Last Updated
May 7, 2020
Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Danny Harris. [Live show recorded: May 6, 2020.]
Guest: Danny Harris
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Guest
DANNY HARRIS, a passionate advocate for livable, walkable and bike-friendly cities, has been named the new executive director of Transportation Alternatives by the non-profit organization’s board of directors. He will officially assume this role on Sept. 3, 2019.
Harris spent four years as program director with the Knight Foundation in San Jose, California, where he oversaw grantmaking related to placemaking, transportation, and affordable housing. He most recently served as senior vice president of Civic Entertainment Group in New York City, where he led teams responsible for high-profile product launches and events.
“Danny Harris is a proven leader and a practiced storyteller who understands the urgency of reclaiming our streets as public space for all New Yorkers,” said Steve Hindy, chair of Transportation Alternatives’ Board of Directors. “Danny is a broad thinker on cities, people, and the connections that drive us. I am confident that he will lead the organization to a new level of effectiveness.”
Harris is an innovator as well as an educator. He has taught at San Jose State University, was named a Vanguard Fellow by Next City, and received a citation from the American Institute of Architects. Harris, a graduate of Connecticut College and Princeton University, is a native New Yorker and currently resides in Manhattan with his family.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show. On today's episode, Lauren Ruffin and I are joined by Danny Harris. Danny currently serves as the Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives, an organization working to reclaim New York City streets from the automobile and advocating for better bicycling, walking and public transit for all New Yorkers. Prior to Transportation Alternatives, Danny was a Senior Vice President at Civic Entertainment Group in New York City, a Program Officer at the Knight Foundation working in San Jose.
Tim Cynova:
He was a principal at Story Social, a full service creative design studio working at the intersection of storytelling and community building. And a co-founder of Feastly, an online marketplace for food experiences. And many years ago, Danny and I connected at National Art Strategies, Creative Community Fellows, where we also met fellow Morning(ish) Show guest, Kristina Newman-Scott and Gail Crider and where I may or I may not have been a very ineffective mentor for him. So, without further ado, Danny, welcome to the show.
Danny Harris:
Hi, everybody, thanks for having me.
Lauren Ruffin:
Danny, it's really great to catch up with you.
Danny Harris:
Yeah. Same here.
Lauren Ruffin:
So, how are you doing? How's your family and how's your community right now?
Danny Harris:
Thanks for asking. We're holding up. We're fortunate that we can be at home and we have two very small kids, we have a one-year-old and a four-year-old. And then otherwise we're transitioning as a staff to probably week seven or eight that we're working from home now and we're holding up together as a staff and trying to figure out, amid this really challenging moment, how it creates a space for one that we can continue to build morale while not being together and that we can continue to advance the work, especially given how important transportation is proving to be amid coronavirus, especially in New York City.
Lauren Ruffin:
Is the way that you're thinking about yourself and your role and your organization's role shifting at all due to the pandemic?
Danny Harris:
I would say everything is shifting amid the pandemic. I think the really difficult thing is that for advocates who have been in, you pick the field, from income inequality, to workforce development, to transportation, to race. I mean, you pick the issue, this has been probably the biggest magnifying glass on all of the broken infrastructure across our society and nation. So, the hard part is that advocates have been screaming, in many ways, into the winds for years or for decades about these problems.
Danny Harris:
And then something like coronavirus hits, and last night they shut down the New York City subway between one and five in the morning for the first time in, I think, over a hundred years, and had to bring 1,000 cops to take out 2,000 homeless people. So, think of every broken part of that system that played out last night for a four-hour period and that's just one small microcosm of all the other huge issues that this nation is facing and will continue to do so over the years to come.
Tim Cynova:
You are deeply committed, you have been for years, to creating livable cities. In your previous role, we met right before you started, you were the program director at the Knight Foundation working in San Jose. You oversaw the grant making for the placemaking, transportation, affordable housing. Your Twitter feed made it appear that you were everywhere all the time, thinking about these issues, visiting cities to learn about this.
Tim Cynova:
As you think about this moment in our history, systems that are breaking down, people for the first time, maybe seeing systems, how are you processing this? What are you thinking about and trying to prioritize now at this moment that feels like a once in a lifetime moment for maybe the opportunity to create real change where more people could thrive, where everyone could thrive?
Danny Harris:
I think the biggest tragedy in cities is that they stopped being built for people. And you can draw that back to cars being sold as freedom and independence or planners like Robert Moses re-imagining a city in an urban area and doing so with really strong and apparent racist undertones that we continue to see today. To the environmental impact of what it means to build, not just for cars now really, but for SUVs and light trucks.
Danny Harris:
I think that as a human, as an urbanist, as somebody who's lived in cities and suburbs my whole life, the biggest difference between the cities that work for communities and those that don't, is the ones that choose to build for people and they build for all people. Because the point is that, regardless of your age, ability, background, income, if you're able to walk out of your home or if you are in a wheelchair, if you're able to leave your home and find that you have a suite of options to get around, and those options are safe, they're dignified, they're equitable, they're sustainable, they're resilient, they're for absolutely everybody.
Danny Harris:
The problem is that too many of our cities have forced people to rely on cars to get around. Cars can be an option, they certainly should be for many people. But when you force people to buy a car, to spend AAA estimates about $9,000 a year in car related payments, to have communities like the South Bronx where kids are struggling with childhood asthma, we have fundamentally failed our communities in doing so. Cars don't pay taxes, cars don't pay for free parking in most places, and they're continuing to dictate the decisions we make. That is wrong and our future cannot be built for cars. It's failed us. We have to build the future for people.
Tim Cynova:
One of the things I've thought about what I'm seeing with the work that you and Transportation Alternatives are doing and just being a New York City resident as well is, what's the ideal number of cars in New York City?
Danny Harris:
I feel like it's one of these you go and you interview at a McKinsey and they ask you how many golf balls will fit on a 747? The truth is, I don't know. And also, the thing that you have to remember is that right now, because I spent a year also working closely with Ford Motor Company, car companies are not building for a future of cars, but cities are. So, I think your question is really about, it should be about whether it's mode shift goals, whether it's about vehicle miles traveled, there are all of these really sort of technical pieces.
Danny Harris:
But I might reframe your question as, how many options should a city be able to give to an individual to get around? And if the answer is that the majority of people only have one option, that city has failed and it needs to provide at least two options and those options should be, again, safe, they should be dignified, they should be sustainable, they should be affordable. So again, car ownership can certainly be a part of it, but I don't think we have a number yet of how many cars. We'll be able to mark our success if we can land on the aircraft carrier and say mission accomplished.
Tim Cynova:
This is the type of conversation that when Danny was assigned me as a mentor, I'm like I'm failing in my duties as a mentor here. Because it was like, yeah, what are you ... You're approaching this all wrong, Tim. I'm like, okay. Oh God, I'm so sorry. Apologies for decades to come.
Danny Harris:
I do have to give a huge [inaudible 00:06:56] Tim. So when Tim was my mentor, when I was a fellow and I was sitting and it was my first time sitting with you and a few others and I think you had said to me what I knew, but just was very bad at is like you were asking me for help and I was just giving advice for maybe 30 minutes and you're like, you should really ask for help. You shouldn't just be better about acknowledging it and getting support from people around you. And it's a very small thing, but it's fundamentally changed the way that I approach my work and I have a huge network of mentors and people that I lean on and I'm also much more comfortable with being vulnerable and asking for help. So I really appreciate that, Tim. So I take that away from you. Thank you.
Tim Cynova:
That's very kind. Lauren, you can take this one before it gets really awkward here.
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm sitting here trying to imagine how many golf balls fit on a Boeing 747.
Danny Harris:
There's probably an answer to that.
Tim Cynova:
There is, yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
There's got to be, and I will know it immediately following this show.
Danny Harris:
There's a searching mechanism.
Lauren Ruffin:
I am curious. So, so much of the conversation does happen about sort of cars and that at the heart of Tim's question is, what should we be thinking about if not about how many cars? Are there other things that are contributing to sort of the poor quality of life, the way that we're moving around cities? I live in Albuquerque, which has notoriously few transportation options outside of a car and they just built a rapid bus line that everybody's really angry about. I'm curious, what are the other things that we should be talking about besides cars, if car companies aren't building for a future that has a whole bunch of cars?
Danny Harris:
I think we should be talking about options. Even if you look at what's happening in the debate around gun control, it's about responsible gun ownership, at least as you see it play out on the other side of the NRA. For us, it's simply about just giving people options. I think the problem is that the car companies and the oil companies were basically the dealers and then the people who have cars became the addicts and in many ways we're letting the addicts continue to sort of push at community board meetings and op-eds.
Danny Harris:
For example, last night I got a phone call from a local TV reporter and this is how it started. It said, "Hi, Danny. We know that there's a huge increase in speeding in New York and so we want to capture both sides of the story." What two sides are there to a story? There's speeding is illegal, speeding kills people. We have automated tools that capture people, so it doesn't matter what you look like if you go over 11 miles an hour, it captures your ticket. But this is a journalist who's trying to capture both sides of a story of people breaking the law. Like if you were walking around looting in the city because no one was around that would be seen as clearly disorder and that would be unacceptable.
Danny Harris:
But we give a pass to terrible car behavior. You can run over a child, you call it an accident. You speed well, nobody was on the road. Again, all of this is a mentality that basically empowers drivers, some drivers ... of a situation where 40,000 people a year are killed. So I just think in many ways in society, we don't take this seriously. We sort of write off car crashes as these accidents, all the infrastructure spending we say is necessary to widen our roads. I think in many ways, again, it's very simple concept, but if we prioritize around people. I have a one and a four-year-old, I just simply want to be able to cross the street with them or let them bike to school. That is not a radical concept, but in many cities or in places like Albuquerque, that basically brings out people with their pitchforks.
Lauren Ruffin:
Did you say 40,000 people a year die from car crashes in New York?
Danny Harris:
No, sorry. That's nationwide.
Lauren Ruffin:
Okay, got it.
Danny Harris:
That's nationwide, yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
I mean, it's still a huge number, but ...
Danny Harris:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, the biking to school thing. So our kids started biking to school this year and it's been fantastic for their independence, but in some places, it's a really radical notion that kids should be able to do that safely. Also, Tim, did you have another question or can I keep talking?
Tim Cynova:
You can keep talking. Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
Awesome. I love when that happens. Are there specific strategies that folks can do in their own towns? Advocacy organizing is a skill and there's a way to do it. Are there strategies that you'd recommend folks are seeing sort of upticks in poor car behavior? How should people be organizing and thinking about this as we rethink the world?
Danny Harris:
Sure. I think the first thing, the instinct of many is to focus on enforcement and that's what our mayor in New York likes to do is to throw cops at the problem. The problem is that this is really about design. So in most of our communities, well let me start with New York. In New York, about 80% of all of our public space is devoted to car storage and movement. So if you think of a city with 8.6 million people who live in small spaces, all of our playgrounds are currently closed. Most sidewalks are not six feet. We're giving away all this space for free in a pandemic when it's desperately needed for physical distancing. You can play out that scenario across almost any community of simply what's the equation of space that's given away to cars versus people?
Danny Harris:
The second stage of that is simply for people who are watching to look outside of your window in regardless of where you live. I live in New York city and I live by the FDR highway that runs along the east side. I hear birds in the morning and the air quality is amazing. I can see all the way out to the airports in Queens. My kids, I take them out in the morning, they can cross the street and I don't have to worry about cars everywhere. There are these fundamental quality of life elements that are better and many people are not able to attribute them to the absence of cars.
Danny Harris:
I think so many of our leaders want us to get back to normal and of course, we obviously want the economy and the nation to get up and running, but if we jumped right back into the way we were before, there's another looming pandemic on the horizon around climate change and we have seen how our nation has been incapable of addressing this one. That will be fundamentally worse and impact so many more communities in so many more devastating ways.
Danny Harris:
We need to get ahead of that, and a way that we can do that is to start thinking of streets as assets instead of liabilities, assets for economic growth, assets for public health, assets for income inequality, assets to address income inequality, for the environment. And right now we're just giving them away to, in many cases, its worse use, which is predominantly SUVs and light trucks that are looting our air, they're killing people and they're parking for free.
Tim Cynova:
A few years back when you were at the Knight Foundation, do you publish a piece titled "What Silicon Valley Doesn't Get About People. Poor planning didn't just aggravate the area's housing problem: It helped create the Valley's growing empathy gap." We've talked a lot on the show with leaders and organizations about the need for leaders and organizations to demonstrate empathy, humanity in the face of some incredible challenges that we're all facing and increasingly talking about worker dignity, even in the face of having to make some heartbreaking decisions. As you think back on that piece around planning and empathy and how we can use this moment for the future, what resonates with you, thinking back on that?
Danny Harris:
I think there are a few things. The first is what it means to be a good, I wouldn't even just say a corporate partner, what it means to be a leader in this age. And so I just sort of share as my own example. I have two brothers and one of them is a doctor and he's a pediatrician and now part of his job, as most doctors, is to do shifts at the ER. And so he has a newborn and he had to quarantine from his newborn and his family. And he's also just a very stoic person and he doesn't complain about it, doesn't post it on social media, is happy that people clap but doesn't see it as for him.
Danny Harris:
And on the other side of it, you have those from the brands to the CSR, to the foundations, even the nonprofits who are making it about themselves, finding a way to sort of tie up this crisis into the mission critical work or the way that their brand is doing X, Y and Z, or the very small percentage of their resources that they're putting towards these types of efforts. Now, I mean, as I'm sure with you and many people watching, I'm the child of my mom is a refugee. All four of my grandparents are refugees and this sort of story goes back and they all told stories about the experience, and where they were and what they did.
Danny Harris:
Now, basically the stories that we're going to tell our grandkids are, we stayed home and we posted on TikTok or we ran a CSR campaign and we gave away a hundred thousand dollars for a company that produces billions. These are not compelling stories that we're going to want to be sharing down the generations. I think now everybody needs to do what makes the most sense to protect themselves and their community. But people ask very fundamental questions of, especially in places like foundations, you had money, what did you do with it? How hard did you make it for people to get it? How much of the story that you told was about yourself instead of those on the front lines?
Danny Harris:
There are these things that I think we'll start to track over time. And I think the hope is that the leaders who are really getting it right, they're supporting the people around them. They're finding a way to support their counterparts in other cities. They're checking in with their staff and their community, and they're finding ways of being relevant, supportive. And I think like most organizations, given how quick this is changing in two weeks, you don't want to look like a fool because you said or you pushed the wrong thing, given the need for ventilators or whether COVID is going to come back or talking about opportunity when people are dying. So I think about all of that through the lens of my experience in Silicon Valley and just if I get another CSR email or hear what the aggressive action that Warby Parker is taking in advanced COVID, I'm going to lose my mind.
Lauren Ruffin:
I get those emails too. The Warby Parker ones really are really special. Yet another company that's not going to sponsor the show.
Tim Cynova:
Every episode we lose one more potential sponsor.
Danny Harris:
I have a list of grievances if you're looking for that.
Lauren Ruffin:
Okay. Got it. Several years ago I read this quote that stayed with me and as I approach my 40th birthday, it was essentially the best and brightest minds of my generation have been spent trying to convince people to click on ads, which is so true. So something you said really triggered that for me. It also strikes me that this question around what did you do in foundations and how corporations are really thinking about this right now.
Lauren Ruffin:
I had a great conversation a couple weeks ago with a friend who's a CEO of a large ed tech company and she went down to a four-day workweek and talked about how she did that to save money on payroll. But what it's unlocked is all the potential of her staff who are now in their communities doing things. And it strikes me that there's a climate change/transportation component to that too. Are you thinking about what a shorter workweek would look like as part of the work that you're doing in New York? Is how we think about work and capitalism and time spent something that you're working on and thinking about right now?
Danny Harris:
I think everything is on the table. The reality is that public transit is seeing a decrease of 90 plus percent, and so even as we start to get back to whatever a new normal is going to look like, one, not everybody's going to open at the same time. Two, not everyone's going to flock to public transit. Three, the number of people are going to realize that they can continue to work from home, they may not need an office, telecommuting, working at various hours.
Danny Harris:
I live in the city and my office is in the city and it still takes me three hours to go there and back. That's insane. I have little kids and I'm so happy that I can be with them all day. All of those things are really up for discussion, but it'd really, I think, be dependent about employers to start to make those decisions, especially ideally in partnership with their teams.
Tim Cynova:
Speaking about your team, you posted a really great video in the past 24 hours that your team made about their new commutes now. We can't show this right now, but I encourage everyone to go to Danny's Twitter feed, Transportation Alternatives' Twitter feed to watch this very creative, clever video to highlight some of the new commuting options that your team has been experiencing. I will just leave it as a cliffhanger, but it is well worth your time if you've not yet seen this video.
Tim Cynova:
Can you talk a bit about ... So Lauren's a cyclist. I'm a cyclist. We've had conversations about how many bikes are too many bikes to own. Lauren sees the sky's the limit on this one. I live in a tiny apartment, I just have one. I want to talk about Bike Match because this is something, the Bike Match initiative, that Transportation Alternatives has been involved in. What is it? How's it working, and how did it come about?
Danny Harris:
So in March, as things started to shut down, our Art Director, J Oberman, had an extra bike and posted it up on social media. And a few hours later somebody came and picked it up. And as he shared the story with our staff, they had this great idea of, well, why don't we create a platform to match bikes? So anybody who might have an extra bike or somebody who might need it. And that's how it started towards the end of March. And so if we fast-forward today we're at about 650 participants in New York, I think about half of all matches have gone to healthcare workers and we've helped to scale the network to 20 plus cities around the world.
Danny Harris:
So I think what we saw was a huge uptake in cycling and unfortunately many people who were concerned about taking public transit. And so it was just sort of a simple tool that we could give them in a way to connect with our membership who might have an extra bike or we started to engage with some brands who were able to donate at scale. The really nice thing about it, I mean beyond obviously the supporting people are kind of two really beautiful points. One is the moment of connection. So obviously as you go through all of the layers of how you have to go about doing it, it's two strangers meeting in a physically distant safe location, giving opportunity to somebody else.
Danny Harris:
And the second is the stories that we hear from people who get bikes. And so there was one person who is a healthcare worker and he hadn't ridden in 20 plus years and he just described the excitement of, he's an adult, riding down a hill on a bike, which he hadn't done in 20 plus years. He's an adult, he's a healthcare worker. He has a very stressful job and he talked about the glee and the wind and the speed and just the sense of freedom and it's a beautiful and touching story that people just need to get around it.
Danny Harris:
Wouldn't it be nice if in addition to having to get around you enjoyed it, it was good for you? It also came from somebody who loved that bike and wanted to see it get into better hands. So it's been really inspiring to see it play out and we want to continue to grow and scale it. We're now, I think, in 120 plus zip codes in New York and so we want to obviously continue to expand here and then grow it to more communities around the world.
Tim Cynova:
That's great.
Lauren Ruffin:
That's great. I'm sitting here thinking about which bike I would give away.
Danny Harris:
[inaudible 00:21:45] child.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. Lauren's got specific bikes and some in the queue to add.
Lauren Ruffin:
I think the Centurion would go. I've got an old, beautiful. Now I can't go. I can't let it.
Danny Harris:
We'll go back and see.
Tim Cynova:
We'll process this on a different podcast episode, Lauren. You can have time. You can have time like this one.
Lauren Ruffin:
I need time.
Tim Cynova:
That's such a heartwarming story. I may or may not have had maybe some tears welling up in my eyes just thinking about like the freedom and sort of ... Because as a cyclist ever since, that was my first opportunity to not be with my parents really when like you went on a bike ride as a kid, and since I had an opportunity to bike across the country and what that means and how at this time when it is so stressful and especially for healthcare workers who are on the front lines here, to be able to find that joy in something like that is really heartwarming.
Danny Harris:
And just because this is all of our soap boxes. I mean, I have a one-year-old who learned how to walk and a four-year-old who's learning to ride a bike, this is something that every parent goes through and you sort of imagine these are sort of the milestones of growing up. If we go back to the point that we shared before, imagine being able to give kids these incredible gifts and then have it taken away from them for decades.
Danny Harris:
Lauren, I don't know about you, it sounds like your kids can ride, but my daughter, when she gets that joy and glee of riding her bike, then it's okay, great. Let's put the bike away until maybe college or after college when you live in a city or unless we move to Amsterdam or Copenhagen because that amazing thing we got for you is now only limited in school yard. But you have an entire city that the kids can go off and explore.
Lauren Ruffin:
You're so right. In DC, I did a fair amount of work with public schools and helping kids get bikes, access to bikes and the joy on a kid's face when they get their first bike is-
Danny Harris:
The best.
Lauren Ruffin:
I mean, again, I'm a bike junkie so they know they're not buying a car, like they'll get an electric bike for their 16th birthday. So that's definitely ...
Danny Harris:
I'm happy we don't have to get the both sides of the debate on this TV show. The other side [inaudible 00:23:55].
Tim Cynova:
You'd be like another e-bike is another side of that equation? Yeah, one road and one off road. Lauren, we're coming up on time here, so it's right for the suitcase question.
Lauren Ruffin:
Okay. So, the pandemic has changed everything about us and how we live. And for most of your life you've been carrying around sort of a figurative suitcase of practices and behaviors and sort of things you've done. So the question is, what's one thing that's been in your suitcase for most of your life that you're taking out forever because of the pandemic? And what's one new behavior or habit or sort of thing you love that you're putting in your suitcase and you're never giving up moving forward?
Danny Harris:
I'm trying to give up regret because I had a lot of it. Something that you can sort of look at various stages and even with different successes or different opportunities, you can still hark back on either things you got wrong or things you didn't do or the things you didn't fully advance as much as they could. So I'm trying to let a lot of that go. The thing I want to carry with me, and I'm sure it's sort of an overused phrase, but it's really just about being present and grateful.
Danny Harris:
I feel even in the difficult moments of being at home and not sleeping and kids running around at all hours and not quite understanding what's happening. It's maybe for the best. I am so incredibly grateful that we have a situation that allows us to be employed, that allows us to have two beautiful children that we can be at home with, that we have a home and that we're also surrounded by an incredible community of people who are out in the front lines every single day for us.
Danny Harris:
So I think my hope is that as we get to the other side of this, I know we're at least in New York, we're all clapping at seven and the mayor is talking about a ticker tape parade every block in New York City. I hope we'll have a huge block party where they'll finally get to see their neighbors, who we see each other clapping outside of the window. We'll be able to embrace, and we'll be able to thank all those on the front lines. So that would be my hope for the first moment that we get to the other side of this, at least in my little corner of the world.
Tim Cynova:
That's great, Danny. Yeah. Thank you so much for being with us, grateful for the time and the work that you're doing.
Danny Harris:
Thank you both. I appreciate it. Thank you for telling stories.
Tim Cynova:
Continue the Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE adventure with us on our next episode when we're joined by Alexis Frasz, Co-Director of Helicon Collaborative. Miss us in the meantime? You can download more Work. Shouldn't. Suck. episodes from your favorite podcasting platform of choice. And re-watch Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE episodes over on workshouldntsuck.co.
Tim Cynova:
If you've enjoyed the conversation or are just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.
The podcast is available for free on your favorite podcasting platforms:
Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS Feed
If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on iTunes to help others discover the podcast.