Messy Cities

In this episode of Booked on Planning, we dive into a conversation with Zahra Ebrahim, author of 'Messy Cities: Why We Can't Plan Everything.' Ibrahim discusses the inspiration and collaborative effort behind her book, a collection of 42 essays that challenge the traditional notions of urban order and highlight the benefits of urban 'messiness'. The episode explores themes such as ecological benefits, social infrastructure, cultural heritage, and the dynamic interactions that define city living. Listeners can expect a thought-provoking discussion on re-evaluating what makes cities livable, resilient, and vibrant, emphasizing the importance of diverse perspectives and inclusive urban planning.

Show Notes:

• Recommended Reading: 
  • Is a River Alive? by Robert McFarlane
  • Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now—As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It  by Craig Taylor
  • The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• To help support the show, pick up a copy of the book and any others on your reading list through our Bookshop page at https://bookshop.org/shop/bookedonplanning.
• To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/

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Chapters

• 3:54 Inception of Messy Cities
• 11:43 Global Perspectives on Urban Design
• 18:35 Nature and Urban Messiness
• 24:05 Living in Right Sized Communities
• 29:26 Valuing Unlovely Buildings
• 37:29 The Planner's Role in Messy Cities
• 40:14 Book Recommendations

Transcript

Stephanie: [00:01:00] Welcome Bookworms

to another episode of Booked on Planning. In this episode, we talk with author Zahra Ebrahim on her book Messy Cities: Why We Can’t Plan Everything, which was which was also co -edited by John Warren, Peter Vujovic, and Dylan 

I thought it was a great way to fund a new series of essays and work on the essential photographic areas, but I'm excited to see the perspective of fans from another dimension.

I'm excited to see the content, and I'm also excited to see And together, we understand that others are scared to get into this world, but together, we understand how others are pursuing that mission.

a different way

And from here, I will pass it on so that it's actually made possible.

the cities.

Jennifer: Yeah, I thought that each of the authors really brought to light a different aspect of mess, we have conversations about around nature, mess around design, [00:02:00] like roads that maybe you and I can navigate, but not everyone can navigate.

Looking at different global cities, like Mexico City or how we look at Tokyo was really interesting and different in how we. reconsider urban systems. , We talk about desire lines in the episode and we talk about how sometimes appears to be a mess to some people is actually just another person utilizing the city in the best way they possibly could.

Stephanie: I personally identified with the ecological section and the essay that was around leaving leaves and not picking them up because it helps really enhance the biological function of our cities. so I read this in a time where I really wanted to clean up my yard and pick up the leaves and refrained.

Jennifer: But for you, I have been leaving the leaves in my backyard. a while now and I have more fireflies so it really works if you yourself in and not clean up. Let's get into our conversation with author Zahra Ibrahim on her book Messy Cities Why We Can't Plan Everything. 

Stephanie: [00:03:00] Zara, thank you for joining us on Booked On Planning to talk about your book Messy Cities, why We Can't Plan Everything. This collection of 42 essays is broken into six categories. What were the ideas that you and your co-editors were trying to express in this book?

Zahra Ebrahim: you know, I think the idea for the book, surfaced through an experience one of our editors had was someone visiting Toronto, and we write about that in the introduction they were delighted by the messiness of Toronto, some people say New York, designed by the Swiss or something. And because for those of us in Toronto, we don't see it as messy We almost see it as overly orderly. one of the editors, Dylan, was sort of the genesis of this idea came from him sort of. You know, ambiently hearing through one of his colleagues that, James Roja, who wrote the first essay in messy Cities, had noted this about the city. as Dylan started to explore the idea, he had been writing about it in our local magazine Spacing, which is about urbanism. realized that the singular [00:04:00] idea of messy urbanism doesn't exist. the reason we assembled this as an anthology and four of us edited it and brought it together was because Dylan explored the idea further, he realized that messiness is such a pluralistic concept. It's a concept that you know, in human language it's like, you know. for everyone. The way we perceive mess and by extension order in cities has a huge is sort of impacted, you know, from our lived experience, from our culture from what is sort of normal to us. And so, you know, I think I couldn't even name all the ideas we were trying to communicate.

I think that central piece, which is. This is an idea that can't be contained and the way that we look at cities needs to have a more diverse lens on what order looks like for people. we really wanted to show, not tell through the stories that in Toronto and cities all over the world, we interpret it very differently.

And what we see is very different, which is how we got all the essays. We didn't actually give our contributors that much prompting. And [00:05:00] this is what we got. So.

Jennifer: Yeah. I have to admit, I would've never thought of Toronto as a messy city. and I guess that's one of the points that you make in the introduction is that we, we need to rehabilitate. What the word messy actually means, which you were starting to talk about. So how do you feel that the book actually achieves that goal?

I.

Zahra Ebrahim: that's a great question. I think messy, especially these days is weaponized. it's highly political that a politician can win on cleaning up a mess. the way in which we think about mess. it's along a continuum. It includes, infrastructure the state of infrastructure.

access, economic opportunity. And then it also includes people, Sometimes politicians will name specific groups as creating a mess in cities and places. I think we wanted to talk about how that is false. And that the idea of me is being weaponized when truly what we're trying to pay closer attention to.

When we look at things that don't seem like they fit in the order of the [00:06:00] city is. Sometimes people trying to, work in workarounds and make the city work for them. we may perceive it as a mess, but it's also a way in which people are getting things they need that the city, and I, I say I use that term kind of loosely, not providing. There are clues to how we can help everyone thrive in cities just by virtue of that. so I think we've rehabilitated. The language of messy by inviting readers and all the people who are contending with this idea of messy urbanism, to use it as a way through something complex that's happening in your city, that's happening in your community as a new lens, a new way to see, a new, tool for noticing where there might be an opportunity to support a community or support an idea to actually. Not have to be a workaround, but be a real thing, the easiest example of that is what Dylan writes about in the introduction, which is Desire Life. You know, there's a study happening on a park in Toronto right now about the way in which people move through that park and some of the sort of architecture and urbanism critics are saying, well. we actually [00:07:00] know the way people move through, especially in winter. ' cause we see the desire lines and Dylan writes about this extensively. So that's one example. We could put a path where the desire lines are. But there's so many examples in cities of how people do this to create access to economic opportunity to create social connection. to create joy. think the book does, and all the essays within the book really do a great job of. That of giving you that perspective. One of the more basic examples in the ecological section was about how if we leave the leaves and don't clean 'em all up in the parks, that that's actually helping. Ecological growth, and it's really hard for individuals that are used to just cleaning up these leaves and getting rid of 'em, to let them just lay there. But understanding what the mess is doing and how it's benefiting is I think all these different stories really do a good job of that.

I mean the leaf litter, is one of my favorite examples in the book, it's such a great way to illuminate it's, it's all in how we see things. We've gotten so in seeing you know, the way in which a front yard is supposed [00:08:00] to be, the way cleanliness is also kind of political too, and clean, what's dirty, and the idea that having and heaps of life in organic matter. on our front yards is a disgrace or something to be cleaned up is actually not aligned with where we wanna go in terms of being more gentle and lighter on the planet. But it, it's all in sort of retraining rewiring our defaults, if that makes sense.

Stephanie: a lot of these examples are demonstrations of good messiness in cities. What are some of your favorite examples from the book?

 Oh, that's a great question. It's so hard to talk about which ones are my favorite because I love them all. , You know, my colleague Leslie Wu wrote a piece about steel pan drums noise, and I think this is a point of contention for many communities, especially, Toronto.

Zahra Ebrahim: Some say it's the most diverse city on the planet, but you know, over 50% of our population identifies as being born outside of Canada. And so you're gonna have different perceptions of what [00:09:00] celebration and gathering looks like. And I loved her story about. What was just a way of a family finding themselves in this new place was a disturbance an offense to other people.

So I, I really loved Leslie's story noise. I think Chi Tams called an argument worth having. Which talks about intergenerational tension around trying to evolve the city and what it takes to get things done. And in the piece she talks about conversations she's having with business uncle just, you know, an older man in the community that she needs to sort of bring on side as they're through opportunities for a land trust, which by extension might mean affordable housing, but they're finding themselves intention and. Potentially at odds. And I love that a lot of the biggest expressions of change in our city start with these conversations that are not straightforward, that involve moving cross-culturally intergenerationally. I really think that she embodies in the story such a great example of. How we [00:10:00] all live out that mess because we're negotiating with our fellow city dwellers all day. And that is part of the choice to live in a city, is to learn how to negotiate, how to share. And so what I love about is that it's not about the stuff, right? It's about the systems. It's about how we connect. So those two are, are, are definite favorites. I will say these walls, these roads by a mirror is also an example of the impact of the mess on us. how we create boundaries to places that feel like home. That are home. And you know how the mess of the politic and the expression of infrastructure actually creates, barriers to finding home and comfort. and of maybe I'll say one moreI love Ajit on tower communities or what we make them. I have known Jeev since he was a teenager. He is now a grown man who's a planner. And we met when, I was working in Scar Row and he was quite young and you know, he, Really found a way to talk about what it was like to grow up in a tower, which is we boast about being this [00:11:00] multicultural society in Toronto and in Canada. And the reality is in a lot of contexts we are very segregated.

We are very siloed, largely by class. But. What's so beautiful about his story is how there are worlds in towers, like the expression of multiculturalism, the expression of knowing the sounds, the smells, the ways of being, the different world views. the promise of multiculturalism actually existed in these places that we neglected for so long.

I, I quite like a achieves, I think it's a great example. metropolitan areas all over the world have these old towers that are dismissed and forgotten and neglected primarily newcomers and low income populations, but they're also vital sources of mixing and the place in which sort of multiculturalism is actually existing in our cities.

Jennifer: one of the things I noticed first as I was going through the index and reading the names of the essays explicitly pointed out in the book is that y'all chose to focus on cities that don't often get a lot of urban design notice, which I really appreciated. How did you end up coming to choose [00:12:00] to focus the books primarily on cities in Canada, Mexico, Japan, et cetera, when, so often we look to New York City or cities in Europe.

Zahra Ebrahim: Yeah, I mean, there's two ways of answering this question. One is the truth and one is the smoothing out the remix, which is, okay, so let me start with the truth. The truth is that the way this book came together is that there were voices. They were people who had stories. we knew had stories that needed to be told.

We weren't sure what those stories were, but we knew with the prompt they would be able to illuminate different dimensions of messy. there's four of us. We have shared values, very different lived experience. And so we went out to our communities finding those people whose stories really need to be told who have a story in them. So that's one part of it. and sometimes it was also topics. So we were talking about things like graffiti, we were talking about things like noise. We were talking about the things that people would expect to hear about in a book about messy urbanism. as a team, we made, I don't know if it was an intentional choice, but we [00:13:00] did recognize that, you know, places like New York City, places like Copenhagen have long been sort of fetishized in the canon of urbanism as places to look to. And I think stories are, and specifically when you think about Scandinavia as an example, they're well documented examples of. they call successful urbanism. I think many people might say that as the world changes in the geopolitical forces mean that migrations are happening in ways that haven't happened in many generations. these places are starting to contend with the challenges of diversity, multiculturalism, they're also. Becoming a little messy. And the, systems of modernism that, require high degrees of control don't work as well because people are going to find home where they are. so I think we wanted to shine lights, shine a light on places.

That, to your point Jennifer, don't get a lot of daylight. But I think as importantly, you know, because we weren't as conscious of what, the jurisdiction people were gonna write about. we were just [00:14:00] resolved that places like New York, major cities in Scandinavia and Europe, already have an established place in the canon of urbanism and it's time to expand our aperture.

you don't see. great cities like, you know, where we go to South Africa, we go to Mexico City, and yes, Cape Town and Mexico City. These are places that we talk about, but there's so much to learn from these places. And I think a lot of people perceive those places as chaotic. if you come from a Eurocentric planning paradigm. the traffic flows are chaotic. The movement of goods and services is more informal in some places. I think there's just so much to learn from that. what we see in a lot of these circumstances of messiness is people creating opportunity for themselves and for other people.

I would love to say that we chose these places in the world, but our contributors did and they did an amazing job.

Jennifer: One of my favorite stories was based in Mexico City and talking about the different architecture and how architects think about buildings in Mexico City. Different and how

Stephanie: Here

Jennifer: in the

Stephanie: entrance,

Jennifer: we get [00:15:00] glass and steel buildings

but then in Mexico they get these beautiful

colors

and different textures designed

designed to actually,

needs of the people who live there.

Zahra Ebrahim: Yeah. 

yeah.

the expression of identity that happens in cities like Mexico City, like Cape Town, is quite remarkable and we don't see that as much. We see that in the alleyways and in the nooks and crannies in our cities, but in Mexico City, it's on display. You know, and, and it's such a, yeah, it's such a great story.

Stephanie: I also think it's interesting too, and I think it was in the essay about Tokyo, where she describes how as tourists, we go to these places that have all of this messiness and what seems like chaos and we really enjoy it while we're visitors. But then we come back to our home cities, we want the sterile and, clean lines we kind of forget how wonderful it actually is to be in a place like that.

Zahra Ebrahim: Yeah. I wonder if that's what has become comfortable to us versus what we want. I think that's something we talked about a lot when we were tossing ideas around for this book everyone travels. They travel to [00:16:00] the global south, they travel all over Asia.

They talk about the vibrancy and the culture and how it's so expressed and visible. And then they come back just defend order. And I, and I do wonder that we know how to visit, but do we know how to live in different types of order? I think that just takes practice, 

And I think, it would enable us to have those moments of vibrancy and joy in our every day, which is part of why we live in cities. We want to be delighted and surprised in good ways. I think in the same way as when we travel.

Stephanie: So messiness as demonstrated in a few of these essays can be good and bad. There are some examples like with the shared streets impact that we like taking away all of the structure and creating these shared spaces, but if we're not very intentional about it, it can impact someone who's visually impaired.

Can you talk about how to avoid creating some of these harms while trying to also create thriving communities?

Zahra Ebrahim: I think, the grounding in all of this messiness is not full urban [00:17:00] disorder. we're not trying to like fetishize chaos in this book and we've been really careful. To avoid that I think part of what we're trying to do is, When we see things that are anomalous in our urban environment, It's telling us that someone has tried to change something to make it work for them, that something is not right. just today we had a fresh snowfall and today's garbage day, there's about a foot of clearance on the sidewalk with all the garbage cans and the snow banks it's a mess. Like our, our city right now, we have so much snow. Like we had this historic snowfall a few weeks ago and it's, the snow is everywhere and it's, it's calcified. our city's quite messy right now, and that is not the kind of mess we are advocating for. A mess that stands in the way of access a mess that stands in the way of people living their lives a mess that stands in the way of safety. And so the mess is much more discreet. And mess should not interrupt people's life, but should sort of make it easier and, and better. so where Mess is interrupting people's [00:18:00] life and standing in the way of them being able to do the things they need to do, that's not the kind of mess we wanna see. And so I think, there's a, discreetness to the kind of messes we've found because often a lot of them are not visible either, right? Like if I think about Sneha man's piece on banquet halls, and it's like these are, you know, large, some people might say unattractive side of highway buildings, but for a lot of communities, specifically South Asian communities in Toronto, they might even designate them heritage, because they hold so much history and so, yeah, I, don't think that where mess stands in the way of access is not a mess that we endorse.

Jennifer: So as we were talking about earlier, nature is mentioned throughout a few of the essays, and one of the prompts that I really loved was to ask ourselves if a forest is a mess or is a meadow a mess? I've never thought of either of those places as a mess. So I started to think about why do you think we've come to view nature in a city as something that we need to have absolute control over and make sure that it's pristine and that [00:19:00] your grass is a certain level, and that your flower beds are all edged? How can we shift that mentality?

Zahra Ebrahim: I keep saying another favorite piece because I love them all dearly. All of them. And so, it makes me think of Suzanne kite and Robbie Wing's piece in the book, which is about humans and non-human and about trying to take a group of people. Through an experience in a city that helps them recognize that the more than human world rights to and has behaviors and has societies and communities we need to recognize. Their rights, in some cases all over the world, you know, and Quebec, we have an example of where River has been given personhood. know, there's, so much work happening, in your country about this at places like NYU with their more than human rights institute. as Suzanne and Robbie talk about, we see nature as something to be dominated and controlled. We don't see it as kin. in Canada many of the indigenous communities across Canada, all of the indigenous communities across Canada would see [00:20:00] nature as kin. Would treat it with the reverence that you would treat kin with. the way in which we go about dominating and imposing our agenda on nature is not aligned with worldviews indigenous communities in Canada. And so I, I think that bring up a really good point, which is what would happen if we. saw that the grass and the, golden rod had rights, had a right to thrive, and that thriving meant not being pulled out as soon as they, break through the surface of the earth. Not being perceived as a weed, but recognizing that they are native to this land. to me, that's the most compelling case which is, in a time of compounding ecological crises, having this lens which. Has us approach nature entirely differently, which is understanding like what does it take for a more than human kin to thrive? what do they need, not just versus what we need.

Because all of the controlling of nature is in service of our aesthetic desires. and in some cases, our public health desires like [00:21:00] trees should be here because this is where we recreate like, you know, in, in a lot of communities in Toronto that don't have a lot of shade cover.

you see high incidences of melanomas, we put trees but always the more than human world is in service of us. how can we think through a lens of reciprocity and consider. What would doing right by nature actually mean? what are the conditions under which native species in our city are not perceived as invasive, but actually right at home?

You know, that's why they find their way through cracks in the cement. It's 'cause that's their house. They do a really good job of telling that story. Because if we recognize, nature as having rights, then we are inflicting a lot of harm onto the natural world as we know.

But it's another lens to see that and reinforce that story. 

Stephanie: Yeah, and I think that's a great example. That goes back to the tagline of your book of why we can't plan everything because I think almost every zoning ordinance or municipal code probably has a section in it about noxious weeds or tall grass ordinances. You run afoul of your local ordinances and end up having to cut it down. And so as planners, I think it's changing in several [00:22:00] communities, but I know here in Lincoln we have someone that has a completely native property, but then often the native plants get too tall and so they have to cut them in the boulevard.

Zahra Ebrahim: Too tall, and yet maybe it's like, pure state of thriving.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Zahra Ebrahim: It's who's who's. you've just summarized the whole ethos of the book whose eyes are looking, whose eyes are seeing, messy cities takes you on a tour of different people. Noticing mess saying, I love this. in the ecology section of the book is where, know, we're sort of like turning the camera. We're, we're changing who the seer is in some ways to say, oh wow, they're tall, they're doing great.

Stephanie: So you describe in one of your essays about your neighborhood and the street you live on. Edwin Avenue, which sounds far more lovely and amazing than the boring street that I live on. can you describe in your own words for listeners what your street's like and why it's such an engaging space?

Zahra Ebrahim: Yeah, now everyone I talk to, I'll say, oh, I'm headed home. And they're like, oh yeah, you live by Dundas [00:23:00] West. Everyone knows where I live now because Edwin Avenue is in the book. They're like, we know you live on Edwin Avenue. many people would argue that Edwin is not the most beautiful street in the city. That is not what makes the street such a rich place. I describe this a little bit in the book. I have many hypotheses. there's the science of it and the alchemy of it. And I don't know what the balance is, but my hypothesis, my running hypothesis is that my earlier point, we don't class mix as much.

In Toronto we are, quite segregated by class in our city Edwin Avenue is interesting because, we exist within three railroad tracks, east, west, and North, and east and west ones come to a point. So we exist in the junction triangle. And we have a very strong identity of being a factory community in the middle of like, some of the most affluent anddesirable neighborhoods in the city. We're very close to an area called Hyde Park, which is just a beautiful, established part of the city and Blur West, which is an active and vibrant sort of economic hub and really established residential community as well. we sort of sit in the middle. and because we were home to so many [00:24:00] factories for so long, as a result of the factories being in our neighborhood, a I think two rubber factories and a paint factory.

 Know there, our neighborhood was always perceived as toxic. the workers lived in the neighborhood, the homes that we all live in are quite small, as I describe in the book. they're just like, they're the right size. They're not small, but they are the right size.

They're as much as we need in an over housed, you know, in the case of a society that tends to, in some cases be quite over housed. we are right sized and even, I might even argue that we have more space than we need still. I think the intimacy of the planning and the design and because there's just not a lot of extra space. You're interacting all the time. You're seeing each other all the time, and so there aren't expansive parts of where I live, whether I'm in the front or the back of my house, where if I'm outside, I'm not a few meters of a neighbor. And so you're constantly negotiating. and I think because of the design of the homes which are smaller, and many typical nuclear families want more space. these houses are not as desirable for them. I think because of that reason. [00:25:00] People age in place more people live intergenerationally more. There's a bunch of renters in our.

neighborhood. There's public housing in our neighborhood. There's co-ops in our neighborhood, it's a very small slice, about 6,000 households. not that big in the context of, a large city. we're constantly mixing passing by each other and constantly sharing things. and you learn that really quickly when you move to Edwin Avenues that you, you need to check if anyone else has something before you buy it. And so just now, I ran into a neighbor who was saying how quiet it's been on the other side of the wall since my partner's been outta town. we got to chatting and I was telling her how I was dreading going to the grocery store 'cause we just had a snowfall. And she's like, well, let's off the ingredients you need and I'll tell you if I have them, you can just grab them for my house for this dinner party you're having tomorrow night. And that was just another example. I was outside for a minute doing a quick shovel and the neighbor's like, I got everything you need for the dinner party.

Just go get it. From my house. because of those interactions, you feel supported. I was gonna go to the grocery store, but you just constantly are feeling supported. and I write about this a little bit in the chapter, which is like, this is the infrastructure we miss.

This is what makes not the [00:26:00] most beautiful neighborhood in the city, but this is what makes it so beautiful is that our social infrastructure is strong. It's exceptionally strong and

it's continually nurtured because you can't avoid each other. There are very few places to avoid each other. And so you're constantly taking care of

to know

You're

each other, constantly checking in, sharing

sharing life 

And that's what makes it so great. the social infrastructure is our hardiest infrastructure. And that's why the neighborhood's so amazing.

Jennifer: So alongside reading messy Cities. I've been reading the book, the Art of Gathering by Preya Parker.

Zahra Ebrahim: It's a great

Jennifer: And she shared a story about a woman who had a neighborhood like yours and had to move into a somewhat more sterile neighborhood. The way that Stephanie and I's neighborhoods probably would be more considered. We are stoic Midwesterners,

Zahra Ebrahim: Yes.

Jennifer: The woman sent her two little girls out on their bikes

Zahra Ebrahim: Yeah.

Jennifer: Notes to everybody's door saying like, I want to host something come, if you want to come. [00:27:00] Here's my number, text me and then be prepared to answer things you love about your life or something like that.

And created that social infrastructure. And as I was reading that story, I thought about your neighborhood as well, and it's just like that connection. We don't have that connection anymore in so many cities. And I guess you could call it messy, but I call it connection.

Zahra Ebrahim: Yeah. Well, it involves a leap of faith, right? Like, when we moved to the neighborhood seven years ago, by nature someone who's, active in community. And had heard that because of all the health challenges in the seventies and the eighties, it was like a very organized neighborhood, very active, and I didn't wanna step on people's toes.

And, there's a community spacekitty corner to where I live that was actuallydesignated through a planning clause called Section 37. It's a community benefit, so there's a community center On our street. I'd run into a few people in the neighborhood and said, can we just do a little gathering?

I just wanna know who's organizing. a bunch of people showed up and said, I'm doing this. And I'm, and there were so many people who were active and I was like, okay, we don't need another community group. Like, but it would be really nice [00:28:00] to just have a regular neighborhood gathering, and maybe we could just call it like the buddies and. junction triangle buddies could just do fun things. it's not activism, it's about making sure we continue to see each other and talk to each other and take care of each other. So when I moved to the neighborhood, just very conscious about like not wanting to step on established organizers toes.

It did things like. a little Sunday gathering at the community center we made a playlist and a mocktail called the Rusty Rail. 'Cause we live by the local social enterprise within the community center. we came up with this idea, it was basically ice teathe whole neighborhood made a playlist we shared it and then everyone went home.

It was nothing and it was exactly that. Right? It was so surprising when I felt like I really met the neighborhood when I started to see like, oh wow, there's like a people who've lived here for 55 years and people who have lived here like me for six months. I think it takes initiative, of course. But I don't think it's unique to me. I don't think it's unique to that woman. I think it's in our nature. To want to be surrounded held and supported neighbors are like not chosen family, but like, I don't know, distant cousins or something,

Jennifer: They're [00:29:00] the first ones that noticed you didn't scoop your snow.

Zahra Ebrahim: they're the first ones that notice that you haven't shoveled.

They're the first ones you don't see, you know, your lights on and wonder what's up if they don't you for a few days. So they are, they're part of our lives whether we acknowledge it or not. I just think we're losing that muscle. we become increasingly individualistic. you know, I'm not gonna go on about technology, but all to just, all to say that as we veer more individualistic, more isolated we need to extend ourselves.

not talking to each other is a source of a lot of distrust and polarization and the kinds of things that actually. Make our lives exceptionally hard. I could talk about my neighborhood for another half hour, but I'll stop here.

Jennifer: Several contributors of the book write about the inner lives of unlovely buildings such as Banquet Hall. And industrial areas. why should we value these aesthetically boring or messy structures as much as we our landmark architecture?

Zahra Ebrahim: know, again, I don't think that. It is for the communities that cherish these places. I don't think they're seeing these places [00:30:00] as beautiful way that we see a traditional kind of historic or building as beautiful, but I think they're so loaded with memory that it's impossible to disentangle.

You know? It's kind of like how we love one of our cherished old sweaters or something, like we love these things that aren't obviously beautiful to everyone, but hold so much memory for us. I think it's not the first choice of many communities to use those spaces.

I think they're in part using them by necessity affordability and accessibility. You know, large groups coming together. predominantly driving and need an affordable place to gather. And so I, I just think that have to take a beat and acknowledge that everything worth preserving is not going to obviously be. As aesthetically aligned with what we've designated as heritage, as landmarks. last week, I was describing Toronto like an onion. I was like, we are the onion city. no one lands in Toronto and has their breath taken away? 

That's not who we are. I grew up in Vancouver. I know what those kinds of cities are. Toronto's not that kind of [00:31:00] city. Toronto's the kind of city that when you peel back the layers of the onion. Which are our neighborhoods and the culture of each of our neighborhoods. When you go through the door of a building that looks banal and find some cool arts collective doing incredible work we are the kind of city where you have to peel the layers back in order to see. Our richness, our beauty. in the Toronto context, that feels very aligned because we're not a city that has landmarks. People travel to come see, maybe except for the sand tower. And so it feels like a disservice to the many communities who haven't been provided access to a lot of these incredible spaces To discard those places is to dismiss their lived experience.

And I think it would be so beautiful to enable access. To places that dignify these experiences for everyone we need to look at these buildings differently that seem unlovable or aesthetically different from our established perception. we have to be okay that the non-obvious still has richness to it. You know, like I think we want to consume things that That a.

of what beauty is and richness is and all, I just think in [00:32:00] modern cosmopolitan cities, like those things are not, gonna be in plain sight sometimes those are the best places.

Stephanie: I was just having this conversation with my students. I teach a historic preservation class in the spring and really trying to convey that. The field of historic preservation is moving away from designating just the beautiful architectural pieces and trying to do the hard work because it is often harder to find these culturally significant places because if you just do a regular field survey, you're gonna skip right over 'em because they are pretty, you know, sometimes bland or not high architecture that you would traditionally have thought of as a space to designate, but. They are so important in telling the story of a city and a community and how it's evolved over time.

Zahra Ebrahim: And that connects to the Plaza Pops essay, right? in Toronto, strip malls are part of our aesthetic. These plazas are very much a part of our urban landscape. As soon as you're outside the downtown core, in the inner suburbs, you see a lot of this expression of like, you know, this typology and, there're places that matter. People gather. [00:33:00] People like they spend time in parking lots, teenagers hang out in the parking lot. Lots of communities, like the parking lot is a really cherished place. And so I think, to dismiss them is to dismiss those stories. in Canada, the definition of heritage It does not hold our heritage because it, mostly recognizes colonial buildings and architecture does not recognize, I need to just form in our city. heritage is also very limiting culture is how we gather, how we eat, how we celebrate, like culture is so much more than just the artifacts that get produced out of our gathering. and so similarly, especially in Canada, we, urgently need to redefine and expand the definition of heritage.

Stephanie: So you mentioned Plaza Pops. That's one essay that shows a dual approach to creating neighborhood spaces. The other one being a story out of COVID of creating a beach in a neighborhood. Base. so one of 'em went out of their way to really navigate city approval processes. The other did the opposite and it was more organic.

I think both have their place and situations dictate which approach you do. But as planners and other activists, how do we [00:34:00] decide, which approach to take?

Zahra Ebrahim: that's a great question. think this goes back to something I was saying earlier, I've always been intrigued and hesitant about tactical urbanism, Dylan writes about it in the intro where, it's available to those who have privileged identities and aren't scared of interactions with police or lawmakers For that reason, it feels limiting because it can only tell the stories of what's working for a very specific community of people. I think what Sherry does with Dale Beach and the story of these residents asking for forgiveness, not permission, but not even asking for forgiveness um, think is recognizing an urgent need Lift a community up at a time that was very scary in the world no approvals were going to say yes, and that no harm was going to be caused. it's a great example of someone using a more privileged identity to tell a story that's like, we need to, we need to laugh, because the Lauderdale Beach story, you know, setting up a few beach chairs and putting a sign On a construction lotcovered in [00:35:00] gravel. it made waves across the city. It became a tourist attraction. I'm actually pretty sure I have book on it right here, You know, I don't know how many images we have, but like, that's it right there.

It's so good. But I think to what I was saying earlier, What did we need? we needed to be inspired. We needed to be connected. We needed to have a good laugh. We needed to find levity in a really dark time. And it served that need. And this is again, going to like, what are the clues here? And the clues are not like, that should be a park forever. I don't know if it needs to be. There'll be green space there, are residents there taking the space because there's no other space? there they were taking the space because it was a canvas to express, you know, counter narrative to what we were experiencing in that moment.

some of this can be ephemeral. Like some of this is not always advocacy. we need to create space for someone not to get, in trouble because they tried to do that. This was advocacy and more like an arm reaching out for connection. The case of [00:36:00] Plaza Pops, I think, they did such an amazing job of. a site of importance for communities across the city and saying, This is not good enough. these are places where we gather and can gather in a more intentional and supported way. And so Plaza Pops was very much the result of advocacy, which is we're not doing right by the communities that have this infrastructure, And could really use, an elevated sort of intervention that actually helps them gather, helps them eat together, helps them celebrate together which is what they're already doing in these places. some of it can be ephemeral, some of it can be permanent.

I think, creating, enough spaciousness, like having every space in the city be determined us space for that ephemeral to say like, if there's a story we need to share, we need to tell, we need to come together around. there's space for that. streets are becoming spaces, right? For stories we need to tell all over the United States, right? we're taking spaces that are determined and using them, to tell a story about a need. We have stop the flow of what's happening. I [00:37:00] think in a lot of cases in our, book, a lot of the interventions we see are actually not interrupting. they're taking spaces that are, interstitial and bringing delight to them. And so I think we need all of that in our cities. We need spaces that are overdetermined so that when we need to. Call attention to something, we can interrupt flows and tell the story of our society. we also need spaces in real time where people can have conversations. And Dale Beach was a conversation. I think what Plaza Pops did was an intervention to serve needs in a community that were being underserved.

Jennifer: While the subtitle of the book we can't plan everything, this is a podcast primarily for planners. So what role do you think planners can have in supporting the cultivation of creating these messy cities that. Allow everyone to thrive.

Zahra Ebrahim: I think that the code and zoning bylaws and all these things are, there to support us creating places that people want to live, work, and play. Where they limit us is where we need to be, okay. To be curious, to ask questions, to not, let the sort of rigid [00:38:00] guidelines we put in place determine how we live. I think it's also worth noting that, and this is, you know, many of your, listeners maybe they may or may not agree, but the codes that contain the planning profession. represent a singular dimension, a single story of what a good life looks like. I think that it is the responsibility of a planner to understand what a good life looks like for all the people that you are trying to serve.

And that is where great community engagement and great research great investment in the social infrastructure and understanding what's actually happening, what the heart of a place actually is, is your job. I'm not a planner by trade. I work with a lot of planners. on planning projects, and a huge part of our efforts are always to say, but these rules serve the people we're trying to serve? and I don't think it's to have anarchy and break the rules all the time, but I think it's to have sort of a level of inquiry and a level of openness, to see where, some of these. Structures that contain us are not serving us. And so I think it's the, the sort of principles of with inquiry when you see something [00:39:00] anomalous, like ask. Tell, ask questions, say, tell me more. Try and understand versus suppress because there might be a way to integrate that learning into your planning and actually make this a place where people not just like they have great lives, but they feel seen and recognized in the process. And I think, that's part of the outcome of any good community engagement. But I do think that. Part of what makes us feel emboldened in a city is when we feel seen and when we feel recognized and our needs are met, our very specific needs can be met. Plaza Pops is a great example of that where you know, the gathering in the parking lots are now just so dignified with these, beautiful spaces. To recognize the beauty of those gatherings. it sounds trite, but I think it requires a level of curiosity that I don't often see consistently deployed across the planning community. staying open is hard. And you know, the rules based order we've been discussing, it was evolving and changing.

And I think, this is one of those places where. If we can be responsive, I think we will continue to earn the right to this practice. every discipline, every profession has to do that. to [00:40:00] continue their role within the social contract. And I think this is something planners, really need to think about, which is like, a huge part of our job is to create places that help people live a good life are we doing that? And so that would be my one of many asks, but I'll leave you with that.

Jennifer: as always, this is booked on planning. So what books would you recommend our readers check out?

Zahra Ebrahim: Oh my gosh, what a great question. I know you told me this before. Give me one second and I will quickly tell you, I'm a voracious reader, so part of what I'm struggling with is there's too many books. 

Stephanie: seeing the background behind you, there's gotta be hundreds of books behind you that you could recommend from.

Zahra Ebrahim: one of my faves this year is A River Alive by Robert McFarland. He's, one of the most prolific nature writers. And has really thought about how we think about the rights of nature has gone all over the world to sort of these different regions where people are fighting for the personhood of a body of water or a forest, the Amazon a river in Quebec. And, and it's a really beautiful story a beautiful way of bringing some of the earlier questions about nature to life. I love this book it's [00:41:00] called The Londoners, by Craig Taylor. Subtitle is The Days and Nights of London. Now, as told by those who love it, hate it, live it, left it and long for it. and it is these short stories of everyone from, you know, a taxi cab driver, one of the like. The London Cabbies, which is a very esteemed job to someone new to the city doing odd jobs to a banker, it's a great reminder of the messiness of most cities, which is there are so many lives being lived that we could never know. And so we cannot assume that everyone wants the same thing.

So we have to do better at not having single stories. and then the last one I would probably say, ' cause I like things in threes. maybe I'll go with a classic, which is Robin Wall Kimer, the Service Barry. None of these are planning books. I think it's an essay that was published into a book.

It's a tiny little book, but it talks a lot about, what reciprocity means as we create anything. And I think to planners and to offer so much and to be given so much, we do community engagement, we get all this community wisdom, but like how are we [00:42:00] constantly in this state of reciprocity versus this singular direction of How things are going to be. I think it's a way of thinking about planning and how we build cities and communities that I think is quite And it's really simple and a really short read, so.

Stephanie: I love it. Three new books to add to our list. I don't think we've had those recommended yet, so.

Jennifer: Great. Yeah. We love when we get non planning books.

Zahra Ebrahim: Okay, great. 

Stephanie: Okay.

Zahra Ebrahim: so many more, so if you need more, I'm always here.

Stephanie: Well, Zara, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast to talk about your book, messy Cities. Why we Can't Plan Everything.

Zahra Ebrahim: So much everyone.

Jennifer: We hope you enjoyed this conversation with author Zahra Ibrahim on her book Messy Cities Why We Can't Plan Everything. You can get your own copy through the publisher at Coach House Books by supporting your local bookstore of course, supporting the show through our page at bookshop .org slash shop slash booked on planning. Remember to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts and please rate, review and share the show. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time on Booked on [00:43:00] Planning.