 Hi, we're back in the Davis Media Access Studio for another episode of The City Considerers. My name is Autumn Laberino. Thanks so much for joining us today. It's my pleasure today to interview Davis Mayor Rob Davis. Welcome Rob. Yeah, it's good to be here again, thanks. So I'd recently interviewed Stacey Winton and Bob Bowen about capping off the city's centennial year, which has been going on all of 2017. But I tasked you with something a little bit harder. We talked about how in July the mayorship will roll over and Mayor Pro Tem Brett Lee will take that office. And I asked you to think about the next hundred years in Davis. We've celebrated the past hundred. We're gonna talk about what's coming up. Yeah, well the next hundred. I mean, I'm wondering what would have happened if someone had been sitting here a hundred years ago. Could they have imagined the things? I mean, at a certain level I don't think we can imagine all the technological changes will happen. I mean, we can talk about broadband, but we're probably thinking 10 to 15 to 20 years out or autonomous vehicles. But what that's actually gonna mean for the life of the city is hard to predict. I generally think in terms of more of the overarching way that we'll be in this area. I mean, for example, as a community, I think we understand we're on the cusp of experiencing significant changes related to climate. And the issues are gonna be about adaptation and what is gonna be the most effective or what are the most effective ways of adapting to those changes. And I think what I see happening is a continuation of what's happening now. And that is a greater focus on local decision making, local autonomy, finding the right sort of scale of local to affect change and to deal with the changes that are coming. And so I think we're gonna be thinking much more about our bio region. That is that that region might be a watershed, but where the resources that we have can be effectively managed locally, whether it's groundwater or whether it's, electricity supply, water supply for consumption. All of these things we're moving, I think more and more in our thinking to what is the right scale. So we're doing more and more with Woodland, we're doing more and more with the county. And I would expect for a variety of services, we're gonna be thinking about the scale at which we can most effectively serve the needs of the community and respond to the changes that are coming. Dave's does have sort of this dichotomy. We love to do things in partnership and the new surface water project is a perfect example. We also love to do things independently. And for years we've been talking about, will we have some kind of municipally run electricity utility, for example. Or you know, so we both love to do things in partnership and we wanna strike that independent note. That's a hard balance. It is, but I think what we're learning is we're not yielding autonomy when we partner. We're more effectively engaging with our neighbors whose needs and interests very much align with ours. So electricity is a really good example. The JPA, the Joint Powers Authority that we've formed is with both the county, which is largely rural ag interests and the city of Woodland so far. That is a unique thing because we may have a vision for how we want to incentivize the development of local supply of electricity, but we're also doing it in collaboration with others who share this physical space with us at a scale that makes a lot of sense and there may be others that wanna join that. So it's gonna constantly going forward. I think it's gonna be a question of how do we balance the most effective level at which to deliver services? How do we maintain that autonomy so that our communities can maintain what's important to them? And those things, I'm happy to say so far, I'm really optimistic that we're gonna be able to strike the balance. I think Davis, I think we're learning that when we share these things with other communities, we gain from their insights, they gain from our insights and we're able to do things much more effectively. So the two examples you cited, water and then electricity are where we're at right now. I mean, in the future, it could be solid waste management. It could be how we deal with our waste stream to monetize it, again, collectively at the right scale using the resources locally. Groundwater management is already a huge issue. We're doing collectively as a region. So I see that continuing and part of the reason I see it continuing is I think there's an appropriate level of problem solving that needs to be somewhat face-to-face where you do rely on personal relationships, where you do rely on that ability to, when conflict arises to know that this is your neighbor you're dealing with, you're nearby neighbor, not someone far away in another state or another region. So I think that, and I believe it'll extend to things like broadband. It could be much more around food supply. In other words, we could go much more in the direction of food production for local consumption. So I think my sense is those things are gonna continue to accelerate going into the future and we'll be much more focused on local problem solving and local solutions to challenges that we face. It is kind of an elegant thing to work with other communities within Yolo County because I think it's a powerful reminder that we're more connected than we are separate. So there's that aspect too. Yeah, I think that's a, I mean, I really think that what we're talking about is even as we see a larger and larger splintering of relationships nationally and across the world, what I'm heartened by is the increasing solidarity that I sense among the different communities here to really roll up our sleeves and learn from each other and work together. And a lot of that is based on relationships of trust that we can continue to work on. It's really that social capital piece that I think we've undervalued for far too long but which we are now seeing is gonna be key to facing the challenges ahead. And that's a very helpful note. I'm very hopeful actually, yeah. So I think we'd be remiss if we didn't touch on the relationship between the city and the university and what that might look like. I think some of the things you talked about, electricity, water, groundwater issues, those are gonna affect us all, campus, city, everything. But is there anything in particular looking forward that you see developing that relationship? Well, I mean, I think to some extent that relationship is gonna be dependent on what the university becomes. I mean, we're still very much in a model of university where people come to a central location for learning. I think the promise of decentralized learning has taken off more slowly than maybe some people thought that it would. But the university is still talking about regional centers across the planet. And I think the same kind of forces that are leading to decentralization of decision making out to the appropriate level, I think education is probably gonna be more and more decentralized as well. And so, will the world be coming to this town in the future? Or will we be providing opportunities for learning that stretch across distances? And if that's the case, then that will fundamentally alter the relationship between the city and the university. The other thing is places like China and all of East Asia really are gonna be actual competitors to the University of California, Davis. In terms of students, right now, we're attracting a large number of Chinese students, but we would expect that the quality of those institutions would increase. I think all of that means that the university itself is going to look very different. It may be actually smaller. It may continue to do the same world class type of research, but I think whether it will be a hub or whether it will be more like a set of nodes around the world with the expertise that's developed here, shared out, that will change the relationship between the city and the university because a lot of the relationship now, obviously, is driven by just how big the university is and the accommodation of all the people coming. Well, if that's less of the model, then those pressures are not gonna be the same. And so I think it's gonna be a healthy relationship and I would take it one step further. I firmly believe that just as we're going to need to marshal our resources locally to deal with local issues, I think more and more the universities around this country will refocus back in on problem solving at a local and regional level. So rather than saying, how do we figure out how to feed the world, we're gonna talk about, we'll be talking about how do we make sure that we marshal and appropriately use, shepherd the resources that are here locally to withstand the changes that are coming, whether they're climate, food, supply, challenges, whatever they might be. And so I think in the same way the university is gonna, their efforts are gonna be much more focused on solving more local and regional problems. That's really interesting. 10 years ago, the buzz was all about distance learning. In other words, teaching people over the internet or broadcasting in other places. And the university was actually coming to us here at then Davis Community Television and saying, can you help us record things? We wanna really explore distance learning. And it had a brief moment in the sun and then it sort of dropped off because I think, as you said, the emphasis switched to, let's put our energy into, smaller satellite centers out in the world. But I also think you're right that the problems that are gonna be facing us are really gonna be around climate change and water and soil issues and food production and capacity. I mean, a hundred years from now, we'll just be coming to the end of the, the population boom echo. So in a hundred years, we may be seeing finally at that point, probably 50 to 60 years out, a global population that is finally peaking at somewhere around 16 billion. And I'm not suggesting a long, slow decline, but just demographically speaking, it will be leveling out. Well, that's gonna change many, many things because right now we're premised on a world that's continuing to grow a population, an aging population, even while we grow, but it's gonna be a very different population composition. And so responding to the challenges a hundred years from now will be different because we'll be in a different phase of population development. The universities and all of us are gonna be responding to that because the challenges will be different then. And I think probably too technologically speaking, the opportunities for real virtual learning through artificial intelligence and other things that we can't even imagine yet will make it possible so that we're not just talking about making videos to put online, but we're talking about virtual learning that's live real time using the technologies that allow people to be in a virtual lab no matter where they're sitting in the world. And that's already happening. That's already happening. And I mean, a hundred years it may be, we may be somewhere beyond that, I can't even imagine what it is. But the point is, I think the resources, if that happens, then people learning in those different nodes will be positioned to really work on the, take the challenges they're collectively learning about to solve local problems. And I think that's gonna be the key to the success of universities going forward is that they're really focusing on those things in their nearby, just as the cities that host them are focusing on very much their nearby. If you could pick one project, you'd really love to see advance, and I'm not gonna take you a hundred years out, let's say in the next decade. What would it be? You know, for me, I think there's two, I can't limit it to one. You can have two. Okay, I mean, and well, they're linked though. I mean, I think our criminal justice system and the way we think about justice, moving towards a restorative model where we end punitive practices for nonviolent crime and where we think more deeply about the causes that lead people, especially young people, to commit crime and go on the path to incarceration. I believe that the 10 year project ahead of us, which I think we're entering into now, to move towards a truly restorative process that restores people to community in a way that holds them accountable for what they've done. I wanna be part of that actually. The other is to really, and I don't believe there's gonna be a technological fix, I think there's a behavior change that needs to happen in each of our hearts and that is the change in how we perceive addiction and homelessness and mental health, that whole nexus. And so the project that I wanna be part of is really a project of reducing significantly the number of people who are caught up in that syndrome that leads to chronically living on the street with untreated mental illness, with addiction illnesses and effectively finally finding ways to deal with those syndromes so that we can take people who are right now living on the edges and living really lives that are barely human and bring them back and that's also a restorative process. And the more we learn about issues of trauma, the more we learn about issues of what is happening in the brain, in the mind with addiction, I think we're gonna be better equipped to say there is a restorative process possible so not just that they're bad actors engaging in bad behavior, but there are things happening in there physiologically that need to be dealt with. And I think we're, again, I think we're on the cusp of developing programs that will help us treat childhood trauma, even if it lingers into adulthood and deal with the causes of the things that lead to that very visible thing we call homelessness, which is linked to a certain criminality. Those are the things, those very human things that lead to the restoration of people to communities rather than casting them out. Those are the projects that I think, I just wanna spend the rest of my life working on those projects. And that takes it from trying to fix a problem to trying to develop a real humanitarian solution. I mean, you know. It is, well these are people, right? I mean, we're talking about people and whatever it is they're doing that we object to and they're objectionable things to treat them, to treat the issue as if people are not beyond redemption and that there is not a need for us to separate them from us, but there is the potential of restoring people to community. I think that's the vision we need. It's the vision we're gonna need because we're not gonna have the resources to continue to send people away. It's more costly than to restore them to community, but there's a lot of hard work to do there. Yeah. We're out of time. I think we could sit here and talk all afternoon. I wanna thank you for the very thoughtful approach you've brought to your time as mayor. And I know it's not over yet. I'm not trying to rush you. And for always being willing to come in here and talk about substantive issues. I appreciate that very much. I'm happy to. I enjoy it actually. So you've been watching the city considers and I've been chatting with mayor Rob Davis and you can watch this on Tuesday evenings prior to council meetings. It airs at 615 on DCTV channel 15 on the Comcast cable system. And of course it'll be online and on social media. And we hope you'll tune in again next month. Thanks so much.