housing
Newsletter
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California’s low-income housing climate initiative faces budget cuts
California’s plan to reduce building emissions through the Equitable Building Decarbonization Program may see a significant budget reduction.
In short:
- Governor Gavin Newsom proposes a 33% budget cut to California’s Equitable Building Decarbonization Program, initially funded at $922 million, to manage a $38 billion deficit.
- The program aims to replace gas appliances in low-income homes with electric ones, such as heat pumps and stoves, to mitigate climate change without evicting tenants.
- This reduction threatens to exclude a third of the intended beneficiaries, sparking concern among advocates and participants about the future of this climate initiative.
Key quote:
“The real goal from our perspective was to make healthy homes.”
— Alex Jasset, director of energy justice at Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles
Why this matters:
California’s approach involves providing financial incentives, such as grants or low-cost loans, so property owners can replace outdated, gas-powered systems with electric ones, such as heat pumps for heating and cooling. This transition not only supports the state’s climate goals but also ensures that low-income households are not left behind in the green transition.Why housing security is key to environmental justice.
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Newsletter
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Builders resist stricter energy codes for new homes
In a clash over climate and affordability, home builders are lobbying against stricter energy efficiency standards for new houses, citing cost concerns.
In short:
- Home builders in various states, including North Carolina and Michigan, are opposing new energy efficiency building codes, arguing they increase housing costs.
- The industry claims these codes add significantly to construction costs, though federal studies suggest a much lower impact.
- Climate advocates and some builders counter that energy-efficient homes offer long-term savings and environmental benefits.
Key quote:
"The notion that building this way is too expensive or too complicated … I just don’t buy any of that."
— Rob Howard, green builder
Why this matters:
This resistance to energy-efficient building practices is significant as it hinders progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from homes, which account for a significant portion of U.S. emissions. The debate underscores the challenge of balancing economic interests with urgent environmental needs.
Op-ed: When a home is not a sanctuary but a sickening, expensive trap.
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Newsletter
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Montana judge halts development over water concerns
In a landmark decision, a Montana judge has blocked a new housing development, citing inadequate groundwater protection.
In short:
- A Montana court ruled against a new housing development due to concerns over declining groundwater resources.
- The case highlights the tension between housing demand and environmental sustainability in water-stressed areas.
- The ruling could set a precedent, potentially impacting future developments across Montana.
Key quote:
“The pendulum for the longest time was largely swinging in support of development at any cost."
— Guy Alsentzer, executive director of Upper Missouri Waterkeeper
Why this matters:
This ruling is a significant moment for public policy, balancing the need for housing against the imperative of sustainable water use, which is crucial for both ecological health and human well-being.
Be sure to read: Tainted water imperils health, traditions for Montana tribe.
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Credit: Paha_L/Big Stock Photo
How these homes in the hottest places keep cool without AC
I traveled in the hottest months to the hottest places, looking for ways to stay cool.
Snakes, spores and sewage: Life in the N.Y.C. neighborhood ‘the Hole’
The small neighborhood on the border of Brooklyn and Queens has a colorful history but an uncertain future because of climate change.
Meet Pelosi the climate czar. (Not that Pelosi.)
Alexis Pelosi is a climate adviser to the Housing and Urban Development secretary and a relative of the former speaker.
Top Story
LISTEN: Sabah Usmani on making cities healthy and just
“I don’t feel like I’m just a science person or just a policy person … I don’t really see those barriers at all.”
Sabah Usmani joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss the role of urban planners in tackling environmental injustice.
Usmani, a senior fellow and a Ph.D. student in the Climate and Health Program at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, also talks about the link between energy access and health, and why she’s optimistic about the future of sustainable cities.
You can learn more about Usmani's work from her essay, Tapping into the power of community to make informal settlements healthier.
The Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast is a biweekly podcast featuring the stories and big ideas from past and present fellows, as well as others in the field. You can see all of the past episodes here.
Listen below to our discussion with Usmani, and subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Transcript
Brian Bienkowski
Sabah, how are you doing today?
Sabah Usmani
Good, good. How are you?
Brian Bienkowski
Doing great. And where are you?
Sabah Usmani
I am in New York City right now. I live next to the West Side Highway. So I can hear the sound of the traffic, which sounds like the sea to me.
Brian Bienkowski
Probably used to it. Well, you are from a long way from there. I know you've been in New York City a while now. But I want to start at the beginning. So you're originally from India, and you lived in a number of different cities and towns there. Can you talk a little bit about growing up there?
Sabah Usmani
Yeah. So I'm from India, I grew up mostly in India, but also in Nepal. Since my parents, they were always moving around for their jobs in civil service and development. So I actually ended up going to seven different schools by the time I finished high school. And I lived across like a number of different cities in India and Lucknow, which is the capital of the largest Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, in New Delhi. And Kodaikanal, which is kind of a small, quaint town, in the south. So and when I was nine, I actually moved, left India and we moved as a family to Kathmandu, Nepal, and then New York City at the end of high school. And then I actually returned back to India after college, to live in Mumbai, and work for an urban development firm. So had a pretty exciting, diverse and sometimes also frustrating and very urban childhood. Growing up between these different places, in different cities in South Asia, many of which are kind of mega cities with more than 10 million residents, I became kind of aware of this kind of unsustainable urban growth that was taking place, you know, driven by the opportunities that these cities provide, which actually make people move to different different places, including my parents. But these, these urban pressures are straining some of the public delivery services in those cities. So for me, personally, you know, I travel to school in the local bus, which is often very crowded, you know, witness kind of informal settlements, next to these large, kind of luxurious multi-storey condominiums, traveled in these crowded trains. You could clearly see there were too many people in these compartments. You know, kind of grew up witnessing much of this kind of urban inequality. You know, India is a very unequal country, and it's evident in every single sector, from health to housing, energy, energy poverty, and other kind of social inequities. But this was always kind of juxtapose for me with kind of the opportunities that cities provided and you know, the reasons why people were actually moving there. So you know, experiencing this firsthand and these extreme disparities in access to space, housing, services, sometimes, which affects the most marginalized populations most, was what kind of shaped my upbringing, you know, I would find myself like biking to office in Mumbai, three-feet in floodwaters, you know, with my pants wet from the rain. And, you know, I, we would go on vacations once we went to a vacation in the Andaman Islands, which is an island off the coast of India. And we were caught in the Asian tsunami, which was a pretty key experience in my life as well. So I guess I was always drawn to cities, but also aware of kind of the frustrations and the inequalities present in these South Asian cities, which shaped my interest in urban planning and environmental health.
Brian Bienkowski
And for listeners, if you haven't, I would encourage you to check out Sabah's essay that talks about kind of who has access to space and resources and really deals with informal settlements and your experience and research looking at them. And we will make sure there's a link with this podcast. So you've talked about this a little bit, can you expand about how you think maybe your identity was shaped by your experience growing up in India and your time in Nepal and New York City?
Sabah Usmani
So my experience kind of growing up in South Asia is essentially kind of a story of intersectionality, and how different facets of my identity like gender, religious and cultural background and socioeconomic status are going to shape our experiences. So while you know, one facet of my identity, like my socioeconomic status, might allow me to go to pretty good schools and provide a level of protection. Like another facet, like being a woman, or my cultural identity, or religious minority identity puts me at a disadvantage in many contexts. You know, women are like not really present in the... employment is very low. It's one of the lowest in the world in India, I think, about 20%. There was a recent Daily episode about it a few weeks ago. And you know, it is very apparent when you're in the workplace. You know, I encountered sexual harassment on the street, sexual abuse and some gender discrimination in the workplace. As a religious minority, you know, woman, I'm acutely aware of many of these issues that we're facing. India, as you know, has had a history of occasional tensions between the Hindu and Muslim minority community, and is presently going through a divisive political phase and a person who is, you know, from a Muslim family, although I'm not that religious, you know, my name is recognizably Arabic. And I have faced a lot of discrimination with like landlords unwilling to rent their homes to me. You know, in 2013, when I was trying to get an apartment in Mumbai, 50% of the places that I kind of apply to or looked at didn't consider me because of my name, you know, they would sometimes directly ask me questions like, "What is your community?" And then I'll be like, "Oh, um, you know, from, not from here," or something, like, I would try to skirt around that question, but I knew clearly what they were trying to get at, you know, Muslims, you know, make up, like, around 15% of the population as a whole, it's like 200 million people. So a very large minority that, you know, is experiencing different types of discrimination. And, you know, in the past, when we moved to Nepal, that was my first time kind of being a foreigner. And, you know, although it's not a visibly different identity, you know, you I don't, I didn't speak the local language, and kind of my experience as a, as a, coming from a different country and kind of living as a third culture kid in Nepal was all you know, was also like, an identity that kind of shaped my experience. So yeah, I continue to kind of overcome these challenges, especially in India, as a woman, I think it's, you know, it's something as simple as just going to a cafe and, you know, sitting there by yourself and using your laptop, it's not so simple, you know, you'll get a lot of like, people look at you like, what is she doing? Why is she in this public space? So I think like, you know, these kinds of things, that it's like a daily challenge and, you know, daily microaggressions, that I think, were a part of life that, you know, some of my Indian friends in the USA, they didn't realize they were facing it until they were like walking around in Brooklyn, and they suddenly are like, wait, I can't believe I was living in in, you know, in this context. So, yeah, it's been a big part of kind of shaping my awareness and extent of the problem and how we kind of made me to take into account you know, people's intersectional identities and how we, how they shaped their lived experience and not just one aspect of their identity.
Brian Bienkowski
Is there one kind of defining moment or event that stands out in shaping your identity?
Sabah Usmani
Um, I think for me, like graduate school, and my experience in in my master's program in urban planning was definitely a very positive defining moment, because I kind of discovered my passion for research. I got this incredible fellowship, and full scholarship to conduct field research in India, in my own country through the MIT', I'm very grateful for that, and spent many months in India doing water and energy planning research, they're in north India. And, you know, I learned, you know, the field of urban planning, which was what my master's was in is a very an interdisciplinary field, you know, takes from economics, from sociology, from geography, from urban science, from public health, finance, and business. And so just the experience, you know, I was like a kid in a candy store, taking classes across these different fields. But applying all these tools I was learning to urban environmental problems. So it kind of really broadened my horizon. So I really don't feel at all limited by kind of disciplinary confines, in my own research. You know, my thesis advisors really supported me in this kind of pushing my limits and showing me how we can bridge these different disciplinary gaps, because the problems of the world, you know, they don't really exist in disciplines. And I think MIT was really a very unique and entrepreneurial environment, with like, strong emphasis on hands-on problem solving and design thinking. And, you know, became pretty clear to me that, like, I need to take this forward and my research and, you know, the search experience and methods and tools to solve real world problems. I now as a Ph.D. student at Columbia, I work at the intersection of urban planning, and environmental health and climate and health. And my research very much kind of continues to be informed by this thinking, you know, I, I don't feel like I'm just a science person, or just a policy person, like, I don't really see those barriers at all.
Brian Bienkowski
And I want to talk more about your research. But first, you've been in the US for I think it's more than a decade now. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was wondering, just kind of mostly, mostly as it pertains to your environmental health research, environmental justice lens, your urban planning, your eye. What are some of the similarities and differences that you've seen between the US and you know, in India and other Global South nations?
Sabah Usmani
Yeah, so living as an international student in the US for over a decade on a number of different visas. I've become kind of like, aware of, you know, some there are similarities in environmental health disparities in the US, especially experienced by people of color and e communities. But there are also differences, there are issues of health disparities related to like Minority marginalized communities and health burdens that are specific to the global south. So in terms of the US like, before starting my PhD, I worked at the Environmental Defense Fund, which is a large, nonprofit, global nonprofit, where I work, my work was kind of looking at disease prevalence and social vulnerability of communities around high-traffic sites in the US like, these are like warehouses and industrial zones. And, you know, we saw cases of higher prevalence of various cardio-respiratory conditions like asthma in these areas, and also high, you know, a number of people of color and low-income communities that live in these fenceline neighborhoods that are disproportionately affected by pollution and health burdens. And in the Global South, my experience is primarily in South Asia, in Southeast Asia, we see kind of health disparities in both rural and urban contexts, but there are different kinds of pressures at play and it's at a different scale. So, for example, you know, rapid urbanization, we see like extreme inequality in access to resources and inadequate kind of basic service services that contribute to many of these disparities with marginalized population bearing most of the burden so, when you think about informal settlements, for example, you know, that is a reality of urban life in the Global South, like in countries like India, more than 40% of the urban residents are living in informal settlements, which are sometimes referred to as slums, which is a term that you know, might more marginalized the experience of these communities. You know, these residents don't have access to the same services. And, you know, they they're often located in more polluted or unsafe environments with greater exposure to air pollution and other toxins. And, you know, basically, we need to come up with, you know, we often look to like places like the US to, or, you know, the Global North to come up with, like solutions for these problems. And, you know, we'll have to go back to the 40s, if we're thinking about, like slum clearance schemes and things like we don't, you know, we don't want to replicate that in the Global South. So we have to come up with place-based solutions that are fair, and that are developed in partnership with communities that are place-based and actually appropriate for the setting. So we can't always like look for the best practices from countries like the US for for these issues that we're facing in the Global South. So yeah, as you mentioned, I wrote my op-ed for Agents of Change about this topic and my own experience, kind of working in informal communities in Mumbai, and in Quito in Ecuador, you know, at Dreamforce, my belief in the need for solutions that are developed in partnership with and with a deep understanding of the context and the communities that live there. You know, there's a lot of disparities that exist locally, both in the Global North and the Global South. But when it comes to sometimes, you know, issues like air pollution, in some cities around the world, almost everyone is affected, regardless of their socioeconomic status, because like ambient air pollution can be poor across city sometimes. So you know, for example, we experienced a, you know, extremely poor air quality due to, you know, in the, in the US recently, due to Canadian wildfires a few days ago. But, you know, there are places in the world like New Delhi, where I grew up, where we experienced these levels, like every single day. And, you know, I checked this morning and the EQI is above 200, in many parts of the city today, and has been for the rest of the week. The read the whole week. So, you know, we need to kind of consider health disparities, both at the local level, which is where I focus most of my research, but also at the Global kind of international level, like thinking about environmental exposure disparities, and health disparities across countries, especially when it comes to kind of these climate mitigation negotiations and, you know, the kind of global response to these problems to address these disparities. So, yeah, your short answer.
Brian Bienkowski
When you talk about place-based solutions, I think that's somewhat intuitive that the solution needs to be focused on the place you're in and taking into account their circumstances, which will be very different than another person's circumstances or another community circumstances. And I'm thinking of as the editor of an environmental publication, we always think of solutions journalism, and one of the ways we do that is we try to find a place who's maybe doing it right. So there's a there's a community that maybe has increased air monitoring, or they've divested from fossil fuels, whatever it is, as an opportunity to say, "hey, look, they're doing it right over here. And maybe we can do this elsewhere." I asked this question somewhat selfishly, is that, uh, is that the wrong way to look at these things? I mean, should we be kind of always focusing on very local solutions, and not trying to draw those comparisons?
Sabah Usmani
Best practices are helpful sometimes, but not always appropriate for like, urban problems. So you know, when you think about the fields of Public Health And Urban Planning, like they, you know, there, there are solutions that are not that place-based, like the medical model where you can, you know, things like vaccines can be transferred across different contexts and are appropriate for different contexts. But when it comes to kind of urban policy and the complexity of the city, often it is important to kind of understand those local dynamics and whether solution will be appropriate. And it cannot always be kind of copy-paste it from one place to another. And I think that's why, like, you know, it's not always a technical challenge, sometimes it's an implementation challenge. So we may have like, the best cookstove available for, you know, improved cookstove for improving indoor air quality, but it may not be appropriate for specific contexts, where, you know, they make, they need to make, like a local dish that they can't make using that cookstove. So I think, you know, it's it's, it's really important to understand the context when it comes to urban policies.
Brian Bienkowski
And this speaks to researchers and others, not just having data or being armed with data but being armed with cultural understanding of social understanding and maybe spending some time in the community which I think a lot of folks, including yourself, have talked about in this program. which I really appreciate. So you mentioned conducting some research in India that looked at the planning of energy and water services. And you came away concluding that energy access is a key determinant of health. So I'm wondering if you could talk about what you did what you found and why energy access is so key for people's health?
Sabah Usmani
Yeah, so during my master's program, I worked as a research fellow as I mentioned, so I conducted research on developing like a spatial planning framework for generating renewable energy on and along kind of this irrigation canal network in north India, which serves 1000s of villages and peri-urban areas that run along the canals. So India has kind of a very extensive canal irrigation network that was built over the past 170 years. And it consists of 1000s of kilometres of, you know, these constructed challenges. Sometimes they have like beautiful architectures, well, there was for water delivery, primarily for agricultural use. And these canals, they cut through many kind of rural and energy-poor areas. Many of these areas, although they often are connected to the grid, they do not receive 24/7, or even 16 hour electricity supply per day. So when you think about energy access, you know, I learned through this research that it's not really binary, whether you have it or you don't have it, but it's like, there's a spectrum of energy access, in terms of like, how reliable it is, how many hours does it you do actually have energy when you need the energy for specific purposes, such as irrigation. So, my work primarily focused on the upper Ganga Canal, which is a canal, which siphons water from the Ganga River, which is the largest river in India. So I was considering both like agricultural and domestic unmet demand for energy in these villages to explore the potential for solar and hydropower on the canal bordering this, the villages to supplement or serve the energy needs, both domestic and agricultural energy needs for these villages. So I had the opportunity as part of the work to conduct kind of mixed methods research going to the field, and talk to leaders, residents, local and state government officials to enrich informed a lot of my research as well as the outcome. And in these interviews, I was often like the only woman in the setting surrounded by men. And, you know, women were not present in these interviews, which was kind of difficult for me, as a woman, as I was aware, like the energy needs and requirements of women may be very different. So I had to kind of make an active effort to include women in these interviews, which was very, very, quite challenging, because you have to, you know, they're not willing to talk in front of men sometimes. So yeah. But if, basically, I worked in partnership with a us implementing agency. So these were like the irrigation department and the power department to, you know, develop a framework for them that they can use to plan their energy services along the canal. So, you know, through my interactions, it became pretty clear that, you know, energy access is a key determinant of health, you know, often very intrinsically linked to other factors, both influencing health through, you know, access to health care, which is quite direct, but also, you know, through its impact on agricultural output, or food, and, you know, the linkages between food and water, you know, we need energy access for extracting water, for example, and groundwater is one of the primary irrigation methods. So, you know, sometimes we'd be like reviewing, I'll be reviewing like the census data and find that there's like zero health care clinics in, you know, the 50 villages, which was pretty shocking. And the closest clinic is like, several kilometers away. And, you know, reliable energy is essential, is essential for maintaining, you know, these healthcare clinics, and also for things like maintaining cold chains for like vaccine delivery, which became really important during COVID. And really important for kind of life saving health equipment and services. So yeah, like, there's a lot of kind of interplay between like energy, agriculture, food, water, and health. And, you know, a lot of research kind of looks at this nexus kind of focusing on these these interactions, which is very important to understand the CO dependencies between energy food, health Nexus.
Brian Bienkowski
We talked about kind of understanding social dynamics, cultural dynamics, and something you said there made me think about this a little bit where you said sometimes maybe women wouldn't wouldn't be comfortable speaking or wouldn't speak. And I'm wondering how you navigate something where you're trying to be culturally empathetic. But also, maybe parts of that culture are preventing the research or the implementation from being the most efficient. In that case, so I'm wondering how you walk that tightrope?
Sabah Usmani
Yeah, I think, in my case, specifically, I had the land like I, I had language I could, I was also a woman, so I could enter these spaces, like the home. I think it is more challenging coming from a different cultural background without the language understanding to connect. I think so I think that was an advantage in this specific case. And I think that that is one of the reasons that I think doing research in your own country, in your own community, you can kind of navigate this more seamlessly. And kind of push forward for those. You know, see, if you see some inequity in you know, why don't they care about the woman's opinion about this? And then you can kind of push for what have more fair treatment or what you think is, you know, whose voices need to be heard? I think when you're when you're outside that context, it's more important to, you know, have someone involved that understands that context really well. I think in my work in Quito, that was really important. Where I always had local researchers and translators, and just folks who are much more familiar with the environment, kind of helping bridge those gaps.
Brian Bienkowski
That's a good point does going in with some humility, that maybe, there are people who understand things that maybe you don't, I don't mean, you I mean, the Royal you have people that are going to do research or, frankly, journalism in these communities to approach it with humility. So I think you mentioned some of your U.S.-based research that looked at the intersection of neighborhood factors, social policies and health outcomes. And I think we think of you mentioned traffic, or if there's a big smokestack, I mean, I think some of these things are pretty intuitive of how they affect our health. But can you talk about this work, and what you learned about the ways where we live can impact our health outside of those kinds of very obvious things we see.
Sabah Usmani
So this makes up a big part of my research now. And I'm interested in kind of place and health, as I mentioned, and much of the work, you know, I tried to focus on this, and you know, where we live in a zip code has this kind of disproportionate impact on our health outcomes. So my work focuses on the built environment, which is like the physical characteristics of the place where we live, and how that shapes the health outcomes. So the built environment can include, you know, access to public transportation, food options, green spaces, biking infrastructure, you know, how conducive our neighborhood is to promoting things like walking, proximity to pollution sources, and you know, where we live, and how that influences health outcomes, and also our exposure to different, you know, pollutants. And how can we use that to prioritize policy action and investment in cities. Place can also impact beyond the built environment, things like crime and Job Access, and schools and other kinds of social determinants of health. So, you know, this is really important as like, more and more people are becoming more urban, like 82% of the US population, but the rest of the world is catching up. And we're kind of seeing these disparities at the neighborhood level. So I wanted to in my PhD kind of understand more deeply how like, our neighborhood influences health and what can be done about it, how do we design our cities to improve health outcomes? Not just I'm not just interested in kind of highlighting the disparities, because I think there's a lot of research there now, but in how do we, you know, design effective urban policies to address them. So one of my projects in my PhD is focused on developing an index of the built environment to capture the aspects of the environment the shift traffic and transportation choice and their impact on environmental exposures like air pollution on health outcomes, specifically cardiorespiratory health. So you know, the the design and implementation of the built environment can affect things like traffic through things things like you know, the the roads, parking spaces, residential density and other aspects that shape traffic. So as we all know, like when we are in traffic, not all parts of the city experience the same level of traffic. So we want to understand like, what are the aspects of city design that shape traffic, and how can we improve these? You know, these are like the actionable things that we make decisions on how can we improve that to address health disparities associated with traffic exposure, and different health outcomes. So I'm trying to kind of do a chunk of my dissertation research on this topic.
Brian Bienkowski
It makes my head spin when I think about a city and all the moving parts, to try to think about that as a puzzle and how people, and how you can be most efficient and making sure that most people, you know, people live a healthy life. And it's, it seems dizzying to try to think about that when I think about a place like New York City. So I know urban planning can can be a research field, but also there's the nuts-and-bolts of planning the planning the city, so I'm wondering what role urban planners can play in reducing these health disparities? And I know, You warned me against this earlier, but are there any examples of places that you think are doing it right?
Sabah Usmani
Um, yeah, I mean, like, Urban Planning and Public Health were once like, really closely intertwined disciplines, you know, there was like, an inherent connection between the physical environment and our well being. And it's been, you know, from the Jon Snow era, as many people might know, but also, like urban designers like Frederick Law Olmsted, like who designed Central Park, like there's a lot of kind of, it was understood that design of the urban environment influences health outcomes. And, you know, it was important for wellbeing, but like these over time, these fields kind of diverged, and kind of subspecialty expertise kind of emerged. And there was like, lots of like silos created, you know, where urban planning became more focused on land use infrastructure, transportation, while public health, more on the epidemiology, health care and disease prevention. So kind of, this kind of separation resulted in some missed opportunities to address this interplay between our built environment and public health. And I think the pandemic has really brought this linkage back into focus, you know, the virus COVID has kind of highlighted the this role of urban design and planning and shaping the spread of infectious diseases. And we saw that, you know, everyone kind of saw that factors like, you know, the overcrowding, or inadequate access to open spaces, and, you know, limited active transportation, like biking options, have kind of been, you know, exacerbated the impact of the pandemic, often on the most vulnerable populations. And, you know, health equity has been an important part of public health discussion. But, you know, implementing this, not just highlighting is now important, I think, and I think this is the era that we're in, and I think I want to be part of, and I feel like, in recent years, there's been a lot of effort in combining these approaches more directly in New York City and organizations like the Urban Design Forum, where I was a fellow this past year, kind of working on a project looking at urban policies and programs to improve air quality in New York. And we were working with mostly kind of people from across government agencies, like health departments, city planning, housing, academia, and the private sector kind of thinking through integrated solutions with them. So we need this is happening, and we needed a lot of more of this kind of going forward. And in terms of good examples, I think they're definitely examples of specific policies from cities that have, you know, been fairly successful for, you know, for example, in Barcelona, we have a paper just came out recently analyzing the Barcelona super block policy. And, you know, the city has kind of embraced this concept of a super block, which is where several city blocks are transformed into like a car-free zone, which prioritizes pedestrian, cyclists and green spaces. And so it's led to like reduced traffic congestion, and improve air quality and kind of increased opportunities for public physical activity, as well as social interaction. So I think like there's kind of this growing trend we see in like how urban design policies are globally, prioritizing kind of open streets, pedestrians, reducing traffic, you know, there's like the '15-minutes city,' which was a little controversial in Paris, but I think there's needs to be kind of more integration of health, health impact assessments in urban policy and planning. And including public health professionals from the beginning of the process, not just like, in the actual designing of the policy solution. So I think that's not been done. And I think that needs to be done a lot more.
Brian Bienkowski
When you mentioned open streets I think of in my backyard, there's a there's a patch that's mossy, and my wife told me stop mowing that and we stopped mowing this one patch, and all the sudden, where it was just grass and I would cut it like everything else. All these kind of beautiful flowers came up and it's mossy, and it's diverse and wild and cool and weird. And I noticed when you do open, like Ann Arbor, Michigan has, they have shut down certain blocks. And as soon as they shut those down, all of a sudden there's a Art, and there's music going on. And there's more people congregating. And there's thing. And it reminds me of that patch in my backyard where all of a sudden, we've gotten rid of doing things the same way all the time. And kind of this beautiful diversity has kind of thrived. So
Sabah Usmani
I really use Open Street. Yes, exactly.
Brian Bienkowski
I just love those examples. I think it's a people really liked that people really liked when they can just congregate and feel safe and comfortable. So I appreciate that. So what are you optimistic about in this field? What makes you kind of look forward with some rosy-colored glasses?
Sabah Usmani
I mean, I'm generally a very optimistic person. And so I'm really optimistic about, you know, innovation, like human capacity, innovate, problem solve, just creative play. I think that we could do a lot better when it comes to collaboration. But yeah, I'm optimistic about the role of technology. You know, I think we come across a lot of kind of dystopian narratives in the media of technology, but I don't, I don't get so influenced by them. And I remain optimistic. Great.
Brian Bienkowski
Well, that's, that makes one of us. I have to ask you, before we get to some of the fun stuff, do you miss India? I don't know how often you get back. But it seems like a it's very, very different from where you're at. And do you miss it?
Sabah Usmani
I mean, I feel like I stay in touch. I read a lot about India, I, my, I you know, talk to my parents and brother a lot. And my friends in India, so I feel really connected. And I try to go as often as I am able. So I feel very connected to to the current events and politics in India and I. Yeah, so I don't I don't miss it on a daily basis. But I yeah, I continue to stay connected.
Brian Bienkowski
Good. Yeah, it's such a global world now, it is much easier to kind of keep your finger on the pulse of places that you care about. So before we get out of here, and this has been so much fun to learn more about your work, I have three really quick questions where you can just answer with one word, or a phrase, my favorite hobby is.
Sabah Usmani
Being a tourist in my own city
Brian Bienkowski
Nice, It's a great place for it. The best advice I've ever received is,
Sabah Usmani
You don't always have to ask for permission, just do it in phone later. It's fine, as long as no one is harmed.
Brian Bienkowski
Yeah, there you go. There's a little asterisk at the end of that one. My favorite comfort food is
Sabah Usmani
Chai, not chai latte, just Chai.
Brian Bienkowski
Nice. And Sabah. What is the last book that you read for fun? You can answer with more than one word or a phrase here.
Sabah Usmani
So I read "Street Signs" by Jason Corbin it's kind of about incorporating local knowledge into environmental health policy. So it is for fun, though. But his work has been really influential in shaping kind of my own, like theory of practice and research.
Brian Bienkowski
Well, thank you so much for doing this. We met in person and you were the first person that I spoke to at length, and I live in a community of about 2700 people. So your focus on cities, is just very fascinating to me and worlds apart from what I'm used to. And I'm really glad you're doing it. So thank you so much for talking today.
Sabah Usmani
Thank you so much. Great talking to you..
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