Season 2 Episode 21 | Urban Concepts with Jared Rodriguez

Do our neighborhoods reflect our natural community patterns? Have we designed them to create economic success? We gravitate towards highly interconnected walkable ecosystems, but somewhere along the way we've turned away from that natural inclination, compartmentalizing our cities so that offices and commercial uses are separate, making the retail businesses surrounding them dependent on the 9-5 workers that frequent the area and leaving the neighborhood emptied outside of traditional office hours. Perhaps it's time to evaluate the ecosystems we create for ourselves to insure they match out natural order: to create neighborhoods that are fully livable and fully functional, with high levels of diversity that create natural economic success.

This week's episode features Jared Rodriguez, Principal, Emergent Urban Concepts, a thought leader in the realm of community development. With a degree in civil engineering, architectural Studies, and has worked in Real Estate Development with a focus on green energy components and sustainability, Jared helps communities determine who they want they be. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

We are experiencing a paradigm shift, a fundamental change in the way we usually do things. We are intentionally choosing to see the silver lining opportunity arises. We can shine a light on the things that weren't working well on those things that weren't really working at all, we can regroup reevaluate and re-engineer it's time to explore new patterns and paradigms those that inspire us to rise above the chaos and explore how the conditions of today and take us to a better tomorrow patterns and paradigms the pattern podcast from Hudson valley pattern for progress. Your listening to season two episode 21 urban concepts with your host pattern, president and CEO, Jonathan Dropkin.

Speaker 2: 1:04

Hi everyone, and welcome to patterns and paradigms. We hope you enjoyed our last episode with Simone development. Today's episode will be our last until we resume after labor day, while we wish you all time to be outside. We have a great deal of work to tend to over the next three months. Um, we will return with a great fall lineup. If you have any topics in mind, drop us an email, of course, feel free to use the break to catch up with past episodes by downloading them through apple podcast or wherever you find your favorite one, or, um, well, actually not, or, but, and please take a moment to share one of your favorites with someone else so that they can be introduced to patterns and paradigms this week's bubble or trend supplies. Supplies supply kind of reminds me of the old Gomer Pyle. If you're old enough to remember surprised, surprise, surprise. But when we return in the fall, we will see where the pandemic induced supply shortages are, whether it is food as all the restaurants open at once and are all demanding, they need supplies or labor as demand for production heats up. There seems to be far more supply side shortages than originally anticipated. If you were looking to build the new house, good luck as there is a shortage of lumber. This one is already at exacerbating, a shortage of new homes driving through the roof. Pardon the pun. If it continues, expect the fed reserve to step in and revisit interest rates, so bubble or trend. Well, we got to look at this one as a trend, at least until September and that's as far as we have to weigh in on this, the economy and society for that matter is going through what we would call the great resettling. There are a number of things that need to find the equilibrium post pandemic. So while this might appear to be a bubble, we think of it more like a trend as we settle all parts of our society to a new leveling. And w w we're struggling to find the right words here. But remember, this is something that hadn't happened in a hundred years. It is going to take a while to see just where we are. So I'm here with my partner and pattern, Joe Cheika the New York times of the weekend. Joe had an article on world demographic trends as weird pattern consider ourselves pretty good demographers, or at least pretty good analyst of demographic information. There was a lot to digest in that article. Unfortunately, we never seem to be able to get people as excited as we are about demographics, but underneath most societal trends, there is an element of demography. What was your favorite takeaway from the article Joe? Well, it was a little depressing to be honest with you, but there's a lot of takeaways. And I think it's really important that we understand what, what was behind this article in that we're losing people, we're losing population. There's something out there called a replacement rate, which needs to be at 2.1. And that's simply, um, the amount of people needed, um, that replaces our society. Uh, that kind of works like for every two adults. There needs to be two kids. That's correct. And there's something called the fertility rate. And so when the replacement rate, I'm sorry, when the fertility right, gets a little complicated drops below 2.1, we lose population. And ever since 1971, our fertility rate has been below 2.1 today. It's actually about 1.7 and it is an issue. It's not only an issue here, but it's an issue around the entire glow, 183 countries and territories out of 195 will have fertility rates below the replacement rate by 2100 that's yeah, that's not too far away. Right. And it's actually forecasted that we're going to start shrinking by 2062, according to the university of Washington. And even if we rapidly increase this rate, it would take decades to take effect. The lack of immigration is an issue, but it's not a long-term solution because the other countries are facing the same issues we are. So it would be sort of a, you know, about a swap out if you will. People leave in countries that are losing population into other countries that are losing population, it's a lose, lose scenario, Joe, Joe, it is one of the solutions for, you know, I don't want to be, um, one of the great parts about America is that immigration has led to probably what makes one of the many reasons of what makes this country as great as it is when we have allowed for immigration, the blending of different cultures, thinking ideas. It was what this country, at least in my belief was founded on. Absolutely. And one of the components certainly, um, that immigration allows is fixing labor shortages. And yet, you know, if you want to shut the door and you have labor shortages, you're shutting off combined with what you're talking about, you know, the low fertility rate and being below the replacement rate, Joe, one of our favorite discussions has come up many times last week was that all my God, we're going to be building in our, um, community more housing and the impact on schools. You have an opinion on that one. Yeah, just a little bit. So the old adage is when you build a house or an apartment, you increase the school population by 2.5 kids. We haven't found the 0.5 kid, but can you imagine 2.5 kids that was based on a Rutgers study done many decades ago, and people on zoning boards and planning words and town boards, they're still stuck on that right now. We're actually probably about 0.6 or 0.7 kids per unit. So it's substantially lower. And so the argument of you build a subdivision of a hundred, a hundred units or a hundred homes. We're going to add 2.5 kids per so it's 250 kids per 100 units. Not happening, not happening at all. People are just not having kids. And, and it's a big impact. The population pyramid, which should be like exactly a pyramid. It should be the younger people on the bottom and the older people. Well on top and the bottom supports the top. Well, the population pyramid has actually been reversed. There's less on the bottom, more on top. So what happens that population pyramid, if you think of a triangle it's standing on its point, it's going to fall over. Why does that happen? Well, not enough gen Z and millennials are having kids. And if they do have a family, as we like to say one and done the birth, the birth rate itself has actually dropped by 4% during the pandemic on, you know, popular belief, oh, people are probably going to have more kids because they're all home and not doing anything else didn't happen. So for many people, it's an economic decision, which is unfortunate, social security. Again, if you look at that population pyramid, social security is going to have a big impact who pays for all of the elderly population, retiring with an aging population. We're going to need more healthcare providers and services. Other workforce issues come into play more than lack of skilled people. We have a lack of people altogether by 2026, there's going to be an estimated workforce deficit of some 6 million people. That's only five years away. Baby boomers were retiring at the rate of 2 million per year. Last year, 3 million retired. The United nations actually said that before the next century there'll be two people dependent upon each worker. So a third depends on I'm sorry. Two thirds depends on one third labor force participation rate dropped from 5% in 1982, between 1980 and 2019. The percentage of, of the, of a given population is employed or actively seeking employment is available for that's the definition of the labor force participation rate about 7 million able-bodied people chose not to work millennials. They're inheriting wealth from the baby boomers. The opioid crisis pulled almost a million prime age men from the workforce in 2015 alone. Then some 38% of men aged 25 to 34, still living with their parents. Those three elements, right? There are huge demographic input, implicate implications, automation and technology will help to some degree, but there's more critical mass. There is more of a critical mass of robots building and providing direct services. Meaning we have a labor issue, technology can't fully replace human beings. We need targeted skills and training with higher retention rate of all workers, colleges and universities will need to enhance their services, their programs, and overall their educator education model to incorporate more non-traditional students, part-timers parents with the child where people taking care of their elderly parents or grandparents. So it's going to be a paradigm shift from everything from working in a manufacturing center, to working in a warehouse distribution center to college programs, looking for their next student. Well, if that doesn't give you enough to think about between now and our return just after labor day, I don't know what does demographics. I know it's just numbers, but as judges pointed out all the realities of what those numbers mean. So thank you. You're welcome. Our guest today is Jared Rodriguez. Jared is one of our favorite young thought leaders in the area of community development. Jared is degreed in civil engineering and architectural studies. He worked eight years real estate development, but distinctly focused on green energy components. Jared is now full time as the principal of his own consulting firm, emergent urban concepts, which helps communities determined who they want to be. Jared has an opinion on just about everything, but they're educated opinions. They're based on having spent years trying to figure out how things work. You'll hear many of them in today's discussion. Hi, Jared, how you doing? Doing well? How are you? Pretty good? You know this for our listeners, this, you know, I'll repeat it a few times probably, but this will be our last as we take our summer break and we couldn't be more delighted than to have you with us. Um, how did you know that this virus was not just a virus, but was going to be, uh, something more than that? So I, I mean, this is absolutely crazy. I read an article by, I cannot remember who it was, but he was talking about exponential growth and how, you know, massive growth can be hidden in plain sight without even kind of knowing it. So this was around the time where they like put a cord in around, or maybe just before they put a cordon around new, um, that was the first whatever that was. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't the first, right? So like my, my wife is a nurse practitioner. She works in Manhattan and throughout November and December, they were seeing COVID cases. They just didn't know it was COVID. Um, so the first, like major, I guess, major outbreak that we were aware of, right. As a, uh, state public health authority was newer shell, but it definitely looking back was not the first time I read this article about exponential growth and how it's sort of like hidden in plain sight. And then all of a sudden it skyrockets, right. And hospitals are shutting down because they're re you know, reaching capacity. And that could happen in like less than a one week period. Right. Just sort of what we experienced. Um, I actually went to London on March. I think it was March 8th. And so went to London after the new Rochelle guy was identified and yeah, and then we're an N 95 mask throughout all the airports and on the airplane. And people were like making fun of me, you know, in the subway too. Right. People were sort of like, what, you know, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? And I'm like, are you, you're watching Asia, right. Like they're doing it. So we should be doing it. And this is an air, you know, this is an airborne disease. Right. And people, and then, you know, even the CDC was saying, it's not an airborne disease. Right. I don't know what the ulterior motives were, but very unclear communication the beginning. Um, and so by the time I was returning, it was like, right before the shutdown on March 13th, it was like Friday the 13th. And, uh, you know, by then it was pretty clear. Cause I think the market was crashing and you know, in, in London it was starting to get a little bit freaky. Uh, you know, and then you started seeing like, everybody's starting to wear masks and yeah. So do you have any problem coming home from London or was it before they remember that some point the president came said no more flights from Europe? No, no, no. It was fine. Um, coming back, uh, and it was actually like really easy to get back. I was just sort of freaked out, join the clubs and um, I mean, luckily I didn't, I didn't get it. And very few people that I know did, but obviously it was like a tremendous tragedy and it's one example of, um, our infrastructure kind of failing us. Right. And in this case it was public health infrastructure. So I I'm one of the people that believe this was a full-out failure to identify a risk and take appropriate action. Um, and it was, and we, you know, we paid the price with, you know, hundreds of thousands of deaths, which is[inaudible] 600,000, you know? Yeah. All right. So Jared, for the benefit of our listeners, um, let's describe what emergent urban concepts are, which is your own baby, I think. And then you also work for LeFrak development. Sure. So actually left is a client of emerging now, I'm sorry. I mean, full on, you know, in my consulting firm, uh, I've, I've had this from sort of off and on actually since 2007 when I was in undergrad. So, uh, with a few friends of mine, we started a consulting firm that focused on planning for large scale renewables, um, mostly in new England and Western New York. So at the time there were a lot of wind power developers that were approaching municipalities and industrial development authorities. Um, and asking for deals like approvals on these really large projects, because that was, you know, in 2007, that was the last time that, um, wind was competitive with natural gas. Uh, obviously like the recession turned everything upside down and the federal government made a decision to use natural gas as a bridge fuel. And they pumped a lot of funds into development of natural gas and the price collapsed. Um, and then when became less competitive. So I actually started took, uh, almost like a 10 year I, it is from doing consulting, um, and got a master's in real estate development. Um, you know, coming off of my undergraduate degree in civil structural engineering and architectural studies. Um, and then, you know, went to work for, uh, the lift rack organization in New York. Um, and I had always been really interested in real estate development. It was sort of the thing that I wanted to do as my, my career. Um, you know, I worked for Martin Ginsburg on Haverstraw and a few other projects. Um, you know, when, when again went away to college and then started working with the left racks and at rougher, I, um, I mostly managed energy and energy conservation and then sustainability compliance because, you know, over the past 10 years there's been sort of a revolution in how, um, emissions from buildings is regulated and how energy consumption is regulated. Uh, and so, you know, I kind of lived through the whole, um, how do you convert tens of millions of square feet of, of, uh, residential and commercial space to all LEDs? How do you, um, you know, take serious, like the issue of lack of insulation, um, and then how do you kind of cut across a lot of different sectors to achieve, you know, solutions that meet objectives, um, that are like very broad, right? And so that's sort of, that's sort of what I think my expertise is, is like I could look at objectives, um, coming from a lot of different stakeholders, right. Who might have like very different points of view. And I can understand when they're saying the same thing so that you can, you know, for lack of a better word, killed two birds with one with one stone. I mean, I, I hate that. I hate that. Uh, but, um, but yeah, so, so, so yeah, I mean, uh, the experience with blood Frick was amazing. I mean, they are city builders. They, they build at scales that few people are familiar with. I mean, they've, they've acquired, uh, rail yards from, from, uh, different rail companies and built, you know, hundreds of buildings, uh, new cities springing up from nothing like just south of the Hoboken terminal on the Jersey city, waterfront, um, you know, battery park city, uh, they were the first to build their battery park city. So they're a company that has vision. They don't have the reputation for being visionaries, but they really are. Um, which is kind of, kind of interesting. So I was lucky to work for them. So I, I grew up in Queens and there was LeFrak city, which was one of, I think their earliest projects, which is how I know of them. So let's, well actually I was going to go in one direction. So let me actually go in a different direction, which is, um, so New York city, the lack of people returning to work all these tall, urban skyscrapers in New York city, many of which are still far below capacity. Have you thought much about something like, what do we do with them? And yeah, of course. Yeah. So what do we do Jared? Well, what's interesting though, is leading up to the pandemic, the amount of density in skyscrapers, like office was increasing dramatically, uh, you know, it increased dramatically. It was like the WIWORK phenomenon, right? Cram as many people as you can into a single space, you know, the partitions come down, everybody's working really close to each other. So there was a dynamic where like we were at extremely high density, like sometimes double what it traditionally was like, certainly triple what it was in the sixties or the seventies when most of the building stock was built. I mean, think sixth avenue we're having to the America's right. Or Madison. Um, so we were already like really high and it was almost to some extent, you know, detrimental to the neighborhood because there you, these neighborhoods with mostly office workers and the entire retail ecosystem, right. Everything is oriented to nine to five. So when people leave, it dies, it's just dead. I mean, we've all experienced what it's like in Midtown, you know, on an evening outside of say the theater district. Right. Um, it's totally dead. So, uh, and it's more dead now. So, so I think, honestly, the answer is we need to make fully livable neighborhoods. Every neighborhood needs to be like fully livable and functional and not just cater to, or serve one youth, right. Or one type of person. It has to have high levels of diversity. And that's how you create economic success. Because if you think about how we build or develop communities, I mean, it's really not unlike a natural ecosystem, right. I mean, it's, it's, our ecosystem is one that we build, right. Um, but it's usually highly diverse, highly interconnected. And the only thing that prevents those things from happening are our own silly rules, um, zoning and exactly. And, and other restrictions that defy what our natural order is. Our natural order is to cluster and do a high diversity of things in, within generally a walkable, um, uh, scale. So we've been doing that for thousands of years. What, what changed? I mean, I could, I could get into what changed, which goes back probably to 1900 or the 1890s. So let me ask you this then could a skyscraper, you know, one of these 80 story, residential towers or something, or commercial, you know, commercial, uh, more of the residential of the higher ones, but what if they were mixed use and you create, create, you know, like every third floor was actually residential and then the bottom floors were actually retail and then which they often are. I just saw this new one opened this eighties story one. Did you notice the one with the outdoor elevators there? It's amazing. Maybe, maybe, yeah. I've, I've seen a bunch of proposals lately and I think people are keying into this, and this is something that was happening before, before the pandemic. I mean, the pandemic sort of like an accelerator, right. Nothing that happened during the pandemic was new, not one thing was new, it was just extreme and accelerating. Right. So all the trends that we're seeing are just accelerated trends that were already there. And one of those trends was mixed use skyscrapers, right. Um, and incorporating different uses. And typically what they, what they'll do is like, you know, the, the, the highest part of the skyscraper is condo. The middle is a hotel and the bottom is retail and office. Right. That makes sense. Cause that's where the value is. Um, but you know, I would go further and say that artists and manufacturing is something that could happen in some of these large floorplate buildings. I mean, no reason why you can't do small batch manufacturing, um, especially if they are core spaces that have less value. Um, there's probably some level of boutique manufacturing that could, uh, that could occur. I mean, a lot of the stuff I went to Brooklyn, um, a lot of stuff that's coming through the Hudson valley. Uh, but you know, this is sort of the problem of like building purpose built buildings, right? Like the building is built for a very specific use, kind of like a Walmart, right. It's how do you let it evolve? Because throughout the millennia, the history of humans, right. Uses and things, and villages and settlements evolve, right. They have to change. So why are we throwing all these resources that like a throwaway landscape, it kind of doesn't make sense versus like, what did they do in the 18, you know, 1880s and nineties in the industrial revolution, they built buildings that could become sort of anything. Right. And that's like garner art center, a lot of our old factory and mill buildings throughout the Hudson valley. So, you know, back then it was built to host manufacturing. And, you know, in the eighties and nineties, they started to attract, you know, artists, um, and scenic design shops and all these other types of uses. And today there's a brewery boom, or there has been for the past almost 10 years. Um, so what is what happens next? And we're actually seeing, uh, like a hospitality boom in the Hudson valley. And I would argue that that will continue as the link between the New York tourism industry and the Hudson valley continues to be solidified. I mean, we're going to continue to ride this, this tourism, boom. And it's not just for international tourists that are coming though. That's, that's a big, big market and it will, I think, continue to be a big market once we get out of, uh, COVID maybe bigger than ever before, because everybody's just dying to not be cooped up in their house anymore. Um, but it's also like this weekend market. I mean, we've seen a major trend reversals in, uh, Metro, north ridership, right? It's it's off peak. I mean, off peak is booming and weekend summers like summer weekends, um, and fall weekends are just booming. Like you can't even today, actually last weekend. Um, not a seat available on a Metro north train, headed back into the city from Peekskill, uh, on a Sunday evening, wait, Jared. So let's just set this up for our listeners. So New York city is this massive urban, um, center to our south. And then the Hudson valley, which is primarily our listeners is, um, for patterns. Listeners is nine counties have, which we're going to, I think your tourism transition is really helpful, but I want to ask one question and then we're going to bring you up to the Hudson valley since you have your, your you've worked in both New York city and the Hudson valley. So, um, are you bullish? Will New York city come back as a young adult? Yeah, of course. Right. I mean, unless we have a population collapsed, right? Cause no one's having children, New York times is a thing. Yeah. But I would say that for every person that says that they want to leave New York, there's 10 people lined up saying that they want to be there. So when prices readjust spots get filled sort of immediately. Um, and it's always been that way. It's always been that way. We have a lot of neighbors in Westchester and Rockland that moved here in the seventies and eighties and said, you could keep the city. I like rest jester and Rockland. Right. But for every person that lived there eventually with someone to fill their shoes or 10 people to fill their shoes and that's what we've seen happen. So the city always reinvents itself and is dynamic and changes. I mean, I know people catastrophize over sea level rise, but the city's going to reinvent and find its way. There's been sea level. There's been catastrophic sea level rise for lower Manhattan since the 18, since the 17 hundreds. Right. And it somehow changed and became something else. So landfilling is not impossible. We're really good at it. Well, battery park city, the new urban park that was just open that's this floating 2.4 acres. It's it's fascinating to me. All right. So explain if I'm, if I'm right. I think there's a difference between economic development and community development and you have been very active in communities like Haverstraw and Ossining is there. So what is community development versus economic development? If you agree that there is a difference? Um, I have a hard time finding a difference because although all I think economic development is, or the economy is, is just the it's, this, the economy is the speed and direction and interconnectivity of how money flows. That's all that it is. Right. And all that is doing is just expressing one aspect of like a society, that's it. Right. And you could place rules on this society, right. And you can shape it based on how you require people settle and the patterns of development that occur. Um, and then that just expresses an economy. So I, I don't know, I have a hard time finding the difference. I mean, community development maybe is a little bit more fine tuned and, and socially oriented, like actually thinking about the different social connections that exists in a, in a particular location. Um, but everything rolls up into the economy ultimately. Um, and I, I was using this kind of, I always use this sort of analogy, like the, the way we've done economic development is very much like, like very large scale farming, uh, sorta like Monat mano culture soybeans on the thousand acres. Right. Um, because you know, we look for like the silver bullet, right? Like we want to attract a really large employer. We think about it regionally from a very regional scale. Um, and we sort of lacked the nuances that occur on a very local basis, but, you know, we're set up to be sort of like a top-down the state has a lot of control there's county level economic development agencies, you know, there's large regional think tanks like pattern. Right. Um, and we sort of lack the other than maybe really good chambers of commerce. We lack the, on the ground understanding of how places function, um, on a main street basis. Right. Uh, and so community development, I think, is like the bridge between, um, like the large scale farming and, you know, people doing gardening on their own plots. So, I mean, in that way, really it is, it is like economic gardening, right? You're, you're attempting to create fertile ground for, um, positive change in communities. And you're trying to generally be, I think, inclusive of the people that are already living there versus trying to land a spaceship on a community to cause major change. I think it's a more nuanced version of economic growth. So you're a trustee in the village of sleepy hollow. You've done work and have a straw, which is a relatively small community, um, Ossining also as a small village, um, when you're working in these municipalities that is closer, I think, just because of scale to what you would call community development. So how do you try to organize them and say, Hey guys, we have to think about our communities a little bit differently than we did before. Any, any thoughts come to mind? Cause you, you work with you've done. I mean, even if you talk just about garner ArtCenter and Rocklin, it is a, a, um, a, probably a story unto itself about how to take an old textile mill and try to say, how can we energize it today? So examples from the communities you've worked in about how you've tried to bring community development and energy to them. So, so like how an ecosystem emerges. It takes a really long time, and this is why I think state agencies, uh, or even, you know, regional aid agencies, um, are focused on, I guess what I call like catastrophic change, like big sort of more immediate change versus like incremental evolutionary change because one, you know, we generally don't have the patience or the perseverance to ceasing, see something through over like a multi-decade period. Um, and two there's, I call it like catastrophic amounts of money available to do big things. So oftentimes the way to do economic development or that we've done it traditionally is like that spaceship lands in a community and it creates major change. Right? I mean, think like white Plains or what's happening in your shell or Yonkers or, um, even to some extent Peekskill, but we're going to see more of that over the coming. I don't know, probably five years. Um, so, you know, it's when you, when you do community development or community scale development and you're causing, um, thoughtful, incremental evolutionary change, uh, you have to have really good relationships with people that hold power. Um, you have to understand the community and where power lies in the, in the community, right. Who has a voice who doesn't, who should have a voice that doesn't, and then you have to come up with plans that everybody can sort of get on board with. Right. Um, and visions. Right. So I was the, I was asked to be the chairman of, uh, the comprehensive plan it's called Haverstraw at a long or have a straw forward. Um, and I mean, that was an amazing, like, amazing process, right? Lots of public outreach sessions, um, embedding in the community during events, uh, trying to reach the different players in the community, like multiple times throughout the process. Um, and, and make sure that they, that they understand like why a vision is useful, right. Because it's, it's kind of showing you like, this is where you could go and all the decisions that you make between now and there. I mean, you're never going to exactly get there. Right. But you should orient it while you're sort of decision-making, um, to at least put you moving in that, in that direction. So, you know, whether it's having a star garner now, sleepy hollow, um, it's it's relationships, I think that are the most that are the most important. Um, and figuring also out, figuring out how to, um, elevate people that are already in the community that have the ability to make positive change, right. Because no, one's going to do it themselves. You need to find effectively a small army of people that are like-minded that share that vision right. To advance change. And it might seem like at first it's something extremely small, like, you know, building bird houses and hanging them from street trees right. Or putting in a community garden. Right. But then ultimately you pull more people in because they see positive change. I think people are attracted to positive change. Um, and they're on board with making, with making more. Um, and then obviously I didn't talk anything about like regulatory or zoning, but all of that stuff, the rules that you place on the community, um, have to evolve with the community's perspective and the community's desires. So wait, pause a second there, because one of the things that I've always struggled with is that in the comprehensive plan process for a community, and they're trying to think, what do they want to be? So they, they you've been, let's say you, well, you have been successful in getting people to coalesce around a vision. My struggle has always been five years later. How do we keep people on mission? This is where we're going. People move in, move out, people have different thoughts. Is that, has that been an issue for you in thinking about how to get communities to evolve? Oh, I'll tell you in 10 years. No, no. I, I think, I think the problem is, is that people think about these processes as like you do this once every, you know, name a period of time. I hadn't had a comp plan done in something like 25 years, I think, maybe longer actually. Um, and hasn't changed it's zoning, right? So the zoning is almost like the original code, which is just crazy. Um, and we did have a whole conversation about where that code came from. It didn't come from local, it didn't come from us. It was given to us. Uh, so, so I think that engagement and the conversations about implementing the vision has to be always public and happening all the time. And so figuring out the right application or mode of, of creating that engagement, I think is really important. So, you know, in Haverstraw, for example, and this predates the comp plan, but it's interesting because it's information that sort of fed into the comp plan, um, a number of volunteers and I, uh, started a food crawl, right. And it was almost like a function that it chamber should do. Um, but in this case it was like a local arts organization that was, you know, pushing this food crawl. And it was just sort of like, it's really interesting. It was to sort of, um, celebrate, you know, people walking up and down this main street, people of all different kinds from all different backgrounds, uh, like sort of rubbing elbows and interacting in a place where there is in north Rockland. Right. There's traditionally a lot of, um, fear and racial animosity. Wait, wait, hold on, hold on one sec. So crawl. So I spent a year in England, so I know what a pub crawl is, where you go from one pub to another, to another to another. So are you saying that if I'm just imagining what, what a food crawl is, different ethnicities stopping in different places with a group of people and then introducing different cultures along the way? I don't know. Yeah. It's really wild. I mean, have, is trust God something like, I mean, we would get 25 restaurant there's more than 25 restaurants in less than something like a four block radius in Haverstraw. It's really insane. So we would get around 25 restaurants joining this event and, you know, the doors would be open and people would stop in and basically get something like top us. I mean, you could sit down and get a full, full service meal, but, but we would encourage people to hit as many of them as they could. Um, yeah, I mean, and there's everything it's like Caribbean, Puerto Rican, Dominican, uh, Ecuadorian, Mexican, um, Asian there's, there's an amazing like French fusion restaurant in downtown Havis DRA. So, you know, there were, there was, and there is like this really amazing opportunity to get people from different cultures to interact over food, which is a lot easier to get them to do than anything else. And then we added beer to, we shut up, we shut a street down and had a, you know, a garden and invited six, like local or regional breweries to, to sell their beer in the street. And it was, it's just an amazing, you know, there's live music, it's an incredible event. Um, and it came out of like Facebook conversations on a community page where people saying like, I'm afraid to go to have a straw. And it's like, well, do you ever? And they're like, well, no, because I'm afraid. And I'm like, okay, so we'll host this safe space event for you so that you feel safe and comfortable and you can experience like all of this really amazing food and realized that the people that are either running these businesses or live in the community, aren't going to bite you, you know, when you show up to, to try this food. Um, and they did. And the, the foot traffic to these restaurants after we started this, like actually increased. And now there are, there are people that never, that, like, they'd never considered going to have us draw downtown Haverstraw for, for lunch or dinner. And now they're sort of like regulars in, you know, like a central American restaurant. It's really absolutely incredible. Um, what it does is it just like shifts the perception or the window of what people perceive to the acceptable, you know, this, and th these, these issues are kind of like across the board, what do people perceive to be acceptable right. In their community? Like what's normal, right? And if you can kind of nudge them out of that safe space, uh, and into some new perception, I mean, that's what community development is. Like, you were radically changing how people think about themselves or their community, um, to create opportunity. So, so I had wondered what your thoughts were going to be about the future of main street, but it sounds like you've, you've given me clues here that there, there, it was, things are always meant to evolve and will there be, you know, people always fear Amazon will take over the world in terms of everything will be delivered, but will there always be this need for gathering places and how do we sell them? And what does, what do we need to add to energize them as well? So as people become wealthier, get educated, travel experience, different things, they demand more, right. They want meaningful relationships, meaningful experiences. They want to buy meaningful products. Right. Uh, and they want to, generally, when this happens, they want to support their local economy and buy things produced locally, right? Like we, that's sort of, that's a big macro trend and all the consumer commodity products that we get, which you might, you used to get them at circuit city or wherever tops. You remember tops. Uh, all of those things are meaningless. They, they don't bring meaning they don't bring happiness. They're completely meaningless. Um, yeah, you could watch your favorite show, but that's meaningless. I think the pandemic is showing people like how meaningless a lot of their life was. And this is actually one reason why a ton of people got into gardening. I don't know if you've noticed this, like, people are like out in the dirt, cause they're realizing like, oh my God, how was I living like disconnected? Right. And then you're forced into actual, like forced to disconnection. So you realize how disconnected you were before, right. When you actually have to step back and, you know, assess where you're at. Um, lack of connection to nature and the community. Um, and we, you know, we kind of saw this, we saw this happen in the last recession, right? When everybody gets shaken away, like, Hey, the system's not working. Some of it's gonna go away. Wow. That's scary. Right. People become resourceful. They care more about their community and positive change emerges it's as the economy becomes more static and entrenched. Right. And is growing on the results of that shakeup, that's the most dangerous period because that's when there's like a glomeration and larger and larger companies eating everything up. But then you get to the point where it explodes again and everything reshaped. So I would argue like this system that we have, where we go for very long periods of time without economic disturbance, right. And then there's the spectacular blow up. Um, that's not helpful for main street at all. And you know, that might be good for very large national and international corporations, right. If they can weather that extreme blowup and usually the way that they, whether it is the federal government comes in and helps them out. Um, they're not there for our main streets. So I would argue that more innovation and more change and more disruption occurring more regularly versus just entrenching, um, powerful interests, right? Over longer periods of time. I think that's probably a better system for us, but mean tell that to DC. There's, there's no way that they're going to embrace that kind of a strategy. But, but, but Jared, it sounds as if that through the pandemic, you, you almost had this, you, I'm not going to say you got what you want, but that in your theory here of this ultimate disruption, you shut the entire economy down. People have an opportunity to think what's important to them. Therefore, our main streets is there this incredible opportunity for them to, okay. Yeah. I mean, only if you think about it, right. There were ways for all of us to support the places that we loved throughout this thing to keep them alive. Right. And the places that we love survived in general. Right. In general, I mean, I could think anecdotally about like my community or a bunch of communities that I frequent, it's the places that we love that survived. And it's the places that we kind of didn't, or that weren't really managed. Well, it was like, uh, you know, that could be better that didn't. And so you, we we've always seen this in a place like New York, right? The restaurants are changing all the time. It's because New York has a population of people that goes out to eat all the time and they know what a good restaurant is and they've got options. So if you're not really good and people don't love you, you're not surviving in New York. And we kind of have, I mean, that's what the pandemic did for most main streets. Um, and certainly malls. I mean, I don't know anyone that loves them all, uh, you know, or a big box store, you know, maybe sure you could find some people that love some big box store. Um, but that's what it is. And we keep the places that we, that we love. And, and if there's, if you have a built environment that reduces the barriers to starting a business, well, that's more chances that you will eventually get a business that you love that will stick around for some time. Um, and in my opinion, it's not the large, floorplate retail, large square footage, retail with no demising walls, those things, aren't, those things aren't supportive of startup businesses or small businesses. It's the 12 foot wide storefront, right. Or the, you know, less than 20 foot wide storefront on a 25 foot lot on a main street. Those are the things that spur innovation because the barrier to entry is generally, you know, to rent, to accessing the space, to, to renovating it because it's generally small, you don't have to renovate a 20,000 square foot space, um, et cetera. So, so is, okay. Some people are fans of what happened to, let's say a beacon or a Rhinebeck because they see it as you know, it, it, it has evil. Some people look at it and say, it's been gentrified. It's not the way it used to be. Uh, we can't afford to live here. Where do you come at? And in that argument over, you know, we have to protect and we yet we have to evolve. Yeah. So it's too, we have it's too spiky. Why are, why do some communities succeed and others don't right. Why do some well succeed? I guess that's the, you know, is it success if you gentrify and displace people? You know, I don't, I don't know to the people that are being displaced. Like if they're actually being displaced, no, that's not successful, but if they can get a job downtown right. And do better than they were doing before, like net net, even if rents increased, there's the possibility that they become a manager of a restaurant that does really well. I've seen it happen in Haverstraw. Right. Right. You know, Latino, uh, first-generation where immigrant young people getting a job as a bus boy, it's their first job. They're in high school. And eventually they become a general manager and that wouldn't have happened with some level of what we call gentrification. It wouldn't happen. And sometimes I think like, you know, th th there's there's the conversation around gentrification is like, just not nuanced enough, right. Up to a certain point, it's integration up to a certain point, right. Once it tips the balance and goes over into all wealthy white people, it's no longer integration. Right. It's, you know, you're excluding, right. But we do exclusionary practices all the time. We've got plenty of wealthy communities that are white only today. So if we have the opportunity to integrate communities and bring wealth and opportunity to people that didn't have it, I say we do it, but we have to figure out how to accommodate people of all needs as that evolution occurs. And that's what affordable housing can do. Um, like regulated affordable housing, where, you know, it is permanently affordable, um, cooperatives, you know, that might be regulated. I think all of options are sort of on the table to keep a place accessible, but this always comes back to why are there superstar places and why are there not like, why is it so spiky? Why, why aren't all boats rising at the same time? And I personally would argue that it's a, it's a racial thing. Um, it's a racial issue. And I would, I would, I would recommend, um, reading. I believe he's at the university of Minnesota. It's Myron Orfield. I don't know if you know who he is. Um, he was really influential in the Mount Laurel decision in New Jersey and the Mount Laurel decision is effectively, no community should quote, bear the burden. And these are like, these are judges from the states Supreme court in New Jersey, no community should quote, bear the burden of providing all the affordable housing for an entire region. In effect. What they're saying is you can't warehouse people of color in a single community so that all the other communities can, you know, remain 80% plus sort of like white and wealthy. Um, it's getting at this issue of spiking this, like, it doesn't have to be a zero sum game here, right? Like we've seen integrated communities be successful. I would argue beacon is one of those. It's still, it's still, uh, like a diverse place with people from all different kinds of economic backgrounds. Can it go too far and tip over? Yeah. But that's their job to figure that out. Wow. Dr. Jared describe, uh, the demographics of Haverstraw, which, you know, so well, and I know fairly, right, right. So, you know, have a straw hat, a straw is a, an immigrant community, mostly Latino. Um, you know, it's historically an immigrant community from, you know, Irish to, uh, former slaves, you know, escaping the south to come and work in the north to, um, you know, Puerto Rican starting in the 1920s, you know, evolving into Dominican, starting in the late sixties. And now it's evolving into central Americans and that trend started around 2000. Um, and so, you know, even in that community, it's fairly spiky, right. Is it's, uh, it's segregated. I mean, it's a segregated community. Like sleepy hollow is like Ossining is where you've got, you know, outer suburban areas that are ringing a downtown, which is predominantly people of color, um, and low low-income people. Uh, and then there have been sort of luxury developments built, but they're almost built like a gated community with little integration, physical integration into the downtown, which is changing now finally, I mean, there's, there's development occurring. That's like better linking pedestrian access, uh, and integrating developments like right into the downtown area. But I, you know, I personally would argue these, even these spiky developments where it's high luxury, but it's on the edge. Right. I would prefer, you know, mixed, uh, affordable plus luxury right in the downtown, like right in the center. Um, because we need to have integration and we need to be attacking these segregation patterns, not just on a regional scale, like what New Jersey is doing. And I would argue New York needs to do the same thing. I mean, Chappaqua, we're coming for you. Uh, you know, it has to be done on a, on a community by community basis. All right. So stop there for a second. I have always enjoyed our conversations. I always learn something about it since we pay you an enormous sum for being a guest on this. Why don't we just end with, if people enjoyed your perspective and thoughts about communities, how do they find emerging urban concepts? Great. So, you know, anyone can visit www.emergentgroup.com. Um, you know, Google me on the internet, find me on LinkedIn, Jared Rodriguez. Um, you know, I'm happy, I'm happy to chat with, with anybody really. It's sort of, you know, it's, it's really important for us to have conversations about how the physical world impacts us. We don't do that enough. Um, we like to live in a social world, right. And be on Facebook and be having political debates, no like roads and buildings and sidewalks and trees and rivers, right. These impact how we live our lives for real, like in the real world, it impacts your health in, in text, your longevity, it impacts who your kids are going to be around who your child might marry. Right. Like, it's, this is really important, real life stuff. And we should be having conversations about how to make it better. I mean, we've only got like one go around and it doesn't really last that long. So why shouldn't it be as great as it possibly can while we're here? I mean, really what are we waiting for? Right. I think that's just the perfect way to end this discussion. Um, Jared, thank you so much for your time. This is pattern and paradigm, um, and, uh, we will be back with you next fall. Thank

Speaker 1: 1:02:18

You for tuning to patterns and paradigms the pattern podcast. For more information about this episode, visit our website pattern for progress.org forward slash podcast.[inaudible].