(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 421: Everyone Thinks They Can be a Landscape Architect
This week we’re joined by Diane Jones Allen, Program Director for Landscape Architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington. We chat about her work on food deserts and transportation access and the American Society of Landscape Architects Climate Action Plan.
Listen to this episode at Streetsblog USA or at our archive site.
Below is a full unedited AI transcript of the episode.
Jeff Wood (1m 56s):
Diane Jones Allen, welcome to the Talking Headways podcast.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (2m 36s):
Thank you for having me.
Jeff Wood (2m 38s):
Well thanks for being here. Before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (2m 42s):
So I am a licensed landscape architect. I am the director of landscape architecture at University of Texas in Arlington. Arlington is between Dallas and Fort Worth. It’s in the DFW metroplex. I’ve been here just since 2017. I moved here from New Orleans, which is where I’ve lived most of my adult life. I guess I’m kinda interested in everything that has really to do with underserved communities from transportation to climate adaptation to you know, migration.
Jeff Wood (3m 17s):
Well how did you get into that? Like what was the first inclination that you’re interested in urban issues and the issues that you focus on in your work in teaching?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (3m 25s):
So my undergrad is in painting, so I have a bachelor’s of fine arts. That’s awesome. I have a master in landscape architecture and a PhD in transportation engineering. So, and I think those things all relate. Most people say what? Not really. No, no, no.
Jeff Wood (3m 41s):
And I’m like, I think, I think that’s great. More people should have painting backgrounds and MLA’s and well,
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (3m 46s):
You know, painting actually was good when I was studying landscape architecture cause I really could like understand color and shape and form making composition, those kind of things. But I think when I was studying landscape architecture and I was lucky, I studied at uc Berkeley, which is a great place because you know you have very pristine landscapes to Oakland, right? So you have real diversity and issues and then you have beautiful landscapes. So I think, you know, studying there and two, like I was lucky because one of my professors was Randy Hester, who was very much even way back then when I was in school was, I mean he was ahead of time cause he was really thinking about community engagement and how to deal with the issues of underserved populations.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (4m 32s):
So I think that’s where I got that from Berkeley, which would make sense cuz Berkeley is Berkeley. And so I think that’s what sparked that in me. And then when I, you know, was in New Orleans, so I, I actually was in Baltimore from the east coast and actually taught at a H B C U Morgan State and I was doing a lot of work in black communities. And then when I was in New Orleans before and after that at post Katrina, I moved and went to live in the lower nine and started working there. Which kind of shaped my issues into environmental justice and climate kind of action when I was in Baltimore, although in New Orleans I too saw how infrastructure and transportation is really linked to those issues, especially when it came to Katrina, right?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (5m 24s):
Because Katrina people were like physically trapped, like people who didn’t have cars couldn’t get out. Those are the people that you saw. And so then I started doing research, like my PhD research was on transit deserts. So I was looking at communities that had been pushed. I mean that’s the thing with the migration, right? So there are all these migrations, these Michael Eric Dyson talks about submerged migrations, which are these migrations when populations are pushed really like great migration when black people were pushed out of the south for fear of lynching. And then, you know, I started to look at this other migration, you know, gentrification and other things and even before that redlining which pushed people into certain neighborhoods.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (6m 8s):
So late after that, the push, you know, the redevelopment push that pushed people out to the herbs where you didn’t have transportation, you couldn’t get to work Yeah, your job.
Jeff Wood (6m 18s):
But in other cities as well because, and I actually was living in Austin when Katrina happened and a lot of people moved to Austin, to Houston, to other cities in Texas. And actually one of my best friends actually he met his wife because he was in New Orleans and then he moved back to Houston and then they met. And so that, that kind of thing happened as well where people were just kind of meeting as displaced peoples from New Orleans. And I feel like a lot of people got pushed out and a lot of them never returned. Even my neighbor upstairs who’s from New Orleans Sheda wasn’t pushed out. She’d lived in San Francisco for a really long time, but she had friends that came to San Francisco from New Orleans and kind of created a New Orleans community here because of that. So that, it’s really fascinating to hear about that kind of that push Yes. For folks going not just outside to the burbs but around the country.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (7m 0s):
Around the country. Yeah. And often those things are linked to environment and where people live.
Jeff Wood (7m 8s):
I wanna go back to a comment you made a little bit earlier about the transit desert and your work on that. And you also wrote a book about it and I imagine that book came from your research. Mostly it
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (7m 17s):
Grew outta my PhD. Although you know, I realized when I was doing my PhD I realized I had to do a book because you know, my PhD was for civil engineering with a focus on transportation. And so, you know, my PhD had to be very, very technical but I was really interested in the social issues cause I’m a landscape architect and I was really interested in these social cultural issues which my PhD chair was not. So I said ok, I’ll do the PhD and then I’m gonna write a book that’ll talk about all these social cultural issues related to transit deserts.
Jeff Wood (7m 50s):
Yeah, it’s called Lost in the desert race Transit access and suburban form. And listeners to the show are, are likely to understand issues faced by people in transit deserts. But what was something that surprised you when you were doing research for the book that you didn’t understand before or you didn’t realize before? Cuz I’m sure you understood many of these issues from being in the field for so many years, but there must have been something that kind of popped out at you.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (8m 12s):
Yeah, so what did pop out was that, you know, a transit desert wasn’t just that it was a place where there wasn’t transit access. I mean that’s the main part is that for instance, some suburban areas that don’t have transit are not transit desert. And that’s because nobody there cares, they have transit, right? If everybody’s in a place and they can get around right then it’s not really a transit desert, right? Because everybody can get around. So to me, the way I define it I guess, and research I began to find transit is a place that there population of right?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (8m 54s):
There are people, people who want to get around but they have no access. So if you have a place where it’s designed for cars and everyone has a car, but in transit desert, there’s demand. There’s demand for transportation and lack there up. So that’s like one of the big things. And that was kinda a debate I would’ve for people and they would say, but does it have transit? So it’s a desert. I said, well not really, you know, cause people, people have cars and they’re
Jeff Wood (9m 24s):
Fine. Yeah. And there’s, there’s folks that have cars and if it’s a far off suburb and they’ve chosen to live there. And I guess, yes, that makes it not necessarily a desert,
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (9m 30s):
But often you have that suburban form which makes people think that it’s not a desert too. Like it looks suburban and you think everybody has cars and you discover there’s this hidden population of people that are, you know, carpooling or hacking which is like a form of you know, doing shared rides and paying strangers or doing other things to get around. And so it looks, you know, it fools you. Like where I live in Arlington’s kinda like that. Like there’s no public transportation, there’s via, but, and so it looks suburban and you think, oh there’s no need for transportation but there is because there is a hidden demand.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (10m 13s):
And
Jeff Wood (10m 14s):
How do you determine that? I mean how do you determine which places are deserts and which places aren’t even if they look similar?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (10m 19s):
So there are three measures, right? So there’s the form, the demographics. So the demographics are, yeah, how many people own cars, you know, how many people work and live, you know, a certain distance probably beyond the quarter mile, the two miles, you know, how many people live a certain distance where they can’t walk, right? So those, the demographic things, the form and then also the transit availability, right? So how far are the bus stops? Are there bus stops? How many lines are there any bus lines? So you can kind of measure, use those three measures of transit access, demographics and suburban or urban form to determine if something’s together.
Jeff Wood (11m 4s):
That’s really fascinating. Going back to New Orleans too, you also worked on the Clayborne Expressway a little bit of some of the design and thinking about what happens to it next after Katrina. And you were disappointed by the outcome. I’d heard on on some of the interviews that I read and some of the things that I’d listened to.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (11m 20s):
Yeah. Like we’re working on it, we’re still working on it.
Jeff Wood (11m 23s):
I know we’ve actually talked about it on the show like a month ago or so. Just, you know, where is it now? What’s going on?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (11m 29s):
Yeah, so that is really interesting. So we’ve worked on it under several different versions or different consultants I guess I would say it that way. And there have been many studies on the Clayborne corridor because it’s interesting, you know, it’s a perfect example of forced migration. Talk about it. So you know, in the seventies they actually, you know, were looking to put it along the French Quarter, but of course that community had political and all kinds of power and they could stop it. And so instead they dropped it in treme on the longest stand of oak trees in North America, double LA miles of oaks.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (12m 8s):
They dropped this freeway and it caused all kinds of trouble, right? For instance, it densified the neighborhood, right? Because it was really kinda where the neighborhood kinda came together. It was a long neutral ground of oak tree. So it was where they would picnic and parade and celebrate. It kinda was the unity of the neighborhood. And when they dropped that freeway in it, people started to do those things beneath it. But it did cause densification of the neighborhood and other issues, you know, businesses left and all kinds of things. People who could afford to leave didn’t wanna live in front of the neighborhood left. So it changed the neighborhood but, and it starting a little bit before Katrina, cause was one of the oldest Creole African-American communities in America.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (12m 59s):
And so it was free people of color and then it was, you know, partially a neighborhood and the houses are beautiful. So it was beautiful, it’s beautiful of homes. So new people came, identification happened. And so a study was done in 76, I think it was 72 or 76 where it was led by a African American architect and they did a wonderful study but nothing happened with that. And then later to like actually put the stores and things beneath the freeway to like recapture underneath the freeway. And Sen goody Clancy did a study and we were just a small local consultant on that in 2013.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (13m 40s):
And they did different scenarios like bringing it down, leaning it up, taking down some of the OnRamps. And to their surprise, lots of the community didn’t want it down. And the reason why they didn’t want down, because there had been another study out there and it wasn’t the study by the black architect, there had been another one which had shown the freeway down and a daylighted canal, like a beautiful canal in the middle. But if you have a canal and like turning it into a lovely boulevard. So if you have a canal and a boulevard, then you can’t second line in that. You know, the things that they do underneath the freeway, people are under at Mardi Gras they have popup markets, Mardi Gras Indians come under there, but if you turn it in this beautiful, so it’s kinda a misunderstanding of the culture, right?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (14m 24s):
Yeah. Yeah. And the other worry too was the gentrification that had started to happen post-Katrina. Cause a lot of new people came, population shifted. They thought that it would cross the freeway in. Once you take it down and it becomes a beautiful boulevard or whatever, then people will be moved out. So some people you know, didn’t want that to happen. And there were these two wonderful black women who were able to work with the city and get another grant to actually stabilize underneath the freeway. And there’s debates about whether it should come down. I mean maybe it should, but it’s nice to do something to claim the space underneath so that if it does come down people have claimed it.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (15m 5s):
And that’ll probably take a long time. So in the meantime we’re working on a project with Clayborn Corridor Innovation District to like do a project underneath which you know is places for the popup markets and places for youth skateboard park, you know, stuff for youth and places for community to do the things they do. But in kind of cleaner, more creative environment.
Jeff Wood (15m 32s):
Do you think that politically anything like that will happen? Like anything, whether it’s a tear down or whether it’s the community stuff that happens underneath the freeway?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (15m 40s):
Yeah, so the, the stuff happens already, but will, you know, will the dollars go to? I think it will. I mean just last week on msnbc there was a town hall about race and culture. I guess it was a national day of racial healing and they had a town hall and the mayor, not the current mayor, but the past Mayor Mitch Land, who had given the grant, he has now in charge of all those PPA funds.
Jeff Wood (16m 10s):
The I I J A at the infrastructure. He’s
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (16m 13s):
Like, he’s out of that money, it’s it epa, maybe it’s
Jeff Wood (16m 15s):
Enough. He’s like, the transportation are for the
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (16m 17s):
Transportation funds. Yes he’s out of all those funds. Thank you for correcting me all those funds. And so that was his project. And so, you know, we’re like, we’re working on construction documents now for phases. So I think it’s gonna happen cause there’s funding for it. Even though there is some pushback against it, there are people saying, oh I should just take it down. Which maybe you should take it down, but in the meantime, cause it’s gonna take a long time to take it down, invest the funds. Yeah, I, I’m positive.
Jeff Wood (16m 47s):
Good. Well before we get to the climate action plan, I also wanna ask about landscape architecture more generally. And I’m wondering what some of the common misconceptions are about landscape architects and what they do.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (16m 58s):
Landscape architecture is hot, everybody tries to do it. Architects try to do landscape architecture and planning and everybody thinks they can be a landscape architect, but there’s a particular curriculum. So lots of times when I see architects, I love architects, my love to the architects. But unless you’ve had the training and grading and drainage and plant material and understand the earth, you know, I’ve seen water run uphill on plans and all kinds of crazy stuff. So it is a true curriculum with a true set of knowledge. And I say that as a director of a program but also as a train landscape architect. It really does. And and really it’s a hot profession right now because of climate change.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (17m 38s):
And covid, believe it or not, right, COVID, cause people realize that one place you could go that was free and you could be outside and be or were parks. So now municipalities are saying we should have more parks because during Covid, you know, parks were one place where people could go, right? You couldn’t go to the mall or the movie theater cause they were either closed or dangerous. But you could go to your local park. So between covid and also the issues of climate change, right? You know, because landscape architects are the ones who really can focus on how do we capture carbon, you know, how do we have more green, how do we deal with water? You know, places like Katrina when the idea was to keep the water out and then they realized no need about how to live it to capture it.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (18m 25s):
So you know, I’m a landscape and I think it’s the best profession in the world. Respect planners and engineers and architects, landscape architecture
Jeff Wood (18m 40s):
As a planner. I’ll let that slide. We need all all stripes to yes
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (18m 46s):
We to help out. I set respect to the all.
Jeff Wood (18m 48s):
Of course, of course. Well let’s talk about the first ever climate plan by the American Society of Landscape Architects. And it’s 2023. I’m curious, I’m surprised actually that this is the first climate action plan from the landscape architects.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (19m 3s):
There was a climate action report that was a committee and there was a climate action report that was done in, and I was actually lucky to be part of that convening and work on that. And then there was a climate action committee that had been working a long time. And then there was a lot of different people like Pamela Conrad and other people had been working on like she was working on the carbon capture. So people, so it’s not like, yeah this just happened. It’s just, you know, kind of evolved into, you know, really now let’s have a strong document, let’s have a field guide, let’s, you know. But it’s been like kinda a culmination of things that have been going on many individuals for a long time.
Jeff Wood (19m 47s):
Well what started the process to get to this culmination of all those documents and this document specifically, which is very impressive.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (19m 54s):
So there was, like I said, there was a committee and then there had been a climate action committee, but then that became, for this particular plan, it became a task force. So there were like I guess seven or eight of us that were a task force, but there was a large advisory group, which was really great, made up of landscape architects, kinda from different places in the industry. Practitioners, academics span the age range spans across the country, types of practice. So there was an advisory group. And so the task force we kind of discussed and kind of began, you know, taking all the stuff that had been done over the years and kind of trying to formulate this and we would pass it on to the advisory council who actually would add and you know, know did a lot of work to really make those things happen.
Jeff Wood (20m 51s):
Were there lots of disagreements between the groups or between, during your discussions about what should
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (20m 56s):
Be There was lots of back and forth. Yeah, yeah. There were lots of back and forth. But one time, you know, we first started it was kind of like, you know, equity was kind be the center, but then it ended up being one of the three, just lots of B you know, thoughts about should it only be about carbon capture that you know, and it, and of course it shouldn’t. More people wanted to be more about water issues. So yeah, there was lots of back and forth. But it, that was healthy because that that strength and the plan.
Jeff Wood (21m 28s):
Yeah, well the vision is to achieve zero emissions and increase sequestration of, of co2. But there’s so many factors we can’t control like the politics of a place or supply chains or things like that. So how do we get there under this specific plan that you all put it together?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (21m 42s):
So this plan, which I really like is about putting the power in the hands of the community, right? Because communities can put pressure on their local pro politics, which you know, impacts national politics where, yeah, so it’s very community focused in a lot of aspects in terms of landscape architects, like learning from the community and understanding the communities that they work in, right? And then landscape architects helping to empower the community in terms of access to how do you access funds, you know, how do you access the political structure, those kind of things.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (22m 25s):
So it’s a very like kinda ground up approach, which I think is important.
Jeff Wood (22m 32s):
And also one of the group actions is to develop a guide on how to partner with and influence federal and state departments of transportation, et cetera, planning professionals and things like that.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (22m 41s):
Yes. And it’s not just for, you know, for landscape architects but also for the community too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jeff Wood (22m 47s):
Well what would such a guide look like in your mind? Like would it be examples or would it be like an NATO guides where they, you know, put out transportation plan sections and stuff for, you know, bus rapid transit and bike lanes and those types of things. What would it, what would it look like from the landscape architects?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (23m 2s):
Oh, you know, it would be an action guide. Yeah. With some examples and then some tools, which is kind of like what, I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but what the field guide is like. Yeah,
Jeff Wood (23m 13s):
Yeah. Oh I really like the field guide. I was really impressed by that. It was almost like a little Christopher Alexander. It was a little pattern language. There was like little pieces where you could put stuff together and get to the place that you wanna be, but you didn’t have to pick everything, but you could, you know, pick and choose the little pieces that actually yeah,
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (23m 29s):
Like a, a little cookbook, which I like.
Jeff Wood (23m 32s):
Yeah. Yeah. A little cookbook. And how was that put together?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (23m 34s):
Through that same process, right through the advisory group at a, the ASLA leadership also had a part in it and taskforce. So the taskforce kind of starting stuff and feeding it right. And then it comes back, you know, so it was kinda like a transactive kinda process.
Jeff Wood (23m 54s):
What was your favorite part of the plan?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (23m 56s):
There is a part in there about transportation. Of course I contributed a lot to the part about financing, like the different ways to help communities get funds through grants using other people’s money, government funds, those kinda things. And then I also contributed a bit about helping landscape architects learn about communities. How do you work in communities? You know, what’s that approach from listening and learning? Because lots of times I, I know in my work I’ve gotten not pushback but not a feedback that, are you saying that you know, you have to be from a community to work in it and I always have to correct and say no, that’s not what I’m saying all you don’t have to be black to work in a black community or white to work in the white community.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (24m 48s):
Cuz I’ve worked in both. Yeah. And but what I’m saying is you do need to know if you’re not, and you do need to listen and come in and respect the community’s knowledge and try to understand and appreciate the history and the place, you know, and if you do that, then yeah, you can work. But if you come into a community and you’re not of the community and you think you know everything, then I think you’re gonna have troubles.
Jeff Wood (25m 16s):
I think that’s true in any profession.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (25m 18s):
Yeah. So that was a big part of the plan. And especially when it comes to climate. I mean, who better knows where the water flows and when it rains and what’s really happening ecologically and environmentally. And they might have those terms, but they know that stuff cause they live it.
Jeff Wood (25m 36s):
Well you’ve mentioned interest increasing cause of what’s happening in, in climate change. And we just saw here in San Francisco we got a day where we had like five inches of rain, but people were posting pictures of bioswales on the street because they were doing their job. And so I think that that’s, that’s something that has been popping up and people are taking notice of what’s happening or what has happened already and maybe how to implement that further. And I imagine this plan tries to do that as well.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (25m 60s):
Yes, yes. And people do notice those
Jeff Wood (26m 2s):
Things. They do. I think something that also I, I find fascinating and I think something that doesn’t get enough attention in places like transportation and planning is ecosystem services. And I think that the value of land, the value of undisturbed property Yes. And how we can put more value on processes that are already occurring over things like, and I appreciate green infrastructure, but if there’s already green infrastructure there because the ecosystem is taking care of it, then green infrastructure might seem more like gray infrastructure when it comes to that. So I, I’m wondering what your take is on ecosystem services and, and how that can be implemented as something that states and cities regions can focus more on. Because I don’t know if they’ve been doing that as much in, in the past as maybe they should.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (26m 45s):
It, it’s so difficult, right? Because of society, especially capitalism, you know, because when you see vacant land, usually we think it’s vacant, right? It is useless. We need to put a development on it. You know, I live in Texas where they wanna put a development on every, everywhere, but, but if you see a vacant, you know, no one thinks it’s doing something good. It’s absorbing water, right? If it has trees on it’s providing oxygen, no one thinks that’s of the shopping center or there’s vacant land, there’s going to be crime.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (27m 26s):
You know? So it’s, it’s it’s, that’s like a really, a really hard thing. But it’s about education. And I think, like you said, more and more people are paying attention to these things and realizing that landscape has value in itself. I was just interviewed by somebody that was doing an article on green infrastructure in, you know, cities or protecting from storm and flood. Yeah. And so the use of green infrastructure and then they were saying, well one of the gods they were reading was saying, you know, you should cut down trees, right? Because in storms, trees can, you know, cause damage and hit power lines.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (28m 6s):
And I was saying yeah, but trees have roots which actually stabilizes the land, right? So, you know, trees are really important because if you eliminate all the trees, then you’re probably gonna have more erosion, right? Because you don’t have something that’s holding the soil together. But it’s things like that. I was reading this really interesting article about the city where there was a project to put trees in the neighborhood and they went to this black neighborhood and the people didn’t want the trees. And so of course they just made this negative assumption, you know, black people don’t like trees, you know what’s wrong with them.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (28m 47s):
But it was cause in the past, trees had been taken outta their neighborhood for some kind of development purpose. So a bunch of trees historically had been torn down, had been taken down. And then also when trees were planted, they were planted not properly, right? So they broke up the sidewalk and they caused problems. So the problems that they had, the reason why they didn’t want the tree was not because of the tree, well it was because of city history. Because the city had, it was a freeway or something nearby and they tore out all the trees and then when they put trees back, you know, they didn’t put entries the right caliber, they didn’t put them in the right way.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (29m 31s):
And so it caused broken up sidewalks and all kinds of things. So it was this kind of negative experience they really had with, you know, the city or those empowered who were responsible for putting in the trees. It wasn’t the tree themselves. So when people came this time saying, here’s some trees, they were like, no, because A, you’re probably not gonna put ’em in right then when you feel like it, you’re gonna come and cut all down. So it’s just our relationship with nature and education on both sides.
Jeff Wood (29m 60s):
Yeah, I mean that’s a really important point cuz there’s, there’s also people that don’t want trees sometimes because the trees that have been put in in the past, like you said, they, there’s some other externality that comes with them. Yes. But also the, the care and feeding of taking care of, of trees and you plant a tree but then don’t water it, it’s not gonna grow. And so it’s gonna be an eyesore. It’s not gonna grow very fast. So it’s gonna be this little stick in the ground versus, you know, what we see in planned drawings and stuff all the time where the trees have magically grown into these 20 year 30 year trees, which we know that doesn’t wor happen when you plant the tree to, to start with. But you know, there’s all these other things that come with it with planting trees that you know, might be detrimental or just, you know, they’re not taken care of.
Jeff Wood (30m 41s):
There’s also a study I think in the Lancet yesterday or the day before, a couple days ago about European cities and how three or 4% of morbidity in cities comes from the heat island effect. And they could actually mitigate that by planting 30% tree cover in most cities. So there’s like, you know, there’s human impacts as well for some of these things that I think really needs more attention. And, and I think that that’s an important part of the discussion overall of cities is, is kind of the natural effects of greenery and the heat island effect and all these other things that are part of our urban environments.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (31m 12s):
Yes.
Jeff Wood (31m 13s):
So environmental and climate justice is also a very important part of all this. What did discussions surrounding these initiatives look like when you were crafting the document?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (31m 21s):
Well, environmental justice was really, really important. And it kind of dovetailed with this thing about empowering communities, right? Because often what happens is communities, they feel powerless. A good example is post Katrina. A lot of people went and did a lot of things down there that didn’t really work well, but it was because people felt desperate and powerless. So they kind of just kind of let other people decide what was good for them. And then also, you know, environmental justice is about the fact that certain communities, you know, whether in New Orleans or even here in Texas, we’ve been working with some Friedman communities that are along the Trinity River.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (32m 7s):
So they’ve been placed in these low lying areas where there are issues of flood or they’ve been placed. We’re working with a community that lies between a cement plant, the Trinity River and a railroad. So they’ve been kind of put in these places where they’re vulnerable. But often it’s, it’s tricky too because a lot of these places, they like this particular town, neighborhood, they’ve been there for a long time, the 18 hundreds they’ve been there. And so, or just like the lower nine people have been there for centuries or decades and they don’t wanna leave. It’s their home. They just don’t want the, the disaster.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (32m 49s):
You know, they just don’t want the oil refinery, you know, or the bad flood design or you just destroying their wetlands or you know, you dropping the cement plant, which came in this case and Dallas came way after, you know, right next to them. Right. So they, they, they love this land, but it’s just that things happen that threaten them.
Jeff Wood (33m 11s):
Yeah. Without their consent too.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (33m 13s):
Yes. Without their consent. That happens a lot
Jeff Wood (33m 16s):
From a transportation standpoint. What stands out to you about the report as a PhD in engineering? Somebody who focuses on transit deserts thinks about transportation as policy.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (33m 26s):
So there’s a good section in the report about transportation, which I really liked and other people contributed to it. But I, you know, I read it, said yes, this is good and right because I was having this conversation with my students the other day, right? And they live in Texas and they were saying Dr. Allen, people in Texas are not getting rid of their cars. I drove here to school today. We need our cars, we need our spaghetti. You know, I don’t care what you said, you know, and so my argument is we need to have transit diversity, which in some areas we don’t. Right? We need to have it so that it’s accessible if you need it and want it. And I mean that’s the problem with transit deserts. There’s no transit diversity.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (34m 6s):
So we need to have it so that people of all incomes, if I wanna drive my car, I can drive my car, but the car should not be the dominant thing, right? Because we kind of designed for the car, we put freeways everywhere and very little do we think about bike lanes or rapid bus lanes or you know, rail or all the other things. Very few places are transit diverse. And so this plan kind of outlines the fact that, you know, it talks about having it so that people can get different places without having to have depend on their car, you know, or to be able to, I think it’s said by 27% or 27% of like all the carbon is coming from, you know, our transportation.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (34m 53s):
But to reduce that. And I think we can reduce that by, you know, giving people choice and being more diverse. And like here in Texas, like I said, where I live in Arlington, there is no bus, there is no public bus and the light rail, the dart doesn’t come here. There’s a T R E A train, like this rapid train system that goes from Fort Worth to Dallas, it runs through Arlington but it doesn’t stop. So they’re like political reasons where, places where people don’t want transit diversity because maybe they don’t want diversity, I don’t know. But, but I’m proud of the plan because it does address the issues of we have to be more multimodal.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (35m 37s):
And you know, I think about it in terms of equity and people getting places, but the plan thinks about it in terms of we wanna have a healthy world. We have to be more multimodal.
Jeff Wood (35m 45s):
You’re trying to reduce emissions overall. You have to focus on that big chunk that comes from transportation. It makes me think of the difference between a place like Arlington, which is chosen and actually is the largest city in the country that does not have a public bus system.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (35m 57s):
I mean when I moved here, you know, six years ago I was like, oh, I’m gonna live near the school and I’m gonna walk to school, I’m gonna take the bus. Or you know, my husband was like, he’s a bike rider, he’s gonna ride his bike and we live close to school, but you cannot ride your bike cause there is no bike lane.
Jeff Wood (36m 12s):
Yeah,
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (36m 13s):
The cars go really fast and you’ll get run over. I mean I actually had to call, I live across from a park where people, like in my development, they get in their car and they drive to the park, I walk, right, but I have to walk across, you know, like four lanes or six lanes, something I’m crazy to get to the park. And I’ve had to call the city of Arlington because I got almost run over, I mean so close that I put my hands and stop the car and I touched the car. The hood of the car kept to me three times and finally had to call the city and said obviously this signal you have out here, people see green and they just wanna turn left and they don’t care that there is, you know, the hand, they don’t care.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (36m 54s):
So they came and they put a longer time and then they put the counting the countdown clock. But still, there’s still people that, you know, the light screen, they don’t care if it says counting. You know,
Jeff Wood (37m 6s):
That must be such a huge difference from I imagine where you were in New Orleans.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (37m 9s):
Yeah. And then, oh gosh, so last year I was on faculty development leave. I was at Dunbar Oaks, I had a research fellowship in DC so I was there for nine months and I didn’t take my car. And then I’ve been like in this withdrawal since I’ve been back because I was living in Georgetown, you know, and so there was a bus and then I could walk to the metro, I could get the commuter training and go to Baltimore and see my relatives. Yeah. You know, I got the commuter train, I got the commuter train and then I got on, you know, the Amtrak and I went to Philadelphia, I went to New York all by train, no car all over the, yeah.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (37m 49s):
You know, cuz that little corridor is amazing. You know, just transit everywhere. And then I come back here and you cannot get on an Amtrak and go from Arlington to Houston. I just couldn’t believe it. I said, come on, you know, I can, you know, I can go from Baltimore to New York or Baltimore to Boston, how come I can’t get on the Amtrak and go from Arlington to San Antonio or something. And then my husband found it. But I think it takes like two days and you have to go. It’s not like, it’s not like the east coast where, you
Jeff Wood (38m 19s):
Know. Yeah, I took, I took Amtrak from Dallas to Austin one time and it was a, it was a bit of a trip. Yeah. You know, it was slowed down by some freight trains and it was a mess. It’s gotta be easier. It’s gotta be easier.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (38m 31s):
Yeah, it could be, but
Jeff Wood (38m 32s):
It could be.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (38m 33s):
Well I, I think the train system is something we messed up in this country, but it could be, you know, I mean I understand there’s pressures Yeah. Whale, all kinds of things that cause us not to have,
Jeff Wood (38m 45s):
We’ll get there eventually. It might not be in our lifetimes, but we’ll get there, I hope. Anyways, so I think the action summary actually was the best place to find what the document is actually going to do. And I think that these three kind of points kind of give like an overall assessment of what you all are trying to do, which is to make sure landscape architecture practice is climate positive, empower communities and support of equitable outcomes and then build coalitions and guide decision makers to make positive change. And so those are three really important points. I think that the, the document makes that seems like it’s on the right track and going to actually work by 2040, which is the, the timeline that you’re looking at.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (39m 18s):
And I like how it does it because, so it says you take responsibility, right? So as a landscape architect, in your own practice, like every day, how much carbon are you expending, like in your business, getting to work, those kind of things. Then in your practice, what kinda projects are you doing? You know, are you doing projects that pay over everything, tear down forest or you know, so in your physical practice or how you live as a landscape architect, how are you, you know, and then in the things that you’re designing and seeing built, how are you doing that? Right? And then within that, yes. How are you influencing the powers that be?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (40m 0s):
Because that’s landscape architects, like I said, we’re in contact with communities, but we’re also in contact with city governments and council people and, and people that are reviewing your stuff and all kind, you know, so I like how it gives you kind of is to empower landscape architects to kinda make this change on these kinda multiple levels.
Jeff Wood (40m 21s):
Yeah. And how do you hope folks outside the profession get, you know, get the plan? Like how do you hope folks outside of landscape architects in ingest it? Like how do you hope they take it in and take it to heart?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (40m 33s):
So as a practitioner, you know, or as an academic you work with community students, other people, you can actually hand this thing to people and you can, as I was saying before, you know, if you’re working with a community, you can enact the guide or if you’re working with students, you can make sure that they, you know, see this, understand it so that they will enact it. So I think it’ll be given to communities in a really direct way.
Jeff Wood (41m 1s):
Is there any kind of like public education process for it? I, I know there’s parts in there which, which you’re talking about, you know, make sure that the media has access to people who are, are experts in the field and make sure that your curriculum is part of this when you’re teaching at school and all that stuff. Yes. But like in the general public sense, like is there some sort of a way that you all are going to reach out and like tell people what landscape architects are all about and, and make sure that, like, I’m just thinking about, you know, there’s all these messages in media these days about, you know, what the right way is to do things and how we’re supposed to tackle climate change and things. Things like that. And I’m wondering what the big kind of public outreach is, would look like.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (41m 38s):
Yes. So there’s a plan for that. So two things. So at the ASLA convention that was in San Francisco, there was like a big push to the profession, right? To landscape architects there, right? There were, you know, educational workshops and seminars and you know, give everybody the plan and it was given to them digitally or you know, get a hard copy or Yeah. And so there was a way that there’s, and still through the chapters, through the local, local chapters to educate landscape architects. And then there is, you know, what, what we are doing, right? So there’s a plan to talk to and landscape architecture as SLA has been having this big media push through many media outlets.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (42m 23s):
So that is important and we’re trying to do that at the local level, like I said, through the chapters and then also, you know, at National SLA and through like talking to you when other people like you and sending it to newspapers and those kinda things. Yeah. And like I said, also most importantly I think like one-on-one with communities as you practice or do community or service learning.
Jeff Wood (42m 47s):
Yeah. So what’s next? What’s next on the agenda for the plan for you moving forward?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (42m 53s):
Well I hope, you know, I haven’t gotten this official from as S L a, so don’t quote me, but I hope there’s always some kinda assessment, right? Like, you know, we probably need to have some kinda assessment maybe in, I dunno, four years, five years, two years. I like what happened? Did it work? You know, where are the measures? How do we assess this? We probably need to start working on that. Yeah. And then for me, you know, I have my practice and we’ve been doing a lot of interesting but sad on one hand work, which,
Jeff Wood (43m 26s):
What does that mean? Interesting but sad.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (43m 28s):
So just past July, you know, we did a memorial for Tamir Rice, the 12 year old was shot in Cleveland and then just two days ago somebody else was, you know, killed in the street, Tyree Nichols. So this stuff, and you know, whether those kind of things should have memorials or not. So that’s another question. But so we did that and then we’re actually working on a lynching memorial in Fort Worth. So the work is sad, but it’s important. Yeah, yeah. Because you can’t let people forget or we’re gonna keep having these things. And then in my academic life, I’m writing a book, it’s called the Maroon Landscape, A Cultural Approach to Climate Resiliency. So it’s about maroon slaves who lived in coastal Louisiana and how they lived and how people have like to this day kind of captured and been inspired by this legacy and are actually doing coastal restoration based on this kinda indigenous, I’ll call it paradigm.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (44m 24s):
So I’m working on that and that’s kinda exciting.
Jeff Wood (44m 27s):
That is exciting. That sounds awesome. Well, where can folks, folks find you, if you wanna be found online
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (44m 34s):
At ut of course. And then Design Jones ww design jones llc.com. That’s, yeah.
Jeff Wood (44m 44s):
And then where can folks find the Climate Action plan if they wish to find it?
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (44m 47s):
Oh yes, they can go to a sla.org and I was, I was there and it comes right up.
Jeff Wood (44m 53s):
Yes. Perfect. That’s awesome. Well, Diane Jones, Allen, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate your time.
Dr. Diane Jones Allen (44m 58s):
Thank you. You are very kind
