 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage our panelists, Rick Lowe, Claudia Guerra, and Mike Poe, and our moderator, Susan West Montgomery. Good afternoon. It's so great to see so many of you here. I guess 2.15 is a really good time to have a Trust Live. So welcome to the First Trust Live of 2016 here in Houston, Texas. We've got a great program for you today. We're doing it a little different for those of you that know the Trust Live format. We decided, once we started talking, we decided we didn't want to start with a keynote. We really wanted to just dive into our conversation. I like to think of these Trust Lives as an opportunity for you to listen in on a conversation. We really, we've brought together three amazing individuals doing incredible work in cities, and we want to hear what they have to say in their perspective. So we really are just listening in to a conversation that they're having, and I'm only here to just maybe throw out a few questions, so enjoy. And I want to start, the topic of this Trust Live is livability. And that means many different things to many different people, and each of these individuals has thought about what livability means in the communities that they're working in. So I really want to start by just asking them, what does livability mean to you? I'll start with you, Rick. Okay. Well, most of the work that I do is in lower income communities, and so, you know, livability starts. It has to start with affordability, so that's kind of a number one, you know, baseline. And I also think that, you know, safety is a big contributor to livability. And when I say safety, though, I think of safety in terms of safety in relation to crime between people, but also crime between that can be brought on by industry. And, you know, hence, you know, environmental racism becomes a big platform to address that kind of safety in lower income communities, and that makes it livable. And then I think the other thing I think about is, you know, the issue of transportation and, you know, and how challenging oftentimes it is for folks in low income communities that live, that choose to live in traditional historic neighborhoods. There's so little investment in those neighborhoods, and so transportation becomes a big issue. So those are three things, I think, that are kind of tops. When you said livability, I thought of, or when you said about transportation, sort of access. Yeah, access to transportation, yeah. Access to opportunity that transportation provides. Great. Claudia? Well, livability, because I work for a city government, often is about infrastructure, right? It is about access. It is about transportation, but it's also about health. It's also about walkability. It's about quality of life. My charge is to take that a little bit further and really investigate what the spirit of place is, because that's really what enlivens the place. That's what gives it life. And the spirit of place is often connected or created by people. So investigating what the spirit of the people is is extremely important to really draw out what makes this community thrive. And so a lot of the work that I do really focuses on talking to people and getting their memories and their connections to place to find out what livability means to them. Right. I hadn't thought of enliven has live and livability in it, but those words are absolutely connected to enliven in place through livability. Mike? Yeah. I mean, so I like those definitions, of course. And I think I hear some similar things to what I was kind of thinking. I think if I hear livability actually kind of drives me crazy a little bit. It seems like a little bit of a silly word. Like, there's no opposite of livability. And I think you always have to ask livability for whom, right? I mean, I'm a person of privilege of some degree of privilege and not everyone has that position. But ultimately, I think I kind of go back to Maslow and the hierarchy of needs. You need an opportunity to make a living and a lovable place to rest your head and safety and solace and some degree of comfort. Yeah, I think that's really how I do it. I'm wondering if, you know, obviously this is a preservation conference and all of your work intersects with preservation. What is the contribution that preservation makes, and I won't say preservation, I'll say the reuse of historic buildings. What is the contribution it makes to livability in the community as you work? And I'll, whoever wants to answer that one first, I don't know if I always go in order. Although if you got something. I'll break the order though. Okay. Just and punt it over. Well, I think the way I would approach that question is that buildings reflect, the built environment reflects people. It reflects the culture. So when we think about historic preservation, we are of course talking about structures, but it's really what happens in that structure and who uses that structure. So I think historic preservation has a lot to contribute to make sure that this isn't just about architecture. It isn't just the bricks and mortar. Right. Go ahead, Ray, please. Okay, well, you know, I'll just, I think that I completely agree with Claudia. And I always think of the thing that was interesting about preservation to me and buildings is, well, let me just go back and say I've always been a little hesitant to call myself a preservationist because I don't necessarily think of preservation as necessarily an end only. I think of it as a strategy, you know, and I think so there are ways that we can look at buildings and history as strategies through which we could do the things that I'm interested in doing with this building community. Right. And I think, you know, when we start thinking about history in general and buildings and more narrowly, you know, those are things that we can talk about and we can use them and we can elevate them in ways that help build communities and build capacity, build a spirit of people that can help kind of explain what a place is. Wow. Yeah, just to jump in. So I mean, you know, I didn't come from a preservation background. I actually have been more interested, you know, I'm a young guy still, but interested in some communities that work for all kinds of people, how different people can mix together, how policy influences the sort of identity of a neighborhood or a place. You know, when I was an undergrad at Texas A&M University, I actually went down to the Texas-Mexico border, a town called Nuevo Progreso, and saw, you know, what's called auto construction in some countries. Basically, neighbors helping each other add on to houses as new babies were born and thinking about how the building codes in a lot of major, you know, modern cities don't really allow for that kind of a thing. And then since I've gone on to, you know, Los Angeles, Skid Row, and Seattle, and Miami, and now come to preservation, sort of understanding, through some research we've done, that old buildings contribute to local living economies, to affordable housing, that kind of thing. So I totally with you. I mean, I consider myself a preservationist. I work for the National Trust in the Preservation Green Lab, and this is a preservation conference, of course. But I think preservation as a strategy is right, would put. Great. It's a great way of thinking about it. Well, and I want to take a time. I mean, you all are probably like, what do these people do? Well, I want to take a minute now to really have them tell you a little bit about the work that they're engaged in and why maybe give you a sense of why we invited them here today. And I'm going to start with Rick. Okay, well, as I said, I didn't start out as a preservationist. It wasn't something that I thought that I needed to do until I was engaged in the Third Ward in Houston, which is a historically African-American community. And there was a tour group that community leaders had organized with city and county officials to go through the Third Ward and identify dangerous places that needed to be torn down. And because of all the crime attached to those buildings at the time, because there was a lot of disinvestment, or there was a huge disinvestment there, and they identified all these places as dangerous places that needed to be torn down. And I saw these little shotgun houses and just kind of thought... I mean, there was something about them that spoke to me, and I went back and I found that this artist, John Biggers, had been highlighting shotgun houses for a long time and talking about the history and the value of them to the African-American experience and talking about the origin of the shotgun house going all the way back to West Africa and moving to the U.S. with the slave trade. And he talked about how architecturally they were important, but also how they nurtured community in different ways and the vibrancy of community that could happen in these houses that are so close together with the porches lined up and the little courtyards and stuff in the back. And so I kind of came up with this idea of creating what I call... Well, first of all, John Biggers did a lot of paintings about them, and I came up with this idea of kind of using these houses to create a living John Biggers painting. And that was the beginning of me understanding the real power of history and the historic nature of architecture, because I didn't really know the real power of the symbol of the shotgun house as a form. But once I start talking to people about this it was like people were coming from all walks of life that had interest in how these houses could actually come to life and reflect a particular kind of culture. And so we started with that little 22 shotgun houses, building both kind of a public place but also private neighborhood with using some of the houses as places where we have artists that come and do art projects to help us think about the community and explore it in different ways. Some of them are used for education purposes. Then there were some that used for transitional housing for single mothers. So this all started back in 1993. And starting modestly with those 22 little houses on a block and a half and coming looking for it now, they've had such a huge impact on how people in the Third War think about their neighborhood. And I think the shotgun house, even though I mean we have to look at different forms of how to express that, but it kind of encapsulate that kind of spirit that you were talking about of what it really means to be in a place. And most people that are connected to Third War can find that spirit connected to these houses. Absolutely. Wow. Power of the shotgun, right? Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting. And I just want to just one do one follow up. So you did these 22. Where do you see it going from here? I mean that place is an incredible place. And those of you that have maybe gone on the tour. What? The image. Oh. It's an incredible place. What's its influence now? And you said people identify with those, but do you see an influence now? Yeah. Well, I want to comment on the image that everybody's seeing. When I say that we have artists that do art projects there, they help us think about the neighborhood. They help us think about what's happening, the culture, and current events and all kinds of things. And that particular image was from an art project that an artist did where they painted this quote from Obama in 2006 on the front. What Washington needs is adult supervision, right? But then inside the house on the back wall was this large projection of the inauguration, the euphoria that everybody had of the inauguration. So that happened in 2008. And then there was a smaller television there with an interview or a question from a woman who was at a town hall meeting was challenging Obama, an African American woman asking him if his presidency meant that it was going to be a continued struggle for black people. So it was like these two-year intervals of Obama's president. But anyway, but that's one of the ways that these houses kind of help us speak and understand the community that we live in. But your question was... No, no, that's good. My question. Well, now I've forgotten my question. I actually do want to say one funny thing that when we visited Project Rojas, there was one of those, there was a crime tape and this step was knocked over and it looked like it was a piece of a car. And we're walking going, is that an art installation? No, a car had actually gone off the road. But we were like, oh, they're so clever. Life happens. Life happens. I guess the question that I was thinking of was, so we know that place now, but what do you think the influence of what you tried to do there has been in both in Houston and the larger ward, larger city, but also nationally? Well, you know, I think what the shotgun house and shotgun communities represent in general is that the interdependence of people. And I think over the last 50-plus years we've just been moving so rapidly toward this idea of independence, you know, that you can have your home with your, you could drive your car into the house, you know, into the garage. So basically you're bringing everything and you never have to really know who your neighbors are. And that's fine for a certain segment of the population, but there are other people that need their neighbors. There's a different kind of thing that they need. And I think that the shotgun house speaks to that. And I think it speaks to how, you know, people are starting to think about building, you know, how we build for the future. I mean, you can build for independence on some level, but it's no need to turn completely away from building in ways where the street means something, where, you know, there's public space means something for people. And that's kind of what the shotgun house represents. And the alternative, not directly, but the alternative of independence is connection, which is what your work talks about. Well, that's a great segue to Claudia's work. And I have been sort of watching and reading a lot of the work that Claudia's been doing. And I think it's sort of a nice follow-on because she talks about it as cultural mapping. And actually Claudia told us that she wishes she had a better name. So if someone actually comes up with a better name today, we'll, you know, we'll give you a prize or something. But this work in communities and this work in place, and so I'm going to ask you to talk a little bit about that. Sure, sure. So cultural mapping is the name of the work that we actually do. And yes, I'd like something snappy, something fun. We've got to come up with a fun name for the project itself. Some background. I'm the cultural historian for the city of San Antonio. I've been that for just a little over two years. A year into my term, the city received an inscription from the World Heritage, from UNESCO for World Heritage for our missions. And as we began to talk about this area and what we needed to do to protect it, we understood that understanding the intangible heritage was extremely important as well as documenting the tangible. And as I said before, sometimes a building may not have architectural significance, but what happens in that building may be very significant. So we recognized very quickly that we might not be able to look at something or look at a photograph of something and really know if this place was important. And the only way to do that was to talk to people. And so despite the title of my job, Historian, really it's not about technical academic research. It's about community engagement. So one of the things that we've been doing is conducting oral histories with people who are connected to the missions. And really connected means anything. You might have been a visitor there once. You might be descended from people who actually help build the missions because they do still live in the area. But it runs the gamut. We don't turn anyone away. And so what we've been finding are these just wonderful stories about not just the missions, but the environment around the missions. So we talked to, in this case, what's on the screen is a family that no longer lives in San Antonio, but their grandmother grew up on a farm near one of the missions. And she's still alive, and they still talk to her about those stories. So they came in and they gave me a little oral history. And they're kind of free-ranging. You know, we talk. I let them lead this, and they can talk about whatever they want. And when we hit upon something that's interesting, I might pull on that a little bit more. The one thing that I ask everyone to do, however, is to draw a map. Because what we're trying to do is take that intangible and make it tangible. So I like to say we turn something intangible into something that everyone can understand. And maps are really important because they don't only tell us where we are. They really can't tell us who we are as well. So the maps are drawn, and they're all hand-drawn. You can see just very, no one says no. No one's afraid to draw, which is wonderful. And then they write some of the story on that map. So it goes in addition to the videotape of the oral histories that I take. The other way we do some mapping is when we have community meetings, we will have, as you see on the screen right now, I take a historic map of San Antonio, and we alter it by adding stories from people. So this is a map that lists a lot of people who were influential in San Antonio at the turn of the 19th century. And so we've removed all of those names and invited people to come and put the names of their families. So we're identifying people that we may not have heard of before. So when we talk about livability, I think what the result is people feel engaged. They feel like their story is being told. And so then this is not just the only effort. It's an integrated approach because some of the traditional tools that a city might use are also happening. So at these community meetings, they're not just giving me the oral histories or their stories, they're also talking about land use. They're also talking about economic development. So what we're doing is collaborating with different city departments and being able to pull a full story together. What people do is also give us historic photographs. So we begin to create an archive, not just of the stories, but of photographs. And the way we're using them is similar to some of the work you do, is we're using that to interpret by streaming them on fences, making these large-sized banners. They go on fences, places that may need some beautification. You know, there's a chain-link fence, and it's not that great looking, but we want the area to look a little nicer. We put these historic photographs on there so that people can kind of see their history right there. And a lot of it may be history that people haven't really been exposed to before. So it's all a celebration. It's a way to explore. It's a way to discover and then ultimately celebrate, which are the terms we use to counter some of the terms we use in historic preservation, which would be identify, document, and designate. So our way is to really celebrate. I love the addition of the maps and the drawings to the listening that you're doing, or the hearing that you're doing. It's hearing and seeing and interacting in a really active, kind of engaged way. And I love that no one's resisted that. They want to sort of map it out. And I think about those of you that were at the World Café this morning, we asked you to kind of get in and draw what you were thinking. You know, make a star, make a line. And that engagement with the conversation really must bring it alive for them and give them other tools for expressing and sharing the story they want to do. I think it's just so brilliant. Well, and like many people, anyone who does oral history probably has heard this before, but everybody says no one's ever asked me my story before. So it's really an opportunity to feel heard. Yeah, that's great. Well, in a more literal sense of mapping, I'm going to ask Mike to talk about the work of the Green Lab. Yeah, so thank you. Yeah, so I'm part of the team. Some of you may have heard of the preservation Green Lab. So we study the relationship between sustainability and old buildings and sort of like the broadest definition. So not just historically designated, not just architecturally significant. So like all the things we're talking about fit so beautifully into all this. And sustainability, you know, sustainability can be, you know, green buildings, lead certify, lead platinum. But our research has shown that actually the greenest thing you can do is reuse a building that's already there, right? Because the resource is already in that. It's already got the memory. It's got a lot of intelligence built into an older building. Oftentimes. So, you know, sustainability in old buildings, yes. But I think, you know, as broad as that can be. So we put out this study called the Greenest Building a few years ago. Since then, we've done some work around energy efficiency. Colleagues at the Green Lab who have led a major multimillion-dollar project focused on driving energy efficiency to small commercial buildings. And, you know, that still, that feels technical on Wonky, but, you know, it boils down to small businesses that pay too much in utility bills and trying to find a way to help all those small businesses. That granular fabric, that local economy, work better. And then Older Smaller Better was a major study we put out a few years ago now. Older Smaller Better showed that Jane Jacobs was right. If you guys know Jane Jacobs, Jane Jacobs said a lot of great things about cities. Wasn't necessarily considered a preservationist at the time. But we showed that, you know, that there's greater intensity of cell phone activity at 10 o'clock on a Friday night where there are a mix of old and new buildings. You know, Jane Jacobs said, you need a mix of old and new buildings. Didn't think cell phones were going to come into it in 1969. But we looked at jobs and small businesses. We looked at permits pulled for seating outside cafes and coffee shops. We looked at a ton of different measures. And so from that, we sort of felt like, well, we got the greenest building. Show the environmental value. We got Older Smaller Better. We can show the social, economic, cultural value. So how can we make that more likely? So we actually worked with a group of real estate developers and community development officials at the Urban Lane Institute. And we went city by city working in Los Angeles and Philadelphia and Baltimore and Chicago and then most recently in Detroit. And really think about, have conversations about, you know, it's a different kind of engagement. We have these sort of facilitated conversations about the barriers to building reuse. What's making it difficult to reuse an old building? And sometimes in really mundane ways, you know, the plumbing code is both wonky and mundane. Things of that nature. Parking regulations can kind of strangle an old building, especially the way that codes are written in a lot of cities. So partnership for building reuse with the Urban Lane Institute was really about kind of shaking out those barriers, you know, daylighting them and then having a good conversation about how you overcome those things. So that's sort of where we've come over the last several years. And yeah, it's going to be a new day soon though. I want to circle back to livability now that you've heard each other sort of tell your stories. I mean, is there something that strikes you now that you would add to the conversation about livability in your thinking about your work? Maybe I'll start. So I want to put in a plug for a brand new project that we are just... I'm so excited to launch. We've been working like crazy to get this thing done and we've had a great team. A lot of folks in the room have worked unbelievably hard on this, but it's called the Atlas of Reurbanism. Wait, what was that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's an awful... So yeah, the Atlas of Reurbanism. And I can clarify here. So first of all, let me take the Reurbanism part. So the National Trust is now thinking much more broadly about the challenges and the opportunities facing cities. Of course, cities are growing all the time. Population of cities is exploding around the world, across the country. A lot of cities are seeing net population gains and job gains for the first time, especially in the core of these cities for the first time in decades. And so Reurbanism is really about... So how can we make sure that we're reinforcing the fabric of those cities? We're reinvesting in the structures in those communities who have been there, and we're re-using the structures. Ultimately, I think it's about making, building reuse the default option rather than demolition and new construction. And that's just logical, I think. The greenest building on the other research from the Green Lab I think makes the case. Now we're ready to say, let's do this thing. So the Atlas of Reurbanism is all about sort of taking some of the work we've done in the past and blowing it up to a much grander scale and opening it as an engagement tool, as a resource for people who are interested in sort of exploring and transforming cities, sort of reinvesting and reinforcing cities. So whereas in older, smaller, better, we looked at three cities, leadership for building reuse, worked in five cities. This takes it to 50 cities across the country, from Anchorage to Fort Lauderdale and Miami and Portland, Maine to LA and Honolulu, actually. I really wanted to get those corners. And with older, smaller, better, we could say, there was more jobs in high character score areas, and I can talk about that, but areas with older, smaller buildings and a mix of old and new buildings in these cities. Now we can say, you know, there's 40 million people living in 50 cities across the country. 24 million of those people live in these areas, including like 12 and a half million people of color. It's far more than in the areas that have large new buildings. There are more jobs and small businesses across all 50 cities as a percentage, not just one, not two. There's greater population density. There's greater density of housing units in all 50 cities. There is more higher percentages and greater counts of women and minority-owned businesses in 48 of the 50 cities in the Atlas. And so, you know, that's some of the magnitude. Kind of this thing is huge. This thing has been a ton of work. So thank you forever. Those of you who have been talking about it with me, it's been a long time coming. But now it's here, but it can be leveraged to understand cities on our own. You know, you can go to the website, atlasovererebonism.com.org, and you can type in your address. We're actually rolling out the cities. There's only five right now, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philly, Houston, five largest cities in the country. But you can go online. You can type in your address, and you can see how your area kind of performs. And I hope that it's a tool that people will understand, and that's useful for a variety of purposes. You know, whether it's in Chicago, and it's about reinforcing, you know, the south side and making sure that there are healthy living conditions for people, you know, living amidst really, really challenged environments. Or whether it's about, you know, the Third Ward in Houston and Project Row Houses and kind of establishing a baseline for how well things are going there. So if there is new development, or if there is development pressure, you can say, at a minimum, we want to keep at this level of women and minority-owned businesses, this kind of population density, this kind of affordability. All these things are baked into this. So it is huge. I have been talking about it for a long time, and today is a great day to be able to say that it's in the books and it's online. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about it. Well, I'd just say, I mean, the thing that strikes me, and what you were saying, Mike, just about this notion of the relationship between old buildings and new buildings and the dynamic that is generated there. And I think that, you know, in terms of livability, I think, you know, I mean, and it was interesting to hear all the kind of the data behind, you know, your research there. But just, you know, just intuitively, I think that there's a sense that people feel that, but we don't have structures through which, you know, policy that can help nurture that kind of environment that we all have a sense, and we feel that it feels more livable, but policy hadn't caught up with that. Well, yeah, it's funny because Jane Jacobs, you know, was so critical of planners and of data and of mapping, especially this sort of God's eye view perspective. And so I, you know, I always hope that I communicate some degree of humility about the data, about modeling, you know, I think modeling in general as a term makes more sense for Plato than it does for talking about how data says what the future of the city should be. You know, a lot of times things don't work out like we expect. It's been a weird couple of weeks. And so data only gets you so far. But the important thing is, you know, so for audiences who care about data, for people who learn in terms of maps and numbers, you know, I think that sometimes this data, these maps can help. And for others, you know, I would love to explore the possibility of doing some, bringing some cultural mapping or cognitive mapping, Kevin Lynch I think used to say, bringing that into the Atlas of Reurbanism and shaking this thing up and making it look like something that's human and not necessarily machine, you know, because it's got to be both. Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, to bridge some of this is that's where I'm hoping this will go. Sometimes the policy can't catch up because it's created by someone who's not necessarily embedded in that neighborhood. And I think that if individuals who live in the community are creating these maps, we can take those maps and make them more technical. So it's a language. It's actually a language that it's bridging and translating from one community to those who actually create the policy. And that's what I'm hoping is going to result. And right now they look very low-tech, but there is a hope that we're going to take this to some level of GIS mapping or something that's more technical that can speak to urban planners. And one way that I do, I'm very excited about the possibilities, and one small success that I can point to, we've been doing this for seven months now, so it's still very much in its experimental stage. But something that has resulted, one little win that may turn into a form of policy, is through the mapping, through the storytelling, I identified a family that is descended from the indigenous people who built the missions. It was their labor that built them, and there are families that are still there that are descended from them. And one of the stories that they told me was about how they always created the food and agua frescas, all the Texans are saying, yeah, I know that. They're drinks that are made from fruit, and they're very sweet and they're very refreshing. And they were the family that made it for one of the particular mission parishes, which, by the way, are still in use. And so they talked about the foods that they created for the festivals. And they said they don't really get to do that anymore because they've sort of been contracted out to companies that do this. And so I was telling that story to someone in our cultural, always forget it, our Tourism Bureau basically. And what has now resulted is they're going to contract with that family to create a tour package in which someone can come tour the World Heritage missions and then spend half a day with this family and have a culinary package integrated into that. And the family will be contracted. They will be paid for doing this. So they are now participating not only in their culture, but also in the economy of their area and hopefully becoming prosperous from that. Wow, very cool. I love the concept of translating. So those lower scale maps or whatever and making them more like what Mike does, but reversing that too and bringing life into the technical maps and that kind of dialogue that we can have between the resources in order to impact policy. It's a fascinating idea that we could bridge those two things in such a dramatic way. My colleague at the Green Lab, Carson, would tell me, he would probably say that the paper maps, the maps drawn by people are much more valid and real and meaningful. Maps that are drawn with GIS, you know, maps lie. Lifeless. Maps always lie. They have maps lie. You have to present to me, you have to be, you know, like anything else. You've got to be forthcoming about, you know, where the data comes from, what it means. It's got its own truth to it. And if you're explicit about it, then it can be an honest map, I suppose, but only by way of saying it's limits. Yeah. Rick, what do you think that the challenges are for... You know, we look at Project Roehouse as this sort of amazing success and, you know, it's there and we visit it. What do you think the pressures on that community are right now? And then I wanted to say that because then I want to talk about how some of what we've talked about can address that. Yeah. Well, you know, the... I think one of the challenges is... has been kind of the success. Oh, yes. It's become, you know, a challenge in that, you know, I mean... And it's not all attributed to Project Roehouse, but I think we played a role in that in that the... You know, in 1993, there was no investment in that neighborhood. Mm-hmm. And we created a framework for people to start thinking about investment. But we didn't have a framework through which to guide that investment. Right. And so consequently, what has happened is, you know, the third ward in Project Roehouse being a part of this is kind of champion and shouted about the value of this place, its proximity to downtown and all of these things, and people have taken interest. And now there's significant investment. And so real estate value is up, watch them go from, you know, as low as a dollar per square foot in 1994. And moving to 19... I mean, 2004 in the $5 to $6 a square foot, 2010, $10 to $12 a square foot. And then our park, the Historic Emancipation Park, started the renovation of that park and the work got out that there was going to be a $38 million investment in that park. And all of a sudden, between 2010 and 2013, values went up from 10 to $12 a square foot to well over 20. Wow. And between 2013 and now, it's up to $61 a square foot. You know, so it's created a condition now that makes it really, really hard for our goal, which is to expand and continue to expand preserving many of the buildings that really give the neighborhood its character. That is a challenge. Yeah, it's a big challenge. And I think, you know, and as I travel and I visit other people and other places, and I just look at the, you know, the asset of the history that they have, and it's always... But I always look at it now with a little bit more caution, you know, about what does it really mean for that place to start to get, you know, more investment. I was just in... Yeah, Petersburg, Virginia. Oh. You know, and I was just... We have a colleague who's from Petersburg. Yeah? No, I mean, I didn't know that much about it, but I went there and I was just like floored with the history and the beauty of these buildings. And, you know, but they're struggling because apparently, you know, it was the largest city and as, you know, people start moving from kind of urban places, these little towns around became the thriving places that are all strip malls and, you know, in 1950s-style ranch houses, basically. And then you have this little gem of a place. And so the thing is like, oh, this is such an asset. So you get people to start investing in and then what happens, though? Right. You know, how do you frame, how do you protect that asset, you know, going forward? And I don't think we've really figured that out. Right. I think that's probably right. The greatest challenge maybe of our generation. What do you think you had said, Mike, that benchmarking? You could benchmark what is valuable and I think the work a lot that you do, Claudia and San Antonio, is benchmarking. This is what is the value. This is the quality. This is the authenticity. This is the power of this place and the value of this place outside of the economic, you know, square footage value. But in a way to keep, if we benchmark it, then we know what it is. But then what do we do? Yeah. I'm not saying you have an answer for that, but I'm putting it out there. Well, I mean, I think that, you know, in instances where the community is organized and feels like they're a unit, I think you can petition. There are, you know, design review boards in Seattle, you know, where I live now. There are instances like that, public participation, public engagement of some sort, whenever there's, you know, especially major new development projects and you can sort of, communities can stand in the way and they can say, you know, it really needs to be better. There are community benefits agreements. It's not new anymore, I guess. It's probably been around for much longer than I realized, but, you know, whenever there's a major development, sort of you can try and hold the developer's feet to the fire a little bit and say, you know, we're happy to have you, maybe, but you got to play by our, you know, we got to have a conversation first. And so I think, you know, I think the Atlas could offer some ground there. You know, I think the challenges are, you know, so that's a challenge. There's a challenge there in and of itself, even if you're organized, you know, David and Goliath a little bit in some cases or Jane and Robert. But in other cases, you know, if there are renters, have a lot less power than a property owner, you could always sell out, you know, the property owner can sell the building. Or, you know, if the community doesn't speak the, you know, majority language or however you want to say it in the country, that's going to be a sort of disempowerment. So, you know, I hope that it gets to conversation. I hope that it might be a useful tool. I think that it can be, but it only gets to you so far. That's for sure. And I think, you know, preservation is obviously not just about the buildings. It's about the people. It's about the community. You know, the buildings give character. The character score at the Green Lab put together is about the buildings, but it's the people that live there, right? So that's what always happens when, you know, the neighborhood, the coolness or the greatness of a place can kind of eat itself. Well, I'd actually like to ask that question about San Antonio with the designation of the World Heritage Site and the work that you're doing so proactively in that community now. What do you see the challenges there to livability and continuity? It's keeping people in place. It's making sure that the rest of the generations of the people who are there now continue to live in that place. And so it is a challenge. It means coming up with something new, something innovative, I think. Some of the things that we've been able to do so far is that, you know, realize zoning can be a friend. So making sure that the correct zoning is in place, making sure that land use is correct through some of the workshops, not just the intangible heritage mapping that I do, but those same workshops have looked at maps and have looked at land use and people have been able to say, I'd be okay if a development happened right here, but I certainly wouldn't want it right here. And so then we've been working to be able to change land use and zoning so that it matches what the community wants. Also understanding that we do have a charge to protect the outstanding universal value, which is very much connected to the people and the culture. So, so far, we've been fairly successful. I think we have 11 or 14 land use amendments that are going to be proposed in the new year to our city council. So it's a step towards that. But beyond that, I do think that there are other things, there are incentives bringing in the right developers, bringing in incentives to help the people who live there create their own economy. So it goes beyond the development as well. It's all very integrated. Yeah, I'm always thinking about how, you know, I mean, the great nature preserves that we have. You know, what was the language used to instill that kind of, I mean, I know people still want to get rid of them all the time. I mean, it's not a step thing, you know. But to be able to get our society to a point that it feels like, you know, there are certain places, natural environments that are worth protecting, you know, that you don't think of their value in terms of economic, not, you know, in an exploitive way. You may think of it how it contributes broadly economically to a place. But I'm always just thinking about, where did that movement come from and how did it come about? I talked to colleagues that are designers because, you know, they have similar issues about the quality of design, you know. How do you instill a sense of value in quality design and similarly with preservation? How do we articulate the value so that we can potentially have this way of thinking about certain places as having a value that is beyond, you know, the simple economic returns? It's interesting that you brought up the natural. Stephanie, who are president and CEO, who came sort of out of the environmental side of the equation, has often said about, you know, cities are ecosystems for humans. And this is precious and it's threatened. And what would we have done in a natural environment we'd put in place ways to protect it, which I think feeds right into what you're saying, that value, it is so much beyond the economic value and we've never gotten good at assigning a value beyond the monetary value. But maybe the atlas is attempting to try to do a little bit of that. And maybe the mapping that you're doing is attempting to do a little bit of that. That's why we got to keep talking. Yeah, we got to keep talking. I think these are huge problems. I don't know if the atlas is going to save the day entirely. But it is a way to quantify. It is a way to visualize. It is a way to hear and see and touch something beyond the square foot, the dollar, economic value. Well, some other stuff the atlas can do. I mean, I think, you know, it can do all these things. One thing that's really exciting about it is that I think it's, you know, cities are dynamic and evolving places obviously. Neighborhoods are dynamic and evolving places. And my goal, and I think the team's goal is for the atlas to be a dynamic and evolving tool. So, you know, we're going to roll out these additional maps, yes. But I think what's going to be really exciting and interesting is starting to do things like working with, you know, Claudia and cultural mapping and start to have people's stories engage with some of this and start to link up with other information that's outside. We're having a good conversation this morning at breakfast. Colleagues and I about possibly linking to, you know, the nomination forms, however old they are from the National Park Service for landmarks. It seems like a relatively easy thing from a technical side, but sometimes I get in trouble saying things like that. But, you know, we can also do things like add new analysis. So sea level rise. What number of buildings built before 1920 are threatened by the most modest of climate change projections? I don't know the answer right now. And I don't know if anyone really does, but this could start to tell us some things like that and give us a better best guess, you know, than I think what we've had so far. Or, you know, if you put, what's the photovoltaic, the solar potential of all the historic districts across the country? You know, what would that look like? Or what's the development potential of all the surface parking lots? Everyone's favorite thing. What if we built on all those surface parking lots and we invested in transit? Would that create a more sort of dynamic and interesting and equitable city? I think so. And hopefully this thing will start to give us some of that, some of that too. Well, I mean, it's really, you know, when you start talking, I mean, the data that you're coming up with and the approach that you're talking about is all connected to this idea of what you're calling re-organization. And I think that's our opportunity. You know, I think it's the opportunity in that, you know, I mean, people are moving back to cities because there's something they know. I mean, of course, for some, it's closer proximity to maybe the work centers and that kind of stuff. But for others, it is this idea of wanting to be a part of something else that has, you know, some added layers to the aspect of life. And I've been seeing that through just, I mean, it's always interesting. I sit and I play dominoes at Project Rehouse on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Anybody's invited if they want to come by. But, you know, I sit there and I do that so I can just hear what's happening in the neighborhood and it's always interesting. Like, you know, just this past Saturday, there was a group of people that just showed up and they said, oh, we just moved to the neighborhood and we live in these townhouses, you know, near Emancipation Park. And we're just trying to figure out the neighborhood. We want to know about the history of it and all this stuff. And there's a sense that people are curious about it, you know, and we just have to figure out how to really tie that interest into the broader development of the city and folding it into policy. Because, I mean, they were all, I mean, they were, I was amazed at how knowledgeable they were about Emancipation Park. You know, these are people that have just moved to the neighborhood, but they had a sense of wanting to know that history and be able to connect to it. In fact, they're having an event next week around an introduction of new neighbors to Emancipation Park. But, I mean, it's so nice to hear that in a positive light. I mean, I feel, you know, maybe it's living in Seattle and, I don't know, maybe it's still graduate school friends talking to me on Facebook or something, but, you know, gentrification's a real thing. Displacement is a real thing. And, re-urbanism has to be about more than just back to the city or the great inversion or, you know, the various names. Because, you know, I think it's all, I think all that is generally good. I'm just so glad to hear you put this in a positive light. You know, so often it's positioned as purely negative and, you know, there's a knee-jerk reaction when you hear someone say, well, gentrification can be good. It sort of starts to say, you know, it depends on your understanding. So, you know, I think we just have to be careful. And I'm not trying to make it rosy, either. But I'm just saying that, you know, you have to really take advantage of those openings, those gaps in those opportunities, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. We have to look for it. Yeah, and the fact that there's a meaningful history and a culture and that people want to be a part of that, you know, that's the important thing. And then the challenge is, you know, you can never pull up the drawbridge. You know, you can never say it's done. So you just got to, I don't know. We still haven't found a great way to say, you know, I think preservation has to be part of it. Historic preservation has to be part of it. Cultural mapping has to be part of it. You have to make this sort of appreciation visible, apparent, and recognize the folks who have been there for a long time. And, you know, it's not an inalienable right to live in the same place as the Constitution defines it. You know, but we could go there. We could have that conversation. And I think that would be really interesting and probably really great. Sorry, yeah, I'm sorry. Well, I actually was just struck, that was powerful too, but I was struck by this when you were talking about, you know, coming in the layers and people seeing, people playing dominoes, you know, the history, the interesting architecture, all the things that we've been circling around about what makes a place livable and why people are attracted to these places and want to live in these places, whether they're people that are already living there and want to continue living there or people coming back. And it almost, the contrast, of course, is where they're coming from, which is not livable. And the more we see, you know, the strip, you know, and we've seen this for a generation, of course, but the contrast between what is livable, which is the places we've been talking about and the places that your work is centered in and, you know, some of it needs more work to be even more livable, but in contrast to those places that are not livable. And that maybe someday will be our interest, but right now we're focusing on these more urban, more historic places. But it's, I guess maybe we should also explore, and I don't mean to go there now, maybe that's Trust Live next year, but what is unlivable? What makes a place unlivable? Lack of security, conflict. Not that kind of easy, let's talk, let's come together. Imagine if it had been a different reaction, what are you doing here? Why are you here? So it would be an interesting thing to explore, the flip side. But we're going to end on the positive, so go, go, go, go. Unlivable. No, well, talking about that, I'll give you an intro then for the unlivable. An example. You know, I just remember very clearly, like when, after Hurricane Katrina happened, you know, all the people that were displaced from New Orleans were here and the mayor, you know, stepped up and invest in all these kind of large apartment complexes in the outskirts of town to be able to house people as temporary housing, basically. And it was as interesting to watch how that happened. So people were kind of, I mean, of course, it wasn't livable and, you know, kind of cooped up in the Astrodome in these kinds of places. And so when they went, moved them to these apartment complexes, you know, it seemed like, oh, that's a nicer livable situation. But after months, it became very clearly that that was not livable because there was, transportation was terrible. There were no opportunities for people in terms of, you know, engaging in terms of workforce and, you know, so it was, you know, and I think that if you look at those kinds of developments, you will see you can find the... The definition of unlivable. Right. Well, I'll ask each of you if you have one more thing you'd like to share with our audience. Any observation, any name now? Have we come up with a new name? No, no name yet. Oh, like cultural mapping. Not everything needs to be a fancy brand. Honestly, it doesn't need to be snappy. Yeah. Okay. All right. I think that's my... So I didn't talk about how the Atlas works and stuff, but we're going to do that tomorrow morning. Yeah. I'll mention that, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just appreciate the opportunity. Yeah. Likewise, it was good to be able to talk about this as... You know, talk about what I do in many different ways, but I never had been really thoughtful about what it means to liveability. Yeah. I appreciate being able to pull that out of it. Yeah. Tomorrow I'll talk about it in terms of democracy. Right? Right. You know, so my last word would be, what's so great about this format and this kind of conversation? I love conversations where there's friction and disagreement and when they open a can of worms and there's not necessarily a resolution. You know, so I just appreciate that we've talked about these subjects in a really friendly and collegial way. Obviously, I mean, yeah, we know each other. Obviously, we haven't solved it. Yeah. We haven't solved it. Yeah, that's okay. That means we're working on it. We're working on it. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. All right. Well, I do want to... We always say with our trust live conversations there is Claudia's session tomorrow on democracy. And also, Mike and his colleagues will actually be doing a deeper dive into what the Atlas means. And that session is called Understanding Your City with the Urban Atlas. So I encourage you to participate in these and other sessions this afternoon and tomorrow morning. And I just want to please join me in thanking our wonderful, wonderful participants. Thank you. Thank you. You're very nice.