 My name is Joe Hennikens and I'm a PhD student here in Columbia's Urban Planning Program and I will be moderating the session and I'll start with a few brief logistical announcements before introducing the speakers and then launching into what I hope will be a spirited and informative discussion. So a bit of logistics during the talk. I'd like to remind the audience members to please mute their microphones. We will be recording today's panel so anyone in the audience who wishes to not be recorded should turn off their video input. The chat box should be used only for discussion regarding the session please. If you have technical questions that apply only to you please message me or my co-host, Marine Avi Khanum privately. So after the moderated portion of the conversation we'll have time for a Q&A and with the audience and we'll start the Q&A at around 2 or 2.15 so that we have enough time for everyone's questions and I will be coordinating the Q&A with attention to diversity and inclusion. So if you have already had a chance to ask a question please allow others to do so before asking another one. And to ask questions there's two options. Participants can either use the raise your hand feature and we will call you to unmute or you may also type your questions in the chat box and I can read them out loud. So with that I'm delighted to introduce our panelists for today. Brooke which is an assistant vice president in the planning division at NYC EDC. She leads interdisciplinary and interagency project teams through public approvals and environmental review on behalf of the agency. Her work ranges from affordable housing development to resiliency and infrastructure planning and most recently has been leading regulatory work streams as part of the Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency Master Plan and the recently released Sunnyside Yards Master Plan. Prior to joining EDC, Brooke was a planner and project manager in the real estate development department at the New York City Housing Authority and she received her master's degree in city planning from the University of Pennsylvania and bachelor's degree from the University of Pittsburgh. Neal Gagliardi is the director of urban design at the New York City Department of Transportation. During his 11 year tenure at DOT, Mr. Gagliardi has spearheaded design initiatives that foster pedestrian friendly, visually appealing and sustainable streetscapes, public spaces, infrastructure and transportation corridors citywide. Prior to joining DOT, he served in various capacities as a city planner and urban designer at New York City Department of City Planning and his private practice span firms headquartered in the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic and California. He holds master's degrees in both landscape architecture and urban planning. Eric Gregory, our third speaker is an interdisciplinary designer and serves as the deputy director of the Urban Design Office at the Department of City Planning, where he plays a key role in public realm planning, policy and design. The Urban Design Office helped shape the built environment of New York City through citywide and neighborhood studies, design review and research, and creatively engaging with communities. And Eric holds a master of science and architecture and urban design from our own Columbia GSAP and a bachelor of architecture from the University of Oklahoma. He's a Robert Bosch fellow, lead, accredited professional and member of the Urban Design Forum. And lastly, Calvin T. Brown is currently the assistant commissioner for neighborhood development at the Department of Small Business Services. In this role, he manages three program areas, neighborhood planning, capacity building, and business improvement districts that are all aimed at assisting in the creation and support of community-based development organizations, advancing the growth of commercial districts across the five boroughs. He previously worked at the Department of City Planning as a senior planner, where he supervised project managers working in Upper Manhattan, supervised the East Harlem neighborhood rezoning team, and worked closely with other divisions within city planning, other city agencies, elected officials and community stakeholders. In addition to a master's in urban planning, he also holds a PhD in urban and public policy and his research, his PhD focused on the neighborhood effect of poverty over time and neighborhood emissions. So today's panel is titled New York City Transformed City Planning Practice at a Time of Crisis. I think we all recognize that planning practice in New York City was profoundly impacted by the events of last year, which are ongoing, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic, the ensuing economic chaos and looming budget crisis, and the reckoning with race, police brutality, and white supremacy in our city and country. And local government officials were called on to mediate and manage these crises, while simultaneously dealing with new frictions in the internal functioning of their agencies, that despite this planning work continued to be done. So in this panel, we're hoping to learn from practitioners how they navigated this time of uncertainty, how they managed to advance projects and how they were forced to adapt. And we will also hopefully have time to consider the prospects for planning in the coming year as the city confronts a fiscal crisis, but also a new administration in Washington and a mayoral transition. And lastly, we also hope to discuss the implications these crises have for would be New York City practitioners, like many of the members of our audience. So without further ado, I thought we could just start by hearing from each of the speakers about current projects of note that they're working on and the accomplishments that they were able to secure over the past year, despite the circumstances. Maybe we can whoever wants to start can start this. Happy to start. Thanks, Joe. Thanks to you, Sat. This is really exciting. So thank you for hosting it. EDC, just to give you a little bit more background, is not technically a city agency or a nonprofit. It's like a quasi agency. EDC's mission is building strong neighborhoods and creating good jobs. So my role within EDC is working in a more traditional economic development. So over the past year, I've been working on the lower Manhattan postures, I see projects. So it's a seaport Friday master plan thinking about the long term protection of lower Manhattan from sea level rise from coastal storms. And it's a long stretch from basically the Battery Park to Manhattan Bridge or the Brooklyn Bridge. So understanding, you know, over the next 100 years, what does that waterfront look like? And how is it protected? And of course, the communities and resources behind it. How are they protected and planned for in the future? Also worked on a few different resiliency projects that came out of a CDBGDR disaster recovery fund. So rebuilding roads in Staten Islands, building firms in Mount Basin, a few other kind of piecemeal projects that have a big return for their cost. And that's been exciting because little attention on the outer borough resiliency, and they're just like this larger place. So that's been pretty cool. And then been also working on Waltz Point's affordable housing project, the mayor announced in 2018. So 1,100 units right across from City Field. And this would be the first phase of the 60 acre district. So creating a sense of place and identity, but also delivering critical affordable housing. So it's been pretty cool. Over the past year, though, those projects have largely been paused by OMB. So the funding has been frozen as the city kind of sorts out fiscally what the priorities are. And during that time, in my experience, there's been a focus on planning and permitting and regulatory processes or things that are like, generally more inexpensive or doable when you don't necessarily need the funds or can can start construction immediately. So that's been cool to like have the project team's focus on the planning effort when there's kind of silence on the rest of the scope. And the last year for me was was spent generally on COVID response work. So EDC was in a pretty unique position to understand the impacts like qualitatively quantitatively across the city from COVID from to understand like how we can kind of collapse as an organization and then reorganize across different response work streams. So I worked on emergency site search response. So citing, you know, different needs and responses to meet the city from like a testing site, a food supply and distribution perspective, educational like outdoor learning expansion sites. So we'll talk more about that later. But that was how I spent 10 months up last year. So like I aged five years in that time, but it was a really good experience and eager to talk about it since we don't really debrief on stuff like that. So we've had some internal conversations at EDC about like if we could do it again and and we could think about best practices, how do we do that? So looking forward to the conversation later. Okay, I can go. So I work at SBS in a division called neighborhood development and neighborhood development sort of operates different from the other divisions within SBS where we don't do direct services with businesses, but we support community partners, whether they are business improvement districts or community based development organizations. And we mainly do this through two grants, which we call Avenue NYC and neighborhood 360. And through these grants, these organizations are able to support the commercial corridors in the districts that they serve. Given the changes that we've all experienced that we really needed to pivot the program so we can make sure that our community partners were still able to do some of the work that they needed to do some of the being as simple as clean cleanliness and beautification and some place making as we were sort of helping businesses survive during this pandemic. So we sort of help our community partners think about how they can look at the public realm and just given some of the other programs that we're going to probably mention earlier, I mean, later in a program like open streets, storefronts program restaurants, thinking about how everyone could sort of operate in that public realm and still, you know, get through this pandemic in a safe way. So mainly we've been really supporting our partners on the ground, but they've been also been helpful to us because we're able to see how these things are working, understand some of the real time challenges that they're having and then shift some of those resources to make sure that we're best serving their needs as we sort of pull out of this pandemic. I can hop in next. Yeah. Okay. So my name is Eric Gregory. I work at the Department of City Planning within the Urban Design Office. We are one of about seven strategic planning divisions within the agency. So we're located kind of in the primary office. We of course work on a range of different studies and projects and initiatives, some that are maybe citywide or in a particular geography. And we also support our borough offices who are of course work directly with various community boards and projects that happen within their boroughs. So, you know, we've, because we traditionally do work on a wide range of work, we try to provide that citywide lens to kind of urban design in the public realm. And so kind of pre-pandemic, there were of course a lot of projects happening that we were a part of. The Port Authority bus terminal redevelopment was a big project that we were on. Also supporting a lot of different private applications. And then, you know, I think when we also finished a publication with NYCHA, called Connected Communities Guidebook, which I can all speak a little bit more about later on, but that was a big milestone for us. That looked at how NYCHA could look more holistically at their open spaces around their campuses and how to better integrate them with their surrounding communities. So that was a huge effort and I'm happy to share the link to that publication with everyone. So that was a big thing. We were just finishing to get that released when the pandemic hit and we hope to have a lot of events around it, but we had to kind of reposition ourselves. I'd say since the pandemic, the agency as a whole immediately was working to supply data to other city agencies in various means, whether that was through Department of Health or, you know, I know we were supporting work with EDC to look for facilities throughout the city that could be repurposed. So, you know, a lot of folks within our population team who are stewards of that data and along with our IT teams were helping to push that out. We also were trying to get back up our planning functions. The city planning commission, of course, is a huge part of the city government to kind of push out initiatives and changes to zoning and planning for the city. And so really getting them back up and running was huge. And so there was a platform that was created called NYC Engage that was really made for all city agencies to kind of be a clearinghouse for how people can navigate. Every day New Yorkers can go and navigate to kind of what's been happening and connect to different agencies there. So that was a huge effort. And then as far as the urban design team, you know, we'll talk about a little bit later about a lot of our efforts have been around kind of understanding how we've been responding and public space to the pandemic and really a lot of documenting on how people are having to move to the city, you know, or lack thereof of accessing transit, of going in and out of stores, queuing on the streets, how street life has changed. And we've worked with many of the agencies on this on this call now to kind of build out some of the programs from that. So happy to elaborate more on those. Maybe I think it's me. I'll activate. I'll show some pictures. Can everyone see that? Yeah. So I was when I was listening to everyone and reflecting back, I was thinking that the past 10, 11 months have been kind of the I'm going to steal from a Dickensian sentence. It's been the worst of times and the best of times and best is a real overstatement. But when I say best, you know, I think we because of the crisis and the pandemic, you know, as as Eric's, you know, the agency has really been forced to really rethink a lot of things we've been doing and respond to to to the pandemic. Just just as we did, you know, when Sandy came and I think, you know, I think it's a cause for great anguish, but also for some creativity and how we use our streets in public right of way. So and I just we were fortunate to get a NACTO grant this summer or spring for our space under the elevated train and Rockaway. They had a grant for streets for pandemic response and recovery and a bit different from what a lot of the agencies are working on simultaneously about restaurants and open restaurants and open streets. This was an opportunity to really locate really very focused pandemic response activities. Rockaway, if you know, you know, we've done a lot of work in the Rockaway over time. I mean, it's beset by by resiliency issues and storms. But also, it was the second it was reporting the second highest death rate for COVID in the first rung. So it was we were really uniquely poised to make this a hub. And we we partnered with other agencies about COVID testing and activation. And I think it was quite rewarding to see how we could mobilize quickly to to kind of use some spaces in optimal ways for for pandemic response. And we were doing this beforehand. And DOT isn't necessarily a planning agency per se. But you know, we had urban design have been looking at corridors throughout the city and L space corridors, elevated train corridors, you know, even prior to the pandemic. So this kind of fit very nicely and kind of defining like what is a healthy corridor among a lot of criteria. And as I said, we've been we had been working in in far Rockaway for quite a while prior to the pandemic. And I was happy to see when we were out there that some of our work. And I know Joe has been involved in this with the design trust. When we initiated these pilot projects at the Rockaway Beach 60th Street, you know, doing green infrastructure and you know, engaging with our partners. This was done by we design with the design trust and rise. And, you know, we did our own planting projects last year. And I think what's significant is that, you know, we are continuing these kind of master planning efforts intended with the wellness way. When we were out there this spring, summer and fall, we saw a lot of the development happening in downtown far Rockaway. And it really was rewarding to see so many things going on. You know, we partner with city planning, EDC on rezonings. And it was purely an interagency effort with our infrastructure project. And it was it was rewarding. I don't know, Brook, if you've been conversant of that, but, you know, of all the activities, but it's it's a pure development site right now. And I wish I had other pictures, but, you know, it's really transforming downtown far Rockaway. So, you know, when I say worst, a lot of our projects were put on hold because of budgetary constraints. But it was fortunate to see what priority projects could continue through construction. And I think that that was again key for efficiency. And, you know, we had done some groundbreaking previous summer. And, you know, as I said, the construction is happening. And, you know, one of the things we do in, you know, DOT is a big continent. And a lot of us are working on so many different things. And I know, you know, as Eric said, with open restaurants. But one of the things we do in urban design is also in house design projects that are of a small scopes relatively. And one of the things that we were able because we had HUD funding still available to us was is the so called gateways to Chinatown Project. And it's the Canal Street Triangle at Baxter and Canal Street. This is the I don't know if you know it, it's a little kiosk there. And we were able to take this in house and really continue the design. And that's what we're working on right now. So, you know, while things are on hold on a number of fronts, there's so much going on. And we'll talk about that later, I guess. And we're pretty busy doing projects. Great. Yeah. So maybe then we can turn to this sort of the temporary or the sort of response project. So it sounds like everyone, you know, did continue working on some sort of longer term capital products. But I am curious about these things that you've all referenced now about open streets, open restaurants, both the sort of actual responses to the emergency that it sounds like Brooke was involved in, but also these sort of interagency responses to sort of the impact of the pandemic. And how did that sort of work? How did it, where did it come from? Which agencies led it? Maybe you can talk about those projects. Well, I mean, I'll just mention it. I mean, DOT, you know, it was a major, you know, emergency response to do the temporary program of open restaurants and really getting getting guidelines together to make that happen. You know, especially in the summer, and then try to address it, you know, for the changing weather in the winter. So so that took a lot of energy from the from from a lot of the divisions. But what was the precursor of that was open streets as well that really laid the foundation for that. You know, again, as I mentioned, this is a double sided sword on some levels. I mean, on the one hand, you know, I think there was great anguish about an anxiety about what was happening to the city and, you know, how we could respond. And then on another, it was kind of, I mean, at least from a design standpoint, was a way of really think, you know, how how how much of a milestone it is to open up, you know, take away parking spots and use the roadway for restaurant space. So I think that, you know, there was that duality that was always, you know, a foot with the agency's response to the pandemic. And, you know, as I mentioned, we we at Urban Design had had opportunity to do the Rockaway wellness way to explore different routes to responding to the pandemic. I'm now and I know Eric, you know, agencies are working on a permanent program and, you know, for outdoor cafes. And you know, I don't mind admitting there's there's a bit of a back and forth about, you know, what is a post pandemic New York and how much right of way for restaurants for the other uses that the agency wants for, you know, multiple modes of transportation and furnishing. So I think that's what's really confronting us right now. Yeah, I want to try to steer clear like the conversation around the permanent program. Yeah, that's OK with everybody, but no, no, I that's all I'm going to say. OK, good. But just to say, like, certainly, there's a lot of things to like really work through when you're trying to make something that, you know, clearly had a lot of successes and how do we translate that success into a long term program. And that has a lot of things that we have to further kind of roll up the sleeves on. But, you know, just, you know, I think there is a silver lining here that, like, you know, because of this, because of the pandemic, you know, something like this was able to kind of come about that probably never would have. So I think that that's kind of a nice thing that's happened, a very small nice thing that's really been able to allow a lifeline to these twenty eight thousand restaurants to remain open and really think about, like, what what should the kind of what should be happening from my curb line to curb line? Certainly our sidewalks are important, their dynamic spaces that we want to, you know, always have, like, vibrancy around. But I think really starting to like question, you know, the asphalt part of the street is important here. And, you know, and again, like in terms of urban design, like, you know, we were we always we would try to unpack like the current regulations that are sidewalk cafes, which some of them live within zoning, our friends at the Department of Cultural Affairs kind of administer the current sidewalk program, which before the pandemic, about 900 restaurants were able to participate in because of, you know, the big hurdles administratively, you know, you probably would need to hire an architect to draw out plans, pay those fee those fines, or, excuse me, fees, and then also that we had restrictions on zoning, I'm like where you could actually set out tables and chairs. And I think kind of like sweeping all those aside was like a huge thing and it required us working with SPS with the Department of Nightlife with Mayor's Office of Disabilities with EDC to unpack all these different regulations from the state down to the city on, like, what can even take place, like how transactions take place on the street. So it was like really fascinating to pull all these people together and a lot of different calls over the summer to kind of craft that program. And certainly there's been, you know, some frustrating communication that comes out of it in terms of like what restaurants can and can't do and setting up barriers for safety and how are we actually, you know, going out and checking to make sure that that walk lanes are remaining clear. But I also, you know, thinking like we also did a program around, you know, maybe Calvin can speak more to this, but, you know, letting retail space also spill out into the street, you know, we try to put that out right before the holidays as a boost to to retail establishments. But certainly this kind of privatization of public space is something we need to be mindful of. And that's why we also like the open streets concepts and also like thinking about outdoor learning, which is another thing that got folded in here and working with the Department of Education and think about what are like routes to schools that maybe need to be more prioritized during a time of day and thinking about, you know, spaces that can be turned over for other uses that aren't just parked cars. So just a lot of things that are kind of thrown out there that are really pushing us to think more broadly about our streets going forward, which is which is pretty exciting. Yeah, no, I agree. You know, when we had to respond, especially bringing together all our community partners, especially our business and food and districts, our bids, because they are the ones who had direct, you know, interaction with the businesses and trying to find ways of, you know, allowing them to continue operation while we're going through the pandemic. So working with our partners at DOT, DC, and other agencies to really understand how to use the public realm in a way that everyone can operate, whether it was, you know, from the restaurants or the storefront was very helpful, but then also allowing them to come and speak to bids directly. We had one of the things that we did was what we called the business recovery, you know, hot hotline or not a hotline, but like a call where we would do weekly with our bids so they can come and just, you know, talk about some of the issues that they were having, some of the bureaucracy issues, some of the fine and just helping them navigate the process so they can continue to, you know, do the work that they were doing for their constituents. And it was helpful because the city did respond. A lot of things, the hurdles that I would just say that sometimes in the way prior, you know, to a pandemic, we were able to remove those barriers. So, you know, from the smallest restaurants to the most, you know, fancier restaurants can, you know, be able to continue their services. But some of the things that we had to do in terms of even in our division is kind of help businesses just operate regularly. Some businesses didn't know how to, they didn't have a web presence. They didn't know how to take online orders, just some of the simplest things so they can continue their business while we were going through this pandemic. But now we're trying to look since, you know, things are operating, we're trying to think beyond that, like what does a post pandemic New York City look like? What sort of envelope should we be pushing to make sure that we are expanding the scope of what they're able to do and how we're thinking about the public realm, how we're thinking about delivery of services, what we're thinking about place making, what that should mean. So, like this is where we are in this stage is like, you know, we're hoping to get out of this, we're hoping to go back to whatever a normal is. But in my opinion, there is no new, it will just be a new normal. It will be something different that we sort of adapt to, and hopefully better where we're functioning more efficiently. And then we're being, I think the pandemic showed us just the how disproportionate some communities were impacted than others. And one of the things that we did, especially in my division, is that we looked at the organizations that we were partnering with in those communities that were the hardest hits parts of Queens, parts, you know, the Rockaways, certain parts of Brooklyn, and making sure that they were getting those resources, making sure that they understood some of the opportunities they can have so they can open up the businesses that, you know, were in their commercial corridors. So even post this pandemic, we want to make sure that we're reaching those neighborhoods that sometimes don't get the resources that are available even outside of these sort of conditions. I briefly worked on this emergency response support with the partnership for New York, EDC and SPS. I would say that SPS like you had done such a fantastic job of being responsive to communities and making sure that like whatever advice, guidance, resources you're putting out there actually makes sense for businesses and is an appropriate language. And I thought that was always really commendable because just the pace of this stuff getting stood up and then pushed out like there were so few opportunities for a free back loop. So although I've only I had only worked on that for like three weeks, that was a really positive experience. The other response work that I had done like I had said, was around emergency response for site sites that could serve city uses or meet city needs. At first, it was about hospital beds. So working with OEM, the Office of Emergency Management Response to identify what public buildings, what public vacant lots, we can turn into tent hospitals, or we could convert abandoned buildings into legitimate hospitals. So we stood up surge medical facilities at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, as well as we got to a pretty extensive plan around the US Tennis Center in flushing. We never execute on that, but that was probably our number two site. We worked with Army Corps and FEMA on the Javits expansion and the city's role and EDC's role is really to just make sure that all the right parties are there to execute on the agreement to size the capacity of those spaces and make sure like I don't want to global scale across the city that we're tracking towards number of beds being stood up or created that would actually meet the projected need. So there's a lot of just like virtual meetings, coordination about like, you know, what's the true inventory of vacant and available sites? What's appropriate for Army Corps and FEMA? How do you actually paper over this stuff? What are the terms of agreement who pays for it? Like if the city is outlying all these funds to actually stand the stuff up, are we going to get money on the back end from the federal government or the state to start it with hospital bed search? And then it moved to testing sites and moved to I would call it like warehousing of food supplies. So the city was really interested in creating a food stockpile. This is when we like, we're unsure in March and April if there's going to be serious repercussions on the food supply chain in New York, which now sounds like it's getting distributed to pantries. That's pretty cool. It takes something that was a result of the pandemic and really have a holistic look at food distribution in a global way. We moved over to cooling centers work with MLR to figure out like, you know, what are third spaces in communities that you can pull off and get out of the house, especially if you're overcrowded or living with families. Sadly, we had to look into decedent storage and like standing up morgues. That was especially difficult given kind of the regulatory constraints, but also like just making sure that it's decent, honorable process. And obviously, there's stuff in the news about mismanagement of that process or just the city not being able to handle the scale. So I think that was like personally something I never thought that I'd work on and difficult for me to kind of separate out what exactly I'm doing versus a spreadsheet that's just square footage of what we can stand up. And then we went over with DoB and SCA on expanded school sites. So like what kind of playgrounds, third spaces can we turn into these? That was pretty interesting as well. But they're on such a tight timeline that they were so focused on like the existing DoB SCA resources. So just like a different agency style of the same kind of problem. The other part from site search that I worked on was this revenue and liquidity exercise. So EDC, not necessarily being a city agency has its own income, has its own, you know, obligations. So early in the spring, the agency had looked at what are some cost savings that we can do, you know, across our own portfolio, kind of iron that out. And then the next step was, I think some people had said like finding the coins in the couch, like where else can we, you know, revisit ideas to bring in new revenue or, you know, cut like contracts that never really made sense for EDC, kind of like taking advantage of the opportunity of the agency income and liquidity. So that was pretty interesting. There was some ideas on earth that have been kicked around for decades, like you had people who were more senior at EDC who said, you know, like I always wanted to do this, but, you know, it's never been the right time. So that was a really creative brainstorm. And my takeaway from a lot from those experiences, like was that the pandemic just leveled the playing field for decision making of like, I saw myself as like a more junior person coming in with like, I'm a planner, like I have the skill set to kind of understand a problem, do the SWOT analysis, do the alternatives and scenario planning, but like it's up to the decision makers. But I think what I've experienced through that, and like I work with a lot of other people who had said this, it's like, no one has more information than you. And it's a matter of just like, you know, distilling that and understanding the pros and cons and like acting quickly, but in a way that like you are aware of the implications and like, you know, it's a feedback loop, like from my experience with SBS that I just talked about. I'm just understanding like, okay, here's our intervention. And how did it go on day one, day two? How can we change our process from there? So at least for me personally, it was a big confidence builder of like, okay, I have the planning skill set and like no one has experienced this problem before. So apply the skill set and see where it goes from there. So it was a really good experience. I also worked with a bunch of people I've never met before across the city and on issues that like I didn't even know position. So I haven't met a lot of people I worked with in real life, including this woman that I reported to for like eight months. But yeah, I would say that like that stuff I'll take with me for the rest of my career and planning wise I think it was the right skill set to bring as a response to the pandemic. That's really interesting about the sort of flattening of some of the city hierarchies in the emergency setting. I guess I wonder if anyone else has yet like where workflow sort of reorganized based on this or how did sort of to chains of command get reorganized or was there more sort of official interdepartmental coordination or was it sort of all ad hoc or for me, I would say that just like the amount of time like people wanted to respond so quickly. So there was no like, here's a scope of work. Here's a work plan. Here's the hierarchy of the group and everyone sign up on this. So a lot of the groups that I worked with or the work streams were volunteer based. And eventually like there would be kind of formal structures put around it. And I was I was given a title for it. But like I think it just papered over stuff that people felt comfortable doing that like they knew that there is a need and a gap to solve. And at other agencies, I know that they did kind of residencies. So I think someone or maybe Eric had said someone from DCP had worked, you know, on a volunteer basis. So people just kind of like volunteer their skill sets, whatever they found relevant. Well, okay, so I guess that's a lot of intense stuff about the pandemic. I didn't want to ask sort of about the second sort of crisis and ongoing crisis that was maybe illuminated this summer. Calvin already sort of touched on that his agency started to think a bit more about the impacts of the pandemic, the disparate impacts of the pandemic on different neighborhoods. But I didn't want to sort of ask a question about about equity and racial racial justice. So it seemed like this summer, this sort of urban uprising, sort of confirmed DeBlasio's diagnosis of the tale of two cities, but it also sort of questioned the city, you know, the city government sort of assumptions and it's it's sort of publicity with some of that. And so I was wondering sort of how if within your agencies or your own work, how that was shaped at all by the events of the summer and was there sort of a react reckoning within city government or within the agencies about disparate impacts of your work or reorganization or things along that nature? Yeah, definitely fast. Like I said, prior to the pandemic, when I first came to SPS, we were given grants to neighborhoods, not to say that they did not need it, but it was the usual suspects who knew how to navigate the grant process, you know, had a scope of work that was sort of in place long term. So they knew how to capture those resources. But during a pandemic, I mean, well, we're in a pandemic, but during the social unrest, we started to see certain communities that were really being disproportionate by not only the pandemic, but just previous things. And it just sort of elevated, I mean, illuminated more, because we already knew it, but just illuminated more sort of the inequity. And what we wanted to make sure that we were able to do is to help our organizations, whether it was the bids or community based organizations, think about how they can address those issues as well. With our bid partners, we started a roundtable where we wanted them to think more about diversity, inclusion and equity. Are they addressing some of the issues of their constituents as in their districts as a change? You know, are they are they being diverse? Are they thinking about the full scope of the individuals that live in their districts, those businesses and helping them out with the resources they're either getting from us or from other avenues? And for our community based organizations as well, as these neighborhoods are constantly changing, are they reevaluating the work that they're doing to make sure that they are reaching everyone that can use those resources? Working with the mayor's office for the thing was the task force for racial and equity inclusion and the Department of Health. They sort of identified neighborhoods that, you know, sort of the double layer of being impacted by a pandemic, but also had racial inequities, maybe traditional, I mean, historically. And we've focused on those neighborhoods and trying to remove some of the barriers of entry for some of our grant programs. And then recently we just launched what we call a strategic impact grant. And as a low level grant, when I say low level grant, meaning that the entry level to apply for the grant we remove most of the barriers just so we can provide those organizations in those neighborhoods with an infusion of resources so they can help the businesses along those corridors. We wanted to remove those barriers so the hardest reach neighborhood would still have an opportunity to capture those resources and do some of the work that there are the neighborhood counterparts were doing to sort of address the issues during the pandemic. So it did, like I said, illuminate what we already knew, but in a very stark way that we can then take that data and say, look, we have to make a change. So it was no more digging for the tea leaves like they were right in front of our face. And we were like, all right, we're going to take this information and let it be the driver for how we're changing or how we pivot the programs that we're doing to make sure that we're reaching those who are traditionally sort of fall through the cracks. At EDC, we as an organization are going through kind of an internal reflection about racial equity in our work and centering Black and Brown lives, which has been a really great kind of experience with leadership that like people are really coming from all levels within organizations to talk about their own experiences, their own implicit bias and what we bring to the work and how that's reflected in the work that we do. And I think that's going to be a long term process that was just kind of spark and brought to the surface last summer, but overdue and much needed in the group that I work in, I work with a bunch of other land use planners. And we've had really good conversations about the seeker environmental review process and the process and kind of taking those like structured inflexible things, which are that way for a reason. But, you know, making sure that not only is racial equity and like a discussion of race included in those processes, but really like centered and making sure that is consistent with, you know, what we're saying publicly with the mayor saying about centering racial equity and memorializing that in documents that actually carry weight. So we've had a lot of like really good brainstorm discussions about that and are getting to a point of specific recommendations that maybe we'll bring to the next administration or the next mayor. But I am like just constantly wowed that more people like everyone's already thinking about it. And these conversations like people have been wanting to bring this up for a long time. So I'm hopeful about and hope that we don't lose momentum as people are kind of focused on the pandemic recovery or, you know, focused on just making sure it's lasting change and not just that service to last summer and the city response. Just kind of building from some of the things you mentioned, Brooke, I think, you know, city planning has also been really focused internally since the summer and kind of really listening to our black and brown colleagues around just what it's like to work at city planning and what are some things that just need to change internally? How are we recruiting and bringing in more diverse voices into the planning field more broadly and then specifically within city planning? So I think there's a real earnest from which is, you know, all across the agency, not just from the top down, which is encouraging and important but really being led from, you know, the staff level, which is really, really important and, you know, really creating spaces that people can have really hard conversations and much needed conversations that have been kind of, you know, for far too long, not happen. So those are, I think, encouraging signs. I mean, you know, we first have to kind of understand how we treat our colleagues and then kind of kind of work outward from there. And there certainly is before the pandemic, there were a lot of, you know, questions around how we work, you know, more broadly in the city and gentrification and, you know, the tools that we use to make changes in neighborhoods and how they need to kind of be rethought of in many ways. And I think that's a much longer conversation that needs to completely take place now. I think, you know, as a team, as an urban design team, we put out urban design principles. I see Thad is here, who also helped with that. And I think we're kind of looking at those and like, how do we, we really think about the built environment and what types of spaces we're making so that people feel welcoming, that there's a shared sense of belonging and and really trying to find ways of actually connecting more with New Yorkers about that conversation. And so we were kind of working on some some efforts that we hope to put out there in the coming coming weeks around that, refreshing our urban design principles and creating a platform for discussion to that end. So I think that's something, again, a lot of staff, not just urban design staff, but planners in the boroughs are wanting to push out there. It's one small step, but I think an important one as we talk about the design of our built environment. And then just the last thing I'll mention is, you know, going back to some of the work that we were doing before the pandemic with NYCHA, which is really important, you know, you know, 400,000 folks called NYCHA home and which is, you know, bigger than some cities and really thinking about those populations and how we can provide better services to them, you know, thinking about how we can, you know, with them plan for a better, a better future. They've got a lot of issues from a budgetary standpoint and needed to make repairs to the facilities. But we really wanted to try to think about the public spaces, the open spaces that surround their buildings and what assets they can provide, not only to the NYCHA residents and beyond. And then the where we live work, which is another thing that I think our friends at HPD, Housing Preservation Development put out there is their fair share plan, which outlines a lot of really necessary steps to make forward to kind of address some of these long-standing, you know, planning issues that we've been kind of operating in for a long time with redlining and the like. So I think those are something, things that we're trying to kind of push forward agency by agency. And, you know, we're an interesting time where we're kind of preparing for a new administration. So it's kind of like, hurry up, but also we kind of, you know, wait. So like, I think how each agency is trying to position themselves and put forth the things that they want to do in the context of like, not just a new mayor, but, you know, a lot of new city council members. So, yeah, that's what I'm saying. I was, I'm glad that you did mention, I mean, the internal DCP, you know, dialogue, I mean, and DOT was also, you know, initiating that kind of dialogue of diversity among our agency. And I think I had been at DOT for 10 years and it really did spark, you know, a better dialogue about how our agency and how employees do respond to each other and to the projects at hand. So I'm glad you mentioned that as well. I do want to mention the difference at DOT. And I was just listening to everyone. It's, there is a bottom line. We had a number of capital projects, you know, that is tied to the agents, you know, city's budget. And I think, you know, what you had said, Calvin was really significant. And we were finding, you know, the type of mapping we were doing about underserved neighborhoods were coalescing with the pandemic that, and it really afforded us the opportunity to add further criteria about health, everything from mental health and really for DOT, from a transportation agency to move into the realm of other multidisciplinary discussions about that and how that affects the physical environment. And I think what I would just add is it helped, at least in the last couple of months to prioritize projects that should go forward. And I, you know, and I think that was really key for a lot of the agencies that, you know, a project on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx, we were right about it as being a neighborhood development fund. There were a lot of overlays of, you know, needs there. But this further, you know, made it clear where the city's priorities have to be, especially for, you know, public investment. And I think that was key in a lot of the efforts that the agency has been doing. Great. Thanks, Tom. So I do want to hear your thoughts on sort of speculating about the future and the new administration. But we are, I do want to also have time for the Q&A. So maybe we can just jump before we open it up for questions from the audience. Since this is a career month at GSEP, I did want to ask you guys one question sort of about practice and your sort of experiences. Two of you are planners in an agency where planning is not the core function. And then two of you are designers in an agency where design isn't, you know, really the core function of the agency. So I'm curious sort of your sort of experiences as practitioners, how you sort of used your academic background, your degree and sort of advocated for your discipline, I guess, within the agency settings. And maybe if there's anything you really sort of want to impart on the master students that are in the audience right now. Well, yeah, that was it was challenging for me because I mean, my prior life was at DCP. So everything was planned in and come into an agency like SPS. I really didn't know where where I would fit in. But when I heard the name neighborhood development and just understanding the scope of what the division did, it made sense because they look at commercial revitalization projects and look at how to, you know, make things along those corridors, you know, work well from a planning standpoint. So my background at City Plan and just understanding, you know, commercial zoning, understanding certain land use, restrictions and use groups that definitely come into play, especially when you have bids or community partners who want to do certain things and like, well, that's kind of outside of the scope of what would be allowed in that zoning, but helping them to really then think beyond, you know, just using zoning as a tool for solving all, you know, the things that they need to happen along their commercial corridor. So definitely that help. But I think it pushed me to kind of think about, you know, case studies and best practices and to rely on those things, rather than sometimes, you know, we always say we use in zoning to solve things, but to think about what other cities have done, especially when we have bids like Ninky Stadium, what have other cities done where they have seasonal businesses and how they take an approach to that. So using case studies to help build our policy and our policy approach in terms of helping the commercial corridors and the groups that we serve. So definitely been useful, even in a agency or a division that I didn't think I would necessarily, you know, seamlessly fit in. That planning is like a problem solving skill set. I think it's helpful to any girl just understanding like doing the dumb SWOT analysis of like, you know, here's your options. Here's how you test on scenarios. I think that's really helpful. And I was told in grad school like this could be the last time you're in a room of all planners. And I, you know, just didn't really think that was serious until like I started working. So I would say that it's about like consensus building and from a planning perspective, bringing the long term vision to balance whatever kind of immediate project or task is at hand. I think that's the value I add on my projects. I think it's also just like a fun exercise to get people to think outside their scope and problem solve in a different way. Well, I'm a planner at heart coming from city planning to DOT. But I'll focus more on the design because I and, you know, when I first came to DOT, it really wasn't a planning agency. And that like Calvin, there was a stark reckoning for me. It's like, wait, are we just looking at individual projects? But I think, you know, there's been an evolution of how we're we're designing and planning streets in the public right of way that is more coordinated among, you know, many aspects of the physical environment. So I think that's has been a really good move across the board. I will say I also see design as the problem solving just as much as I see planning. And I think, you know, the the nuts and bolts of, you know, what the agency does has has really honed some of my approaches of just how how to apply design to solve problems and then and see how we can raise level that that, you know, is pleasing and hospitable to other users. And that's been an important evolution. I think, yeah, I agree with Neil's point about, you know, problem solving being a being a key component of both professions, you know, and being being a designer and a planning, you know, agency. I would just say sometimes it's challenging because you we've always been thought of as like the, you know, the visualizers, the ones who can draw and make things, you know, look nice. And those are important things. And certainly, I don't want to diminish the value of visual communication because it's like a core core skill set to who we are. And it's very important to be able to visualize and illustrate complex zoning, you know, constructs, planning constructs to something that's accessible to many different people. So I think that that's something that's extremely important. But I think what's what can be challenging sometimes is like making sure that that you have a designer in the room and that you may, you know, you may not you may be thinking about the end result and like, OK, the end result really is going to require a designer, but we don't really need them right now. And I think that that's where I would advocate strongly that no, in fact, you may not you may not think you need a designer up front, but having one in the initial conversations is really important because just having another another person in the room. And this just goes in general, right, like it's always good to have a lot of voices in the room, lots of different experiences in the room because it makes the conversation richer. And if you can do that at the onset, I'd say our odds are your solutions are going to be a lot more successful and enriching to those that it's trying to serve. So I would just say that we kind of do that a lot where we're trying to like constantly get ourselves into a process or a conversation. And sometimes that it falls to the later stages and it makes it hard for for us to really impart a lot of impact. So. Well, thank you all so much for these responses so far. It's it's about two fifteen. So we have about fifteen minutes now for for open Q&A from the audience. So as I mentioned at the beginning, there's there's two options. You can either use the raise your hand feature on Zoom and I can call on you to unmute and ask your question or you can put your question in the chat box and I'll read it aloud. So it looks like there's already a few questions in the chat box. So maybe I'll just start with the first one, which comes from that who asks, given the open streets and restaurant program, what are the long term lessons about how streets should be governed? Well, businesses continue to have an elevated role and responsibility in building and managing the public realm. What about CBOs, arts and culture or others? I guess that I'll respond a little bit to that. You know, I think I alluded to it. You know, at DOT, we're always kind of balanced. We just have limited public right of way. And the question is how how do we divide that among the different uses and responsive uses, you know, for vehicles, for bicycles, for multiple modes and for moving people around. And I think that that discussion is that the four ever more. I think the open restaurants, you know, effort has has brought, you know, an intensity to that discussion. I know when we were at city planning and at city planning, there's always a question of, you know, the private use of public space and vice versa. And I think it's really important to keep that role. So I think there are efforts that the agency is doing. There are culture streets in addition to open restaurants and responding to businesses. There are other. And Eric had mentioned this as well about, you know, cultural and community facility uses and how we could best and optimally use the public right of way. And I think that balance will be the challenge moving forward. Also, to mention, you know, our commissioner has gone to the federal department as well. And we're sad to see her go, but excited about the prospects of going on. And I think there are other elements that that brings forward about congestion pricing and some other long term infrastructure issues like electrical vehicle charging, which we're involved in. So I think there is that aspect of the future and how that is balanced with the business aspect of the public right of way to use the ground. I mean, I think the program, you know, in response to what was going on, was very, very good and needed. But I think as we move forward, we're going to start to then really evaluate what the long term for these programs look like. Because when we first initiated, it was like response, let's get something out, let's, you know, be reactive to what was happening. And then over time, we start to see more elaborate structures. We started to see more encroachment, more conflict in term of use of space, whether neighboring buildings. So there's going to be some ongoing evaluating of how the how is working and what how we should best deploy for a more longer term strategy. I know as we move into, you know, spring again and summer, a lot of these businesses are probably ready to ratchet up what they had last last time because I was just to, you know, in a quick response. So we're going to really have to kind of think about how the public realm is being used. I know it on one of our grants, we did a contract with Design Trust to help come up with case studies and best practices so that we can then provide that to the bids in a community based organization so they can help businesses kind of really think about how to efficiently use that space without, you know, crowding out of opportunities for, you know, other merchants, whether it's storefronts who are not selling, you know, food and they're selling other retail items. So it'll be good to see, you know, what comes out of that sort of exercise and then, you know, what happens when we start to get warmer weather again. So Stefan also had a question in the chat. He asks, I'm curious about delineations and responsibility during the early stages of the pandemic at the city level between the mayor's office and agencies slash departments. We certainly read a lot about the city-state delineation or responsibility and challenges that have come with it. For instance, has the mayor's office of operations been active in engagements with and across departments? Or has more of the collaboration been interagency in nature? Can you speak to my experience? I'd say from like the early pandemic response when it was in like crisis response mode, even before like crisis management, it was all from the state. And I think that's largely because like the amount of resources needed to like set up hospitals or kind of understand the implications of the pandemic were so early and unknown that the state's response was needed. The mayor's office of operations was kind of like the nucleus as we went more into crisis management and then kind of recovery planning. But just a volume of like response needed just spanned so many agencies that I think even though the mayor's office of operations was the one making the final call or getting city law to execute on license agreements, there was just like staff at agencies running with stuff until someone said, that's illegal or like that's not needed anymore. So I would say that like the people that I worked with on the emergency response stuff were amazing and independent and creative. And that's been such a good experience for me to see how people just kind of like take ownership of an issue and go for it. Yeah, I think the interagency part of it has been really, really great from for the open streets or open restaurants program, just on that one alone. You know, I think in echoing some of Brooke's point, I know there's there's colleagues at at city planning that, you know, I think really just, you know, took a lot of research on their own. I know one of our team members, Ryan Jacobson just went out and was like really going out in the field a lot because he was able to and documenting and bringing a lot of that knowledge and and really unpacking things that really helped the larger teams get off on a good footing. So it's encouraging to see how, you know, the remote work environment has allowed people, you know, certainly it's been challenging for some. There's like a digital divide there that even affects some of our colleagues. But that, you know, there's ways that we can kind of connect and and and ways that that kind of work a little bit better. But certainly the interagency part has been key and kind of filtering that back up to a city hall, which, you know, I think, you know, has has its challenges, you know, rounding out the end of it. So the strength of the agencies, I think, is what's been been good here. I want to offer a little, you know, a little critique and a positive, you know, I think we we definitely have come away, you know, breaking down silos and barriers to really make decisions in a quick way. But I would critique looking back that we were too slow in the pandemic response to get certain things because a lot of agencies and processes and operations were in silos like and very separate. And so I think there, you know, that is something to have that we have learned. And I think, you know, it's something really to be vigilant, to continue and to let evolve, because I think the more flexible, multiple agencies and operations can be the better and more optimal our use of like the public right of way, at least, can happen for the public realm. So I think that's looking ahead. So looks like Marine has a question if you want to unmute. Yeah, thanks, Joe. So most of the people in our audience are pretty much master students who are thinking of entering the job market for the first time or re-entering. My question is like, first, how did you enter the planning profession? And second, what are some of the lessons learned that you could share with students that could give them some advice on how to move forward in a productive way? I can jump in real quick. So I worked in the private sector and architecture before coming to city planning back in 2011. And there happened to be a grant that was open for two years on a study in the South Bronx. So, you know, it kind of was a nice change for me. I think I was out of out of graduate school in Columbia. I was looking for work in the public sector and actually worked with that in the urban design team back in 2007. I think on Penn Station, which oddly enough, we're still doing. But, you know, that was like right around the downturn. And so finding a job was pretty difficult in general for a lot of folks and certainly within kind of the urban design and architectural realm that was it was hard. So I ended up back in the private sector. But so I clearly like there's a huge challenge facing a lot of you now, which, you know, I know is not going to be easy. Certainly with the city side, you know, there's challenges with with bringing in and new folks. But, you know, we do have a host of of intern programs that we do like to push. I think we're hopeful that we can offer those paid programs over the summer. I don't and certainly want to, you know, connect with with Chisap on those. But, you know, those are those are conduits that we've had in the past and or internship programs for credit during the school year is really a way to kind of be a conduit conduit into city planning. A lot of folks start out as interns at city planning and then end up, you know, just finding finding a role within the agency more longer term. So and hopefully maybe there'll be some, you know, coming from the federal level and influx of grant monies that can kind of tackle some of the things that we know need addressing from pandemic and social justice response. Yeah, that was actually my entry to city planning. It wasn't I wasn't an intern, but I was a graduate assistant. I was at the Hunter planning school and I worked, you know, clocking in you look applications. That's how I got to really understand, you know, what planning and tell what the type of projects were, what type of projects were happening in various parts of the city. So working from a graduate assistant and then once I graduated from planning school, they offered me a job. So actually, SPS is the second job I've ever had outside of, you know, my plan career. I started in community economic development planning in North Philadelphia. Got interested in kind of more city and regional planning with grad school and Philly at time at Joe. I couldn't find a job in Philly afterwards and New York had way more options to New York and work for the housing authority. So I kind of like have broadened my interest in planning now more towards infrastructure and resiliency planning. So again, big advocate of just like the planning skill set in general and advice wise for recent graduates. I think that in my experience and when I've talked to other people who are just entering the planning field, we had a lot of like formal connections offered to us by our graduate programs of mentors who were well established. But what I found was useful was mentors who were just a few years out of school who kind of like know what it's like, remember what it's like to be new and to do all of the networking and kind of establish yourselves and help like guide those informational interviews into ways that give you feedback that's actionable. So there's all kinds of like APA planning groups, Black space. There's other local chapters that know these conversations are happening with younger and more like newer planners, not necessarily younger, but newer to the field. So I look into those opportunities and kind of broaden your network in ways that maybe don't think are traditional. I just to add, I'm sort of like you, Calvin. I resisted going to grad school for planning because I had been doing some work, but I was fortunate when I did enter NYU for planning, I did get a position at city planning as they don't have it anymore, but it was it's a training program, which really gave me the opportunity to look at many aspects of the department of city planning and what was what was going on. So I was able to choose and I think sometimes taking the time to to really shop around and get experience in many different areas at first is helpful. And like you said, Brooke, I mean, then you can find a way to start specifying and focusing on what really drives you. And I would also mention as a recommendation is just I always poo poo the discussion, the questions that interviews. What do you see yourself doing in five years? I wish I had not done that because looking back, I think it is a significant exercise internally, not necessarily to answer interviews, but to really understand that, you know, where you want to be at certain parts of what really drives you. And I think that that is helpful. And it does help drive you where where you like seek employment and where you see opportunities arising as well. So great, excellent advice. So we are approaching the end of the of our allotted time. So I just want to close out by saying on behalf of of GSEP and the urban planning program in particular, I really want to thank you all very much for for participating in this panel today. We really appreciate you taking the time and I think the audience will agree that it was a great, illuminating discussion. So for those of you who are on the call and maybe this is your first let's talk, make sure to join us this our weekly. So make sure to join us next week at the same time for a talk with a dancer from Georgia State University. So thank you again, everyone for coming. And I hope that everyone has a great day.