A Climate Change with Matt Matern Climate Podcast

Heat is the largest killer in terms of climate impacts. Part of my origin story is growing up in communities that look like and have some of the same challenges that I’m working with current communities. Dr Sheila Foster, she is a professor at Columbia. She is an expert in environmental and climate justice, land use, local government and collaborative governance regimes. She’s been at the forefront of Law and Policy and Governance innovations, serving as an advisor, co chair and expert for various global and local initiatives on urban resilience, sustainability and equity.

We were hopeful to use those kinds of tools and places in the kinds of places that I’m working but now those are no longer as robust.

You’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matern, your host. I’ve got a great guest on the program, Dr Sheila Foster. She is a professor at Columbia. She is an expert in environmental and climate justice, land use, local government and collaborative governance regimes. She’s been at the forefront of Law and Policy and Governance innovations, serving as an advisor, co chair and expert for various global and local initiatives on urban resilience, sustainability and equity. Welcome to the program, Doctor Foster.

Thank you. Nice to be here.

So I always like to start at the beginning. What behind your journey? Or what’s the beginning origin story? Kind of of your journey towards climate and and these issues?

Yeah. So I My journey began working on issues around environmental quality, particularly in urban communities, only because I had been writing about this issue of environmental justice when it first came on the scene in the mid to late 90s, and then started working with various urban communities I taught at Rutgers University, which is in Camden New Jersey, so that was one of the first communities that called me in as an expert. And so I began to see this kind of interesting intersection between urban development and also the history of development in these communities and environmental quality.

And over time, as we all became more aware of climate change, then I began to work with some of these same communities, including here in New York, on the impacts of climate change in those communities, and finding out that they suffer more from some of those impacts than others. So it’s been an evolution of experience as well as knowledge.

You’re also the co director of lab gov. Tell us a bit about that.

Lab gov is a applied research lab with colleagues in Europe and and also other parts of the globe, basically that are working on a model of CO governance, and really trying to understand how communities that are impacted by a host of concerns, which include climate, environmental quality, but also housing and vacant land, for instance, How those communities can work with governments, the private sector, universities and others, to collaboratively revitalize themselves and to collaboratively look for policy and other solutions.

So we started working in Bologna Italy with the city of Bologna on a regulation there that was that created packs of collaboration between the city and nonprofits in various communities, foundations and universities to kind of CO create solutions for those neighborhoods. And then I brought some of those, or some of that work, to the United States to work with communities here, including in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for instance, and in New York and other places.

So where do you hail from? What? Where did you grow up? What? What area?

So part of my origin story is growing up in communities that look like and have some of the same challenges that I’m working with current communities on. So I grew up in Miami, Florida, but I was born in Detroit, Michigan, so part of my family hails from Detroit. I lived there for part of my life, and then the other part of my family comes from Miami, and in both places we lived, either in or approximate to. And my parents also worked in communities that were kind of on the front line of a lot of social and economic challenges throughout the few decades, the past few decades.

And so when I went to law school, I’m trained as a lawyer, I knew that I wanted to work on those kinds of challenges and issues, but I wasn’t quite sure what that would look like. And eventually that led me to working on issues of environmental justice and climate justice. So you’re also co author of Co-Cities, innovative transitions toward just in self sustaining communities. Tell us about the book and why you wrote it and and how how it’s been received.

The book is based on the work that lab gov has been doing. And there are really two parts of the book one is an empirical study of over 200 cities and 500 projects and policies in those cities in different regions of the world. And what the question we’re asking is, are there models of collaborative city governance or revitalization in urban communities, or policies that help those communities and that help cities address the challenges in those communities, and what do they look like, and what are the main design principles? And so we so part of the book is reporting on what we found, and the other part of the book is abstracting principles around what we found like in what we call the CO city, which is a collaborative city that is working with different sectors and bringing it together and in a collaborative mode to address challenges in that city.

So for instance, if a community in New York City lacks broadband or high speed access in a smart city, which New York City is, we work with a community in Harlem to come up with a community broadband network, working with the city, working with Microsoft, which donated edge cloud servers, and then working with the community to put in the hands of folks in public Housing and small businesses that don’t have access to fast, secure broadband access to put in their hands a functional network that then is connected to the city’s 5g infrastructure. So that’s an example of the kind of policy or projects that we were looking to find around the world and what, how do those work in?

What circumstances do they work? So that’s part of the book is to just report back on that, and the other part is to explain this model of CO city that we think a lot of cities could adopt, and in fact, have adopted, to work more collaboratively with communities and different sectors to really innovate.

So a couple things, what are the design principles that you find? Found that actually work, and then also curious as to the broadband and its connection to environmental issues?

Sure. So some of the design principles that we found work are, for instance, what we call collective governance, or CO governance. And governance just means who makes the decision. So in the example of the broadband the community high speed broadband, Edge cloud network, the fact that community institutions, in that case, an institution called Silicon Harlem and small businesses and residents have a real role in not just co designing that that network, but also continuing to make decisions as the network is up and running, a kind of stewardship role.

So collective governance is that it’s not just a centralized it’s not a legacy provider, it’s not the city, but it’s rather a number of people coming together to decide what the network looked like, what kind of services it delivers, to match the needs and also as it’s being managed. You know, going forward, who’s involved in that. So collective governance. The What we also found is that you need an enabling environment, what we call enabling environment, meaning you need some policy or law or City program that enables these kinds of this collective governance. We also found that it was important to involve different actors, what we call this five actor motto, that usually who we see involved are, you know, the public sector, the private sector, the business sector, the knowledge sector, university and then what we call social entrepreneurs in communities.

And so what we found was that in with regard to tech justice, that access to technology is very important, and even if communities are involved in what’s called mesh network. So there are mesh networks all over the world, and there’s a famous one in Red Hook. There are a number in Europe where communities that, again, are not well connected, are connecting themselves through these mesh networks. So those are some of the principles that that mark what we call the CO city right, that you need collective governance, that you need an enabling environment, that you need access to technology, that you need the involvement of multi sectors, for instance, to innovate on solutions that meet the increasingly diverse communities and the different challenges that can.

Communities are facing in a heavily urbanized world, centralized governments are really struggling to meet the needs of these diverse communities as we increasingly agglomerate in cities. So the book really is taking that on and trying to provide a solution in doing so in a way that’s not romantic, but says that these can work in some places under certain conditions.

Well, I guess going forward, in the next few years, there’ll be more opportunities for cities and and states to lead the way in the environmental movement, in the US. And how do you see that happening?

That’s right. I think as we see the federal government pulling back, particularly with regard to funding, but also with regard to programming, we will see, and we have seen states and cities step up to fill that gap. So one of the things that we see happening is and coming back to this idea of enabling environment. So if the federal government is pulling subsidies out of clean energy or the energy transition, or pulling out of what the previous federal administration was doing was giving grants to these communities that are facing environmental and climate justice problems, we will see states, and we have seen states trying to step into that void by, again, subsidizing.

Let’s say, energy efficient housing, or subsidizing just transition projects where communities are trying to, let’s say, put solar in their community to reduce their energy burdens and also to bring down, you know, greenhouse gas emissions and in at the local level, we see increasingly cities facilitating, you know, community land trust, for instance, in which, you know, cities are working with communities to either help them acquire or transfer to them available land in the city. It could be vacant land, it could be abandoned land, underutilized land to create something called a land trust, and that is that a nonprofit manages and owns land, but leases it to housing or commercial uses or even park and other uses to users to over a 99 year period not to rent, but actually to generate some equity.

So that’s one of the models of collective governance that we found the increasing use of community land trust. Mostly, they’ve been used for affordable housing to allow people to live in high cost cities, for instance. So these exist in New York. They’re flourishing in New York and places like Los Angeles and Seattle, but in a way that allows them to earn limited equity. And the land trust serves as a kind of land value capture. It owns the land, but it’s keeping it affordable. It’s a complicated structure, but it’s work and it’s flourishing. So that’s one way that cities, I think, are helping to address these issues. And I say housing, because housing is an environmental issue and it’s an energy issue, right? A lot of the problems around energy insecurity where people cannot, let’s say, pay rising utility bills, so they can’t run their air conditioning.

And so in a heat wave, you have very vulnerable populations suffering and even leading to some deaths. Heat is the largest killer in terms of climate impacts. If you have a house that is energy efficient where you don’t have air escaping from the windows. If you have solar, for instance, or even community solar that can address a number of problems, not just good quality housing and then you have affordable housing through a land trust, but also energy insecurity and climate impacts. So those are the kinds of holistic solutions that also map onto what we call this CO city approach, which is focused on collective governance, innovative solutions to an intersecting range of problems that are not that separate housing, environment, energy and and and affordability.

So do you see the the rate at which these solutions are being adopted, that you’re proposing increasing and increasing at a dramatic enough rate to really make a substantial impact given the enormous scope of the problem.

It’s a really good question, because I think scale is a challenge to this model and to similar models in which you’re trying to put into place solutions that don’t come from a centralized government and that are worked out in offices and among officials and then kind of applied broadly and may face some opposition, but rather are co created with the people that are going to benefit from them, and then you’re wrapping and. And really titrating that solution to those needs, right? So that is a much more, I would say, costly in terms of time and process. It’s a more costly solution, more sustainable, I think.

But I think if it takes a lot of time and it involves a lot of effort, that either the local government or the community doesn’t have great capacity for you, might have trouble scaling it up. And so one of the reasons that we did this empirical study, that we looked at examples of this all over the world, really is to be able to weigh in on is this scalable, right? Is this done in enough places at the scale that it really can be a solution? And we found that in some places, it is. I think the US and Europe are two places where you see, for instance, the explosion of land trust.

So a couple of local administrations ago here in New York City, the housing department decided to give grants to community groups to plan community land trusts, to work with them to transfer land and as a result, we went from having two to three land trusts, some of which were old, like the Cooper Street Land Trust in New York City now, to a number of them that are flourishing around the city, some up to like nine or 10, I think, and the same in other cities we’re seeing. So that’s a model, and they’re also flourishing in some European cities, in particular in the UK, these land trusts, community solar is another example, in large part because of an enabling environment, in particular under the inflation Reduction Act of the last administration.

But also some local programs, like in Washington, DC, they have a solar for all program because of that enabling environment. So these are programs put in place to enable community solar. And what that means is that, let’s say you live in a rental building or public housing, or even have a single home, but your roof is not in a stable enough condition to be able to host solar. Community Solar allows you to put panels on a building that you rent or on a sponsorship building. It could be a business in the community, and then various people buy into that community solar, and then the utility passes those savings back to the household. So we see that flourishing for because, again, an enabling environment. So coming back to this coastal approach, yes, these solutions can scale, but they need an enabling environment. They need a policy enabling environment, state, local and or federal government that not only puts in place a kind of welcome mat to say, We want you to do this, but often some kind of a subsidy.

I guess another question related is, what’s the return on investment for the projects that you’re talking about, versus, say, a large, large scale solar project or a large scale wind project, in terms of reducing greenhouse gasses. I realize that may be challenging, given the fact that there are other factors in play. In terms of I would think an advantage of your approach is it brings in more community members, gets more people involved, and creates maybe deeper connections to the environment on a more holistic basis, which, of course, is almost impossible to measure. So given that impossible question, what’s your answer?

Well, I think that we need to do both, and they’re not unconnected, right? In the sense that we know that we had large scale infrastructure needs if we’re going to meet the energy demand in the next few decades. So we need large scale wind and solar. And at the same time that the federal government and state governments and sometimes regional as in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and other regional packs were trying to move toward that, we were also seeing the explosion of these community level efforts, because they’re not disconnected, right?

You could build wind and solar in as many places as you can, and not withstanding how long that takes, and the red tape around that, and now the political you know, pushback against that, you can build all that at scale, but you would still have needs in certain communities for these kinds of models, because one query is whether even that large scale infrastructure, whenever it comes online, reduces cost enough that you’re covering some of these communities, which is to say that that they’re still going to have challenges around energy costs and quality of housing. If they run the air conditioning, it’s not staying all inside.

So there are it’s a complicated problem without one solution. So return on investment, it depends on. On what kind of return you’re talking about. If the return is mitigation, then I think you see for sure, more mitigation with large scale wind and solar in terms of greenhouse gasses. If you’re talking about reducing the disproportionate impacts around energy cost and also climate impacts, then I think you probably get a little bit more at the community solar and the community project scale level, because it’s more targeted toward those households in those communities that are on the front lines of those challenges.

I guess another question is, how does your approach work in, say, smaller towns and places like that that seem to be kind of the ruby red parts of the United States?

So one of the projects I have going is in Baton Rouge. It’s not small, small, but it’s a medium sized city. And we’ve been able to work with the local government, the local Redevelopment Authority, there in a four mile area of the city, that is what I would call an infrastructure desert. They have lots of vacancy. They have inconsistent sidewalks and roadways and even street lights, very little commercial activity, etc. And we’ve been brought in to apply the coast city model there. And one of the things that we’ve done is created a community land bank and land trust to for the city to get to move some of the vacant lot into this community institution to hold it and then to develop, with philanthropic and other dollars, things that. So we just opened an Echo Park there that would create a safe bus stop, green space, flooding relief, etc.

We’re working on building affordable housing there, and also spaces for entrepreneurship, for commercial kitchens, etc. And all of that is done with the city, with philanthropic and hopefully some private investment to revitalize that part of Baton Rouge that has a long history, long, long time ago was a commercial corridor, but over the years, has become quite blinded and disinvested. And why did the city bring us in? Because issues of mistrust in the community, private investment passing this community by.

They wanted another innovative model to say, you know, how is it that we can revitalize this and how can we do it with the community and meet their needs and restore trust? So if it can work in a red place, a red enabling environment, in red meaning that Louisiana is a red state. The city is just elected a mayor that’s not a progressive. But yet, you know, I don’t think that when you come when it comes down to meeting people’s needs, that people care too much about, you know, whether you’re red or blue, right? If you have a solution that works, they’re willing to try it.

So who is paying for that project in particular? Is that city, government, state, federal, private or a combination of all three?

So we applied with the city to for a $5 million seed grant from JP Morgan’s Chase advancing cities award. And so we applied with a collaborative with the local Redevelopment Authority, ourselves, a CDFI, a community development financial institution. They’re called CDFIs, and others in the community for this $5 million award to see a lot of these projects. And we were awarded that back in 2020 I believe, 2021 and we’ve leveraged that to bring in additional dollars, and are still bringing in additional dollars through, you know, various programs, federal, state, but as well as other foundations.

And what, what have you started to see the results as being and how do you see that kind of blossoming going forward?

Going forward, we have plans to build 10 new housing units. I talked about the park. That was the kind of so one of part of the coast city approach is a quick win to restore trust and show that it works. So one of the things we did was we had the city transfer lots and to build something that the community needed, you know, which was, you know, green space, flooding relief, a place for a bus stop for a new Rapid bus line that the federal government was funding that would connect parts of the city and other things that they needed. We had a co design competition, so that’s up and running.

We’ve been working with an affordable housing team there to build out these houses. We will be working with others on commercial uses. So we see this unfolding over I mean, these, none of these are quick processes, right, but we see this unfolding over the next five or so years to deliver right green infrastructure, housing and commercial spaces that are affordable and that are co governed by. The community, this Land Trust. Land Trust have a governance structure where you have people that are using the land on the land trust, that could be tenants or commercial businesses, people from the larger community, and then experts, and that’s what the board entails that will govern the land trust and the uses and the leases and and the investment in the reinvestment of the dollars through that land use over time.

You know, Baton Rouge is not a tiny city. I think I lived in New Orleans for about five years while I was going to school, and so I recall it being around 400,000 people. Do you see this being adopted by even smaller communities. And is it? Is it feasible, given the kind of amount of complexity maybe that it takes to put together these, these types of legal structures and projects,

it could be there’s nothing in the model that would, per se, prevent a small, rural community from doing it, except having the capacity, the expertise, and that’s why so often we’re called in as a team to help bring that and then to build it. But really what matters are the assets in that community, and land is often a good asset. I would also say the social ties in a community that enable people to work together, and the political willingness, and then someone needs to do the groundwork of, you know, finding funding and investment.

And again, that could be through federal, state programs, that could be through foundations, including bank foundations, but and then eventually you want private investment, but private investors are not going to come unless someone’s broken ground first on how their development and they see a return on some investment. And there, I think you need more patient investors.

So in terms of, well, you have opportunity zones that are part of the federal structure, I don’t know how effectively those have worked. In some respects, I think they put money in developers pockets versus you heard about the president’s son in law who was opportunity zones investing. And you know, I wonder how much of that actually got down to people in need versus developers in in need.

But I guess they’ve largely passed these communities by those opportunity zones. I mean, there have been studies they are not landing in the kinds of communities I’ve been working in. And so one, you know, one feature of the legislation under the previous administration federal was a direct pay feature that we were thinking about using it still existed. Wasn’t taken out with the big, beautiful bill, as they call it. Wasn’t one of the incentives that was removed from the IRA in the in the bipartisan infrastructure, but one of the things that that allows is a nonprofit or a city to instead of having a tax credit for bringing a private investor in, they would actually get a direct pay cash, which could directly subsidize right development.

If one could partner with the private sector, you could pass that along to the private sector, or take it out front and work with, you know, an affordable housing developer, let’s say so there were these new tools that were part of the previous legislation that still exists, at least nominally. It’s not at all clear to me that, once you take away the other incentives, which have been taken away, of the infrastructure Act and the IRA, that that direct pay feature works as well, because what you’d want to do is stack that direct pay on top of the other, you know, tax credits for for doing work in what they called a disadvantaged community that was mapped by the federal government.

Or if you had local hires, or if you were doing certain kinds of climate work, you could reduce the development by up to 60% by stacking those and then using the direct pay to get a lot of that money out front. So we were hopeful to use those kinds of tools in places, in the kinds of places that I’m working, but now those are no longer as robust

Well, I guess one of the questions is, how are you doing as far as cloning yourself and your team to work in other areas, because it seems, though the need is is overwhelming, and I’m not sure if the amount of people out in the field doing this fairly complex, you know, or very complex legal structures required to do this and planning on the ground, and all of the things that it takes to put one of these projects together, which sounds like a lot, you know what? What’s the outlook for that?

So that’s good question. I’m not cloning myself, and often there are teams of people working on projects, and most of them on the ground in those communities. I mean, I might be brought into. Give to explain the model, to talk about how it’s worked in other places, and maybe to advise along the way. But for instance, I’ve been working in Los Angeles and around the Leimert Park area with some developers and also land trust there and developing that area. And again, I’m not there all the time. I work with the team. Often over zoom, they have other people, including lawyers, that may not understand these models, but can be brought up to speed pretty quickly.

So often, I’m brought in as a kind of advisor. When cities call and say, we’re interested in this model here, there are usually people on the ground in the city and at universities, including at my university, if we have to build a team that can help with the capacity to be able to put this model in place in a way that is not cut and paste, I think what works in one place may not work. I don’t know that I could replicate what we did in Harlem a lot of other places, simply because the partner that we work with this outfit called Silicon Harlem, had amazing relationships in the community, and also a lot of capacity to host the servers, etc.

So it’s really to do to bring the model in a way that can be adapted to the place and its assets and its capacity, and that just looks different, but, but there’s enough capacity in a lot of these places, if you scratch the surface, including in the city, and work with people over time to say, here are some things you could do, and we just need the right people to help put them in place.

So how are you doing it? At far as motivating students at Columbia to go out and do this work and forego those fancy jobs at the big laws to go work with the people a little bit and probably not get paid that insane amount of money that those big law firms pay, right? And some of the law firms are doing this pro bono, right?

So sometimes you can be a law firm. I was once at a law firm that had a pretty robust pro bono practice, but to answer your question more directly. So I teach both law students and Master’s climate students. My main appointment is at the climate school, so I’m teaching a lot of master’s students that are going out and will be working in the public and private sector. But even the law students, there are quite a bit of them that come to law school knowing they want to go into public interest. And the law schools, as you may know, have programs that work with students in terms of loan relief and and scholarships coming in, and public interest programs that allow them to do that right without the burden of a lot of student loans. So, so, so there is a kind of self selected group that’s interested in this work.

So I get more interest from students wanting to work with me than I can accommodate, by far. And I’m happy to say that there are other people around Columbia that are doing similar work, you know, with communities in New York City. So students have a lot of different places to go. There are, there’s a global impact lab at the climate school. There are other centers that work with communities. I mean, maybe not exactly the same way that I am, but I think there are lots of opportunities for people that want to work with communities and coming up with solutions, particularly around climate and energy issues. I’m not alone.

Fortunately, that’s good to hear. So I’d be remiss to ask you how this controversy at Columbia, with the federal government coming in and kind of doing a little battle with the Columbia administration. How is that playing out in real time for you and your colleagues and students?

So I am going to leave that to the president of the university. She regularly, or the interim president puts out messages. I mean, I think I can only say what we all know, which is that that the grant pauses, I guess, have a significant impact, particularly on the sciences, medical school, a lot of the research oriented work at the University, and that affects, I think, a lot of departments, not all, but a lot. And I know that the university is working with the federal government, whatever you think of their negotiating stances, to try to, you know, to restore some of that, at least in terms of my own work, hasn’t affected it yet. We have a lots of demand for our programs, both at the climate school and obviously at the law school, and I suspect that will remain so. And I think the funding issues just will have to work themselves out, department by department, and they affect different departments very differently.

So as far as the climate school at Columbia, how big is it? How many students are involved, how many faculty? What’s the kind of impact that the climate school has more broadly?

So, the climate school is a relatively new school. It’s the most recent school that was born out of Columbia at the university. Work for many, many decades. And so it’s maybe five or so years old, and it scaled up pretty quickly. It absorbed, in part, some institutions that were already there, the Earth Institute, which you may or may not have heard of. Also, there’s the Lamont Observatory and other programs. It has offered a master’s a one year master’s climate and society, and now offers two other masters, a Master’s of climate science, which is a two year program, and a Master’s of climate finance with the business school.

And it’s, I think, I don’t know our incoming class this year, but could be as much as 250 maybe a little less. So it’s a strong school. We have a core faculty and then a number or a core set of faculty members like myself and then various other faculty members that are co appointed with different schools. It’s an interdisciplinary school, because the problem is a wicked problem, and it involves not just obviously earth science and climate science, but policy, you know, you know, history, economics, etc. So we have faculty that often are co appointed with different schools, and that gives students a really rich, you know, education in this area, because climate, you can’t really separate it from, you know, like, I’ve said housing or infrastructure, or, you know, food, for instance, and lots of other, you know, challenges that we face.

That certainly is grounds for giving us some hope about the future. That many young people are going into this and and they’re being educated in these areas. I know it was a billion dollar grant that were donation that was given to Stanford climate school and and there certainly must be others around the country which which are leading the charge. I guess, pivoting a little bit to local politics, since you’re a person who deals in local political issues that I’m kind of fascinated to ask you about the current mayor’s campaign, or the campaign for mayor in New York City, and what’s your take on what’s happening there.

Well, so I will say I’ve been working with the city. I’m on the New York City Panel on Climate Change, which is like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the international level, and I’ve been on since about 2016 and so I’ve been working with the mayor’s office, which is where the staff that works with this group of experts that are appointed every three years to assess climate risk and projections and also the best the state of the Art in terms of how to adapt to climate changes. So I say that to say that I’ve had a good working relationship across now two mayoral administrations, de Blasio and Adams and so all that to say is that I think that New York City has a lot of challenges. Affordability is one of them, and one of the reasons that the Democratic nominee Matern, I think, won and shocked the political establishment here, was a willingness to really listen and hear the diverse communities in New York. I think New York is a as a city, as most large cities are incredibly complicated place to govern.

So I’m really interested in governance, as you could probably tell. And one of the ways to be as successful as I think he was is that he literally spent time. He was everywhere in all these communities that really listened, even to people that had voted for Trump in the last election, you know, because we have a lot of voters in those communities that voted for, let’s say, AOC for Congress, but then Trump for president. So he went out and said, you know, why’d you vote for him, you know? And what are your issues? And then crafted a campaign to be responsive.

So that’s my understanding of what accounts for his win, and now he faces a much more complicated general election, as you know, the current mayor, whose numbers are not popular or or he’s not popular, and his favorability rating is fairly low, and he’s polling low, obviously, former Governor Cuomo, and you know, then on the Republicans, so they’re running as independents. And then there’s a Republican who’s run almost, I think, at least the last two or three times, Curtis Lewa, and then, of course, Mamdani. So it should be interesting. One of the interesting things, speaking of young folks, is that a lot of what powered the result in the Democratic primary was the immense turnout of new voters right which polls can’t quite capture if you’re polling likely voters or past voters, the fact that he came 12 points ahead when the polls were indicating a squeaker suggested and now we know that all these new voters were brought in to the election. So I think that’s a wild card.

Now, somebody was positing maybe the Republican, and I really don’t know much of his background. And even a friend from New York didn’t know much of his background, even though he’s run for mayor, as you said a few times, like he’s kind of been a non issue. But does he have the potential, really, for winning this thing because the three traditional, you know, Democrats, will split the vote courteously.

What started the guardian angels, right? You’ve heard of that group. They were a neighborhood. So he’s famous for that. He’s famous in New York. So I’d been a New Yorker for only 22 years, and even before moving to New York, had heard of the guardian angels, and then when I moved here, understood that, oh, he’s the guy, right? So a lot of people know him. So it’s, does he have a chance? I don’t know. I’m not a political expert. I mean, if someone’s running time after time, and you know, they haven’t won, then you can determine for yourself, right, whether their chances go up or go down. What’s different about this general election is the number of viable candidates, right?

Obviously, Matern and then Cuomo is viable, and Adams has, you know, a constituency that believes in what he’s done. And I just think we don’t know. I think it’s, it’s, and again, the wild card is the folks that showed up in the primary for Mamdani. Are they going to show up in the general election? And the Republicans and people that were not in the or independents, frankly, they couldn’t vote in the Democratic primary. Which way are they leaning?

So I don’t, yeah, certainly a very fascinating voter, the Trump AOC voter that voted for Trump and AOC is it’s hard to know where that person goes or what they’re listening to on their podcast, but you know, as we will see, but I certainly wanted to kind of get your hot take on it. Appreciate that we’ll get back to more environment or maybe that’s a question is like, hey, where do these candidates stand? Is Mai and Dami, I haven’t heard much about his environmental positions. Vis a vis Adams and Cuomo. Is there much variance between those candidates?

Don’t think you would find much variance actually, on the environmental and climate direction that the city’s been going. I remember in the last mayoral election, I don’t think I knew where Adams stood in, and I was serving on the NPC season and and I remember having a conversation. We had no idea where he was on these issues. I don’t know that he had a well developed platform, but then he came in and he changed the mayor’s what was the Mayor’s Office of, I believe resiliency, he changed the name to the Mayor’s Office of environmental and climate justice. So that wasn’t so there was no signal in his platform that he would do that. So I don’t think we know, but I also don’t think it.

I would guess that there’s not a significant difference between Mamdani Cuomo and Adams. So we know where Adams is because he’s been running the administration within past four years. Cuomo, when he was governor, had a strong record on climate and environmental issues, and Mamdani has a platform that is pretty consistent with what’s already happening in the city. So I don’t and the governor, so I think they would all pretty much be aligned, including on congestion pricing, for instance, for instance, on the congestion pricing. Were you involved in in that process at all?

No I was not, not directly. No, does it seem like it’s working at all.

It’s working. I think it’s successful. The metrics, you know, you can agree on the metrics or not, but the metrics, car traffic spin down. You know, busses are running faster. There are fewer street accidents. Business foot traffic is up in most areas. The the fear of pushing or displacing, externalizing, choose your word traffic elsewhere in the other boroughs, hasn’t materialized, at least not significantly, right? That was the big fear, was that people would avoid the part of Manhattan from all the way up to 60th Street, and then, you know, drive through the Bronx and down or or or Staten Island, and that those communities will get more traffic and more pollution.

Um, my understanding is that that has not come to pass. I think New Jersey has its own beef with congestion pricing, and the governor has been outspoken about that and and I think is probably aligned with the Trump administration on trying to roll it back in court. So I think most, and then I think the sentiment among the public, even people that thought, we don’t want this for cost reasons, that that swung a bit as a lot of I think bold initiatives, when people hear about them, they say, too costly or. It’s going to change too much. And then when they’re put in place, what sometimes happens is, you know, once you’re living with the reality, people see that there are things to like about it. And my understanding also is that the MTA, the transit authority that is in charge of the busses and the trains, et cetera.

I mean, you can see some already, some of the improvements that are being put in place on the subway system. So railings, for instance, in the subway systems, and upgrading of you know certain technology and signals, etc, and you know better trains that have been in the pipeline, but they’re replacing the cars, for instance, in that makes a difference. I ride the subway every day, so I think people that do can really tell that there are investments being made. Now, whether that’s a direct effect of this program, but that was one of the promises the program. So if you can correlate those improvements with the start of this program, and probably not be far off because those were investments, investments that they needed to make, but but the budget did not support and now they are getting money from prices.

I know I saw some, some pictures or images from space on Paris, and seeing that the the amount of emissions went down and the air quality got better. Are we seeing that in Manhattan? Post, you know, these pricing changes?

I think we are the same thing happened in London many decades ago, when they put in place something similar, right? London was the first major city to do this. So, yes, I think that’s one of the metrics that we’re seeing. Is that, and you could see, I live near the near the Holland Tunnel, and it used to be, you know, a couple blocks from me. You know, from 3pm my street leading there, and also the large avenues would just be backed up for miles with cars. And you just don’t see that anymore. And so it’s a lot of, you know, emissions that are gone. You know, people can bike more freely. And even if you’re going through that right, there’s just a lot less traffic so for people that are commuting. So I do think there are really tangible payoffs, both in terms of quality of life and environmental quality.

And so I think we’re hopeful that that’s a policy that works, and that will be kept in place given how long it took, you know, going back to Mayor Bloomberg, he tried to put this in place, and you need the approval of the state and the governor. And so de Blasio was able to work something out at the end of his term, or maybe Adams at the beginning of his term. I’m not sure which Mayor eventually struck a deal with the state to put this in place. And given all the costs I would find it surprising if it were rolled back.

Well, thank you for giving us your take on what’s happening in New York City. It’s only the flagship city of the United States and of the world in many ways. And so I think it takes leadership. I think it takes taking tough decisions. And this was a tough decision by the governor. She was getting a tremendous amount of heat for for going this way, and kudos to her for doing it and being a leader. Because being a leader is is means that you’re going to get some flack so completely. Yeah. She did, I think, a great job in taking the heat and going forward and seeing, and, as you said, people then see the promises, and then kind of resistance reduces, because you see, okay, yeah, there are some benefits here for the people who live here. And that’s, that’s great to hear as well.

So thank you so much, Dr Sheila foster for being on our program and sharing with the listeners the amazing work that you’re doing around the country that is impacting the lives of lots and lots of people. Kudos to you. And let people know how they can support you. What are the ways, I guess, go out there and and buy a copy of your book, host cities, innovative transitions towards just and self sustaining communities and and check out lab gov what? What else are ways that people can support your work?

I think people can talk about the alternative models that are working. I think we have a lot of alternative models for housing, for climate, environment. So congestion pricing is one we just talked about. There are things that work, that address these problems and and I am doing the work, but other people are as well. Look for people that are doing the work. I’m always happy to talk to people in cities or towns that want to bring this model there, and to talk about how to do it. So I’m always happy to connect with folks who are interested in trying something different and innovative, and something that can both restore trust in communities with government, trust in government, but also access. Bring needed change and services to people that are struggling right now. So I’m thrilled to be able to have the capacity to do this work and happy to work with anyone who’s interested like.

One last question, which would be kind of the collaboration between universities on this subject, because I see universities as being one of the most powerful set of institutions to bring about change and and what do you see kind of on the front lines of collaboration between the universities? You are doing great work at Columbia, there’s great work being done at Stanford and and other schools around the country. How do you see that playing out?

So lab.gov was founded to be university based, I think knowledge institutions and particularly large universities, but not only have a tremendous role in an important role, and I think now we’re seeing it, particularly with the rollback and in federal dollars that not just in this kind of work, but in science and in moving innovation along. So I do think if you lift the black box or of how universities operate, that you will find in many of them, this kind of work going on, although it’s often hidden and it’s under resourced. One of the things that drew me to Columbia was that the climate school came out of what was called the fourth purpose of the university. The the the previous president Bollinger, created this fourth purpose mission, and that was the university having impact in the world and in communities.

And so a large part of what we do around Columbia and at the climate school comes out of that sense of fourth purpose, that, yes, we value scholarship, obviously, in research, that’s the crux of the university and good teaching and service. But then there’s this fourth purpose, and that is having impact. So in partnering to have impact, unique partners, communities can’t do it alone. Governments can’t do it alone. The private sector often can’t do it without some collaboration, and universities can’t do it alone. So so it’s important those partnerships, those public, private, community, university partnerships that I write about in the book, are super important, and we’ve seen those flourishing, and that’s at the core of the model as well is to create those kind of, you know, partnerships that are not just triple three, you know, public private partnerships, but triple five, you know, public private university community, etc.

Oh, yeah, I see that as well. It’s a university is becoming more and more powerful actors out in the world and have huge endowments and resources that are way beyond kind of individuals and that they need to be responsible stewards of that, that power to really, as you said, effectuate that fourth purpose, which is impact on community. We can’t just be kind of up in an ivory tower. It has to be out on the ground with with people who are in need. So thank you again, Dr Sheila Foster, for being on the thank you for having and we’ll look forward to collaborating with the work that you’re doing there. And if we can be of any help, please let us know. So follow every everybody. Follow Dr Sheila foster going forward and see what she’s doing and support her in in any way that you can.

Thank you so much, Matt. It’s great to be on the podcast. I enjoyed our conversation. Thank you.

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