72. Lindsay Sturman, Showrunner, and Bike Activist

Show Notes:

Lindsay Sturman, an English major from the Harvard and Radcliffe class of 1992, discusses her advocacy work in Los Angeles. She moved to Los Angeles after college and returned to New York for film school at Columbia and became a TV writer and has been doing that for around 20 years. She has always been interested in public policy, and she became involved with the Ed Reform movement to improve public schools. Lindsay and a group of 3000 people fought the election for the Democrats. After the 2020 election, she became aware of the housing crisis in Los Angeles. The problem was that the city stopped building housing in the 1990s. The city's downtown was built in 1987, but it took decades to catch up, making it difficult and expensive to build. People drove further and further out, leading to a massive increase in rents. Rents are now twice as high as the rest of the country’s comparable cities. Lindsay and the group have been working to unpack the issues and find solutions. She talks about what they found in terms of a wide range of issues leading to the housing crisis and best possible solutions to the problems which the group are bringing to city council.

Barriers to Building Houses 

Lindsay talks about over regulations and the barriers to building housing. They unpacked the causes of the high cost of construction, which surprisingly leads back to parking. One of the solutions is to allow companies and people to build without parking, which could lead to the construction of three to five-story buildings in under a year or eight months, but this can only be achieved with citizen buy-in, which can be achieved through deep canvassing, where people are trained to listen to NIMBYs and their reasons for building without parking. Other barriers to building include reduction of single family house value, privacy, noise, and visual appeal.

 The 15-Minute City Solution

Lindsay explains the 15-Minute City concept, developed by Carlos Moreno, a French Colombian scientist who created the idea that everything people need can be reached in 15 minutes. She refers to lower Manhattan, where 80% of people don't own a car. The idea is that housing doesn't need parking, and people can walk or bike to everything they need in 15 minutes. However, there are several hurdles to implementing this solution. One of the main challenges to the adoption of this concept. Lindsay identifies the list of changes that need to be made to green light this movement, including politicians' control. The idea is to take the power away from politicians and set up a system where city streets are allowed to build according to standard plans.

Building Reforms in L.A.

Lindsay explains how the organization is taking practical tactical steps to get reforms passed in LA. They are meeting with city council people one-on-one and attending 99 neighborhood councils. They are networking and telling the story, focusing on pain points. They are also addressing the misinformation that housing can only be built if it is 100% affordable, that developers are evil and greedy, or that there is no housing crisis.

 The Livable Communities Initiative

The organization advocates for a few streets in the city to become low-car, bikeable streets with low traffic. They are advocating for a network of these 15-minute communities, which are being implemented all over the world. They are convincing people to use their ideas hand-to-hand, convincing neighbors, skeptics, electeds, and bureaucrats. They are also working with planners to show them the problems in the building codes and make them frictionless. The organization is praying for electeds to join the parade and lead the way in addressing the housing crisis.

The Climate Crisis and Transport Solutions

Lindsay shares what drives her commitment. She talks about people who work with the homeless and how they call them their unhoused neighbors, and it's heartbreaking to see. She explains that housing and transportation are interconnected, and that often 50% of the area of a city is ripped down for surface parking lots. She also highlights the importance of rethinking the inner core of cities. Her passion for this work stems from understanding the tensions in cities and the impact of transportation on climate emissions. She further explains that 20% of the city's climate emissions are from transportation, with cars being the primary source of emissions. She cites the debate over bike lanes and the supply chain issues surrounding electric vehicles (EVs). 

During COVID, she became interested in bikes and was interviewed about her tweets on a podcast called Bike Talk. She interviewed a climate scientist who found that EVs cannot scale in time to reach Paris climate goals, which are modest. She believes that climate is far more alarming than the average person. She believes that we need to address the crisis in 15-minute cities and understand how mobility systems work. She believes that we need to advocate for more forceful and existential solutions to address the crisis. She believes that climate is the top priority and that addressing it with 15-minute cities is a crucial step towards climate crises.

Lindsay discusses her conversations with politicians, city officials, planners and developers and the difficulties they encounter in the process of getting building approval. She talks about the solutions for the transit system, mobility, and the importance of building affordable housing units for the homeless. 

 Addressing Issues to Affordable Housing

She also discusses the need for low and moderate income affordable housing as opposed to building luxury housing and hoping the occupancy will trickle down. She suggests that there are three main issues to address: building the deficit, building affordable housing, and inverting the current model. She believes that building affordable housing should be small and affordable. Lindsay also emphasizes the importance of equity in building housing. She believes that a ton of vacancies at all price points is crucial to prevent 70% of unhoused neighbors from falling into homelessness. She also suggests working with nonprofits to build housing, which can be done through church land donations and construction loans.

 

Influential Harvard Classes and Professors

Lindsay mentions a class called Rock for Jockeys, ​​changing the surface of the earth, and Rob Moss, a professor of VES 10, and the resources available at Harvard.

 Timestamps:

02:45 How the problem of parking became visible

09:06 The issue of NIMBYs

11:46 The 15-minute city concept

17:24 The problem of windshield blindness and car blindness

22:24 The livable communities initiative

25:20 How housing and transportation are interconnected

31:17 Working with city administrators and bureaucrats

37:22 Luxury housing and the missing middle

42:12 How do you build housing that doesn’t push longtime residents out?

Links:

Website: LivableCommunitiesInitiative.com

CONTACT:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsay-sturman-168a334/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LindsayJS