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0:20
I'm going to talk about transportation. It's relevant. It's something I've been working a lot about, and this is also the thing that confronts us every day when we have designs that either had too narrow and intention or some set of assumptions that may not be serving our community as well anymore. I think many of you recognize this scene. This is at the turn of the last century, and what's interesting about it is that there's not a car insight,
1:01
fifth Avenue, 1900, 1903, the Ford Motor Company was born 1908, was the first Model T. This was a clearly remarkable technology, and this is a decade later in 1913. There's not a horse insight in this picture. This was a time without the Internet, there was no rapid dissemination, and this was a thing that people were mesmerized by this technology, and clearly some of the elements of that early system design, were immediately evident and successful. For example, it solved a problem that
1:47
every single city in the world was facing. Horse poop, it got rid of the horse poop problem instantly. It was amazing and people were just thrilled with it. But that's not the only thing it did,
2:09
the biggest thing was how much every city, every place in America began to prioritize the automobile and it's circulation above everything else. In the modern American city today we devote somewhere 25-30% of the entire land to the storage and circulation of automobiles. There are between 6 and 9 permanent parking spaces for each and every vehicle in America. It's a lot of land. We've permanently divided and depressed property values and limited access by bisecting neighborhoods by highways.
2:50
We've entirely concealed and undermined the benefits of proximity and convenient daily destinations within walking distance, so much of our cities have been designed without any thought that people would ever get there by any means other than an automobile. We subsidize the wealthier car owning households with free or low-cost parking and used the public space for car storage. But we don't have an equivalent program for people who aren't traveling by car. I always wanted to take
3:26
a six by nine foot raised bed garden on wheels that I would put in the parking space on the street. I'd move it when it was street cleaning. But why can't I have the use of that space? I'll pay my $35 a year for the rental of that space. But that's not open to people so it's not fair. It has also made car ownership and absolute necessity. It subordinates, people to vehicles, and it has created environments which I know you experience every day where something is nearby,
4:08
but you just can't get to it safely, because the automobile traffic is so heinous, it's so extreme. But the more important thing, and I mentioned this earlier that the American dream is alive and well in Canada, not in America. Part of it is we've really made auto ownership the prerequisite for entering the US economy. You can't get a job or keep a job in a lot of places if you don't have a car and it's not cheap to have a car. It's the only way to access most of
4:40
the big job centers in almost every part of the country, and it ensures that parents become chauffeurs as a primary responsibility when they have school-age children. Transportation spending the second highest cost, it's intense. We also sicken and kill millions of people every year. About 40,000 people died last year alone directly from collisions, 1.2 million people worldwide, about 20 times as many get injured, and more than 200,000 people die annually in our country from diseases
5:15
associated with a sedentary lifestyle, and many more are sick and by tailpipe emissions and particulates. I don't even want to get into what happens, what we've done in pursuit of securing fuel in foreign conflicts and entanglements so that we make sure we continue to have access to petroleum,
5:38
and we have created a problem where in our modern transportation system, we absolutely reward failure. If you utterly fail to coordinate transportation and land use and you result in huge congestion problems, it is so easy to get a grant from the federal government to add more roads. If you actually were successful and coordinated transportation, land use so you didn't have all this traffic there's not a reward. You either get no money or your are ignored.
6:13
So cars demand bigger and wider and more roads. Electrifying Hummers and F150. Carrying those new vehicles, they violate the weight standards for most highways. You couldn't cafe a truck that carried those because they're so heavy and they're so large that a lot of them couldn't see a bicyclist, a whole classroom full of children in front of those vehicles. It's a huge safety issue, and finally, we fomented a global crisis when it comes to climate. This was certainly not
6:59
the intention of either the maker of automobiles or the cities that rushed to accommodate them. But this is what we got as sure as if it was our design assignment. We've done this so thoroughly and so well. I think it's really important to note the moment that we're in right now. Because of a combination of factors including a response to the climate crisis and the recession, we have about $3 trillion in federal funding flowing to cities. In California, you're even
7:35
better positioned because you are the best state in the country when it comes to addressing climate and putting your money where your mouth is. There's more money and more requirements that really have to do with decarbonizing transportation. But we can't do it the way we did it before, not in any way the way we did it before. We have to be really deliberate about our intentions. We have to be really specific. We talked about the work that we do in our cities.
8:03
A lot of us who were planning directors, undoing the work of the past generations, reconnecting streets. Getting rid of one-way streets, bringing people back to live in the center of the city. Well these other problems that we have to undo, particularly when it comes to inequality and climate. That is much more difficult and serious task. When we talk about intention, we have to spell it out all of us right now in our neighborhoods, in our cities, we should be saying, "This is what we intend
8:40
any infrastructure spending to be doing in our city today." We intend for it to meet a much broader set of objectives. This is from the city of Pittsburgh. We were working with them last year on a series of initiatives around bringing new mobility options to Pittsburgh, and this is the design remit for their program, safety access affordability. How about this? Good health and joy? Have traveled, be fun instead of frustrating and have it build and enhance community. This is not going to be the
9:23
design remit and every neighborhood, this is something you have to figure out for yourself. But what I'm saying is it's not too soon to be thinking about this right now. Money is coming to the city of San Diego. Money is coming to the region. There's going to be five years worth of dollars. Now is the time for people to be saying in our neighborhoods, in our communities, this is what we want. These are the connections we want to make. As several speakers including
9:50
Gill said, let's reevaluate proximity. Let's really focus on short trips. Short trips are mostly a land use, that means putting some more convenient destinations near residential neighborhoods that would enable a lot of trips to be taken that way. It also means recognizing that we already take more, even in San Diego, even in Los Angeles, most of our trips or short trips. More than more than half of our trips are less than three mile. An e-bike would do that in a second.
10:27
A conventional bike also, if you didn't feel like you were taking your life in your hands. We don't have incomplete networks for cars. How do we think it's acceptable to have four blocks, a bike lane and then nothing? That's ridiculous. These are the things we should be using the money to repair. We should be trying to capture those short trips and recognize that transit is a huge part of the solution also. I'm going to just leave you with that and thank you. [MUSIC]
11:04
What I'm going to talk about is my background experience, but bring a lot of the conversation from today into some real stories around three cities, how these issues have played out in my practice, and specifically San Francisco, Chicago, and Boulder Colorado, very distinctively different cities. Give you short little stories about each of the areas, how design discourse plays out in this areas, primarily because one, because of the DNA of the city from the planning contexts, the urban form,
11:43
and the governance of each city determines how you talk about design and planning in each city. Second, how we engage with community, how we talk about those issues over the challenges of design. How we engage with them, literally mix impact on how what the outcomes are at the end. I'll give examples of that. Then third, how the most contentious issues and debates about design density, height are exactly the same regardless of the city scale. This talk is about
12:21
big cities and I'm a fan of big cities. But from my experience, those specific issues are exactly the same. Whether you're a 50,000 people city or a two million population city. Let me start quickly first with San Francisco. San Francisco was one of the most beautiful cities. It's an immeasurable city. You can add an image when you think of San Francisco, why it's not by accident. The topography in the urban form is wonderful. That it's also its urban design and planning
12:57
that really created that form and shape and texture that people will die if you try to propose to change anything about that. But that started in 1839. That contexts that DNA about the San Francisco has an important role in terms of how people talk about heights, talk about density, talk about change today. But it's also its political contexts. It's the most engaged city around planning issues, development issues, or any change issue. Everybody comes out to talk about that and they
13:31
engage at nauseum if you have any proposed changes. San Francisco, how did it come about? In 1839, Jean Jacques Vioget laid out 10 blocks in the downtown area called the Vara blocks. The Vara is most some you know, it's like a Spanish measuring system. Long chain, two men on horses on each end will take the chain of one Vara, is about 33 inches. At that time the longest chain that they had was 100 Vara. It's the shortest side. They said 100 Vara, it translates to 275. The longer side, they went
14:10
100 and then they went halfway and they said, okay, those are the blocks. They laid out the first 10 blocks. That created the DNA of San Francisco in terms of its urban form. Also, really wonderful actually work. You can divide them into 1,625 foot lots on one side, 16.47, and on both sides and the street is about 68 feet. That translated the rest of the pattern of San Francisco that people love about it. It's workable, it's a human scale from that perspective,
14:45
and that image that you saw before, translate it that way. Then the pattern, when this is Market Street. I forgot the date, but later the developers complained that this are two small blocks. They're not conducive for industrial development. Alfaro came and pretty much doubled the size of the North of Market Vara blocks and just doubled it down in the South of Market to create spaces that are conducive to development. That informed the pattern of San Francisco.
15:25
Then fast forward, the redevelopment area in the '40s and '50s, the highway construction. This is a diagram I love from the former Redevelopment Agency of San Francisco, progress in city planning. A lot of those fine grained Victorian pattern were considered as a blight. That diagram in the bottom. All the dark, the beautiful places that we think of in San Francisco at that time, that was modernism, that was old, it was blight. This is from the Redevelopment Agency.
16:04
Progress were those concrete blocks object, the links sitting in space. This is a time of Corbusier and all the big modernist movement that are taking place in the '40s and '50s, that was progress from, and now you realize why people have a jaded view of redevelopment agencies. Never mind that when I was there in '90s and early 2000s, the new Redevelopment Agency was actually fantastic. They were doing a lot of great work in the city. When I was working in San Francisco a long time ago,
16:45
in the early '90s, this is what Transbay looked like, the Transbay Terminal. South of Market, the right after the Loma Prieta earthquake, there was a great opportunity in that hole that you see for redevelopment of that area and bringing high speed rail, reconfiguring Transbay Terminal. Conversation about design and planning started at that time. At that time, there was a different conversation. San Francisco did not have any culture of housing in the downtown area. The Castro or Haight-Ashbury,
17:26
Mission District are vibrant with lots of residential and other commercial activities, but this was dead at night in the evening. This is a great opportunity to make a big transformation for San Francisco in this column again, once in a generation to have that major transformation. The conversation at that time is how should that area be developed? The state gave the city most of the land around Transbay area. At that time, we were working on the contexts of the urban design guidelines
18:02
and regulations for buildings. You've heard of the wedding cake copied New York to actually implement that in San Francisco. At that time, it didn't allow for residential towers because it's too expensive to step residential towers. Developers will not build for residential in the downtown area. That was one of the constraints. The other part of it is, it actually did not result in most cases, great architecture. You have this bulky buildings, fat, they meet the standards,
18:34
they meet the regulations. It was blur in terms of architecture and form. There was also a height limit, 550 feet height limits. That was a reaction to a lot of the '50s development. Stop them from burying our city under skyline of tombstones. This is debates that started there because of buildings like the Fontana Towers or right by the water built these bulky, fat buildings blocking views, and now as a reaction, and it was also a reaction to the Transamerica building. [LAUGHTER] At that time.
19:12
It was seen as a monstrosity. It was actually designed for 11,500 feet when it was thought about initially, 1500. Remember that number. But they reacted negatively and they put the 550 foot height limit in reaction to that n a lot of the buildings that were coming up. There was a big challenge to how you develop that prime property to actually meets the time of the day. We've talked about today around some of the aversion to height is that context.
19:50
This is a diagram from Allan Jacobs, Jake's diagram. He was a former Planning Director in San Francisco, giants of an urban planner and he wrote Great Streets, one of the seminal books about great streets. That's nice diagram to describe what that looked like. The discourse about planning and design started with incredible community engagement. San Franciscans engaged at nauseum anything about planning issues. That was a time when I still had hair
20:23
and we had [LAUGHTER] significant amount of engagement. But the engagement process was about how do we separate these complex issues and peel into the idea of how transformation takes place. In this case, you start with 2D planning. We call them the planning game or hurts colors. They represent different scale, different square footage. Let's just focus what the area could yield. There was discussion about actually capturing value in the site that are going to be
20:53
developed to actually build the Transbay Terminal. There is a projection about $1.6 billion was the estimated cost of the Terminal at that time and the objective was to capture value from the increased heights eventually. But we didn't get into height at this time. We just wanted to have agreement and color card planning game to determine the pattern. Then we took that to the next level and we said, there'll be three potential options. These are scenarios. Again, very simple.
21:30
An eight year old can understand it. Diagrams, we have the available blocks here. We did initially three options. Here's the Salesforce Tower now, but we did not talk about height at that time increasing. You said 550 would be the highest. Let's really talk about form and scenarios. How do we place towers in this areas to actually have lightened error on the streets? What is the form mostly around thinking about the urban form, so each of the diagram show, we call it the checkerboard pattern,
22:11
two towers per block with 150 foot separation. What you see in pink is the datum. The ground floor would always have about 65-75 foot height, and then you go to two towers. What does that mean from urban form? But also I won't go into it so each of those calculations, whether you have one tower or two towers, also has numbers around how much revenue it would yield. This area became Melrose district, a taxing districts that you capture the value. When you go to one tower from two tower one tower,
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you have 50% of the potential revenue that community groups have to consider all of those not just form, but I'm just going to talk about form. The height is also illustrated. You go high in the middle and you stepped down as you get closer to the water. That's the San Francisco pattern. Then illustrate that what it means from many different neighborhoods and views. The checkerboard pattern, one tower per block, and one downtown hill, and we have debates and rating so what
23:19
does that mean from a skyline perspective? What does it mean to look at that from the bridge as well? Then we started thinking next level, so height is a problem. Have 550 feet was not going to do it. It's not appropriate everywhere that in that area to capture the value and one of the most important and expensive part of the land. You need to capture value vertically. But how do you do it? First, you have to change the paradigm around height. This is simple Photoshop, cut and paste.
23:56
There's nothing high-technology. You said, okay, we take community groups and meetings. We say, Mark Fontana Towers, what do you hate about them? Or blocks the views. You can't see the water. How about the cut half of it and put it on top? It's exactly the same square footage and you say this or this, this, or this. I don't know, eight or nine out of times they go out. I rather have this [LAUGHTER] because I have more light and air and opening and views.
24:25
Again, an eight-year-old can understand this. This is not a complex discussion. Some of the buildings that are going up at that time, Avalon towers, I think this is on, is it second? John is not here, I believe it's on second street. You take that and do the same thing. Simple Photoshop. You won't believe how much actually people ideas about what height means changes. Along with this, I don't have those diagrams, but we also talk about how do you experience buildings,
25:00
the first 60 degrees and people talking about that today. It's like the ground floor that really matters. From that and again, I'm using Allan Jacobs diagram, so maybe in the downtown area, this is not appropriate area. We might want to go skinnier and taller instead of short and fat. It has a lot of environmental implications. Then that led to more acceptance of height and that led us to actually change the regulations, so the wedding cake that was there since 70s.
25:34
Actually have a base of podiums that has no bulk control and then you limits the towers size, the spacing and that then became written into the regulations that then helped shape this is a Skidmore. I believe from the translate development, these are the early ideas, and forms before anything was built. Now some of the diagrams from crude diagrams and translating into what is now built well, the Salesforce Tower is now about 1,000 feet. [OVERLAPPING] The first time I
26:11
actually propose 750 people freaked out. Redevelopment agencies, they don't even talk about that. We cannot go there at this time. That's when the sketches and illustrations, which you don't even see, I used techniques. Whenever you use lime green people and free sketches, they respond better [LAUGHTER] than those computer drawings so that's San Francisco. Chicago has a completely different DNA. Although it has a great plan. Burnham's 1906 plant was
26:45
the most important plan at the time in even today. It was the first modern time plan for any major US city at that time. But that laid out literally for the next 100, 200 years, the DNA of Chicago. Protected waterfront public spaces they adapted the bizarre. It's planned a French plan and boulevards and streets in the public realm is just as important as the blocks are developing blocks. This is done by the civic government, but the civic and businesses
27:21
of Chicago where there is a great culture of that in Chicago for how the city is developed and that resulted in the form and skyline, and if waterfronts that's completely protected and accessible for 26 miles because of the 1909 Burnham Plan, 1909, I'm sorry. Then Chicago DNA is also built on some of the greatest architects of the 20th century actually practice their right after the fire it was tabula rasa, and that's where a lot of the Chicago's architectural culture came about fast-forward.
28:04
When I worked there in the 2000s, Mayor Richard M. Daley, was that a mayor, and this is where, again, he was the chief urban planner of the city. He loved city planning, not from a planning perspective where it takes 20 years, but city planning today and then building it tomorrow. He had no patience for waiting. Temporary buildings, he called it pilots, if it doesn't work. Let's make them pilots and then we build something or pilot green roofs and then they become regulations in the city.
28:37
When I was there, we were doing a major transformation for the downtown, the central area planning, so they're projecting the growth of the city, and Millennium Park story when that was built, that was a major transformation for the city. The public realm first actually leading the way the transformation of the city of Chicago at that time. Because of that, there were significant interest on owned private properties around because that added significant value to the neighborhood.
29:12
When I started with the city, this is a short story. First week the commissioner asked me to come to this meeting, a presentation by the developer of all of this area. The guy, they developed, all of these buildings as new Chicago neighborhoods. The Mayor Daley moved in one of those buildings that they built and this two short and fat buildings that you see there. They built those. I didn't know I was walked in to the meeting. They unveiled this a year of planning and design that
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this developer has developed to the commissioner, and I liked. I was very diplomatic than I looked at it. They had proposed right at that corner, which is like the book end of Grant Park. A stubby building like this, but very fat.
30:07
After they presented, the commissioner, Alicia Burg at that time asked me so well, any comments street introduced to with. This is a new Chief Deputy Commissioner for chief urban planner designer for the city and I was diplomatic. I said, I've been coming to Chicago on enough from San Francisco and I was just really disappointed about what the lost opportunity. There was a long lecture drive, and I mentioned this two buildings. I see the architects and
30:36
the developer going, hell is he talking about? Those buildings are really important buildings they solved right away and they are wonderful. What is the concern? I said, oh, and I don't have any concerns about obviously all by there as well if I have the view of the lake. But I said Chicago invented the modern time architecture, they invented the whole building. This is a great opportunity to book and complete the Grand Park, and they are looking at me and he said, I've never forget,
31:05
I spent about $1.6 billion of development in the downtown, research successful projects and one, and then two he said, we can't go above 400 feet because the Michigan Avenue is a landmark area, but not all the way here. What you see back there has about 400 foot datum. I said the issue is not about height so much, but it is important here because it's the right place to complete the Grant Park, but it's also an important place that then you save
31:38
space to create public spaces than the ground floor. Why not go taller? This is where a tall buildings should be, and they freaked out. She said, normally, we come here and they tell us to make it shorter and I said It's because the design maybe did not work. It's because the grant floor may not have worked. They looked at the commissioner and I said you'd have to go to back to the drawing board. This is the thing about Chicago too. There's no Planning Commission. Yeah, they have final say
32:09
often that everything is negotiated. There's a deal task force in the planning department. There is a team the commissioner and the urban designer and the planners get together and any developments, and you go through it, so you have a negotiation. The floor area ratio allows you to build significantly high. But through negotiation is that you determine what the heights and the building character is going to be. They went back and came back with new designs.
32:39
They went to the public, the community groups, and they were surprised that the response they got was really positive because they did a building. They have four sites here. They started building and proposed 680 feet at that time to be literally the book end of Grand Park. After the design started, he sent me a letter. The developer, normally we are skeptical about urban city government planners that I have to tell you, this building has become the highest selling property in the country for
33:19
a condo at the time before it was even built. They were incredibly surprised. This is where private and public sector in terms of if you have good leadership within the city, you can actually work with them. That then led to significant amount of transformation at the book end.
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This is the other thing. I used San Francisco in Chicago, and I'd bring some of those diagrams and I say, "Hey, this is what we did in San Francisco." When you do that, and this is a lesson, I think for the San Diego folks who are planning to implement. When you bring other cities' ideas, people actually open up. It's the easy trick to do. I used that in Chicago to tell them, "Hey, this is what is going on in San Francisco," because I went to Chicago after that. That then translated the design
34:11
because of the design culture in Chicago. Some of the greatest architects, once you give them the form, the outcome and the products are actually much better. It's not about the height, it's really some of the quality and design which we control less about it, and it's really up to the culture of the city that requires good design. Now a completely different scale. From the City of Chicago I went to Boulder, Colorado. It's one of a spectacular city. It's like San Francisco in
34:43
a way but a completely different scale. What's unique about Boulder is in the '50s or '40s, two professors from CU, Boulder, actually activists there, physics and I think, I forgot the other guy, they decided that there should be an urban growth boundary, and at a certain height in the mountain, they said they marked the area and they said above this line, no city services will be provided, so we'll grow sustainably. Then what you see in green, that whole area is the City of Boulder.
35:30
But the urban growth boundary protected that area and the city over the years and to this day they tax themselves to buy the land, to protect it as open space. You have to have a compelling reason to grow into those areas if you really run out of space in the center.
35:52
Like San Francisco, in Boulder you can solve everything about planning. They talk about zoning at Nazim, its city council. They would quote Vitruvius and Shakespeare when they talked about a three-foot height variance request. Literally. They would bring Vitruvius and they will talk about what the meaning of that three-foot design would mean for the City of Boulder. But what was interesting was there was a major opportunity to transform what is called the civic area in Boulder.
36:32
North of Canyon is a downtown. The famous Pearl Mall is right about here. There were some new developments that are taking place here. This is around 2011, 2012. There was a huge reaction from the community because the buildings that were built in the downtown were called Manhattanization of the Canyon Boulevard. Because they are built to the height limit of 55 feet, not 550, 55 feet. But if you heard the debates, it was exactly the same as San Francisco. There's 500 feet,
37:16
anything about even 55 foot is going to destroy their quality of life forever. These well-educated people who talk about Vitruvius would talk about anything. They hated the 55 foot building that were new ones. There was a whole debate going on. The first week I joined, the city council had directed the planning department to come back because there was, sorry, I forgot a little context here. There was a plan to actually expand South of Canyon of the downtown.
37:55
There was a big resistance because they did not like what was being built right along Canyon. Because there are three buildings on the end, the Atrium building, that square building. Dushanbe Teahouse for Tajikistan is a building that was brought in as a sister city and then put there, and a band shell from the 1930s, which was a hangout for homeless people, because we proposed a Boulevard, and they would die over the band shell being and even relocated because it's historic preservation there,
38:32
we'll talk about it another time. [LAUGHTER]. They've directed planning department to come back with three options of the South of Canyon development. But everything they talked about is FAR. The direction was the current FAR was like 1.2 floor area ratio, or 2.2 that was allowed. They asked them to come up with what a 2.0 FAR, or 2.2, or 2.7 could look like, so that they can decide on the zoning. It completely backfired because they looked at this and they said there's no difference.
39:11
You could hear at 1:00 AM in the morning meetings at city council, literally debating this. When I came and I said come back because there was a new vision was being discussed about FAR. They said come back again. I came back. Actually, that's when I joined and said, you are having the wrong conversation here. If your direction is to come up with a new vision for South of Canyon, why are you focusing on the building area? You own about 75% of the land in that civic area.
39:51
Why not transform the public realm? Not the building blocks, but the space in-between. That would transform. That's a new vision. I said, by the way, look at what Chicago did in Millennium Park. I brought Millennium Park images and fit it on the plan. It's exactly the same size. This is 27 acres from here to that end and that's what Millennium Park is. What is the Millennium Park of Boulder, and they went, "That's interesting." Then looked at the Boulevard opportunity for Canyon.
40:28
They are the Boulder Creek. Why not we focus on the major streets? Boulevards, tree planting, and churn that derelict street in more pedestrian friendly, with more like Paris and lime green colored sketches of the different parts of the areas. People have a softer response to that, and how you can create Boulevard with bikes and pedestrians and everything else. How small scale areas can be created, alleys, so that really changed the conversation. At the end of this process, they're very extreme,
41:11
including Steve Pomeranz, Bill Nelson and plan Boulder, to say one extreme instead of nimby organization, to the developers, both of them actually applauded when city council said, "Let's go in this direction." That then turned into, "How do we get public engagements?" One thing that we did there, because Boulder is really smart, we said, we planners should not go out and actually speak in the public engagement. Let's give them the tools. Let's hire an artist
41:42
to talk about planning and engagement. This is a short video, and we hired this performance artist to come and actually talk about what the place could be so that we get people who don't normally come to public meetings and about planning, to come out. She didn't know anything about planning. We told her what we wanted as the outcome. This is a short couple of minutes video. Just watch it. Protocol Number 2 deals with my anxiety about change. Sometimes I'm thinking change is not
42:15
a good idea and I think I like the way it is. I don't want it to change, but I think no, step back, think about the temporality of the human experience, of the experience of the planet. When you step far enough back, look at geological time, you see the change is inevitable. In order to feel the sense of history and time, I took myself using applied science and modern technology and inserted photos of myself, videos of myself into the past, into the Precambrian era, into the Mesozoic era,
42:42
into the 1890s, into the 1920s, the 1970s, and the 1950s. That practice of taking my contemporary self into the past really soothed my anxiety. But it felt also important to bring the past into the present. That's why with the use of this little Victorian number and also the use of my warm outfit, they would have of course come from the Precambrian era, I was able to imagine what that prehistoric reality was and how important it is to our present day. In addition, it felt important to
43:12
imagine what the future would be to bring the past, the present into the future. You see me here in the warm and the Victorian outfit and the contemporary outfit in some possible features. Futures. I don't know what it's going to look like. The Matrix Star Wars, I don't know if that's right, the right look or Dubai as the right look for boulder. But again, just starting to think what that would be in known that the people back in the day, they were dreaming about the future of boulder and
43:36
that we need to do it now and that people in the future we'll do it as well. That takes me step 5 which is the idea, again of thinking outside the box. Dance very helpful to help you think outside the box, and I was going with this metaphor, thinking outside the box and I thought, You know what, maybe there's a problem with thinking outside the box. If the box is the same old box. Here, I'm experimenting with a variety of different boxes. Because again, I'm thinking that if we really want
43:58
to imagine yet unimagined, we not only need to think outside the box, we need to actually think outside a different box. Here, I'm just around the neighborhood during to think deeply and profoundly outside the box, and again, the diversity of the boxes, trying to represent some of the diverse needs and realities and possible pleasures here in boulder and again, this is not what I'm saying should be, but it how shall I say, suggest that unless you do get involved,
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my ideas are going to be the ones on the table [LAUGHTER] and beverage looking at architecture. But it's cool because they're all connected with straws. That's great. But again, it's super important for everybody's voice to be at the table. I hope if you're in the mood, you'll consider contributing to this effort. [APPLAUSE] We did not only have videos, so we would have her in person with a video background where performing in farmers markets, outdoor gatherings, and it was so effective,
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it we increased incredibly the participation. That led to a vote that went into raising think it was eight million dollars to first build a park. That again, the lime green sketches really work really well, and this was the plan that was approved, and then they did a first phase, a eight million dollars to actually build a park. The first phase is completed there already starting the second phase, and it was an incredible transformation in that engagement and then we have, 3-4 minutes.
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I have one more video, but if it takes about four minutes. This one is, so at the end of my sixth year there, this is an ad how Eminem and improv. There was an interview about the park at my last interview with the local channel, and I wanted to bring up some of the absurdities as well around historic Landmark, but you'd see how it's turned out. [MUSIC] In June of 2015, city council accepted the updated border civic area master plan which defines the overall concept for
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the Civic area park and establishes criteria and guidelines for the consideration of specific improvements. The site includes the area between Canyon Boulevard and Arapaho Avenue and between ninth and 14th Street's, the long-term vision is to transform the civic area into a unique and active destination. There reflects the community's shared values, providing spaces and programs for people to gather, recreate learn, and innovate. Joining us for an update on the civic area or city planners,
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Sam SFO and project coordinator join a Korean welcomed inside border. Thank you. Juan, I'm wondering if you could give us a little bit of background on how the $8.7 million phase 1 projects billing. [OVERLAPPING] Absolutely, so we have done a lot of work with the community and engaged in the design of the park. We had a number of options that were being considered that has been narrowed down to one. That one option is being brought through the city's process in terms of planning, development,
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design review, and we're actually at a point where we plan to start construction by the end of the summer and Labor Day. See him, I know part of this visioning and design phase for the Civic area. You really think about new concepts together people, and one of the things we keep hearing about as the band shell, I'm just wondering where that sat. The band Charlie's one of the most important elements in the civic area, and there's been a lot of discussion, community conversation about that.
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What we've done is have heard from thousands of people about ideas. We've engaged professionals to actually help us figure out how best to relocate the band shell within the civic area and the idea that really had the most support currently is one that would actually look at the band shell on top of the teahouse and you'll be structured in a way that it's incredibly. A proportion so that they both respect to each other from a design perspective.
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And what is even more compelling is an idea that you take the atrium building and that could be on top of the band shell, and it's a really phenomenal idea that was actually brought by an architect from Netherlands, Rem Koolhaas. It's well structured in which you have a balanced historic structures. The only within one on top of the other, the atrium buildings or pyramidal strips. That will be the top of that. Completely improper, pictures were done across [inaudible]. One challenge we had was
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it won't meet our height ordinate. It will become, it will go above 55 foot height. But we're very encouraged this all together. Our last meeting actually wanted to put on the charter amendments to the height limits so that this project could actually be implemented. We're very excited and there's a lot of public support for the idea, and people would really appreciate the architectural importance of this historic preservation,. Why stackable design Louis is taken, in other words,
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by storm, so instantly bring it to border. I do have one other question though. I understand that we've been modifying parking you in the civic area, but a lot of things have been landmarks. There has been a movement to landmark every third parking spaces is correct [LAUGHTER]. How will we relocate that? Is that going to be part of the new hospital complex? That's going to be a challenge, especially when your land marking every third and if it was every other one, that would actually be better.
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It'll take a long time to explain why that is the case. Why we decided to do is actually look at the boulder community health side and see if we can mitigate that situation. But we can still learn mark every third parking spot, [LAUGHTER] and then be able to actually accommodate some of them. We may have to share one parking space through three cards. This idea of stackable design could come into play there as well. Many parking garages,. Exactly, what we learned from the band shell,
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teahouse, an atrium stocked up. The structural innovation from that we want to apply to stocking cars and one parking spaces can be shared by three people. If your land marking every third parking spot, then you can offset it by stacking up three cars in one parking spot. That's another innovation that we're really excited about. This indicator is going to be a destination spot for so many reasons. Thank you both for joining us and gave me some when that project is. Thank you for having us here.
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[APPLAUSE] That's complete, Improv. Then went back and put the Photoshop here. He went with it. Photoshop those things and then that was added later. Anyways, so that, you have to have some levity in some of our conversations that we have, especially with online marketing. Thank you [APPLAUSE]
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