked up. And they also, they make more frequent use of cafe locks. So like on the rear, I think you can see one right here, like on the rear tire, it's kind of that round like lock thing that just stops the rear wheel from moving. But yeah, they're often not locked. There are no mountain bikes. I wonder, I wonder why that is, Seth. So yeah. But yeah, so about the style of bike, right? Like any town cruisers, upright styling, right? So one of the things about the bicycle culture is that bicycling is a really social activity, right? So most of the time you don't even see helmets. And so people are like have are kind of moving around, kind of like looking like talking to other people and really just having some excellent situational awareness as far as like how folks are moving through an area on the bicycle. Little bit different. So that was something that we also talked about was like people are not out of your wearing helmets, but because of the lower speeds and frankly just the integration of that as a mode, they don't even see a lot of head injuries when there are collisions on bicycles. Do you know what the injuries are? Fights? No, they're in the wrist. So people are falling and catching themselves on their wrists. So don't need to mitigate so much the head injury risk because it's just not something that they're seeing as an outcome. Sort of an interesting thing. Also all the bikes are covered in flowers. No, just kidding. Here's another really interesting thing that we saw. So a residential area where do you know what this was until recently? It was parking. So really similar to a lot of what U.S. cities have done in the time of the pandemic, there's been some really thoughtful conversations about are we using the streetscape? Are we using all of these spaces in the way that's most helpful to folks? So they've taken over the street parking in this neighborhood and you can see some lovely, all these plants are in pots. And they've created bicycle parking and there's some lovely cafe just off to the side here. But this was introduced as this is a street experiment. So they took out the parking, they put in some of these temporary installations and they're like, we're gonna see how it goes for the summer. And it went really well, right? Except for a few residents who did not appreciate that they had no place to park their cars and so they're gonna leave most of it but take out probably like two parking spots or so for folks who were particularly put out or had accessibility issues with not being able to have their vehicle accessible there. This is an interesting one. So I talked a little bit about the intercity rail and this is right outside one of the major rail stations. Or I don't know what's going on there. What you can't see here is, well I don't know, do you notice anything that you don't see in this particular plaza? Bicycle parking, right. Because all the bicycle parking is underground. So they have giant bicycle parking garages in the transportation hubs which is helpful because then you maintain the pedestrian plaza and the access for pedestrians moving through that space and provide an attended, secure location for bicycle parkings. You have not bikes thrown against fences and unattended. My favorite place that I saw bicycle parking was at the airport. I was like, why is there a bicycle parking garage here? And Meredith was like, oh no, it's a very Dutch thing to see somebody bicycling and dragging a suitcase behind them. Totally normal. Just have to change your habit about that. Habits of thought. Oh, here, there we go. There's the end of some pictures of bicycle infrastructure in Amsterdam. So we will, oh thank you. We will take a short break to bring up our final panel and get them mic'd up. So feel free to visit the restroom but you don't wanna miss this. We're very excited. So. We're in Switzerland. Yeah, by the transportation which I actually totally forgot about until you mentioned it. And, but bike thefts were rampant. I mean, you bought a bike and it was gone three weeks later, you know. But they were all pretty cheap, so. You're like, you bought a bike. Yeah. Except for when I bought mine and then suddenly it wasn't there. Great. I know, I was like, ugh. Hello. Okay, I'm famously bad at estimating by sight. So I think this is most people who were here. Maybe, no. Mike's shaking his head. So, very excited to introduce this panel who's going to help us with our big finish here. One of the huge themes, you know, that I observed at this conference in Amsterdam as Lisa mentioned was really about the, you know, kind of the social aspects of, you know, how do we make our cities more human, more livable, more beautiful, more welcoming? And so we're gonna have a small conversation about art and nature in urban environments. So, I'll start our panel here which I will tell you their bios. So, Paula Fitzgerald on my left, your right, is a Longmont resident and a retired city of Longmont employee. She led park and trail development in Longmont for 22 years, Sandstone Ranch, the St. Brain Greenway, and Stephen Dave Parker among the many projects she helped develop in retirement. She's currently the chairperson for the Boulder County Parks and Open Space Committee. She's an avid cyclist, hiker, and oil painter and has written the book Stories of our Longmont Parks available from Natural Resources. Literally wrote the book on Longmont's parks. Yes, thank you. Thanks, Paula. John Cross is the president of the board of the Firehouse Art Center and the department chair of the art department. Yes, one of those in Front Range Community College. John describes himself as an image maker who's interested in merging historical and figurative representational painting techniques with contemporary design sensibilities and materials through the interplay of disparate visual clues. John conveys ideas about relationships and connections to people and places through the literal and allegorical as well as the literary. So thank you for being here, John. And finally, Elliot Moore, to my right, your left, is the music director and conductor of the Longmont Symphony Orchestra, another jewel of Longmont. Born in Alaska, Elliot Moore received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Michigan where he'd been a recipient of the Helen Wu Graduate Conducting Fellowship. Active in our community, Elliot is the founder of the Music and More Foundation, which aims to increase the accessibility of music through programs for children and through commissioning and promoting works from young composers. Says Elliot, I envision a world where music is a catalyst that deepens the awareness of our shared humanity and where artists impact all segments of the communities they serve by meaningful collaboration. Thank you, Elliot. So because we're talking about, you know, art and nature in public spaces, can you tell me about your favorite public space in Longmont? And we'll start with Elliot so we can check his mic level. My favorite, let's see, can we turn it down or do I need to turn it down? What do you think? Are we okay? All right, my favorite public space in Longmont. You know, one of the things that at least the first thing that comes to mind is where would that be around? Fourth, I think across the south of Ziggy's. There is a, on the ground, it has the old kind of Chicago layout of Longmont. And I just love seeing how it used to be and I'll go there and take a look and kind of imagine what used to be Longmont and continue along my way. And I've always found that to be fascinating. So that's at least the first one that comes to mind. Yes, I love that. Yeah, at St. Stephen's Plaza, I also like to go touch my foot to the plaque there. You know, there is, sorry, there is one other one that, now the second one that comes to mind though, the Kanamoto, I don't know, Temple Tower, yeah. To me, there's something about that that I really love, which is connecting different cultures and a space to connect the different cultures. What a wonderful thing that is. So, sorry, the second one. I love it. John, how about you? I think downtown is my favorite part. I live within walking distance of downtown. I am a pedestrian in this city and just being able to walk to all the shops, restaurants, bars, everything. And I've been here for 13 years and seen Main Street transform from check cashing and pawn shops to places you really actually wanna visit and hang out in. And everyone I know in this town is a result of being in those spaces. So that, and then I think some of the work you've done, the green spaces, the bicycle pathways, I use those all the time and they're gorgeous, so thank you for that. Yes, absolutely. Paula, tell us about your favorite public space in the world. That's tough. It's like, what's your favorite child? We're really lucky. We have so many, so many old ones, new ones. I also live in downtown, old town, and so walking downtown and to the various galleries and whatever is really key to my life. But I'd say the downtown parks are the ones I visit most, but St. Vering Greenway and Sandstone Ranch are of course also top of my list there. So wonderful spaces. Kanamoto's a treasure. So what is it about that? So Elliot, you talked a little bit about how it connects to history in that space and culture. John, you talked about the people. So, and Paula, in talking about parks, is it kind of that connection to nature that you find most relevant? Say a little more about that. Yeah, I'd say for this discussion, certainly nature is key to sustainability. It's got all three legs of the stool. It provides for social justice. It provides environmental sustainability and quality of life, so people wanna come here and visit. It provides the venues for us to create art, creates inspiration points, as well as ways we can interpret nature. But environment in and of itself is important for its own sake, for the planet. Places to recharge groundwater, places for the wildlife to habitat, to travel through the community, and then for us to interact and watch wildlife or have solace in those wild spaces is of course key to unstressing and appreciating our life in an urban area. So I think it's really, really key. I think one of the things that's most important to these urban green spaces is that we commit to maintaining them. A disused or underused or discarded sort of byway that doesn't have the care it deserves quickly degrades and then people don't wanna go to it. And it becomes, when I first moved to Longmont in the early 80s, the river corridor was pretty much a trash heap. The concrete trucks would come along and dump concrete wash after their projects over the side. People would unload any number of trash things down the side. So the community has committed and come along ways in terms of preserving and upgrading those spaces, but it really needs to continue. Paula really presaged. My next question was about talking about some benefits that you've experienced or that you know exist from interacting with arts and nature in the urban environment. So John, I'll let you talk about that. I'm a public artist. I've done quite a few murals in town at private businesses, but also for the city. And beyond just what I've done, just seeing artwork as I interact with the city as I move through the city, I think of this as a pedestrian city and every time I get to see a new sculpture piece or a new mural or something like that, I get more excited about what the city is and what it's doing. There's more conversation to be had with people. If I go sit at Rosalie's and have a slice of pizza and we talk about the new sculpture or the new piece of art that is just shown up in town. So that constant change and keeping something visual happening in the most urban part of the city I think is really important. I don't, we're surrounded by nature. It's one of the things I love about Longmont is that five minutes in any direction and you're back in the country. And you drive up on Ken Pratt that the overpass and there's this gorgeous view of the mountains every day. But when you get downtown, that view gets blocked pretty often. And so whether it's creating any idea of like something like a green space downtown, which would be great, but anything that takes your eye away from brick, concrete, steel changes the way you look at the downtown. One of my favorite murals is the one that just was executed on the new parking structure. What's the spoke, right? It's a gorgeous mural. You don't notice it unless you're kind of looking around and looking at the city. And that's one of my favorite things when I visit other cities is you're taking it all in. And you want that from your hometown to be a place where you're constantly surprised by what you see as you turn the corner. Got to give a plug for Angela sitting over here in the audience and our art and public places program that's helping with all those art on the move pieces where we have that beautiful variety every year. So yeah, thanks, Elliot. Some benefits that you've experienced of arts or nature in an urban environment. Well, one of the things I think that I'm hearing sort of us all say is that we're reminded when we see some of these things that the world is bigger than ourselves and that we're part of something. And I think that that kind of feeds the soul. What I was talking about with the old Chicago layout of Longmont was that on 4th and Main. There's a piece of history there and it brings us back. And the Kanemono Park reminds us of our sister city relationship. And there are all these kinds of things that remind us that we are part of something greater. And I think that in so many ways that's what art can do. And having it in an urban setting is a wonderful way for the masses to be able to take it in and be reminded of the fact that we're all part of something greater. So I think that's part of the importance of it. Can I add on to that? Yes. Thank you. You mentioned that idea of the signalists intersection in Amsterdam. And one of the key things is that it required empathy. People have to be respective of each other when they're driving their car, riding their bike, walking down the sidewalk, whatever it is. And I'm reminded of my in-laws from Missouri came out and we drove up left-hand Canyon and they were terrified, I was driving, but they were terrified about all the bicyclists and the Canyon, they kept saying, well, they shouldn't be able to. And I kept saying, it's their road too. And that sense of empathy, I think, is a big part of what we're talking about here. The more opportunity to create a sense of empathy within the citizenry, the happier the whole city's gonna be. And one of the articles, as I was kind of researching what we're gonna talk about tonight, one of the projects, there was like 50,000 people in Norway were part of this test survey, I don't know what you call it, research thing. And what they found was the more interactions they had with cultural events, arts, music, anything like that, nature as well, the more empathy they felt towards their fellow person. And so when you brought that up about that intersection, like there's no way that could happen here because when you're in your car, get out of my way. But if the whole city starts to feel that more empathetic attitude towards each other, then there's that slowing down at the intersection, there's that looking to see, is there a bicycle or is there a pedestrian coming by? And so it seems unrelated that art or just access to nature can make moving around the city better, but it's that, what did you call it? I wrote it down. Situational awareness? No, I love that one. It was the... Habits of thought. Habits of thought. And it's those little, like taking those little pieces and changing the way people approach their environment and each other. It's not, you make one big change or you change a law. It's, you just slowly change people's attitudes so that they are more empathetic to each other. And then we're all happier. Yeah, it's so interesting that you bring up the concept of empathy because I flashed up on the screen that the giant puppet thing. And I don't know if any of you are familiar with the walk, but it's an interactive art project, right? A giant 12-foot tall puppet, which seems sort of abstract, right? But the artistic director of that project really talked about the fact that that representation of a person in this situation of being a refugee because the puppet does not speak, does not use verbal language, that it invites empathy and helps us to kind of broaden our own thinking about how we relate to each other. So what a fascinating connection you brought in there. That puppet took quite a few people to puppeteer it. Operate, yeah. And so like there's a sense of community to make that one person whole and move. And I think that's a big part of what that piece was. Absolutely, really interesting. Jump in here. Yes. Because we have our own Higantes here in tomorrow night. But going to nature, that empathy, that if we find a place in nature, a place in a park, a place along the river, a place where we can slow down and listen to the wind, open our senses, have visual beauty around us, see some wildlife. We have more empathy for the wildlife and the habitat that is down there. And I think until people have an appreciation for wildlife by seeing it, they don't want to protect it as much. So it creates a willingness to really engage with and support that wildlife wherever we come across it, unless there's squirrels in my neighborhood. I draw the line there. Leah, thoughts or things you'd like to add? No, let's keep going. All right, I'll bring you another one. All right, so, start on this next one. Tell me a little bit about your work and how it brings or represents that nature or an emotional state into this built environment. You know, one of the things that I've been thinking about at least recently is how music can be something bigger than itself or greater than itself. And one of the things I think an orchestra represents is a community. It is people coming together from all different walks of life. Some are wind players, some are string players, maybe even you've got some vocalists in there. Each one has their individual issues. But we all have to literally play in harmony. And that can be a challenge because each group has their own issues. And how do you facilitate all these different people coming together, making and creating harmony? Well, fortunately I have a degree in that. I don't know, I guess I can figure out enough how to get that to work. But then all of a sudden, so you have people playing together harmoniously, but then what does that actually mean? What does it mean to the community? Like I'm talking about what does it mean to Longmont, right? And I think when you can harness the music and make it relevant to people's experiences and their lives, what's going on, all of a sudden the music has become greater than itself. And I think that that in many ways is the challenge of being in orchestra today, but also what makes it so beautiful is to be able to make it relevant. One of the, I'm in conversations right now with a pianist who happens to be Ukrainian, studied in Ukraine, also studied at Juilliard. We're talking about bringing her here next year. So we bring her here and she plays, I don't know, a piano concerto. But what about bringing her here and having her talk right here about the fact that her city has been destroyed, that the school where she studied music is no longer there? How does that impact people's experience of what's happening in the world today with the concert that we're putting on? What do you program with it? Do you program, she loves Russian music. Should we program Tchaikovsky piano concerto at a time when Russian, you know, there's a lot going on in the world about that? How do you balance that out? There are all these questions that then have to be answered. But again, I think that in these questions, we're digging deeper into what makes all of this relevant to everybody's life. How does it impact Longmont? How does it elevate the city in terms of where we are, what we care about? There's so many different ways, of course, that we can go with all of that. But I think that these are the questions that as an example I'm facing right now for next season. In the back of my mind, what I'm wondering is what's the right answer right now for this community with the music that I can program? What kind of guest artist should I bring in? What should I pair with it so that it's relevant to your lives and that it elevates everybody's experience of what Longmont is? Again, I don't have the answer. I hope I'm asking the right question, though. I would offer, yes, I think, and it speaks to your other comment about the history, right? You have to understand where we are in order to be able to provide that impetus to move us forward. And I would offer that we can consider rock bottom and often we can compose our. That's a very good point. Very good point. Just helping. That's awesome, thank you. John, can you talk a little bit about your work? I know that you have some literal representation of natural elements in your work, but say a little more about how that hangs together for you. Personally, I have a strong connection to nature. A lot of my work has natural elements. I spend a whole year hiking looking for perfectly rectangular rocks to fit into paintings and perfectly rectangular clouds, which don't happen. But I just think when it comes to, like I live in breathe art, I don't know how the rest of you don't. So I don't understand, and if you do, then great. But I look at walls like that one and I get depressed. I look at any blank wall and I get depressed and I start thinking what could be there? What visual image could be there? How could that image support what's going on around it? What the purpose of that place is? And so when it comes to like public art, for example, you know, murals that are in the public sector for the public viewing, a lot of what you try to think about is the audience didn't get to choose to see what you're gonna show them. And how can you, again, with empathy, how can you present something that reaches across the most people, but how can you create imagery that makes people think? I'm not a fan of art just for it being pretty. I hate that part of arts. But if it can cause thinking and conversation and a connection for people, whether they love the art or not, it doesn't matter too much. Did it cause them to have a reaction? Did it cause them to have a conversation with somebody they might not have before? And all of those things, I think, come back to that whole idea of the connection of the community, the more those kinds of things can happen, the more connected the community becomes. And it goes again back to the idea of empathy, the more we can have that empathy for each other than the more connected and open we can be with each other. Another piece, I keep looking at some of my notes from this article I read earlier, just looking at art or listening to art, and I know this is true for nature, releases dopamine. Dopamine is the chemical in your brain that makes you really happy. It's the same thing that's released when you're in love. It's the same thing that's released when you eat chocolate. And the article said cocaine has the same effect, but I was gonna skip that one. But dopamine does a number of things. It makes you happier. It increases your mental health. It actually studies have shown that it makes healing go faster or better. It increases compassion. And the one I underlined is social openness. It creates more social openness between people. And so when you think about going to a concert or going to an art gallery or just seeing some art, that little bit of joy you get is you're drugging yourself, which is great. But it's the one that gives you the most happiness and makes you feel the most connected to other folks. And I think the more opportunity we have for that in a city, the better because the more compacted, the faster we grow, less and less of that is happening. And so the more opportunity we create for people to experience art, music, cultural things, nature, the more we can keep that, those dopamine levels nice and high for everyone, keep everybody happy and socially conscious. May I pick you back real quick on that? You know, one of the things that we all experienced during the pandemic was just isolation. And certainly one of the things that I think is so awesome about music concerts, is that everybody first of all comes together and second of all, they have a shared experience. And that sort of shared experience around coming together, experiencing the music, having some kind of visceral reaction to it that probably includes some dopamine. Isn't that what we need right now? You know, that's something that has been so, it's been taken away from us for such a long time. And that's one of the reasons that I do love, especially right now what I do, is that idea of bringing people together to have a shared experience. It's a wonderful thing, especially given what we've all gone through. Jump in there, this is on. So, you know, nature can provide the venue. I'm thinking of fourth of July concert and we're in this beautiful park, it's shady. But I'm thinking also about the other kinds of art there are out there that relate to the environment and lots of environmental art using recycled objects for one, botanicals in art for dyes and for just, or as inspiration, of course, performance and music. But art and nature both create placemaking. They give us identifiable places in the community. It's like you get sort of a muscle memory. Every time you visit a place, you remember it, you've had a shared experience there or a solitary experience there, but something triggers your memory and makes it a special place for you. So, you can interpret nature through art, but I think the venues that it provides all kinds of art, so much of our art is in parks and greenways and things like that. Getting into the dopamine and the value, society-wise, thinking of the nature deficit disorder, how kids are so locked into their devices and they call it natural childhood is a thing of the past now. So, kids aren't safety or whatever reason, they're not allowed to explore on their own. It's a real loss, but just being in nature or being in a state of art or in a state of awe of anything I think will bring down the stressor levels and just mental health, physical wellbeing is enhanced. So, you brought up the topic of safety and I wanna kind of come back a little bit to the climate risks that Lisa talked about and that this might be a specifically Paula question, but maybe not, but we're coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the 2013 flood. Can you talk a little bit about the impacts to your work and kind of what you saw and experienced through that experience? Well, I started with the city in 1994 and my first project was the first phase of the St. Vering Greenway that had just been masterplanned. So, there was a little section at Golden Ponds, there was a little section down on South Parkway, nothing was connected, nothing was really visualized or built out yet. So, 20 years of my work at the city was building out that greenway and I have to say that one positive that came from the flood and there are a few positives that came from the flood, money for one, but people became very willing to sell their land to widen that river corridor which then allowed a larger flatter bottom which becomes a wetland and improves the groundwater and of course reduce the flooding risk, but on September 12th and 13th, going down along the river and watching all those bridges and slabs of concrete and basically 20 years worth of work floating downstream was a little traumatic but I am very hopeful that as it's rebuilt it will be even better and I think since it was there it's allowed it to be not just a when or an if but a for sure will be because this community loves it and now sees the need for it and I think it will go beyond our boundaries and become a regional greenway trail which is really my big goal is to see it expand beyond Longmont. So, speaking of that regional look and things that are bringing us all together, why don't we close with some thoughts on what do we wanna see more of in the region to bring forward art and nature in our collective environments? Oh boy. You know, I believe that every great city has a great orchestra and Longmont is a great city and I think we actually have a phenomenal orchestra. One of the things that I think is a challenge for us right now as an orchestra is where we perform. I have been working tirelessly since pretty much the first day I moved here which was basically July 1st, what was that, 2017 to work on building a concert hall. I think that venue matters when it comes to art. You know, I think about fine wine. If you put it into a decanter, a beautiful decanter, it enhances it. If you put it in a Coke can, somehow it just doesn't seem the same. They're both receptacles, right? But one enhances it, the other takes away from it. So I think that it's a critical thing and really in the context of this conversation, I think that once people's needs are met and there is a sense of security and sustainability in a community, we want to be able to do something. We want to enjoy our lives. And I think that arts, nature, visual art, music, these are all ways that enhance our experience during our time on this planet. And I think it's a critical thing and I think that for where Longmont is, one of the things that is absolutely critical is the construction of a concert hall that is worthy of the orchestra that's worthy of this community and that draws more and more and more people, not just to the Longmont Symphony, but to performances by off-Broadway shows and Fan With The Opera and, I don't know, Weird Al Jankovich and things that are, there you go, Diana Crawl. Let's get culture here, not just classical music. I mean, I do care about classical music, but let's bring culture here. Let's have educational elements where the kids can really get their hands dirty with what it takes to do this, whether that's working as stage hands, whether that's all the things that go into the performances, lighting, staging. Let's make this a whole community-wide effort and make it something that our children will be able to benefit from for the rest of their lives. So that's what I would like to see and what I think will really make this even a better community in terms of the arts and where we are. I 100% agree with that and I think in the theme of where I think this night is going as Longmont plans for its future as it develops as a city and grows, planning in those spaces for that, planning spaces for public events of music, theater, public spaces for art, even as our down, I know five minutes ago I said five minutes and you're in nature, but still planning for things like green spaces in the downtown area so that we're not just, when you're down here, you don't just see bricks and concrete and steel, you see art and you hear music. We do a great job with this, but as we grow and plan new ways to envision our city, we need to include those pieces. So Paula, your thoughts? Yeah, I have two different ways, directions I'm going with this. One is in the art field, we need gallery space downtown for local artists. We have a real deficit of gallery space as well as maker spaces downtown. A lot of other communities have art spaces and Longmont certainly could be one of those. Another thing just in the environment piece, we need to complete our greenways, complete our parks and then maintain that funding to keep them beautiful places so that we can really truly be a city of parks now and forever. But I wanna see the connectivity of our greenways to other communities and to become a driving force for tourism and for economic engines along there for little shops and bike stores and cafes along the route, but that can be a real huge as you probably saw in Amsterdam. A huge economic driver as well as just a huge quality of life thing. Well, if we construct a new concert hall, I can assure you there's gonna be a lot of empty walls that will need to be filled by some art, John. So I look forward to working with you on that. Systems thinking in action, thank you. Great, well, thank you so much to all of our panelists for joining us and now we can open it up for questions. So I don't know if we wanna, anyone have anything they wanna ask, observe? Well, I mean, maybe not observe so much, but. Well, I just, I was born in Longmont and I lived away for a long time and I've spent a lot of time in European cities and I love the greenways and all those types of things but there's a lot of disconnectivity but the greenways are bicycling as recreation, which is great but there's not really much infrastructure for bicycling as transportation, particularly there's a lot of them, the railroad tracks cause a lot of problems and another thing I was really disappointed in was how the whole village of the peaks thing was done. I mean, it's basically a sea of parking lot with a few little shops surrounded and that seems like a spot that would be better with a lot of, that's a spot that could have far more art, far more green spaces and we've benefited a lot from bicycle accessibility but it's still very much car focused. And I'm just curious if there's any kind of initiatives in the cities for things like that. I don't have an answer cause I don't work for the city but think about this, the difference between being downtown and being at the village, the parking lot at the village is in front of the buildings. The parking lots downtown are back there which means you park and you walk and this is, it's a small thing but I think it's really important when you walk down the sidewalk to go to a store or restaurant, whatever, you're interacting with your fellow citizens. When you park in a parking lot and you're trying to be as close as you can run into Whole Foods, you're just like screw everybody. I just wanna get in there and out as fast as I can. So I think a really smart city develops a system where you're almost forced to have to walk by people so that you have to say hello. And so I agree with you, like the planning of that, the development of that, the, I don't wanna say artistry of the design of it but does not provide for that at all. And one of my favorite things about Longmont, what I said earlier is walking downtown, it's maintained that. And so I don't know what we can do about the village but we can keep downtown a walking area where you have to walk by people and whether you want to or not, they make eye contact, you're gonna say hello. Has anybody been to Savannah, Georgia? Yeah, okay. So that was one of the first planned communities and it has, I think, 26 or something urban parks in the downtown and it was laid out so that you could walk from one to the next. A lot of fountains, so hot and humid, they really need the shade and the fountains and stuff but to me that's the vision for a walkable, pedestrian-oriented, bicycle-related community is to have that connectivity between spaces and to have it really fronting for bicyclists and pedestrians rather than the cars. You mentioned systems thinking. We're here tonight really to talk about climate change, sustainability, environmentalism. How can we bring the habit of thought into every single discussion that the city has regarding initiatives, projects, developments? Bring that habit of thought of whenever we talk about a new project, a new development, a new whatever it is, that climate change, sustainability, these existential crises or become part of that conversation because I had a very frustrating experience last night here in the council chambers when the council was discussing a million dollar grant, if you will, for youth activities and in the hour and a half discussion around those youth activity programs, there was the issue of climate change, sustainability, environmentalism never came forward and I was here to actually discuss an opportunity for youth activities for environmental education in the St. Rain River based upon what the Greenway Foundation in Denver has done, bringing 100,000 kids, urban youth that have never experienced nature to the South Platte River and educating them about water quality, about the ecosystems, ecology, and the proposal that I tried to bring forward to the city was to be honest, was obstructed and was not even allowed to be presented. So how do we bring that habit of thought of being open to new ideas, particularly around the issue of climate change and sustainability? So I'll give some thoughts on that but what an enormous topic, right? And to a certain extent it's shifting the Titanic. We're starting from where we are and the habits of thought that we have about the way that city services are provided and the way that we make decisions and incrementally, right? The work that Lisa is doing, the work that all of these community members are doing will shift that, including the development of tools to encourage that. But it is going to be a process. If Amsterdam has taken 50 years to become bicycle first, how long might it take Longmont to achieve the goal that you're articulating? I don't have the answer to that. But hopefully that's sort of helpful in terms of, we are trying to think about that and by using standardized processes across different things, by introducing things, by shifting relationships and slowly kind of incorporating new tools and ideas, that we will get there. Yes, absolutely, the climate emergency, I think, you know, begs a certain level of reaction. So, we're getting there. Question. I just have some thoughts and my thoughts could go on for hours. But I wanna hit on a couple concepts that I've heard very little of. I hear ideas, but I don't hear a path. I hear costly projects. I don't hear how people are willing to stand up and accept the socialized costs of those. Just doing some quick math while everyone's talking. Climate change, $275 trillion through 2050. I start doing the math and that's $7,250 per capita if you wanna bring it down to Boulder County level per year for every single one of us. If you really wanna address it, if you want to have open space, I love open space, I'm an avid cyclist. I happen to live in Old Town right over here. I happen to work and employ people on the Greenway. Thanks Paula. We finally got our undercut after all those years we got flooded by the firm, we've got it done. So, we're making progress. I've been here for 29 years, but you can't have a bikeable community with single family detached housing and people fighting every housing project that comes. You'll get your facility, Elliot, because we're gonna chase all the poor people out of our town and we're all gonna be millionaires and then rich people will live in Longmont and the poor people will live in Weld and all the rich people can fund the facility. But you wanna talk about sustainability and equity, we won't have that. We'll have elitist, very wealthy community unless we holistically look at what's going on in our community unless we solve the problems of my employees wanting to buy houses and being unable. I spent an hour and a half in a prosperous Longmont lending meeting today figuring how to create mortgages and pay down PMI, private mortgage insurance and how to create a project, a product for people that are on the edge of being able to afford a $525,000 home in our city. Let's stop thinking about what we would like to see and let's talk about what each of us individually are willing to spend or contribute or make happen. Paul, if we want a gallery downtown, start a gallery. The great frame-up has a gallery, but if you want one, who's gonna bring it? We collectively, the citizenry of Longmont are gonna bring it. So, no, I don't, I have a comment. She said comments or questions, I don't have a, I just said there are issues that underlie this. If you wanna look like Amsterdam, there are million, 1.1 million people in that city. They live on average in 720 square feet per living unit. It's different than Longmont. We're gonna have to get denser. Thank you for your observations, yeah. Looks like Marcia's got a question, Shaquille. Yeah, I, is this on? Yeah. I have a counterpoint to that, Mr. Wallace, because I think that what we've been talking about is the essence of the necessity for our habits of thought and therefore our institutions as our brick and mortar institutions, we cannot live in an urban dense environment without the art and beauty that we have been talking about. And so, yeah, we must socialize it and we must understand that it is part of the, the urban environment that we live. Because, you know, I spent the first half of my adult life in a city that went the other way. From Amsterdam. I'm from St. Louis. I mean, I was born in Colorado, okay? Had sense enough to come back at some point. But I think we, you know, when you urbanize in a soulless way, then you have such a loss of culture. You know, when I lived in St. Louis, there was this wonderful ragtime jazz culture on the riverfront. Everybody's afraid to go down there now. And it's gone. And I had such grief, you know, when I went back there a few years ago. And we can't let that happen in this city. So it really is all the dots have to be connected. Yes, we have to have urban density and it has to happen in walkable neighborhoods and where we can live close together and we have places to congregate, you know, to have art in our public places and music, by the way, is the most public of arts because you can stand there and experience it no matter which way you're looking, right? You know, it needs to surround us. It needs to be part of our lives because if we have a tenement lifestyle, we won't be able to endure it. You know, when it's hot and miserable, we won't be able to endure it unless we build the kind of beautiful, holistically designed smart city that we've been talking about in different ways. So get on board. I'll talk to you about it tomorrow. Call to action. I'm still on board, I don't want to be more fancy. I don't want to be on board, I don't want to be more fancy. If I can just add something that I think every public endeavor starts with a vision and visions don't start with money, that comes afterwards, but you have to have a unified vision of what the community wants, what the community needs and that can inspire you to look for ways to fund it. So I mean, you know, there's money out there in many ways but good point. I mean, that's the hard reality of making it work, getting it off the ground is funding some money. Great. So I think that's a great point and so the point of our conversation here is not that we should be Amsterdam but that we should be Longmont and that we should think about the ways in which Longmont can be with that vision and with the money and with the work. So thank you, Marcia, for your call to action and thanks to all of you for joining us this evening and have a wonderful Wednesday.