 Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today. My name is Justine Calma. I am a science reporter at The Verge. We cover science and technology and my reporting looks specifically at climate change and the environment. I also have a focus on environmental justice and equity. So I'm really excited for our discussion today on equitable recovery for public spaces and city planning. We have some fantastic panelists. And so we can start with some introductions so that you all can get to know each of our panelists a little bit and the great work that they're doing. So I'll start off by introducing Catherine Lusk, who is the executive director of the Initiative on Cities at Boston University, where she spearheads university-wide programs and urban research. And I will hand it over to Catherine to tell us a little bit more about herself and her work. Hi, thank you so much Justine. It's a pleasure to be with all of you today. As Justine mentioned, I serve as the co-director and founding executive director of the Boston University Initiative on Cities. We are a university-wide research center at BU. So I have the pleasure and privilege of working with faculty in the social, natural and computational sciences as well as in public health. And we seek to catalyze research in on and with cities in pursuit of sustainable, just and inclusive urban transformation. We also create experiential learning opportunities for students and connect them to internships and course-based work in cities. And I'll end by saying we were actually co-founded now many years ago by the late mayor of Austin, Tom Menino. So one of the major projects that we spearhead is the Menino Survey of Mayors. And we have the pleasure of interviewing over 100 mayors across the country every summer. I'll talk about some of those findings today, even though we're in the field right now and about halfway through our interviews, but we've learned a lot about how mayors approach equity and equity in the public realm and a lot of the challenges that they're facing as we not emerge from the pandemic, but as we try to look down the road beyond it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Catherine. And then next we have Christian Bannister who is a digital experience design director at Gensler. Christian has been conceptualizing, designing and developing award-winning interactive experiences for more than 20 years and I will throw it over to Christian. Great, thanks. Yeah, so I think you started, still a little my thunder there, but I'll pick it up. Yeah, so I work with Gensler and I work with the DXD team. And really what we do is we work at the intersection of people, place and technology. So it's really about integrating technology and really kind of finding opportunities to integrate content and data into the built environment. We're currently, I should mention, we're currently matching a grant with the Knight Foundation for a project called Urban Periscope where really the goal is to increase awareness of data for civic engagement. Really it's to sort of like, kind of really onboard citizens to the potential of data by allowing them to get their hands dirty in a playful augmented reality experience that we're sort of integrating into the urban experience. And that's been really interesting and exciting for us to kind of push new technology and these new opportunities to connect with people and really get them excited about data and what's possible. So this is really what I'm bringing today. Hopefully we can talk a little more. Thank you, Christian. We will talk about it a lot more, I'm sure during our discussion. And then we have Melissa Gaston, who is the co-founder and executive director of the North End Community Coalition in Charlotte, North Carolina. Melissa is a community organizer and also a realtor with her own firm. And I'm really excited to introduce Melissa Gaston. Hello, everyone, glad to be here. Thank you very much, Justine. I am the co-founder and the executive director for the North End Community Coalition. And here in the North End, we're just about a mile and a half outside of the city of Charlotte, but we are trying to bridge the digital divide and connect our residents with the resources that are out here and available just to make their other lives a little easier, definitely on the ground working with the community, connecting them to all kinds of resources and people and just being in the trenches, as I like to say. Thank you. Thank you. I love that you're in the trenches. Hopefully you can bring that view into our conversation and we can kind of join you there as we dive into discussing equitable recovery. The first things first, I wanted to ask how you all have seen the pandemic exacerbate existing inequities or create new ones and how can we then address those inequities? So I would be glad to go first and answer that question for us because of our location, where we are and the demographics and the economic status of a majority of our residents, that the pandemic had a dramatic effect on our residents. Things that some of us took for granted like internet access, just being able to have a safe place to be and stay away from the COVID and things like that. It just, things we took for granted. So as an example, residents who didn't have access for internet, they couldn't do a telemed visit. They couldn't help their children connect to school. So if your children are already struggling with school for whatever reason and then you don't have access to get to the technology that we just really showed how much that had an impact on it. Things you don't think about and it created even greater isolation for our residents as well. If you have technology, you can, you know, zoom or FaceTime with somebody but if you don't have that access that also creates additional isolation. So they're already telling you to stay in your house and stay safe, but you can't even connect with your friends and rape neighbors and relatives because of that isolation. So it really had a demonstrative impact on us. Thank you so much for sharing Melissa. It really hits home for Gensler. I mean, we do a lot of design for workplace and it really has been sort of an inequitable sort of kind of experience for people in different demographics sort of adjusting to this hybrid reality of the new workplace. They were sort of promoting and for certain clients, like we have a lot of clients that are tech companies. We work with Facebook and Twitter and it's sort of a different situation for some of those people who have a lot of space, a lot of income, their connectivity is good. They have all the technology set up but then there's like other people who are living in crowded homes that just really don't have the space to be able to sort of realize that dream of the hybrid workplace. And that's been really interesting for us because we design the spaces but we haven't always like been designing for people's homes. So it's like an extension of an architecture that we've always been considering for years which is fascinating and sort of a new, I guess a company for our team. Yeah. I think I would say there was going into and then emerging from the pandemic, right? So there were inequities in place and elements of the sort of infrastructure of cities that was seriously eroded at the beginning of this sort of time period we're living in. So in all the years of surveying mayors we've sort of found that they talk about kind of the three legs of the stool of what makes a vibrant city, right? And so you want sort of healthy physical infrastructure transit, housing, bridges, schools. You want healthy and thriving fiscal infrastructure meaning is this, the city's finances healthy? Do they have a good bond rating? Can they get access to capital? Is the economy diverse? Can businesses, new businesses sort of open and operate and thrive? And then they talk about social infrastructure, right? So they talk about our people, the people that make a place sort of as wonderful as it can be. Are people actually thriving? Are they healthy? Can they live up to their full potential? Is there some degree of social cohesion? And if you look at all three of those some were broken before, infrastructure, physical infrastructure was broken before, but I think social infrastructure and sort of fiscal infrastructure in cities has really eroded or corroded both because of the pandemic and because of systemic racial injustice that has been just part and parcel of the urban experience and the sort of American experience for decades. And so, you know, when we talk about when we talk about cities, you sort of look at all three and because you both made such great points I want to like tease with a close by sort of teasing of the little point that's come out of the Menino survey so far with our interviews with Mayors this summer. We're asking them what are the long-term consequences of the pandemic that most would bring them? And we've only done about half of our interviews but two things are rising to the top. One is learning loss among kids, right? That was inequitable going into the pandemic and it's gotten worse for communities of color and lower income communities. And the second is mental health and trauma. It was inequitable going into the pandemic and it's worse as this endures and there's racial injustice endures. And the overlap with the points that, you know that you guys have been talking about are both relate to broadband and the digital divide because telehealth is one way you can serve and support communities in addressing mental health. And it's another way that's really critical to closing educational gaps. And then the other one is, you know because we have researchers that do work on educational divide and do work on telehealth and mental health and the physical environment people are in adversely impacts sort of outcomes in both of those areas. So can you get access to it? And can you be in a space that's private? That's quiet, you know that's actually health promoting and that's conducive to learning while we're all having to endure sort of being at home and having to endure the sort of exclusion from the normal settings where we would work and we would get access to healthcare and we would learn. Thanks so much. I'm curious to what if any opportunity, you know I quote unquote new normal might bring, you know from here what do we do to address these all these inequities? It's a tough question I know everyone's working on it. There's a lot to unpack there. Yeah, I mean I think it but it's for, I mean I'm gonna go back to the project we're working on tonight because I wanna talk about that. And I mean, so we're kind of going back to civic engagement and we wanna get people to really lean in on shaping their world. And I think that's something that, you know that we've been, you know we feel really strongly about it. We understand there is a digital divide and there's a lot of inequity that's just kind of systemic and part of our society but at the same time we think there's like value in getting people to really sort of hold their leadership accountable really add some transparency to data the way that funds are allocated to really get people thinking about that but not in just a way where they're sort of consuming graphs and diagrams and insights that have been sort of distributed in more of an editorial way or a part of like, and here's my insight it supports my research this is something I wanna tell you you wanna get people slicing the dice in the data including, you know developing their own insights and validating it on their own and then really amplifying their own ideas and I know this requires social media but we think that that is like a way to sort of kind of facilitate these conversations that are more open so I guess in a way it's really optimistic because we believe that the social media or the people being connected to the internet can ultimately benefit everyone but obviously there's been a lot of issues with when we look at what's happened in last couple of election cycles and just the way that things the way that sort of social media has been misfiring and misinformation, fake news a lot of things that are happening right now so those are negative outcomes but I guess we're still working towards some positive ideas I guess we're still very optimistic about connectivity, the internet and empowering people with usage of data so that's something that we're doing right now I mean it's, you know and I don't know that's a few thoughts there so I'll jump in right here for us and our community and our coalition we've been kind of going back to the basics I agree, you know social media and having the data is very important but we just need to get to the basics so people can at least connect to the internet so they can have the to be able to share their information or either to be able to share their data if you don't have that connection and you're not going to people's houses or you're not having these big community meetings where people are able to engage you're really isolating people and they're not able to provide the data that's needed and the data that they have is very important to change what's happened and to improve what's happened in the past and keep developing and going on so one of the things that, you know really struck me during the whole pandemic thing so some kids were able to connect to the internet because they had a device the school gave them a device, whatever but they weren't necessarily familiar with it because it wasn't like they had computers in their home all the time or they just used them at school but the person who was at their house trying to help them may have been an elderly person you know, a grandparent or an older parent who did not know how to use that computer or better yet, their parents were the healthcare workers or you know, the people that had to go to work they didn't have a choice to stay home so their kids are home by themselves trying to connect to the internet they can't connect, they're having difficulties or they're doing what kids do I don't want to do school work but and so that's a whole missing thing so there's definitely that aspect as well so I just don't know how we can come together and collect the data and do those things so we can improve upon it without connecting to the people we have to figure out a way to connect to the people and really be able to institute change that's gonna be effective for them That's a great point there are some, you know the numbers are improving as far as like connectivity and people who are sort of have access to smartphones and mobile devices over the last 10 or 20 years you see like huge really positive trends and movement in that direction and I think an interesting dimension of this is the way that people use connectivity some people that will not even they'll be more consumers than producer you know what I mean? So it's more about like people will be connected but they'll be streaming video and things like that and maybe not even know that they're connected in a way where they can actually be leaning in as opposed to leaning back because I think it's something we think about a lot is like, what is the posture of that sort of digital experience? I mean, are you leaning back and watching something and you know, playing a video game maybe it's even a little closer to leaning in but this idea that, you know there is the potential for some people to just shift their posture and become more involved and realize totally that there are still inequities but I think that's an interesting dimension that's one of the point out of the problem I mean, I'll stay on the topic while we're on it I'll stay on the topic of community engagement you know, I think change change certainly changes the local level mayors will say that it's the most personal job in politics and I think constituents will say, you know it requires a certain degree of relentlessness and vocal advocacy and activism to really affect change, meaningful change change with dollars, changes sort of allocating resources and one elected official told me you know, it's not enough to be on the list of priorities for us you wanna be one of the top three items and that for the advocacy and activism comes in it's like how do you actually get an elected official to say that thing is one of my top three and I will get it done and I will get it done now and you know, I look at community engagement and I think about the inequities again, that we had going into the pandemic and that has endured during the pandemic and community engagement so my colleagues at BU, Katie Einstein, Max Palmer and David Glick have studied this issue at length looking at inequity in the zoning process and looking at inequity in how new housing gets constructed in cities, right and what do they find? They find that the people that show up the zoning meetings entity older white male homeowners often with a legal background and they're protecting their asset and so they're precluding new housing and particularly new affordable housing from getting built and what they've actually been looking at is has the shift to remote engagement sort of lessened inequities during the pandemic I won't speak for them but the initial lessons are no it hasn't reduced inequity that the shift to digital engagement still in the current processes we have still create more space for the most vocal and the most privileged to turn up and speak in opposition to things that are really serving the greater good for the community and so I think there are things about the process of community engagement that continue unfortunately to be broken. For sure and you all have touched on this already but are there ways to use the power of data to highlight where we need more targeted investments? Certainly, I think that it starts with transparency but it also it is really about that engagement because the data is there it's just that people aren't using it and I think there's no real kind of gateway or real invitation into sort of using it in a meaningful way and I think also put in a face on it so to me I find it really interesting that someone has these assets that are available for them to craft insights and amplify new ideas across social media it's there and it can happen but I think you just need to see someone doing that and get inspired I mean if it's a little bit more punk and DIY and then we can put a face on it and we can get inspired by that person who has a message and can use data to support it and I also think that the idea of being able to validate the data because people are questioning everything nowadays so it's like drilling down into individual data points and just saying like yes that data is real it's not just a graph on a newspaper article editorial this is like something I can see I can see the voices and the people and I could sort of because there is a fabric of experience that supports this data so I mean kind of connecting those things I think is a good way to get at some of that. I think I'll point to two examples from cities where I think data has been deployed in a way that's really driving meaningful change one is here in Boston so Boston had something called it has something called the streetcaster program and streetcaster is actually an effort by the city to remedy inequities in the built environment specifically in relation to maybe the most underappreciated element of infrastructure which is the sidewalk. We don't think about sidewalks we're fortunate to have sidewalks in the Northeast not every city in the country has sidewalks certainly not every city has sidewalks that are actually created and maintained by the city itself but we do here in Boston. So with streetcaster the city went out and they manually inspected every single block of sidewalk and they created a score to understand where sidewalk quality was inferior. But that created a massive list like millions and millions of dollars farmer money than they could ever put into fixing all those sidewalks in a given year with a given capital budget. And so they overlaid that with socio-economic demographics of the neighborhoods and they overlaid it with transit access to try to understand where their lower rates of car ownership meaning more people are walking more people are walking to transit more people are taking the bus and they use that to pinpoint and allocate those dollars and prioritize investing in neighborhoods with the worst quality sidewalks that really use them that are high users. At the same time they tried to actually fix the 3-1-1 system because what was happening was wealthier neighborhoods this is data wealthier neighborhoods were calling to have the same darn pothole fixed over and over and over again. And they were getting there with a squeaky wheel and so they were actually getting all of the attention and all the dollars of those sort of patch remedies. And so they were the city said no we actually have to fix the system it can't be response time and we're going back to the same neighborhoods again we actually have to be reallocating dollars to permanent upgrades in neighborhoods that feel less investment and be more responsive to the neighborhoods that are even less likely to call to fix the problem. So that's one and the second one I'll say quickly is the city of Milwaukee also the city of Minneapolis actually created parks master plans that took into account both the quality of parks and the demographics of the neighborhoods surrounding those parks. And so they were again scarce dollars scarce resources how do you allocate them they actually were prioritizing both places that had sort of inferior quality that were due for upgrades and neighborhoods where they have for the higher number of users lower income users and sort of a density of users so that they were allocating those dollars in a way that they were having the best then most effective impact and remedying historic inequities. Those are two things that I think tie the data to the dollars. Yeah, those are amazing. Those are two very good points I see both of those happening in the city of Charlotte the sidewalks and not having the sidewalks well we don't have sidewalks all over Charlotte so some places do most older places don't have them and the people who use the sidewalks are not the ones who have the best sidewalks but the people who call and complain are the people who live in the south end of town or what they call the wedge and those are the individuals who make all the noise so they get all the improvements and they get all the, because they know how to and it's just, it's amazing. And then the other point that you made again about Milwaukee and I mean it's true here and it's just, it's amazing just like zoning here with zoning if you don't, you see the yellow sign but by the time you see the yellow sign go up or they put a sign announcing it is probably too late where other places the developers are meeting with the residents to find out what they want and what type of changes and the effectuating those changes based on what the citizens are saying but here they're not doing that and so you're right they get on and complain or they send a letter to city council or to whoever the zoning and they send all those requests electronically through the internet using that social media to do that and then the other people aren't here when they have meetings they're in the middle of the day when they're at work because they have to be at work so the inequities are still there, the data I just, I'm at a loss really I know that's what you do Christian for the data and if we can just translate that and somehow and bring it down to the people who are less who are more impacted by the lack of data would be a great we have to figure out how to do that and how to make it correlate. That all resonates with me I feel like my work is a lot of turning data into stories and you know highlighting how that actually affects people's lives and when it comes to things like sidewalks and green space that's something I've reported on too how important sidewalks are for mobility is hopefully for folks with disabilities and in the wintertime when there's inclement weather which we're seeing a lot more of recently and places like parks being important refuges when we have really bad heat waves like we've seen this summer although those places aren't always accessible and equitable and I think on top of all of those issues the pandemic has also made us rethink how we use public spaces and how we're allocating all of the public realm so I'd love to talk about how how can we ensure more equity and access to things like parks and green spaces and sidewalks even. Well, there's an aspect of this that I think that we're really interested when we talk about digital experience we want to reduce friction if we want to make this inclusive I mean those are drivers that we always go after and it is really part and parcel of the way we design things we go from a human-centered design approach so you want to understand the need and how to connect with people in the most effective way and that's really in one of the things that we're getting at with some of our new design thinking is like really embedding these things into the environment itself so when we want to talk about sidewalks can we look at a sidewalk and get an insight related to that site so the data isn't so much of an abstraction it's not the planner view it's the view from inside that I can start getting these insights and I really think that distributing them it maybe doesn't even require connectivity but we talk about ways of integrating these data dashboards and views and insights into the environment itself I think there's a lot of options there and we're just trying to be creative about that and just really kind of opening it up transparency because I think it is a lot of these things are transparency we've seen some alarming trends and in San Francisco gentrification is unbelievable I mean the median house price is completely unaffordable it's broken, housing is broken in San Francisco you know what I mean and it's so interesting that there's data that just is a very simple story a couple layers of data and you can see these trends that are alarming and anyone could see them and also anyone could see the way that zoning has been sort of disproportionately it has an agenda that doesn't support all people and that's something that's also a very clear trend that goes back for 50 more years that you see the way that zoning's been and not everyone knows that story not everyone has that at their fingertips well we all have it at our fingertips we just don't know how to access it and we don't know that we need to or maybe we should be looking at it so those are some things that we've been thinking I know there's a lot there but I'm excited about the topic Yeah I mean I think I because I was talking about sidewalks and parks I'll move on to trees I use that as an example because it's one area where there's been a lot of media coverage on the relationship between things like tree canopy and historic redlining right and then we know scientifically we know that there's a relationship between things like tree canopy and air quality and air quality is one of those issues that we know there's tremendous inequity it's becoming a more prominent issue as I was telling you guys before this all started we were hit with the smoke from the forest fires even here in Boston even though we're miles and miles away from them and trees can't solve that problem but they are an important part of improving air quality in cities and so when you look at a map and you look at neighborhoods historically neighborhoods of color and lower income neighborhoods you see are less tree canopy but mapping that is really expensive and I think one of the things that has been exciting is seeing new resources that are coming out that are really national and so I'm pointing to one and I just looked it up to share with everybody the American forests if you haven't looked at it has a new tool out that actually maps tree canopy for cities all across the country and you can drill down into your own neighborhood if you actually wanna see and then it looks at not just where are the trees but whatever the actual benefits or the benefits are missing out on if you don't have that tree canopy and I think things like that where there's a third party they make that investment but it's a national resource that also has local relevance for residents who wanna advocate for improvements to things like tree canopy then there's actually these tools and resources at their disposal that they don't have to be this sort of data whizzes or work with the academic experts they can go to that I think the second thing is even the trust for public land has new measures of park they've always had measures of park access now they have measures of park equity to try to understand park acreage and park quality and investment by different neighborhoods and within different cities and so again, those are the kinds of things someone's done the work for you but if you're a local resident working at a local level in an individual city you can tap into resources like that and that helps you make the case for why your city or your neighborhood needs greater investment and greater resources. Yeah, definitely. You pointed out a couple of different things the tree canopy, if you notice in areas where there's predominant people of color there's generally no tree canopy or very little and yet if you go into a neighborhood that has a tree canopy if you're transitioning from one to the other you can noticeably feel how much cooler it is where there's somewhere that has a tree canopy and somewhere that doesn't just like parks and things like that so in Charlotte they have this we wanna make sure we have a park I think within that two miles or a mile of everyone's home there's a park that you can go to and so what they call a park for some people maybe a park with a couple of benches on it and maybe a basketball hoop, a court and that'll be it for the park and then you go to another park in another part of town and they have all kinds of amenities in that park and it's just so amazing those are the kind of things that you can say well, we have a park here and they have a park within a mile of their house that they can go to but the inequities in the park they just did a study here where they went around to all the parks and the parks that were in the worst conditions were all in areas of people of color but then they put tons of work into other parks but the people who are complaining about the parks are again, the people who are in the wealthier areas because they utilize the parks more but do you think they utilize the parks more because they're nicer parks? Do you think other people wouldn't wanna utilize the park close to their area but it's just not something that's appealing to go to so it's just all those kind of things that are out there that you just don't realize unless you know in a lot of areas where people of color and especially because of redlining the type of zoning for the houses or the areas like and there's a neighborhood where we are here and basically the whole neighborhood is considered like I-1 land which is industrial land but it's residential so there's houses built on I-1 land so it used to be industrial or they built industrial next to houses because they didn't care and nobody complained and said anything so the data is there but how do you get that data out to say well this is here because one of the things that the city don't get me wrong city I love you city of Charlotte well one of the things is they don't wanna change some of those industrial zones because they're thinking oh then the businesses are gonna have to leave so we wanna keep these still as some industrial zone although there's residents right next to it so how do you make those adjustments? How do you take the data and make that say well no we need to change this and make it actually happen? Yeah we actually just published a video on the urban heat island effect and how and why some neighborhoods are significantly hotter than others it's on the Verge Science YouTube channel but we went out with thermal cameras in East Harlem and the Upper East Side to see a pretty dramatic difference in temperatures from neighborhood to neighborhood so there's definitely a lot to dig into there and so much that can be done around changing physical infrastructure to prevent heat related illness and prevent heat related death and make it so that you don't have one neighborhood that is suffering much worse temperatures and health effects as a result. With that said I did wanna talk about whether we are spending enough time looking through different lenses knowing that the same strategies don't necessarily work for all communities how do we do that better and be more inclusive of community voices that differ from community to community? I think this touches on a lot of the civic engagement that we've talked on before but yeah I mean the strategies are there's no one size fits all. Yeah I mean I think one example like that comes to mind for me I think everyone is trying to solve this right now I don't know of a lot of great evidence at least or even really great examples from cities I think one sort of older example that comes to mind for me was a number of years ago the city of Toronto, the head planner for the city of Toronto recognized inequity in engagement around zoning decisions and she said okay we're gonna completely change how we engage citizen engagement like completely change how we change we're gonna completely change citizen engagement in relation to zoning decisions. And they did essentially a lottery and broke down the demographics of the city the age, different racial and ethnic groups different religious groups in Toronto and just by lottery sent invitations to different residents saying would you like to be part of a community advisory group around zoning decisions in the city of Toronto? And people responded and they applied but it was a random process right it was trying to get people who would never otherwise be engaged in the city and so they applied and then they went through essentially like a citizen boot camp to figure out what is zoning, how are decisions what are the things that we have to worry about what agency does what? And then through that process they actually came to they became the sort of expert advisory council that was guiding the city rather than just the resident groups with the most vocal people with the most time to kind of show up and harangue elected officials. So that's one example and I guess the second example would be participatory budgeting. Which is not a panacea but a lot of cities across the country have been using New York, just in New York city counselors in New York often use it to say here's a pot of money and let me actually turn this pot of money back over to my constituents and they come up with the ideas they scope those ideas and they vote on those ideas and those are the investments. And in Boston we have about a million dollars in capital budget. It's a program called youth lead the change and it's youth driven participatory budgeting. The young people come up with the ideas scope the ideas, come up with the ballot and vote on the initiatives and it's a million dollars of the city's capital budget that they vote on every year. That's amazing. We're doing a lot to engage kids because we think it starts by like reframing attitudes towards these things and like understanding what's possible and starting with a simple story and kind of deepening that understanding. But I think just the hooks from the very beginning we're interested in there's a museum exhibit that we're designing which is sustainable cities which is really gives kids the opportunity to adopt a section of city and it's a projection map, it's high tech city it's mechanized projected map but the kids can make decisions. Like one of the decisions is the building mix. So it's a very simple idea of zoning. So what is the mix? How do you combine your building mix? And as you do it, you watch your city transform and change and you see the impacts of some of those decisions because everything's a trade-off in a way and you can also adjust your green space mix. So if you turn up your green space some buildings drop and turn into parks. I mean, it's all fantasy but the idea is that kids realize that, yeah, I can shape my city, you know what I mean? This is something that's totally possible and all these decisions are being made by somebody and in the future that could be me just even just that realization that somebody's making these decisions that all of this is possible, you can sort of have some agency in your own community and maybe get involved in these ways. It's just, it's really one-on-one stuff. I mean, but I think it's also valuable just to kind of get that reframe some of this stuff. So it's not just like a world that I've inherited but a world that I can impact. I think there's something there. That's great. I also, I really wanna hear Melissa's take on this as well but wanna quickly open it up to any questions that folks wanna submit. We'll continue the conversation with, you know, any questions you want answered from our panelists, you can drop them in the chat. But Melissa, did you wanna add on? I have a lot to say. I don't know. That's great. Yeah. Let me give my thoughts together. Yeah, let me give my thoughts together. I just think that what's, I think that's important. What Christian said was very important. I love the ideas. I love the ideas that everybody has. I just don't know how do you turn those ideas? So as an example, we had a project, the smart cities engagement, where we worked with the city and our community and we said, okay, here's some money. We have these, we call them kick starts, not projects. We call them kick starts. And they said, okay, here's the kick starts. You determine from the community what you need and what you want in the community. And I think there were four overall that were suggested by the community, maybe five, but there were four suggested by the community. But then there was one that wasn't suggested by the community, but they just said, okay, we're gonna do this one too. We're gonna throw it in there. And that was the one that was least successful. So to me, what that says is, if you're inviting the community and you get the community behind and they're the ones giving the ideas and how the impacts and what they're looking for that you'll be successful in that. So somehow we have to turn this in to say, yes, if you have the community behind it and the community is able to provide their input. And I love that idea where they were and people were invited to come and join this committee and they did and then they became the advisory group to the rest of the community or to the other groups. That's so important because people are thinking, oh, this is important for me. I had an impact in this and people wanna feel valued. So they wanna feel that and because they wanna feel value, then they're willing to be engaged in it and they're willing to share what they learned. So it's not just certain groups of people that are able to impact change that everybody can impact change because you have the opportunity because you were asked and you were included in the process. So I think those are all things that the cities that we all are in and the areas that we are working we all just need to go back and I said it again, I'm trenches on the ground. So I'm not at the high level with all the other stuff. I'm like right there in the ground where it's happening talking to the people, talking to the residents, being in their face, but not in a negative way but being in their face and talking to them just to get their ideas and get it out and to be able to share that. And that's just so important because I think no matter what happens to be really effective in any type of change you're gonna have to engage with the community. Don't just come to a group and say, hey, this is what we think you want. No, what do you want? Tell us what you want and let us determine how we can do that for you. You know, like how do you want that done? What does this look like to you? And really ask and don't just ask and not do it but ask and help them give them the resources to do what they need to do to get done what needs to be done for their communities. I love that. It's such a great melding of data and being in the trenches that we've gotten to have today. Thank you so much for all of your insights. And I'm excited to see all of this work move forward before closing out. I did wanna introduce Lillian Corral, the Director of National Strategy and Technology Innovation at Knight Foundation with some closing thoughts for us. Grace, thanks, Justine. And thank you to the panel. I think a lot of the comments share really bring back the point around using data to really understand inequity. And I've heard Catherine really talk about this. You know, I think we can take for granted that it's really clear what inequity looks like in our community. And at the same time, if we really wanna try and solve a lot of these inequities, we really do need more of this data at our fingertips. So there's a lot more that seems like we need to be able to do. And it sounds like the engagement piece is still a nut to crack. And so thank you to Melissa and the team in Charlotte and then Christian at Gensler for really pushing on the bounds of how we make data more accessible. How do we really engage the public in this discussion? To close out, I just wanted to give some last minute instructions. If you're still with us, thank you so much for finishing up day one of the Smart Cities Lab 2021. As a team member here at Knight Foundation, we're so grateful to be able to be in conversation with you all. If you are interested in learning more about the grantees that are on the Hoppin platform and via Hunt, we now invite you to visit the Expo Hall. You can find the icon on the left side of your browser or if you're on your mobile device, you'll see it at the bottom. And if you click on the Expo Hall, you'll be able to actually go into various sessions, see grantees. They are virtual booths, if you will, that are being hosted by individuals who are running programs and initiatives across the Knight Smart Cities portfolio. And when you click on the booths, you'll see a video or Google slide presentations and you'll be able to interact with them and ask questions, hopefully exchange information and perhaps pick up some ideas for your community along the way. Please join us tomorrow for day two, just a sneak preview of what's happening. In the morning, we'll be kicked off by Kelly Jin, who is our Vice President of Community and National Initiatives, who's gonna kick off a day that's really a bit more forward-looking. We're gonna tackle the issue of mobility and equity and we're also gonna talk a little bit more about autonomy. We're gonna delve deeper into one of Knight's initiatives around autonomous vehicles and autonomous devices and really look at how the public can get engaged with such a sort of forward-looking technology, but yet that has a lot of regulatory implications today. And so how do we actually do the hard work as Melissa just alluded to, of working on the ground in the trenches and actually letting community have a voice in all of that. And then we'll also, for grantees, have a session from Panthea Lee around strategy and impact and how do we keep our eye on impact when there is so much variability and so much ambiguity in the world around us. So please join us tomorrow and right now I invite you to go through our expo hall and meet others. Thanks so much for joining us today.