(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 447: Leadership for the 15 Minute City

This week we’re joined by Yvonne Yeung to talk about ULI’s recent report, Building 15 Minute Communities: a Leadership Guide. We chat about how the guide can help create good development that reduces the need to drive, and supports our climate emissions reduction goals.

Also make sure to sign up for the Webinar on September 13th.

You can listen to this episode at Streetsblog USA or at our archive site.

Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript:

Jeff Wood (1m 21s):
Yvonne Yeung, welcome to the Talking Headways podcast.

Yvonne Yeung (1m 40s):
Yeah, my pleasure.

Jeff Wood (1m 41s):
Well thanks for being here. Before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Yvonne Yeung (1m 45s):
Sure. So I have 23 years of experience primarily how paying the public and private sector leaders to create complete community. So I was in touch with Urban Institute actually when I was a student At that time I was studying landscape architecture and really trying to understand is there anything we can do beyond design that can help to use public spaces to revitalize economy? So through that, I have 10 years in the private sector and primarily helping government agencies to think about how they can use invo structure to shift the way that we are doing development. And I think what’s exciting is over the last 10 years I was actually part of the government sector.

Yvonne Yeung (2m 29s):
So I helped two local municipality helping them when they’re making a major shift. So at that time there’s policy in place saying that there’s a focus on transit, there’s policy in in place saying that the shifts of economy is more towards innovation economy. So in other words, the way we are design cities need to do a company shift. So through that is very exciting, helping different department to think about how they can shift the decision making from a more kind of drive to automobile base to a walk to base. So I think that’s a focus of our conversation today.

Jeff Wood (3m 4s):
Awesome. Well let’s go back in time a little bit though. I’m wondering what got you interested in cities?

Yvonne Yeung (3m 8s):
Yeah, so when I was six years old, I grew up in Hong Kong. At that time the city was building the coastal line, the subway. So I was fascinated just looking at the construction sites, looking at a lot of new opportunities happen within a very short period. So I think it was between four to five years I can see really how the city transform and every time when there’s new development comes in, it provide new amenity as well. And I was very curious because I love observing how people interact, particularly because of the shaping of the public spaces. People are more cohesive, people integrate and people just get a lot more activities happening.

Yvonne Yeung (3m 52s):
And I think it’s a major shift for me when my family immigrated to Canada when I was 14 years old and it was a little bit of shock in the beginning because the whole structure of the city seems to be surrounding the automobile. In other words, there’s more cars on the street than people. So that’s a major shift.

Jeff Wood (4m 12s):
And all of this was when you were six years old, you thought of all this, well

Yvonne Yeung (4m 16s):
I was six years old, I spent a lot of time thinking about the future and I was think that if I grew up and get a job just building cities, that will be the coolest job ever.

Jeff Wood (4m 27s):
Oh, so now you have the coolest job ever.

Yvonne Yeung (4m 29s):
Yeah, I’m fortunate. Yeah.

Jeff Wood (4m 32s):
Well let’s talk about your report building 15 Minute Communities, a Leadership Guide done through ULI. I’m wondering what was the impetus for this report?

Yvonne Yeung (4m 39s):
So what’s interesting about the Urban Land Institute is that we have a combination of public sector members, private sector members, and also real estate and also community leaders as well leaders. So this is primarily is a voice from our membership. So we did a survey, it was during Covid and what they say they see there is tremendous opportunity to reshape how we are integrating infrastructure with development. So that’s how this initiative gets started. So it is part of the Curtis infrastructure initiative and it’s funded by Jim Curtis, a developer from San Francisco. And he believe that infrastructure and development has the opportunity to shape people’s lives.

Yvonne Yeung (5m 23s):
It’s all about people. So through that for this we put together a report and primarily trying to think about what are the key things that we can do over the next seven years. And I think why we see this as significant is that we know from a planning standpoint over the next seven years we’ll be building at a minimum 10 billion square feet of new developments and we have a choice to make whether we are gonna put those in auto oriented area or we are intentionally putting those into more dense mixed users, walkable neighborhood. I think the reason why Urban Land Institute is drawing the energy to do this report at this critical time is at the same time we see trillion dollars of infrastructure investment coming to North America.

Yvonne Yeung (6m 10s):
Majority of them is coming to the us, there are some of them going coming to Canada as well. And the key is what is interesting about these infrastructure dollars is that it provides a seeding fund and for the very first time giving people opportunity to look at infrastructure differently.

Jeff Wood (6m 27s):
It’s so interesting because we do have all this money and you know, Congress basically doles it out to states and and cities around the country. But you all are trying to figure out a way to structure it so that we get the most out of it.

Yvonne Yeung (6m 38s):
Yeah, absolutely. So what we notice, the biggest challenge based on our survey and also we run infrastructure forum as well, is the decision making. So therefore the report, which is now available on the UI website and anybody is welcome to just Google 15 minute committees, a Leadership Guide, you’ll get assessed to two pieces of information. One is a set of slides that we put together helping people to have this constructive conversation. Another is the report. So primarily our product is very simple, basically using a three tiers decision system. First is trying to understand what is the best way to align some of the new policy.

Yvonne Yeung (7m 21s):
And what interesting is that there’s a lot of new policy come out in November of last year and many of those is provide a solid foundation in terms of how we are making infrastructure decision. So for example, the first one is 30 30 conservation. So that is focusing on protecting 30% of land and water by 2030. So both US and Canada is very clear in terms of making that goal. So what it means for us is that we can create nature in the city, we can be intentional about growing back our forest to deal with some of the flooding and heat issues.

Yvonne Yeung (8m 1s):
The second policy is Justice 40 Initiative is intentionally putting that to allocate 40% of the funds to fill in any of the transit and service gap, particularly for equity perspective. So we know for example, in certain areas there’s Red line District in certain areas there is older neighborhood that in the past they didn’t get the tension and the party having the infrastructure dollars. So the justice for the initiative is primarily fitting that goal. Healthy people 2030. So I’m a professional planner of a designer landscape architect and I also have an M B A. So this to me is very exciting, which is for the very first time we have something tangible to measure.

Yvonne Yeung (8m 43s):
How do you define a healthy community? So the healthy people initiative have very clear measure, particularly looking at built environment, how that translate even to education performance, the social performance, the health performance, and also looking at how it can improve the lives of people from different ages as well. So I think some of the challenges we’re facing at the moment is aging population. A lot of millennial families is having young children, but it’s lack of the support phase. So what we’re gonna do, so that would give us a very clear to measure what we need to do and how we can get to a more possible outcome.

Yvonne Yeung (9m 22s):
Another one is decarbonization. So our goal is to reduce at the very minimum 50% by 2030. So from that standpoint is that it is really for real estate to take the leadership from that standpoint. So it’s not just on material meaning like using no carbon material, but it’s also about clean energy, removing parking, reducing the waste, but also a big chunk of the carbon coming from autocentric behavior. So therefore using the community model and we call that a 15 minute community primarily is making it in a way that you can walk to all your daily needs within 15 minutes.

Yvonne Yeung (10m 4s):
We believe that that model can be a model for decarbonization at a community scale. So if you imagine the messaging is that instead of decarbonizing building by building, you are decarbonizing at a community scale. So that is very exciting.

Jeff Wood (10m 21s):
And the 15 minute community idea isn’t necessarily new, it’s something that’s been around for quite a while. It has a precedent in history I imagine.

Yvonne Yeung (10m 29s):
Yes. So what is interesting is that during covid, everybody around the world, they heard about Carlos Moreno in Paris about the 50 minute community because they were able to do the shift so quickly and it’s so simple, right? But when we are going back to history as part of writing this report, the initial idea was actually coming from New York in 1920, so it was Clarence Perry. So he was a planner working for the city of New York planning department. He was task to decide where would the city put in new parks. And he noticed that he cannot make that decision in isolation because at that time that was also the time when the city is starting to have a lot of automobile and they’re facing a problem at that time, which is they’re losing one child per day.

Yvonne Yeung (11m 19s):
So therefore instead of come up with the recommendation of new parks, he come with a recommendation of neighborhood unit. Basically the idea is very simple, it’s starting with putting in a new school surrounded by new park and the school will be open in the evening and during the weekend for community users and putting that in the heart of a community, but surrounding that with the local kind of mixed users and residential users. So that become a scalable template. So this is this the model to us, this is kind of like a, the legacy actually is, you know, going back to New York. So that’s very exciting.

Jeff Wood (11m 58s):
What was your reaction though when you heard all of the kind of conspiracy theories and such from Carlos Moreno’s a 15 Minute City and what was happening, you know, during the pandemic and after the pandemic actually we’re still in the pandemic for the most part. But you know, what was your reaction to the conspiracy theories that were happening? You know, during the pandemic on the 15 Minute City,

Yvonne Yeung (12m 17s):
I think what is interesting is that in order to make the shift, people need data to make decision. But because many of these is so new, so how do you get those information? So I think the conspiracy is that people try to understand what is trigger the decision, why are you, you know, making this major shifts. But from our perspective, we know that over the last 20 years, many profession has made major shifts. It’s not just professional planners but also professional engineers. So in other words, they’re not looking at, you know, we are traffic engineers, we are transportation engineers, we are focusing on active transportation.

Yvonne Yeung (12m 58s):
So that means the numbers that they’re looking at is entirely different. Instead of counting cars is about counting people. So because this is so new, so how do they, you know, having a clear benchmark. I think from that standpoint is that a lot of that is about professional judgment, but also another part is that, you know, thinking about how to collaborate and really kind of focusing on the outcome

Jeff Wood (13m 22s):
From the transportation perspective. We know how hard it is to get a bike lane or a bus lane sometimes. And I feel like it’s easy to say we need to do these things, but how do we actually get everybody on board with these ideas? Because I, I know that for some folks and some traffic engineers that might call themselves transportation engineers now it might be a tough sell.

Yvonne Yeung (13m 40s):
Yeah, so I think what’s interesting about the manual that we created is that we using different prototype to tell the story. So can use the one prototype to kind of tell this strategy. So imagine you have a downtown, so now that a lot of people is working from home and the downtown has the opportunity to getting more diversified. So how to do it is looking at is there any opportunity to transform those parking spaces into public spaces? So that’s a start. The key is finding a way to create a new set of destination. Once those are in, then the decision about putting in bike lane or a new walkway become a lot more straightforward.

Jeff Wood (14m 24s):
I really like that though the part of the report where you talked about the different geographies and especially you know from a ULI perspective, it’s interesting to see what those geographies are. ’cause usually it’s like the region, the city, the neighborhood, those types of neighborhoods. But you all have, you know, excerpts, malls, suburban corridors, edge cities and downtowns. Which one of those was the most interesting to you?

Yvonne Yeung (14m 44s):
For me, the most interesting and also the most important one to put more energy is the region is the metro region scale. So we see that across North America there are more than 400 metro regions. So as part of this research we actually study the top 55. We try to understand what is the growth projection and also what are the infrastructure gap. We also look at affordability as well what is actually, you know, aging infrastructure based impacting region as a whole. So what we see is that right now there’s a lot of proposal coming down the pipeline and generally triggered by metro region very often is by transit agency. But in order for the transit case to be successful, land use decision need to be made at the same time.

Yvonne Yeung (15m 28s):
So that means it involved the land use decision of multiple cities. So I think in order to make this effective, there is opportunity to put some of the key land use decision upstream. For example, how many people and jobs are you looking for? What kinds of jobs when it come to economy, many of the region, they’re competing at a regional basis late in others thinking about how many university, what’s the kinds of attraction that you can create as a region? And all of those need a lot of collaboration among cities. Another element is modal split. So in order for transit to be effective, other than having you know, different kind of agencies work together to provide integrated service, but is to agree on a modal split.

Yvonne Yeung (16m 14s):
Is this 20, is it 30? Is this 50? How many of those movement is not by driving but is by walking, cycling and transit. So I think that’s very important. Another piece is Asian infrastructure. So we know the transmission lines, for example, in certain parts of North America is experiencing a lot of the black out. So we know that this is only a symptom that could be more happening in the future and is really impacting not just the economy as a whole, but also life and safety as well. Particularly in tower neighborhood when there’s a blackout you have to find a way to, you know, get outdoors because the building can get so hot.

Yvonne Yeung (16m 56s):
So now we have this initiative, some of those is coming from the Biden administration during November. There are a series of very progressive white paper, one of them, the title is Game Changer initiative, particularly thinking about how we can decarbonize the supply chain. So from that standpoint, how we can provide energy differently. Is there any opportunity to localize it so that you don’t need to wait for major upgrade to solve the problem, but starting to focusing on more district-based solutions.

Jeff Wood (17m 27s):
So you’re really targeting, you know, in the report I imagine what developers can do and what developers can focus on because of ULI. But also there’s other units that are in the report like nonprofits and things like that. So how do you coordinate all of these groups together that would be important for making the changes that you’re suggesting?

Yvonne Yeung (17m 43s):
So what we do is we start with a walkable catchment. So imagine it is around a half mile radii and in certain area that’s more dense, it could be a a quarter mile radii. So using that to define a district. So having a general idea and we can call that the special district through the special district planning mechanism, there’s opportunity to clearly define what is the growth projections, how much development, what are the kinds of infrastructure that is needed, and also importantly who are the stakeholders. So that will include the local land owners and also many of the community members as well. Once you get that in place, then finding a way to have the public and private and also the community, the free sectors collaborate, become a lot more straightforward.

Jeff Wood (18m 32s):
We’re facing some really difficult environmental issues as well. And you mentioned heat and extreme heat is kind of, I think at the top of people’s minds at the moment because of what’s happening in the United States, specifically in the southwest Houston, Phoenix, et cetera. How can people use this guide to address those issues?

Yvonne Yeung (18m 48s):
So in the guide, one of the prototype we call the edge city. So primarily it means uptown. So I believe in Arlington there’s some sample of that. So imagine that you have a cluster of high density and majority of them they’re in a form of towers. Some of those are residential, but some of those could be just office as well. But they’re in a very car oriented environment. Like in other words, the streets are very wide and there is not much amenities nearby that can kind of facilitate that walk to coucher. So we’ve seen that, what we see there’s a big opportunity is part of the infrastructure dollars provide opportunity to use biophilia.

Yvonne Yeung (19m 29s):
So how you can within one year from a building operation standpoint, you can actually upgrade your building. So there’s three ways to do it. You can apply the green wall in the exterior spaces or interior spaces or in combination and also the roof spaces as well. So that’s one strategy. Another strategy is that very quickly finding a way to transition to renewable energy. So we know that now with district energy, the FMO system, there’s opportunity not just to wait for cluster of new development, then you bring a digital energy. No you have, you can actually use that to retrofit cluster of existing G F A as well. So I think those are the very quick conversion that can be done within a very short period.

Yvonne Yeung (20m 14s):
And then the third element is about converting. So we know that there are opportunities to convert some of those vacant properties, whether they were former industrial users or office users to residential users or to become used for institutional as well. So I think all of those is about seeing the results in a quick way

Jeff Wood (20m 35s):
And malls too, right? Mall redevelopment. I think that’s the most interesting to me of these ideas that you can take dead malls and you can turn them into something new or repurpose them. There’s a huge amount of malls in the United States and and in Canada too I imagine that are just kind of slowly deteriorating and they’re sitting on this huge amount of land.

Yvonne Yeung (20m 52s):
Yes, so in our research we see that there are actually over 1000 miles and those are pretty big scale, but they’re also strategically located because many of those are either have direct highway frontage or along some kind of transit line and has the opportunity to be, you know, bumped up to be part of the rapid transit network. And they’re also adjacent to existing communities. So from our standpoint is that we see that a big portion of that is actually going through transformation because the nature of retail has changed. So some of those is going through a total redevelopment and some of those is going through retrofit. And the opportunity for us is that we have studied some of the example in Dallas for example.

Yvonne Yeung (21m 36s):
So imagine there’s a mall and the mall is adjacent to the highway, is also adjacent to existing community and it’s surrounded by trail and surrounded some watercourse as well. So right now the mall is vacant and the owner has tried different strategy even putting in some of the recreation uses, but it’s not really generating enough energy and also enough revenue for the city. So what can you do? So we see there’s opportunity to do two things. So we call that a small T of T O C, which is trail oriented development. And about line is a very great example, which is basically drawing a clear delineation and a clear expectation so that everybody know there is a new trail and it’s quite extensive in other words that can generate a lot of activity and how you can line up development along it.

Yvonne Yeung (22m 30s):
So once it’s set up as a trail oriented development, that means that those development potential can come in without parking and within the kind of mall there’s a lot of surface parking that’s creating a lot of heat and also there’s flooding issues as well. So how we can transform those driveways into the streets. So I think those are the kind of like two elements to begin with, to kind of set the stage, how to integrate that as part of community. And then of course it’s about retrofitting the space from, you know, putting in community center users, library users. What we see is that with the aging population, based on our survey, our members is generally attracted to you know, free buckets of location downtown because of the proximity to university you can get the cultural simulation but also location near moss because it provide for the kind of weather protected environment year round for the activity.

Yvonne Yeung (23m 25s):
So I think you know, that is why we are seeing so much MOS is going through major transformation.

Jeff Wood (23m 31s):
When you’re putting together this report and talking with all the folks that you talked with, what was something that surprised you about it?

Yvonne Yeung (23m 38s):
What surprised me about it is the decision. Everybody know this is a great idea, but it’s like who’s gonna start? And I think part of that is having a certainty of a district, an idea of a boundary is so important because without that our decision, everybody’s gonna make the decision based on different geography, different set of calculation. Another part that surprised me is the timing of infrastructure funding. So taking school as an example, 30 years ago, our way of building new community is that we built the school first. We have a general idea of you know, how many people, how many kids.

Yvonne Yeung (24m 19s):
And we built those community facilities first because we know it’s gonna cost much less. And also by doing it from day one, you already set up a healthy tone for a diverse population that model change. And right now what we are dealing with is that development comes in first and we need to make a case and say okay, all the surrounding schools, they don’t have any space to add students and then you have to go through a very lengthy process to get a new schools. So in some of the neighborhood we are seeing even like 10 years to 20 years delay. So I think that is really shocking from our perspective.

Yvonne Yeung (24m 60s):
And our third element is the cost of time. So right now in some of the fast growing region, we are seeing a construction escalation at around like 24%. We are seeing the land value escalation from 15% to 27% to the really big extreme. So if you add all those dollars together, what it means is that if we are not making decision in a prompt manner, the same set of developments would not be affordable after let’s say three to kind of five years of delay. So therefore we see that in the past it’s not that people have nothing about this model, there are a lot of energy bring to creating a master plan.

Yvonne Yeung (25m 44s):
Everybody’s trying to create a perfect plan, but many of that perfect plan become a booklet in the library as opposed to getting that implemented. So I think what is exciting about this time is that we structure this manual as a very short booklet. A lot of graphic is primarily focusing on upstream decision and our goal is that executive is gonna pick it up and within 15 minute, very quickly flip through those pictures. They can kind of think about, okay, what are the local opportunities within our projects that I can starting to create this more kind of dense mixed users environment. And then based on some of the factors that we are putting in some of those factual and some of those is more methodological, like what need to happen first, why, and also who is gonna do what it create a very tangible comprehensive network or almost like easily translated to a one page briefing note.

Yvonne Yeung (26m 41s):
So our goal is to make it very easy for executive to make a decision. Maybe it’s around 15 minutes elevator page, 15 minutes. You can grab a few kind of key leaders within an area and try to figure out, okay, do we want to get it started or not?

Jeff Wood (26m 59s):
What’s been the response to the guide so far? Have you had any executives pick it up and run with it?

Yvonne Yeung (27m 5s):
Well so far is very positive. So we completed this guide in May and we presented that at our forum and it’s very positive. What we see is that there some local area because the policies is also going through changes. For example in California, California is getting as a right for mixed users, that’s exciting, but also at the same time how you can create viable mixed users. So that’s the kind of gaps that trying to fill. So there’s definitely a lot of interest from that standpoint to use this model to apply to some of the kind of live project, particularly relating to transit as well.

Jeff Wood (27m 44s):
Yeah, here in California, I guess we’ve recently allowed commercial properties along corridors to be redeveloped and that was another one of your geographies was a suburban corridor too. So it’s interesting how those things weave together.

Yvonne Yeung (27m 55s):
Yeah, what is interesting about the suburban corridor is that we see that usually it’s transit coming in and say, hey, there’s opportunity to put in A B I T, but in order to make the case, land use decision has to be upgraded as well. So those are the area that if you can imagine has fragmented ownership. So some of those are larger developer, they have portfolio base of retail, and then there are also a cluster of smaller land owners. So they see the opportunity to put in mixed use development, but they do not have the skillset. So where do you start? And then from a local community perspective, people primarily what they’re looking for is if there’s improvement about health, social and education, then it become a positive story.

Yvonne Yeung (28m 43s):
So what they’re looking for is really when there’s new development coming to the area, what are some of the key amenities that can benefit them? So many of them, they’re now working from home, so they’re looking for walkable amenity, many of them, they have kids that’s gonna go to college and university, they want to provide opportunity for them to stay within the city and town as well. So what we see is the opportunity to turn these kind of plaza spaces potentially into innovation districts. So that is a new way of creating mixed uses to bring in a new set of economy and also primarily using that to create more kind of micro changes, but collectively it can have a big transformation.

Jeff Wood (29m 28s):
I’m also interested in this timeline discussion, the timeline issue, especially as it pertains to the timeline for development and the timeline for infrastructure. Because one of the things that we thought about a while ago when I was working at the nonprofit at the center for for T O D, you know, they’re so different and so putting in infrastructure is such a different timeframe than putting in development housing or commercial development that they often kind of butt heads against each other and it’s hard to, you know, figure out what comes first or what goes where specifically without kind of one tail wagging the dog of the other. If that makes any sense.

Yvonne Yeung (30m 4s):
Yeah, of course it does. I think over the last 10 years from a planning standpoint, we spent a lot of time working with our colleague from economic development trying to make business case to justify why we need this money, why we need to do it now is everybody know we need to do it because there’s seeding money coming in. So I think the shift is at how you need to do it. So there is dollar for infrastructure. So let’s say it’s water main, right? How big is the size you have to make a decision Now when you are putting that in the ground, how you can avoid multiple construction along the same corridor, but doing a combined approach. So in the report for example, we look at those three piece of key infrastructure that can be combined.

Yvonne Yeung (30m 46s):
First is about mobility. So when we are building Complete Street, is there any opportunity for us to integrate not just bike lane and walkway and seeding and tree planting, but also the L I D low impact development feature as well. And also BroadB that because you are gonna need it anyway, can you use factor in one project. Another element is road diet. So food report a research. We also see that there’s a lot of economic case. Usually it’s the local B I A or B i D and the middle A case and saying that we do road diet with everyone, dollars spent and it can potentially give you some of the more extreme cases is a hundred dollars return.

Yvonne Yeung (31m 30s):
In other words, the economic case is there, why is it not happening? It’s really about factoring in, in the same project, it’s about leadership action and say the street is too wide, it’s hard to cross, we can just say the space for something else. So that’s one way to combine. Another element is that we see the flooding is impacting a lot of the existing property and 20% of the flood is actually happening outside of PL area. Like in other words, you can’t just rely on the flood map to confirm whether the property has issue or not. So from that standpoint, we also see this extreme heat issue and extreme heat compared to other climate impact is the one that is impacting people the most because it’s constant and is long.

Yvonne Yeung (32m 18s):
And from that standpoint, is there any opportunity how we can intentionally shifting from grade to green? So we’re focusing on creating urban sponge. So in other words, is there any opportunity to use park spaces, not just for recreation purposes and paved it, but also at the same time intentionally creating the green spaces so they can also reduce flooding and also reduce heat as well. And then a third element, I find that this is the toughest, but it’s also the most impactful. We call that the community hub. So primarily is, is there any opportunity for different surfaces to be sharing under the same roof? So if you imagine you have an urban school model and we’re seeing the same building, you also add in your community center uses, your library uses your social use and health uses.

Yvonne Yeung (33m 8s):
So in Singapore for example, they have this model and it also have a local bank and they have a local supermarket. So that make it very convenient and also financially viable and in our world, and here we see that there are certain jurisdiction starting to do that. And what we see the key gap is how you dealing with ownership. So in the past people feel that they need to own the land in order to provide certainty. Like for example, the school is not gonna worry about, they don’t have the right to use the space. Right now it’s shifting from only land to leasing spaces. So that model actually provide opportunity that your facilities can potentially expand as your need increase.

Yvonne Yeung (33m 51s):
But also the delivery timeline and the delivery cost is much smaller and shorter because you are doing a lot of microscale as opposed to really big mega scale that takes a long, long time to plan, a long time to build and also very costly to maintain. So those three bucket in my view, we can, you know, make those into a tangible examples and then starting to kind of celebrate every time when we see there’s these kind of project get started, we put more spotlight to it. To me that will be a success.

Jeff Wood (34m 23s):
Whatcha most excited about going forward?

Yvonne Yeung (34m 26s):
Very excited going forward. Looking at the next generation. We see that the millennials, the Gen Z is now Jen Elva as well.

Jeff Wood (34m 36s):
Oh no, there’s another one. Yes.

Yvonne Yeung (34m 39s):
Very smart teenagers and many of them are very concerned about the global view. So social corporate responsibility, they were very thoughtful, they asked a lot of great questions. They want to make sure every move that they are contributing would benefit the globe as a whole. So I think very exciting from my perspective is that this 15 Minute Communities model primarily should create a lot more opportunities from the next generation to take leadership. And we have seven years to make the best effort to make the change. And hopefully we’re successful and we can see a dramatic result at the end of 2030.

Jeff Wood (35m 21s):
I hope so too. Well the report is building 15 Minute Communities, a Leadership Guide. Where can folks find it? If they wanna get a copy,

Yvonne Yeung (35m 28s):
They can find it on the Urban Air Institute website and the knowledge finder. And as part of the launch of this report, we are doing a global Webinar on September the 13th. We like to welcome everybody to sign up and all you need to do is to go to the UI website on the events and we’ll also provide a link helping people to, you know, find a way to sign up for the global Webinar. We’re gonna do a deep dive of the report going through all the prototype, but also having a fruitful discussion about how to make it happen. So some of the guest speaker, including Jim Fisher from Rotman School of Management, particularly focusing on leadership and we are also bringing in other speakers as well.

Jeff Wood (36m 7s):
Cool. And then we’ll have links to it in the show notes. So get that in your pod catcher or on the website at Streetsblog. Well Yvonne, thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate your time and thank you for the report. It’s great and I hope that folks follow it because it’s really important.

Yvonne Yeung (36m 21s):
Thank you. My pleasure.