Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams. Over the summer, o we're bringing you some of the highlights of our 2025-26 season, which wrapped up in mid-May.
Speaker: We're going to be back with our brand new fall season in September. Our first live radio broadcast will be on September 19th on Vancouver Cooperative Radio CFRO 100.5 FM and streaming live at coopradio.org slash red eye.
Speaker: Podcasts of interviews from that show will be posted the following week. On the podcast today, we talk with Melissa Bruntlett about the new book, Women Changing Cities, highlighting women leaders from Tirana, Albania to Sydney, Australia.
Speaker: Anuela Ristani is deputy mayor of Tirana, the capital of Albania. She says that she realized one day that her city had been planned with one user in mind, an adult male with no physical impairments who needed to get to the office as quickly as possible.
Speaker: Everything about Tirana's streets, public spaces, and transport systems were designed to make his life as easy as possible. Anwela Rustani is one of the women in local government that we get to meet in Women Changing Cities, a new book by Melissa and Chris Bruntlett.
Speaker: Melissa and Chris are Canadian authors and urban mobility advocates. Their first book was Building the Cycling City, the Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality. They currently live in Delft in the Netherlands, and Melissa Bruntlett joins me from there this morning. Hello, Melissa. Hello. Hello, Jane. How are you? I'm good. Nice to talk to you.
Speaker: Let's start in Tirana. Now, that's somewhere that's not on most people's radar in North America. What does it look like when you design a city that focuses on that particular one kind of user?
Speaker: Yeah, well, Tirana is a very interesting city because it is, of course, for those familiar with communist era Soviet Union, Tirana fell into where the Soviet Union was. And so their city was very functional in a lot of ways to... allow for that sort of lifestyle. There was a lot of informal setup, not a lot of vehicles in the city due to the rules around what you could own and the idea of community benefit and and what have you. And then in the late 90s, as communism fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, Tirana started of to find themselves again. They're a relatively young city in terms of how we understand them, but they have a millennia of historical contexts that they found themselves needing to come to terms with at the same time as being attracted by this modernity of Western life. And so in addition to lots of new developments, new buildings that have come up in the last 30 years or so,
Speaker: you also saw this massive adoption of cars as it was a symbol of success, of wealth. And the country went from having just a handful of cars to suddenly having 10 times as many cars on their streets in spaces that hadn't been designed for that, where public transportation was having to navigate these suddenly new crowded streets.
Speaker: And not a lot of space for playing, not a lot of space for walking, definitely no space for cycling. And really just this idea that transportation, the way it existed from 1989 onwards until about five, 10 years ago, was very much about getting from home to work. very economically driven, still largely done by men, and creating transport chaos on what were relatively informally designed streets. And so from the tyrannic context, um it's been in the last five to 10 years, this idea of how do we reimagine that space and reimagine all the other trips that people make? Because we know for those of us working in transportation or those of us that just function in our daily lives, that that trip to and from work is one trip in a myriad of other trips.
Speaker: And generally, you know when we're talking about things like children or older adults, not the trips that they're taking. So with Anuela Ristani and her team, it's been, how do we reimagine our streets? How do we reallocate that space to, of course, understand the number of cars we have on our streets, but then make it a little more equitable so that all of the other people that need to move that aren't just going to work have that access to the city.
Speaker: She decided to focus on the role of young people in the city and came to another realization that there was nowhere for children to play. So what did she do to address that?
Speaker: Yeah, well, together with the team, they decided to look first look at the spaces where play was lacking in the city and address it. So the major project that we highlight in the book is the Grand Park in Tirana, which is this beautiful green space. It's been there for over 100 years. It's where people living in Tirana go to get access to nature, to get outdoors. It used to be a place where people would swim, less so now.
Speaker: But there was no playground ah for the children. And so their team came together and said, let's create this beautiful playground that is for all ages. So not just for young children, but, you know, from zero all the way up to children around 17, 18 years of age to give them that space for play.
Speaker: in this community citywide asset. But at the same time, they also asked the citizens of the city to let them know, do you have an empty space on your street?
Speaker: Can we reimagine that as a place for play? And these could be empty informal lots, not very big, and maybe four meters by four meter space, but they would come as the city if they received a request and build in seating, play structures, improve the ground space so it's a little bit more comfortable to play, to give that to citizens so that they didn't just have to go to the Grand Park but could have their own neighborhood playground, understanding that this is vital for children in terms of having that social space outdoors that isn't just their daycare or their school or the big city park.
Speaker: You have a statistic in your book that during the construction of the playground in the Grand Park, I guess it took 120 days, there were days of intensive protest against it.
Speaker: Indeed. And what we have to understand about places like Tirana, those that were in the Soviet Union, is there is still this big distrust of government. And so this was part of what Ristani and her team were having to deal with, is helping people understand this wasn't taking space away in this beautiful asset that people have come to love in terms of the park, but it was actually adding quality to it. And so that's why there was so many protests. People didn't understand. And so there was a massive campaign to really engage with people, help them understand, but then also know that they're on the right side of this decision. And so to not, despite that 79 days of protest, to know that this was the right thing to do and to keep moving forward. And now, you know, when we were visiting there, Chris and i interviewing Mayor Ristani and Eden Pedraj, who's also in the book, in the Tirana chapter, the park was full
Speaker: Every time we were there with children of all ages, with families, with teenagers, which is for me, like the litmus test of how successful. Are there teenagers, especially teenage girls hanging around?
Speaker: And it's this beautiful space now, but it you know, credit to Envera Arasani and her team to say, we have to get this done. We understand your concerns, but just trust us. We are on the path to something really good.
Speaker: Let's move to Barcelona now. Barcelona is an incredibly dense city. I think 16,000 residents per square kilometer overall is a statistic I read in your book, up to 53,000 in its most crowded neighborhood. Under the leadership of of Mayor Adekalo, they implemented a very creative solution to increasing their green space. Tell me about Superblocks.
Speaker: Yeah, for a lot of us working in urban planning, this whole idea of super blocks has really yeah taken off. And, you know, Barcelona has been the example that everyone's turning to. And essentially what it is, in the late 1900s, Barcelona started to design their city in these in blocks, essentially. Very grid pattern that we're very used to in North America. And they were essentially designed in a way that you have your major arterials or the streets that carry the most traffic on the outside of these large blocks and then inside is your neighborhood buildings.
Speaker: What the Superblocks program does is looks at those the streets within the neighborhoods and reclaim space away that has formerly been used for parking. And so for those that might be familiar with Barcelona, a lot of these streets would have the sort of chamfered or diagonal corners, so not the traditional sort of right angles that we might be more used to In a North American context, it's a much more angled where people would park. You've got cars moving in all directions. It's very chaotic. It's not a very enjoyable space. And the idea with the superblock is to take those large squares and transform them into social spaces.
Speaker: in some cases being upwards of 1,600 square meters that can be opened up for new opportunities. And so what you see is in neighborhoods like the Poblano or in San Antonio, using tactical urbanism, so putting in wooden stairs and seating, some paint on the street, some planters, and reclaiming what is really street space, where cars formerly would move, into social spaces for seating, for play. You see chess boards in some cases. some play structures for children. Oftentimes there'll be cafes nearby people can enjoy a coffee. And it's this wonderful way to transform or has been this wonderful way to transform how Barcelonians understand how their streets can be used.
Speaker: And one of the reasons that Ada Calao and her team, Jeanette San, Sylvia Carason and Ariadne Mikkel have used in terms of pushing this forward is that People living in the Mediterranean, like in Barcelona, have small apartments. The outdoors is their living space. And so the idea is to give this outdoor living space back as ah a place with quality, a place to spend time, where formerly it would have been rather hostile and uncomfortable And one of the best stories, I think, when we were speaking with Jeanette Sons, who's one of the counselors in Barcelona, that she told us in terms of knowing they were on the right path was a letter she received from a citizen who said, thank you for putting this into her neighborhood, which is the San Antonio neighborhood. Her mother, who's 80 years old or was at the time,
Speaker: would use the superblock as a place to come down and have coffee with her friends every day where formerly she would be stuck inside her apartment. And so it's given this social space back to the people that live there, their outdoor living room, so to speak.
Speaker: I was trying to think of a Vancouver example of of where we could imagine that might happen. So are we thinking of somewhere like we take over Kingsway in Maine Not necessarily Kingsway and Main. That would be a bit too much. But if you think, if we're thinking about sort of the Main Street and neighborhood there, you know, maybe around ah Quebec and 14th, for example, or, you know, JJ Bean on on Main Street has already taken over part of that area with a parklet, extending that into the most adjacent intersection and basically creating this slow street environment. So cars can still move through the space, but at a very slow speed. But take over that more so it can become a place for social engagement. So you're not taking away the ability for cars that are moving faster on more arterials, although caveat, I think that Main Street shouldn't be an arterial, but that's a whole other conversation. um But making those neighborhoods, like returning the neighborhood back to this idea that we maybe had in the 70s and 80s as places for meeting neighbors and kids playing outdoors and these kinds of things.
Speaker: No, we started by talking about kids, and I guess kids were really a focus also in in Barcelona. And Adriana Michel, who you mentioned, developed a strategy called Protect the Schools. What did that look like?
Speaker: So the Protect the Schools is about taking maybe taking that superblock idea a little bit further and looking at how to implement these calmer environments at schools.
Speaker: So we know you know children want to go to school and and meet up with friends. They want to have these spaces for play, but also caregivers want to know they can do so safely. And Barcelona, like so many other cities, experiences this idea from a lot of caregivers that they can't let their children walk or cycle to school on their own because it's unsafe. There are too many cars. And so it becomes this perpetual cycle of people drive their kids to school because it's not safe and so on and so forth, increasing traffic.
Speaker: So the Protect Children and Protect Schools idea is to reimagine those school streets. Once again, starting with tactical urbanism, slowing traffics against not removing it completely in all cases. In some cases, yes. And then creating streets that invite sociability and invite play. So things like paint, like plants.
Speaker: The ones that we visited, there was, in one case, children playing football out front of the school. Seating so that grandparents coming to pick up kids have a place to sit. But then importantly with all of this is also to understand that while these become wonderful places that increase the safety at school for children arriving and leaving, they become community assets on the weekends.
Speaker: And so it's this wonderful way to really reimagine the schoolyard, essentially, extend it beyond the boundaries of the school, create place for play, but also create place for community gathering. So these children don't just have this school space temporarily before and after school, but rather have it all the time.
Speaker: And then at the same time, the city is also so helping to support the BC bus, which we would refer to in North America as a bike bus. So it's essentially this social gathering where through police protection, because there's not enough space yet, they they are guided through the city from a meeting point two or three days a week. Children meet at one of the superblocks, for example, start cycling a route to the school and pick up children along the way so they enjoy the safe and joyful trip to school, whereas before they might not have had that opportunity. It's interesting how the superblocks then become a germination point for many other ideas to to spring.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. And it's, I mean, one can inform the other. We know a lot of cities that are doing school streets that maybe don't have super blocks, or I was just in Vienna, for example, they've started with school streets and are going to super blocks now. So it's one informing the other. But really, at the end of the day, these kinds of transformations are just about understanding that our streets are not designed for one purpose. They have always been spaces for ah commerce and community and gathering. And we've lost that in the last 50 years or so as cars increased their dominance on street space, whether they're moving or parking. And all these projects are is sort of shifting that balance back and understanding that streets or public spaces. They should be for more than just moving and storing cars. They should be places where we can meet, where children can play, where we can relax. um And that's so essentially what Barcelona has been doing quite successfully.
Speaker: Barcelona's Mayor Colloud didn't get re-elected and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has decided not to run for a third term. But Mayor Clover Moore of Sydney was elected to her sixth term last year. What challenges has she tackled during her time in office?
Speaker: Yeah, the story of Sydney and of mayor Lord Mayor Clover Moore is is interesting. She started out more in the state government, very much focused on, you know, how can she help the overall state in terms of whatever she was elected for at the time, but also had an influence, had grown up in Sydney, wanted to have an influence in her city as well. And Through the complications of what Australian politics used to be, she was representing Sydney, but then also representing the state. And then her opposition changed the rules and said, you have to pick one, you can't do both. And so she decided to focus on local politics. That's where she wanted to have the impact. And if to her credit, she's been fighting against them. I see her posts all the time on LinkedIn of how the conservatives are trying to stop a light rail expansion or trying to stop any implementation of slower speed. And she understands that
Speaker: Sydney is not for just for economic prosperity, it is also for the people that live there. And so for her, it's always been this focus on improving the quality of life for people in Sydney. And that's been in part with an expansion, rapid expansion during COVID, of their cycling network with the support of Fiona Campbell, who's also featured in the book. But also the expansion of light rail, the pedestrianization of George Street, which is their main high street in the central business district or shopping area of Sydney. And for her, it's always about this look at, yeah, how can we keep Sydney in a place where we're trying to benefit the most as opposed to those that already have the most? which Sydney, like Vancouver, has a similar struggle in terms of rapidly increasing cost of living, greater divide between those with highest economic means and those with the lowest. And so for her, that's that's really a lot of what she's trying to focus on and a lot of what she's pushing back on in terms of opposition. It's unfortunate that the state government feels they can influence what's happening at the city level, but to her credit, she's she's not backing down and neither is her team. Now, we've been talking about just three cities that you say have been transformed by the vision of women in local government, but there are actually 10 that you profile in the book from Bogota to Manila and Kampala. You even have a Canadian city, Montreal, and you've identified some common themes about women in leadership positions that mean they can break through the status quo. You talk about leading with empathy and long-term planning with an intersectional approach. Another important one is valuing the role and ethics of care. What do you mean by that?
Speaker: Yeah, so the work of care, the ethics of care is a topic that is coming up increasingly in literature and research. um And we're seeing it more and more influencing local politics and decision making as well. And essentially what it is, is care work is everything that each of us does throughout our day that is not economically driven.
Speaker: So these are things like caring for family members, going and doing groceries, running errands, Looking after elderly family, friends, these kinds of things. and they are these kinds of tasks are still predominantly done by women. It has always fallen historically on the woman in the household to do these sort of soft activities, although I i really dislike the term soft. I think they're very difficult and hard activities, but be that as it may. And so when we talk about building the ethics of care into leadership, it's understanding that the work of care, the trips centered around care are just as important as the economic
Speaker: trips or the economic work that happens in cities. So it's not just about, you know, doing a job and earning a salary or running a business and and earning and a profit. It's also about all of the other things that happen. And Kalpana Viswana, who we feature in the Delhi chapter, she's the founder of ah an organization called Safety Pin, She refers to the work of care as the latticework of our daily lives. We cannot function. No one in society can function without somebody performing some act of care. And so when we're looking at city building and urban planning, we need to be building that in to understand that society the trip to the grocery store or the trip to school is just as important as the trip to work. And so how do we facilitate that? And how do we design for that in a way that is responsive to the people that are doing those trips?
Speaker: So that's why you see so many cities featured in the book developing school street programs or expanding pedestrian and cycling facilities or green space, because they understand that Just as much as having and a relatively efficient and effective trip to work helps to ensure that the time savings that you experience on that trip don't mean that you're spending hours and hours and hours commuting to get to a job that you're at for eight hours and and home again, but also all the in-between finding those restorative spaces where children can play or where elderly people can, be older adults can sit and rest or all of us can sit and rest. are just as important and ah help us function at a much higher quality.
Speaker: Well, thanks so much for talking with me today, Melissa. And I really refer people to take a look at the book. It's not only got a lot of these really interesting ideas and case studies, but it's full of your wonderful color photographs of the cities that you visited.
Speaker: yeah Thank you very much. And i credit goes to also to my husband, Chris. We both take photos, but he's much more passionate in cities, whereas I like to absorb what's happening around me and and take photos that really inspire me. He's always snapping away. So thank you for the compliment, and I'll be sure to pass that along. Thanks so much, Melissa.
Speaker: Thank you. I've been speaking with Melissa Bruntlett, author with her husband, Chris, of Women Changing Cities, and it was published earlier this month by Reba Publishing.
Speaker: You've been listening to the Red Eye Podcast, produced by an independent media collective based in Vancouver. If you enjoyed this episode, it would be great if you left a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps other people to find us.
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Speaker: I'm Jane Williams. Thanks for listening.
