 Hello. Welcome to coast-to-coast. My name is Lily Weinberg. I'm here joined by my colleague Lillian Corral. How's it going Lillian? Good. How are you? Good. So what's happening? What's happening at LA? Nothing much. I think the the what is it? The big story is whether our schools were open or not, although we already said our schools are not opening, but I think a lot of just parents trying to enjoy the summer and but also try to figure out what to do with their kids. How about you all? That's that's the same here and and and so you know there's there there's been a huge debate in Florida around around schools opening. Our governor I'm giving the green light there but but then you know there are cities including where I am in Miami where there's a huge outbreak and and there's questions around whether or not to open and actually one of the unions is suing about this. So it's just it's you know there's a lot of questions I know a lot of our audience members are are dealing with this with child care but but yeah it's it's it's a challenge for sure. Yeah well so what's going on today and today shows Lillian? Yeah so so for coast-to-coast today so it's episode 10 which is hard to believe I can't believe that that we've that episodes and and as you know it's it's been such a dynamic time we've explored public spaces we've explored topics around mobility around equity and and it's definitely been an interesting ride. Today we will be going deeper into public spaces and really how communities rebuild their public spaces in an equitable inclusive way. In particular we're going to be looking at how history and culture and the arts play a role in the future of urban spaces while building community. So so I think it's gonna be an intersection of actually a lot of the conversations that we've been having equity piece the arts piece the culture piece and so it should be it should be interesting. Anything that you want to particularly get out of this conversation? Well I'm curious to learn more because I'm not I love Walter's background and I'm not as familiar with landscape architecture and the design space but I but the thing I'm interested in coming from a policy space is sort of like how you manage for a lot of these sort of policy issues that are in some ways like baked into the ways our cities are built when you're looking at design and equity and history of place so I'd be curious to see how he manages for all that and and the kinds of partnerships that he that that are developed in order to kind of help make decisions come to life. That's a great point super so we can we can dive into that and so it's it's my great honor to welcome our guest Walter Hood and and for audience members Walter is a world-renowned landscape architect an artist a night public spaces fellow a MacArthur genius fellow and the creative director and founder of hood design studio welcome Walter how are you I'm fine how are you guys Lillian and Lily I know it's it's definitely it's definitely a little confusing and and I'm in Miami Lillian's in in California you're in California so so we have all all of the United States represented here but thanks for being here and excited to have this conversation and and I'll just tell our audience about how this is gonna work we're gonna have 15 minutes between you and me we'll do rapid-fire questions do some contact setting and then Lillian's gonna hop in and and elevate some of the questions that we're hearing from our audience so audience members please put in your questions in the Q&A box you're gonna see that the bottom of your screen if you're on Facebook and streaming on Facebook hashtag Night Live and we can get your questions there and and let's do it let's do it Walter okay so so I want to start off with some contact setting and and and defining some of the concepts that that you you speak about and so one is around hybrid landscapes really kind of the dualities and public realm can you tell us a bit about what this means give us some context around that and and why this work is is really important right now well this idea of hybrid landscapes I guess I've been thinking about it probably for a little bit more than a decade and it became clear to me by working in the public realm that you know we were still dealing with these historic colonial typologies and no one was really talking about them and so through a kind of a linguistics framework I came upon this way of thinking about typologies through this notion of hybridity right and hybridity can be defined as you know kind of forging two different things together to become one thing or it could also be the opposite but I was more interested in this idea of a formal hybrid where you could look at a space and really think about its cultural context and then through a kind of a transgressive way talk about that history and so my early projects in plazas and squares you know we were really trying to talk about that history through design and by showing people that things were designed a certain way to control them right through social reform you know that if you put in pathways people would walk along a pathway versus if you left a space open people might do what they want to do and in most cases we tend not to do that. The second part are informal hybrids which are more interested in which is breaking away from kind of colonial ideas and really thinking about landscape or space in terms of trying to invent new ways to think about them and this could be through language because culture actually does that so people refer to places through their experiences and so if you begin to kind of build on those things like we have a project called a solar strand or green print that we literally take the language to take us to a different place and so instead of again only designing parks and plazas we're actually trying to think of place in a completely different way. Fascinating and I'm gonna ask what let's link to an article about about more so you can gather more information around landscape architecture I mean excuse me I'm around hybrid landscape and that's really really fascinating Walter I would love to kind of ground this idea a bit more around what you're talking about kind of informal hybrid like tell me actually a tell me a bit more about the project that you just spoke about what is that mean you know different places so we're not talking about a plaza we're not talking about you know what is that what does that mean on the ground it really means to sort of approach a project almost on face value the project I was referring to is in Buffalo and we want a competition to do a solar array and it was on a campus and instead of again thinking about the space as already how can I say already having a typology it wasn't a park it wasn't a garden it wasn't a field we basically did the research and found that there was once a creek that went through and the creek was moved so in a way it was a flood plain and so by at least looking at that history we were able to understand well why the water wasn't draining why the trees were not growing and so we tried to build a new strand which are these linear ecologies that follow normally waterways and so by using that again that language of landscape we were able to create an informal hybrid that actually talked about its place and what the space was doing versus a cultural typology right right and so it's not then controlled by any kind of idea of a bureaucracy or any kind of social control of it it's actually created itself so it actually comes out of its place and it comes out of the cultural relationships which was on a campus students using it by providing power for dormitories and over time what happened to this space by working that way actually became a wildlife preserve so by again and that was not something that we designed we actually allowed that landscape to become and so these informal hybrids you don't really know where they end up you actually try to build a system and allow it to become and it becomes based on its context how people are using it so in a way it's it's much more true right to the actual landscape in people hmm that's really fascinating and so so we're getting beyond being confined by by the typology that you're referring to and and one of the conversations that that we've had is well two parts so so one thing that I that I've noticed is you don't say diversity you talk about differences and and then the second piece that we've talked about is how this plays out and neighborhoods and how that's really we've been we've been seeing like the local piece really interesting around COVID and you and I talked about what this means for neighborhood streets and things like that so so let's explore that a bit what what are you seeing and learning yeah that's a lot well going back to the first question this idea of diversity versus difference again if you kind of work down to it we're always trying to make difference in the sameness yeah right this is you know the country you know the pluribus unum we're always trying to like come up with this one thing and in a way one thing can't define us and this notion of difference then suggests that you know there we have to have this belief in that difference is good in ecology difference is good and so this notion of trying to make everything the same is not sustainable and kind of saw this we see in our politics in this country and we forget that we're only like 50 plus years of trying to live together in an integrated way and so this notion then of you know trying to make everyone become the same thing I think what you're beginning to see is this kind of breaking and that people actually want to be defined on their own to a certain degree and I think we're in a generation where people can't look back because they don't have those experiences so people I mean I was born you know before 68 so I was actually born in a segregated society right people who were not born in a segregated society they don't have any idea what that means and so again they want to be defined on their own and so what you're beginning to see I think is this kind of breaking right again really trying to find ways in which we can be different but also build on those differences and things that we talked about during the pandemic was you know my big thing now is you know why can't we improve our neighborhoods and show the differences in these places in which you know now I've had to like be one space for three months and I'm actually seeing how little we invest right in our neighborhoods where I can you know drive three miles away and see where all that investment is going but now being able to sort of see you know garbage pickup you know lack of trees you know garbage dumping you know all of these things that make our neighborhoods unhealthy you know all of a sudden these things are becoming highly visible hmm that's right on everything no no you touched upon it all and and I love the way that you that you speak about differences and I also I also really love the way that you're thinking about about hyper local investments and and how there's that possibility of going more in that that direction so I want to I want to build upon that idea and talk a bit about community engagement and and how how you think about that with your work because you're you're you're talking a lot about embracing differences you're talking a lot about about culture acknowledging history so what role does does community engagement play with this work oh it's everything I mean I don't think I could design a community without having you know that input you know and I'm being just people saying this is what I want but having those voices no matter how different they are and it's been interested you know in the last three months trying to you know build community you know the way we're distanced right now we've set up a model where we formulated you know different committees we have a kind of a small committee and a big committee yeah and an example is we're working in Winston Salem right now um looking at the role of a free black slave Peter Oliver who became a ceramicist and you know they found the site next to i-40 and so we have a committee of about 30 people including the Oliver family people in Salem people in Winston where we have a call every other week and we get this conversation and then the next week we have the designers and so we have this kind of dynamic conversation that allows for multiple voices to be heard but people to be part of the process so that they feel empowered all the way not just at the end but at the beginning and we allow people to give input and that input then is built into the project so it's not just part of process I'm hoping in most of my projects that people who participate they actually see their voice in the final thing and it's not a you know we don't do the ABC you know scheme A scheme B scheme C you know we really believe that through this process of hybridity merging all of these things we can actually get something very different in the end and so we like to think when I say we my studio that we have no two projects in our portfolio are alike and again that can be kind of confining because you know people always ask so what do you specialize in you know and you don't we don't have this you know we do just do parks we just do streetscapes you know we work on landscapes we work on full space and how do you know when it when it works like Walter like what does success look like to you success is you know being able to go back to a project and actually see that it's fulfilling some of the goals that you set out to be off we at square park in downtown Oakland we had this idea where we wanted you know as one of my friends at the suits to be with the normal guys and the guys were you know guys who just hung out and maybe the suits are not there but the guys are still there 20 years later and again you know these are people who might be out of work these are people who are on hard times but at least they have a public space that they can meet and another project is a project you know 25 years ago we planted 150 trees over three blocks at least 100 of those trees are still there 20 years later so that to me is success you know it's not you know whether it wins awards or these kinds of things it's that the basic DNA that we try to bring to a project that it somehow has a power to sustain itself and the aesthetic of places are going to change and unfortunately in the public realm you know cities don't spend much money maintaining things you know and things do get a little rugged and as a designer you have I think in public space you have to sort of be okay with things becoming a little messy like one of our projects flash pad park here in Oakland which is a market which gets a lot of use on Saturdays it's kind of showing at the edges but it's still this space that people can go to it's a fantastic space so my last question that I'm gonna I'm gonna call in Lillian because I see tons and tons of questions coming in is around moving forward the rebuild and one of the things that you and I talked about Walter was the COVID but then also the racial reckoning that's occurring in our country and how and I don't want to misquote you but you said to me you know that you feel like there's a level of openness that you've seen across the country that may really impact the way that we think about our public spaces can you talk a bit about that and what you think could occur moving forward? Well I mean we were discussing I think I was saying you know projects that I worked on maybe a year ago or two years ago you know in places people would say we're not ready ready for that yet and this would just be simple acknowledgement right of segregation practices or even racial practices and I think today there is you know based on you know what has transpired over the last 90 days there is this moment I think where where we're able people might be listening now right and when people are listening then it's time to act right because we only have these moments every now and then and so you know we're really trying to be almost going overboard to a certain degree because this is a moment where we can talk about these injustices that we kind of see around us and maybe hopefully people will have more empathy now and that once we come out of this hopefully there we've have garnered this power to move forward to do things that maybe we just didn't do before. That's right okay so I'm going to call in Lilian and and we will we'll talk in 10 minutes thanks Walter. Hopefully these won't be too hard. We're gonna go really hard on you Walter. Actually these are kind of hard and there's a ton of questions so let's see how we can get through these. First there's a set of questions sort of building on the point that you made about language and hybridity and I want to start with the first one around do you think that it that the that language of hybridity actually translates into other languages and can you talk about that and I thought it was a good question just because you're working in a lot of communities or you work in communities as I'm reading that are very diverse and we are such a diverse country and so how does yeah how does and there's another related question around how language inform the relationship that they have in your work so let's start there. Well that's a tough question but you know again if you are looking to places and you understand their difference one wants to sort of build on that and I just remember years ago working in San Jose and San Jose was building paseos and I was like what's a paseo and you know they were inspired by their Latino you know population and they built these alleys and then years later I heard someone use paseo as a way to take a walk so this notion then of language how culture adapts through how through our action you know landscapes can begin to build on that but we also want to understand that it becomes pastiche once you remove culture so if you don't have people who paseo in paseos, paseos don't work and that's one of the things that you know started me thinking then you know you can't just appropriate these things you have to look right to see how people are actually using space and then you can reinforce that so you reinforce culture through the language that people are actually using to describe what it is they do. Yeah I really know it makes sense and I love the way that you were described earlier how the space sort of match like allowing the space to naturally evolve into what it really wants to be. I feel like sometimes you forget we live on land that actually is meant to be something else so a related question Walter came up is that when you have when you have these differences when you call in multiple voices is there a way to bring those differences into convergence like where do we find a common approach in some ways or yeah in order for this all to function? Well I guess I'm I'm not looking for the common approach I'm actually looking for the double negative I'm looking for those things that can actually reside side by side that's the difference you know to me you know again instead of trying to mold and mesh things to become one thing I guess I've been more interested lately in seeing how these things can reside together right which means that again it's a careful crafting of it's almost like bringing two people together who have nothing in common right and bringing them together in a space and allowing them to get to know each other right and I have this kind of belief in the same in spaces that you can make spaces that don't seem resolved that might allow people to see something else in them versus resolving them to only have one narrative yeah there's a related question about a project in Los Angeles which struck me because I actually live nearby in Baldwin Hills and and the question is around the challenge of converting these industrial spaces so I think you're sort of speaking to it how do you let these differences really and and and just can you speak to how how you what are those challenges to converting the industrial space so that it becomes something helpful and beautiful in a community and and then perhaps you know kind of going back to the community engagement piece there's a lot of questions in the Q&A about not just how do we make sure that we're not just including people in the process but like in the actual decisions and that they see they have some stake in the decision making well that's a lot of questions yeah well the first one you know in the post-industrial landscape you know which we are in a post-industrial world and so we do have a lot of sites around and one of the things again that our studio practice has been looking at is a lot of these landscapes are where black and brown people live right we have this history of redlining in this country where we're basically have put people in these spaces and I do think it's time now to be truthful about it I think I think the the knowledge is out there it's not something that we're just now uncovering and going back to Lily's question prior to this maybe to me post-COVID that's something that you know a lot of us when I say designers that we're looking at these places and how do we actually begin to say we've disinvested in these places way too long if we invest the first thing we have to do is invest in the healthiness of the places not just building them and that should be the first layer and this can happen in some places through allowing successional landscapes to actually you know build which means again that it's a different aesthetic in the way we might think of landscapes another would be again bringing people into the fold to actually be more how can I say over in talking about the health of places you know that people living next to freeways like right now we're doing a project with the non-profit and we're asking people who are basically waiting in a food line under a freeway to tell us about you know what they want that space to be since they want to be in it and we're actually doing it through street wise which is this digital platform and so we're trying to figure out ways to again get people who are in those landscapes right to tell us you know how they want those landscapes to change or how those landscapes are actually affecting them which again is a different set of questions that we're asking yeah that's that's a really good point I was I was curious about that and you may have heard there's a question here about how do we address sort of the regulatory systems that kind of restrict a lot of these differences and and yeah to me it seems like um and the point about the freeways is a really is a is a is a is a good one here living in Los Angeles a lot of our communities are are designed alongside these very unhealthy spaces or if you think about other communities that are over polluted water um how does that I mean how do you account for that in your work and and can you talk a little bit about the the partnerships that you develop to address some of those like policy or regulatory issues um that are you know we can make a space beautiful but that could still be harming the community that's living in there well that's a really tough question I mean you know we've worked with state agencies you know here in California we have Caltrans you know we have bar you know and a lot of these regulatory agencies it's really hard to penetrate them to do what I call the work that's going to allow those neighborhoods to actually be healthy uh you know years ago we tried to insert a filter system under a freeway with Caltrans and the big issue with Caltrans was if there's an earthquake we need to see the cracks you know and I'm like if there's an earthquake maybe that's the least of your issues that you're having but most of the days why can't you know we have this filter that's actually cleaning the air because school kids are actually walking under this freeway and we have not been successful you know and getting people to kind of think in those terms and I do think you know again I think we need more voices out there to begin to challenge right these assumptions that you know these things are hands off right because when you think of this infrastructure it's like you can't touch it you know they have their own right of way even though they're going right through your environment you can't touch them even the you know the little green space beside the freeway you can't touch them so that's a good question that's a good prompt to this next question around how do in your own words how do you think your projects really challenge the status quo and and on a related note there was some some questions around just your perspective around the increased investment and the impacts on gentrification which is a question I'm sure you deal with all the time too yeah well the first question is you know I just remember a early project we did and someone called me and was like I really like your project I like how you turn the benches out towards the sidebar and I went huh that's an interesting question and it made me think that you know what we were doing or what we do is we try to look at spaces and we then relate to spaces not just inward but outward right and so these little things I think make the work difference when you respond not in that normative way and one of our early projects we got an award for it was Lafayette Square what I was talking about they said instead of turning the space inward we turn the space outward right and these are just things that we were trying to give people more spaces right being able to sort of get together and not be one and I do think this notion of again I talked about it early about homogeneity right making things the same is kind of stuck we're kind of stuck in that it's like all the straight trees need to be the same all the light poles need to be the same all the you know everything needs to be the same which does not distinguish anything right other than you know and we have a thing called Mandela Parkway here I think it's known for having like over a hundred historic lights and I'm like well why do you have historic lights there you know that has nothing to do right with the kind of space but it's really trying to make the same thing everywhere right which again I don't think is equity at all right in a way it's almost marginalizing space yeah um we're I know we're up for time it's um it's 10 30 and there's a ton of great questions no there's like 35 36 yeah um there's an interesting question I mean I think um turn it over to Lily but there is a there's an interesting set of questions of you know in this moment like your your advice for planners um and then there's an interesting question about how design can inspire action in the public realm when we live in such an individualistic society and I sort of like that question because you know we're right now in the midst of you know this war about you know the individual versus the collective good and so do you think design can inspire some of that especially some of that civic engagement that you're asking for in terms of the public realm yeah I think we're seeing it around the across the country you know where we have you know neighborhoods are taking back their streets I know in san francisco there's a couple of neighborhoods that just basically have said this is our street now this is our living room and they're collectively using it together I haven't seen it here on my street you know now that I'm sheltered you know that we all see that we're in this together it's really it's harder back at the city level but at these smaller levels I do think there are these moments and hopefully as we begin to break out of here we don't lose that that there is more advocacy and I'm hoping that planners actually see right that the kinds of things that are happening now that they can keep doing them right I'm trying to close my street I'm working with planners in downtown oakland and you know I'm trying to say we can do more of this and so I do think this action that we're having now hopefully gives us the courage and it also gives us the power to continue to fight for these things that bring us together versus the things that separate us yeah um that's uh that's a really hopeful um I like that um ending um lily do you want to come on in and close this up thank you yeah I love to that was that was I don't want this to end I don't want this conversation to end that is um I just I think that was a wonderful point to end on around around calling for courage um in this moment in time um and and there are there are so many questions in there but I just want to bubble up a couple of themes um a lot of folks were pushing on engagement how you're thinking about engagement um how do you get everyone around the table um there was a question around leveraging technology um and then there was a lot of folks were were continuing to to push around this notion around um your quote and I think it's brilliant um I'm looking for the you said you're looking for the double negative um and examples of that not that seemed to really resonate um with our audience walter um so um so with that um thank you thank you for taking the time um and and chatting with with lily and and me um really I mean I think you see the double negative being played out with black labs miter painted on streets you know I mean again it doesn't mean that you know it's a negative thing it's just that things can coexist right and the more we kind of think about allowing these things to coexist those things that are different than maybe even some of our beliefs but they coexist they only make us better yeah yeah and and folks were asking for example so thank you for for highlighting um that example and and I also want to um put in a link for um your your new book that's going to be out in november um black landscapes matter you can pre-order it um and and I know that that we're all excited um for that walter and and again um thank you and and for our audience we'll we will um see you next week on on tuesday the same time same place lily and do you want to say a couple of words about about next week yeah we're wanting to have a discussion around the digital divide so walter we've been going and just for context we've been going back and forth around these issues of the public space public realm and also the impact of technology on our lives right now and in the future of our cities and so the digital divide has been something that's come up constantly and so finally we're going to have a conversation next week with a couple of communities that are doing some really interesting work around the country about on this area fantastic yeah great well well thanks again walter see you next see you next week lily and bye