 Okay. So welcome to the Urban Cycling Institute podcast. No, wait. What? We don't have a name for this podcast yet. It's definitely not your podcast. Okay. Welcome to the podcast. So we have a podcast. Okay. We don't know exactly how it's called, right? That's what we decided. Right. And it's neither my podcast nor your podcast. Right. It's actually it could be a humankind podcast which is where Leo was the co-founder of and it's really good to be in his office, which has a podcast studio. So we decided to have some beers after work and you know, have a little chat about urbanism bikes and the new designing the cycling city course that we're working on. Yeah. So just when I woke up this morning, I didn't have a podcast. And now you do. I do have a podcast or it's your podcast. So it's episode one of something, which I think it's the pilot. Yeah. And our plan within two, three months is to sell to Spotify for a hundred million dollars. Yeah, because there is still not a popular urbanism podcast out there, right? I mean, there are a few actually I made a blog post with all urbanism podcasts. So there aren't quite few, but what are the ones that you listen to? So I stopped listening to podcasts about urbanism. I kind of stopped listening of following urbanism news because it was kind of my hobby. And then it became my work. So I tried recent, recent months or just can go call Turkey. But don't you love your work? I love my work, but you're asking too many questions and then it will become your podcast. Okay, you got one. You got a question. No, but just, just to finish it up, I, I, I think, and it's, I think it's also important for urbanists is not, is to try not to read only urbanism related topics because actually everything is related to urbanism. So it's better to read maybe psychology, philosophy, sports, everything is related to education. So that I'm trying to do it recently. It's not really working. And what, what's on your reading list? So I've been reading quite a lot of diversity books recently. I did the whistling, Vivaldi is a good one. Just, just, just about to finish. That's, that's what now I'm reading. Just to open the mind to different ways of thinking. And of course, while reading that, I think about cities, how it, how it, how you can apply it to cities or to urbanism. But what you, are you reading? What am I reading? Oh, you can admit that you're not reading, right? Yeah, yeah, I have to say that I'm reading. So the, the most recent book I'm working on is Steven Pressfield is work, it's war on art. I find that's since, you know, we're creative people. It's, it's a lot to say about what this idea of resistance and, and what makes creating art or creative products so hard. And that got me thinking, you know, we just made our Design the Cycling City course or the second version of it. Go check it out. Designthecyclingcity.com. Shameless plug. Shameless plug. Yeah. And, and what's, you know, what's so difficult about putting yourself on camera, what's so difficult about writing, you know, blog posts, what's so difficult? If you go up the list, you know, writing a book, making a painting, it's not physical labor. I was talking to you about, like, how it's way more satisfying to build something physical and you see it, like, go up and then you get to sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor. But, you know, as something that's a product electronically, I never really see it again. So actually, so now I have already three topics for this podcast. So the first one might be the satisfaction of doing something physical, which if you're going to become an urban planner, you might think, yeah, I'm going to shape streets. But actually, while after becoming an urban planner, you realize that most of your work is behind the computer and it's very long term. So you don't see things happening. And you're just finishing your PhD now in urban planning, right? It's officially urban planning. So it is also, I mean, PhD four years of just writing, not just writing, but mostly writing. But another topic that we can discuss is combining media, social media and urbanism, which is a very, I mean, I live sort of in this bubble. You're in it. I'm in it. So maybe we can discuss that or we can discuss online courses. Okay, let's talk. Or we can end up with online courses. I like this social media. Social media. Yeah, I want to hear more about how you got started into social media, because my big thing is like YouTube, which I don't, it's kind of social media, but I think it's, it's a big difference. But you're in like, Okay, so first of all, you need to keep talking to the microphone. It's not connected to anything. It's all about the looks. But just keep talking to this microphone. You see, it's just not connected to anything. Yeah, so are you allowed to think and be silent in podcasts? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. No, so actually, I have to say that there is a bubble. There is a urban planning bubble. I think it's one of the most positive bubbles on Twitter. So most Twitter is very negative. I'm following two bubbles, the urban planning one and Israeli politics. The Israeli politics, Twitter is terrible. It's cynical. Yeah. It is, it is very, yeah, it is politics bubble. How do you call it? Bubble? No, there isn't. Yeah, it's a bubble. I'd say it's bubble is a good word. And the Twitter one, the Twitter urbanism one is very positive. Everybody's just sharing great pictures of their projects or just things that happen in their cities. And then everybody's supporting it and shares it again. And then there is a small niche there that is about being angry on what your city did. But it is still, everybody has the same opinion and everybody is working toward kind of like bikeable, walkable, happy places. Maybe we should talk a bit about the bike aspect. Because I joined urbanism, this bubble through the bike bubble. So you first saw the bike bubble on Twitter and then you joined urbanism? I'd say I'd first joined this group of cyclists at the time it was in Toronto where it's, I think, like there's not that many. Sorry. I'm hosting you on my podcast. I hope it's my podcast. You're from Toronto originally. Tell a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so I grew up in Toronto. I was born in Beijing, China. I moved to Toronto when I was five. And I started biking regularly to university, I'd say, in high school. University was a long bike ride. It was 23 kilometers each way. Wow. So what you realize when doing that is that that the food itself is fuel, right? And that if you do 50 kilometers a day or 30 miles, because this will reach an American audience, that you eat quite a bit more than if you didn't do that much. And probably for people who work out as well. And did you notice it on a daily basis? Yeah, like, I don't know, but I would remember eating a foot long sub. I think I think subways. Every student does it. Yeah, but I needed to. For lunch, I couldn't get the half. I needed the foot long just to get me home, right? Okay, so sorry. So you came across Toronto bike bubble or what? I was a bike mechanic during my university years. I also served time in the army. So that's like the two things that got me paid through university. Musician in the army. Canadian army. Canadian army. You were a programmer in the Israeli army, which I thought was really cool. But bike mechanic part that that got me into this like bike bubble, I would say. And then, you know, the more I worked in there, the more I realized things could get better. Streets can be designed differently. So you started as a user? Well, we all are users at the end, but you started as a user? I started as someone who thought cycling like, like I really enjoyed doing it, but it sucked. It's like, it's horrible, especially in the winter. And then you came on Twitter across or not Twitter, YouTube, how did you start? Wow, how did I get into this whole bike community online? I'd say like, I'm not, I'm still not fully in it online. Okay, right? I'm not, I mean, maybe 500 Twitter follower, which, which is nothing because I don't, I just don't, you follow on a 500. No, I only have, I think 500 at this point. Like, like I don't tweet. I don't think you're going to help my podcast because you're not, you don't have so many followers. Okay, so it's your podcast. So it's my part. Okay. But I might send a few YouTubers your way, right? Okay. So you don't have too much, but you were, you, you are still working or I feel like, yeah. So I feel like I'm in this bubble in real life. That's how I started in the academic community, I would say. And then, you know, back then it was just Facebook and probably a few, a few more platforms, but I think that's when Twitter started. And then at some point I realized like, there's no formal education for people who want to do bicycle infrastructure, right? I took a trip to Europe in 2013. I rode my bike up the Rhine River, starting from Rome and up, up to the Netherlands. And I thought like, this is, this is some like embodied knowledge that you could, but people haven't been communicating to me in Toronto, in the North American context. And the Netherlands is just so much better than any place I've been at that point. Because when you go to a cycling friendly city, like there's gradations, right? Yeah. And that's when I realized, wow, the Netherlands is a really cool place. And then through the process of searching out more, more knowledge about the Netherlands, that's kind of how I've gone to social media, that the bike, Twitter sphere, if you would call it. So for me it was, I decided to go, so I went to, to study, to do my masters in, I'm originally from Tel Aviv, but I went to do my masters in Stockholm. And then I decided I want to, I had a blog. So the blog, that's where I started Twitter, I had a blog called livable city, LVBL cities, livable and lovable cities. And I did it with Sasha. You couldn't afford the domain name. You couldn't afford the domain name. No, but also I, we thought it's cool because I saw Sasha Benes is like a Dutch friend of mine from Sweden. And then we just thought LVBL is cool because then some people call it livable, some people call it lovable. And you see how people think about cities when they say it. So some people think about it. So that was the idea. And we had a blog. And then Sasha actually told me you should go, is Dutch. So he told me you should go to do an exchange in the Netherlands, an exchange year. Which university? So I was accepted only to two, not accepted, it was possible only to go to two. So it was either Utrecht University or Groningen. So Groningen I've never heard of. So I googled it. And I googled it. And I came across street films, which is very famous, of course, talking again about social media because street films, it was quite new back then. It was street films about Groningen as the world cycling capital. I think that was the name of the world cycling city. That was the name. And I fell in love. So that's how I discovered street films, I think, by googling Groningen. That's how I discovered Groningen, by just having this option to join Groningen University for half a year. And then when, yeah, I think I watched this video. So I think this video has like over one million views or something. And I think I watched 20 or 100 of those. And when I arrived to Groningen, it was as amazing as the film. So that's how I joined. And then in Groningen, I was a student during my master's. I started to be active on Twitter, so I don't need one hundred followers. And it's kind of like, I realize every time I make a picture of a bicycle or people cycling in Groningen, people from all around the world retweet it, which forced me because I wanted more followers, of course, back then. It forced me to keep making those, so this feedback loop, keep making those videos of pictures and videos of people cycling in the Netherlands. And how normal it is. It's quite amazing for someone from the Netherlands. And then I started with another, yeah, we started with August Groningen. It's a blog. I started Velotropolis. Velotropolis is how I started, look, it got acquainted to, excuse me, to your work. Yeah, so Velotropolis was just, the idea was Groningen is, yeah, most people cannot even pronounce it, the name of the city. But it is one, yeah, I would say top three cycling cities in the world, or maybe even number one. And it's not like Amsterdam. So Amsterdam, it's very, it's very easy to sell Amsterdam because everybody knows Amsterdam. Some people think that Amsterdam is the Netherlands, or at least the president of the EU. And Groningen, it's just a small city, 200,000, but it is an example for so many cities around the world. In Europe, there are much more people living in cities in the size of Groningen, so between 100,000 and 500,000. I think it's the latest number is 200,000, something 180,000. No, so Groningen has 200,000 and 5,000, but there are so many cities with 102,000 to 300, 400,000 people. So it's different from a place like China where, like the average city size is like a million, right? The average, I thought it's like the minimum. I don't, yeah, it's the minimum. Yeah, you're right, you're right, you're up this tab. But the thing is that if you talk about people living in cities, the majority of European people who live in cities live in those kind of cities and not in the mega cities. Right. And there are hardly mega cities in Europe. So you have London, you have Paris, and then you have Madrid. You have Madrid, this is the mega city already. More than 10 million, I'm not sure. There's not that many. And then you have, I mean, of course, what do you define as Europe? So you have, of course, Istanbul and Moscow, but yeah, it's not the EU. And then you have the Randstadt, which is like the metropolis of here in the Netherlands with like Amsterdam, Rotterdam together. And you have the Rohrgebiet in Germany, which is also a mega city. So it's a Dortmund and a mega city of many cities. So anyway, we, where was I? That's what I love about podcasts. You never, you never know. We're not ever lying. No, but so you share those pictures and people love it. And then we decided to share with the metropolis, just make pictures, normal people, businessmen, women, parents, children, cycling. That was all we did. And we had like 4000 followers. It was so easy to get followers, no budget, just the camera, just like our phone. And how long were you in Carnegie? So I was there, I came for half a year for studies and then decided to stay. So I stayed for another half a year, finished my masters, started to work there as a freelancer, urbanist. Oh, you loved it that much. I loved it that much. And then I never went back to Sweden actually, since I think I went there once to Sweden. And since then, I'm in the Netherlands. Now I live in Rotterdam, humankind is based in Rotterdam. We work in Rotterdam, but I still go to Groningen often for projects. We do quite a few projects there, but now home is Rotterdam. Yeah. Yeah, I actually used a few of your projects. This probably goes back to what it feels like to build something. So we finished with social media. Oh yeah, I think. So that's the first section. Let's talk about your project. Do you have also like a… I think my take on social media is that it's too fast, like Twitter, I thought LinkedIn was a bit slower, but even LinkedIn is getting more like Facebook. But YouTube, you can really take your time. Like when you release a product, it's… So let's go back to YouTube, because YouTube is related to the last topic we will have today, which is the course, the online. By the way, it's free. So we're not selling anything. It's free course. Thanks for the European Union. We'll talk about it later. So that's the course. Later, YouTube and the course, I think it's a nice discussion. But what I want to end with social media is that I'm kind of like a victim, but I'm also creating it. I love it. I think one of the things about… So I said it's very positive. Everybody's supporting each other in great examples, especially from the Netherlands. Great examples of… And a lot of things coming around the world, like before and afters. But it is also a little bit repetitive. So, yeah, people are kind of sharing this. So actually, I use it a lot, but I don't learn too much. You know exactly what works. You have an intuition of like, if I post this X amount of people… But that's what Twitter makes you learn, because you really… If you tweet a lot, you get a feedback. You know the algorithm. Well, the algorithm teaches you what you need to do, which is terrible. That's deep, yeah. And if you look at it like in every field, but in urbanism, what works is very visual images of great urban life. But it's also nice, because it means that we all can, by just looking at a picture, realize what is great urbanism. It is not defined. There are like a thousand indicators. And yeah. Whoa. So that's Twitter. So the algorithm could teach us what people like. Like the things that people retweet are… But hey, bubble also hate. But it's not people. It's not people, yeah? It is only the people in the bubble. So the only thing that works on the urbanism Twitter is those Twitter, like those Twitter urban fans, or LinkedIn, that are really into new urbanism. Yeah. You know, like this cycling, biking, walking. Yeah. This kind of bubble. And unfortunately, it's not real people. It's the common man, right? So it doesn't really teach you a lot. You can learn a lot of practices, but it is also sort of a support group between urbanists all around the world, supporting each other. I love it. I'm going to say that I love it. But I would just wish there would be a little bit more space for criticism and discussion, and maybe opening up to people thinking a little bit differently. But I cannot blame the urbanists there. It's how those social media system works. But this is not a podcast about social media. It's a podcast about urbanism. It could be. It could be about anything. But then we need to find another host. So building things. So you live near Khoronga as well. Yeah. Because of social media. Or not? Probably, actually. I was at the cargo bike festival at a friend who lived there. So I visited, I believe it was on this bike ride back in 2013. I somehow found myself in Khoronga. Oh, yeah. And because I lived in Einhoven, which is the south of the Netherlands, I have this, they call it the Zachterge, which is the soft G where you don't go. Like the real people do. So that means I say it kind of weird. But you got the real Khoronga going. It's from Hebrew, you know. Yeah. So you made, you were involved in a bunch of projects that made these playgrounds, kind of adult playground bar things. It was fun. And I'm always looking for places to like. So outdoor gyms. Outdoor gyms. That's what you call it. And there's a few in Khoronga where it's like this bright orange. There's one by this ship harbour thing. Yeah. By the canal. Well, it's the Cadet. Yeah. So I found it. And I was like, this is a great place to do some. Wait, who is responsible for the show notes? Because then you need to add a link to that. So you'll add the show notes. I'll do the show notes. Okay. So on the show notes, you will find a link to that outdoor gym. To your website. To your human kind website describing this gym. There is a project that I designed together. Actually as an intern, I'm not sure, or as a freelancer working with the municipality. No, I was already a freelancer. And I was designing it together with the department of public space. Which was really cool to design something in the city centre. I was 25 years old. What was the space used before then? It was playground. It was only a playground and a basketball field. And it was really old. And the city wanted for, I think it's also written on a website, but the city tried for years I think to change it. And the neighbours were against because they wanted to build just a nicer playground. A new playground. And there was also I think an angry neighbour there that was like against having a playground because he didn't want all the noise of children. And then when we, when I got this assignment, I did analysis which is in another world. I went online and looked at the population data and realised that there are no children living there. So the entire area is home to just students and acts like kind of this 20, 30 year old youngster. So why would you build a playground there? And then, well, then I discovered that it's also home to like, yeah, some visitors coming every weekend. So there was some need for a playground. But actually in order to get support for that, you need to build something for young adults. And young adults also want playgrounds, but they don't want like the classic play elements. They want gyms, they want to store. So Frödingen has a average lifetime. No, average age of 34. I think I believe that's the last numbers when I checked it out, which is the youngest average age of all Dutch municipalities. So it's a very young city, but it's because it's a student town. It has a lot of these like 20 year olds that you're talking about. It's not necessarily kids with families with kids, right? Exactly. So, and especially that area, which is close to the city center, a very hip and small apartments. And we built this gym. And I have to admit that I didn't, I've never used it. So I built it. I played basketball there. So I've never took a full practice there. And that's because I never do outdoor sports. I built, I helped to design outdoor gyms and I love it. But I don't want to make a mistake of thinking that urban designer or planner can know everything. So what I do normally is when I design those places, I just do it together with local trainers or activists that know how those things work. So I designed another basketball field and I presented it to the local basketball community and they told me it's terrible. And then just told them, guys, let's sit together and design it together. I can do the technical things, but you can tell me exactly how big you wanted to be. And it was much easier. So that's also where I learned that co-creation or participation is not only about asking people, do you prefer this or that, but actually do it together. Which makes my work much more, yeah, much easier, right? Yeah. And you worked out there? Yeah, every day I just take a bike ride over. So you are healthier because of this design? Absolutely. One cannot do enough chin-ups after the break. So back to like we're talking about urban planners do a lot of computer work. I think chin-ups or pull-ups are the best way to work the back muscles after a day. Yeah. And there were the bars for that and then you can also do dips and a bunch of stuff is well placed and free because of you, especially actually now with COVID going around. Yeah, but you know what was nice about that specific place? It was when it was built and planned, there was a gym there. And then what we wanted to do is so the place was deserted at night. And the city really wanted to be activated. So what we thought is let's work with the local gym and ask them, hey, what are you missing in the gym that you can do outside? And we hope that they will take the people that train outside and work out there. And this will attract more people to just come and work because seeing people working out invites you to also work out. So that was the plan. Make it. But maybe it was so good that the gym was just a bankrupt because everybody worked for free. I don't know, but the gym is not there anymore. So that was nice. But then we discussed about the fact that, okay, so this project is very nice because three months you work on it, then three months it's in planning, kind of like this administration, you get the approval. And then it's built one month and it's built. So half a year, one year and it's built. And this is I really like because you build something and a year later you work on something and maximum a year later you go there and you see people using it. This is amazing. And this is only 1% of the job urban planners do and urban designers, which is terrible. So what there's been a question that I struggle with a lot is what is the job of an urban planner? Because I feel like engineers are very clear in what their role is that if you, maybe this is partly responsible for the higher wages that engineers receive. And this could include computer programmers, for example. There are professions which have very clear roles. You go into it, you can come out expecting a job. The job market is set up for your profession. If you study urban planning, you do a mishmash of theories and you do a bunch of practical stuff like public consultation that's practical but it's not hard skills. So it's hard to put that into a resume. So what in your opinion, what do urban planners do? Yeah, that's a good question. What's fundamental to us? Because I'm building urban gyms, you said 1%. Yeah, so building urban gym is not a work of urban planner. It's a work of urban designer. Or a landscape architect. Or someone works in the maintenance or parks and recreation department. It might be just someone who is responsible for maintenance. That's what happens most of the time. Something is needed to be replaced or the neighbors are angry. And you just speak with one of the suppliers that your municipality works with. So it's funny because urban planners, in my opinion, do a lot of types of jobs and each one of those jobs can be done by someone else. So urban planners might be, for instance, work on a bicycle policy. But a bicycle policy can also be planned or worked by an economist that cares about cities and a traffic engineer. But I think it takes an urban planner to see all those fields. And that's why urban planning, at least where I started, so it's Stockholm University, it's very broad. You see really a lot of, you learn about a lot of topics and you learn mostly about policy. You don't learn about design. You learn about policies. You learn about laws, rules. And then each university has its own takes. So I think Stockholm University will very much about inclusivity and mostly about gentrification, fair planning and gender equal planning. So every course we took had something about gender. Yeah, that's lovely. It feels to me like we have a very broad responsibility that doesn't really kick in at the the intern level, let's say. So if I'm fresh out of university, first job, it's not very useful to learn, to have all this knowledge of Jane Jacobs or like what urban planning was in the turn of the 20th century. It has nothing to do with the day-to-day paperwork, right? I'm just trying to approve zoning codes and stuff in general. Yeah, so I've never worked on zoning and I've never studied zoning actually on my masters. Interesting. It seems to me that's like what urban planners in my head, that's what stereotypical urban planner does, is like approve zoning. And I think in every country it has different meanings. So in Germany it's really almost a lawyer. No, it's kind of like it's not a lawyer, but you study a lot about laws. Okay, which is what zoning is. Yeah, exactly. So that's maybe also in Canada, I don't know. And in Israel it's more human geography, so it's really about, also in the Netherlands, right? It's under the Human Geography Department or Institute or I'm not sure. Thought himself, I haven't studied urban planning and the Netherlands. In Sweden it was also human geography. But then in the Netherlands you have more types. So it's like, that's something I like about the Netherlands. And then we can move to the last topic. But where is that, where they say they have many words for snow? Is it Iceland or? Iceland. Yeah, they have like Iceland, let's google it. So Iceland has many words for snow. Yeah, it has 46 words for snow. And that's because they're so used to it, it's part of the culture, right? So they see different types of snow. We in Israel we have only one type of snow and it's like Disney movies, snow. It's like what we see on Disney, we don't have snow in Israel, it doesn't snow. Maybe in Canada you have more words for snow? Maybe you have a word for like light snow or snow. Snow, I can't say. I hear the Inuits or the First Nations of North, they have more words. But most of Canadians live on the border within 100 kilometers of the U.S. border. That's where it's a very linear country. Yeah, true. Yeah, we stick to the warm place, essentially. Smart. Yeah, smart. But then that's what you see with the Netherlands and urbanism, they have more words for that. So first of all with cycling, I don't know any other country that has two words for the verb to cycle, direction to cycle. So you have the fitsen, which is like the person just cycles on the street. The normal person just cycles from A to B, which is basically every Dutch person, almost every Dutch person. And then you have the wilrenen, which is the race cycle. The wheel runner, literally, yeah. So you also have it, I think, with the profession of urbanism, because the Netherlands has such a rich history of planning and urbanism and building cities. So you have the difference between the urban designer planner and the urban planner. And it has two different and very developed professions. So they have the planoloog, which is kind of like the urban planner. But it's more the policies. And then you have the Stedenbouw, which is more urban design. Probably they don't even pronounce it very well. And then, of course, you have great schools here in the Netherlands for urbanism, much better than most places in the world. And studying urban planning is something very common. So whereas in Israel, many people go and study, I don't know, administration or business management. In the Netherlands, many people study urban planning, because there are so many jobs related to urban planning. And the municipality, de Chemeinte, is such an important institute in the Netherlands. So I think, maybe it's a topic for our next podcast episode, or one of our next episodes, is the different way Dutch people see urbanism and the municipality. Yeah, so that was that. It should be. Okay. Do we have a last topic that we want to end on? Yeah, so let's start with it. Why do you like YouTube? I like YouTube because it feels like you can put a polished product out there. Every time you make something, it lasts relatively long in terms of the lifespan, because I can think of things like tweets. Tweets, how much the tweets? What would you say the half-life of a tweet is? The point where you get half of your likes or views ever. First day. First day, right? It's just like, boom, and it's gone. I think YouTube, the half-life is probably more like a month, where you get half of your views in a month. So it starts after a few days, right? It'll accumulate quite regularly. So Twitter is like, boom, right? Whereas YouTube is much more gradual. And then it never really stops. Yeah, especially the good ones. Yeah, people keep searching for it. And it's also, YouTube is owned by Google, so... Yeah, it's a great, it's like a search engine. Because people don't search for tweets, not really. Like, sometimes for the course that we're making, like, I'll go back. Did Lear say anything about this topic? Stick in the course. But in general, I don't think people really... Or if you're trying to dig up dirt on people, right? Like, what bad thing did this person do? One day I will run to be the mayor of, hopefully, I don't know, Tel Aviv maybe? And that's when your people... Yeah, then when people will be your tweets. No, yeah, I don't have plans now. But hey, so you were doing YouTube with the Institute? Urban Cycling Institute, yeah. Super cool productions in the Netherlands. Yeah, I thought podcast plus a bike ride, you know. Lovely, there is even... Yeah, there are a few good ones there. We did our first one on the Crow design manual. Yeah, but then it was just an interview, terrible, terrible, like, terrible equipment. This is better, isn't it? This is better, we have a podcast room. It's not connected to anything, but we were like, yeah. The mics, we have beautiful mics here, if you just listen and you don't watch. We have beautiful mics that are not connected to anything. Yeah, so then you did YouTube, I tweeted, you kept producing great YouTube. Then we met, that's for another episode, how we met. But then we thought, let's create an online course. Before we continue to our last topic, online courses, do we have a sponsor? Or how do we make money out of this entire operation? Do we have a sponsor? For YouTube? For this podcast, I don't know, do we have a sponsor? No, we don't, I'm looking for one though, so. Yeah, yeah, because I want to speak with you about our online courses, and the online courses are free, so it's also not going to make us rich. Yeah. So, okay, you will work on getting a sponsor for this podcast. I think so, yeah, that would be the next logical step. Great, so, okay, so you were doing those great videos with the institute, lovely, and then we thought, let's have a course. We kind of delayed it, we worked on it, it took time, then corona started. I thought it was good because you're a practitioner, right? Like you're not, you don't live in the halls of academia. Yeah, and you create beautiful courses on Coursera with the University of Amsterdam, so. Right, so you have a few courses there, and how many people took part? I think we're up to 7,000 now. Okay, so 7,000 people, and it's more academic, right? It's more, it's an online course on Coursera, it's more academic. And then we wanted to do a course, and then we got across the EAT Urban Mobility, which is the European Institute for Technology. That was really great, they were really kind to sponsor the course actually, and because of their sponsorship, we're now able to offer it for free. So we were able to produce a course, the deals with designing a second city? Exactly, and then it's enough people really enjoyed it, apparently, or it got to the right people. But the thing is that what is nice about this course is that, okay, we discuss it, you don't study it at school. Yeah, that is the problem, right? Nobody can teach you this, sorry, it sounds like I'm too selling it, but I don't care if anyone does it because it's for free now, so. But I think, as an urban planner, urbanist who studied the University, moved to the Netherlands because we wanted to study about cycling design, you don't study it at school. It's not so easy to move now with the coronavirus, but. No, but also nobody teaches you that it's cool? No. It might, or maybe yes, but I don't know of any places, it teaches you really the rules or the guidelines of cycling. Then we added on top of that some visualization skills, so how to really make it happen. And then the entire course, the idea is that it takes five weeks, right? You can do it in five weeks, you can do it in two days if you want, if you don't want to sleep and just do it. And read all the materials, but the idea is that you start a course, you learn a little bit the context of urban planning, urbanism and cycling. Then we go to the rules, how to design lanes, bike tracks, intersections. All the practical stuff. Just the practical stuff mostly, with a little bit of context of what is happening around the world. Of course, comparing the Netherlands to Denmark, we have to do that. That was a fun lesson to record, actually. And we have to give credit for that lesson, right? Because we linked there to... Yeah, on there, it's not just bikes, also did an episode. So actually we pull in the YouTube videos, I like, this probably links in with why I like YouTube so much, just because anyone can be a creator, right? And it's, I think, like other forms of social media, it's a good way for people to be exposed to ideas. And I think it's a really unique time that we have. Like it's not that long ago before... It's not that long ago that video became possible, on-demand video. Like that's a very recent phenomenon. I'd say it's probably just 10 years old, right? Yeah, it's also so easy to watch it streaming for the user, but also for the creator. Yeah, and if you think about phones, it's incredibly easy to make videos these days. And it's also easy to make podcasts, look at us. Yeah, but just, I mean, not enough people do it. It's kind of odd, right? Considering everyone has the access. But wait, it's a detour here, which I love detours, but wait. So we have this, it has all of those things. And then the last module, which is supposed to be on the fifth week, or whenever you want to do it, whatever your pace is, if you're a working person, maybe you do it on the weekends, you will design your own street. So you'll take a street from your neighborhood and redesign it, and visualize it, and make it touch and proof. And you make a sales pit, a slide deck, which is your sales pitch, really. Exactly. So actually, the idea is that at the end of the course, you end up with a pitch deck, pitch deck, pitch deck, pitch deck. You end up with a pitch deck, and you take this pitch deck to the local mayor or the committee in your city, and you sell it. Yeah, that is the idea. And then if one of you, one of the listeners here is going to make a change, then it's all worth it, right? If we can make, with one course, a change of one street, make it safer to all ages and people and everybody, that's, yeah, we won, right? Absolutely. And it's a long journey. So you present this idea. It might take, not the fault of urban planners, but it might take just a year or so to work through the bureaucracy, right? If not, no. Well, I hope only a year. And then we have more courses going on with the E80 mobility. Yeah, so they're actually kind enough to sponsor Reclaiming the Street, which is live, as of now, and also another one, which is the Alternative Mobility Narratives. These two courses then go through more of an academic perspective on reclaiming the street. It's how things of, well, using examples from the COVID pandemic, right, as a basis to see how urban change can be accomplished quickly. And then Alternative Mobility Narratives is thinking about, it's kind of going beyond this mechanistic view that we have of the street. Okay, but I'm going to stop here. Sorry, because I'm not going to let you sell other courses on my podcast. It's my podcast. My podcast. It's my podcast. Wait, so there are more courses there that we are not involved with. E80 Urban Mobility is working on more courses. Yeah, for sure. It's super cool. We will put a link. And the courses, I think most of them, all of them are free now for now. Yeah. But we're not going to talk about those courses because designing the Cyclic City is the best one, I hope. No, yeah, isn't it? And yeah, and actually it is out now. So we will have the link. You can go to designingdesigningcity.com to log in. I turned this podcast into a sales podcast. Oh, so it's good to talk clear. And do you have anything that you forgot to say? No, I hope we get to do this again soon. Yeah. Yeah. Ciao. Ciao.