Rethink Real Estate. For Good.

Equity

Transforming neighborhoods through crowdfunding.

“The idea of harnessing small-scale investors for real estate development is gaining momentum nationally, boosted by digital platforms and federal rule changes” writes Carey L. Biron, for Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Backers say the approach opens up real estate investing to a broader pool of buyers and gives locals a say in neighborhood investments – and a stake in any profits, too.”

Since 2016 crowdfunding laws have been driving investment and the US market is estimated to reach USD250.62 billion by 2030. “Real estate has traditionally been left to those who already have money to make more money. And crowdfunding gives you a platform to democratize that,” says Molly McCabe, chief executive of investment advisory firm HaydenTanner. “This is one way to really ensure the community gets to participate and benefit from what’s being created, and to have a sense of ownership.”

Crowdfunding not only makes real estate investing available to a broader pool of buyers, but it provides previously unobtainable finance for unusual projects and marginalized minority and women developers.

Lyneir Richardson, chief executive of social enterprise Chicago TREND, is one of those developers. He crowdfunded a partial purchase of Walbrook Junction, a shopping center in a Black neighborhood of Baltimore which has seen major decline in its 40 years. Richardson held more than 60 meetings with local groups and 90 percent of his 130 investors, who invested between $1,000 and $50,000, care about or have some connection to the neighborhood. He now intends to revitalize Walbrook Junction to bring life and wealth back into the neighborhood.

Another developer, Joanna Bartholomew, used crowdfunding to raise capital for Aruka Midway. The project aims to restore 23 Baltimore row houses which have been vacant for decades. “We did it with the purpose of showing people you can have a stake in the neighborhoods you’re from, or neighborhoods that remind you of where you grew up,” said Bartholomew, chief executive of O’Hara Developments.“That you’re able to invest in your own backyard.” This was Bartholomew’s first try at crowdfunding and although it took more work than she expected, it brought her almost 80 new investors.

Both developers raised capital through Small Change, an online platform launched in 2016 by Eve Picker. Small Change has helped raise almost $11 million to build housing for the homeless, transform empty buildings into corner shops, put retail in food deserts “and everything in between” said Picker. More than half of those developments are women- or minority-owned, and most would not have succeeded in seeking traditional financing. “Projects like these require patient money and a long-term hold,” she said. “You have to wait while the neighborhood catches up.”

Read the original article here. Or listen to podcast interviews with Lyneir Richardson and Joanna Batholomew.

Image courtesy of Joanna Bartholomew

Eve Picker wins national Real Estate Award.

Connect CRE has named Small Change founder and CEO Eve Picker as one of their National 2022 Women in Real Estate Award winners. 

Central to Connect CRE’s selection of Eve was her establishment of the Small Change Index to evaluate the impact of real estate projects according to ESG-related factors. All projects listed on Small Change must score at least 60% on the Small Change Index in order to prove that they offer an opportunity for real impact within their community.

Connect CRE noted that Eve is on a personal mission to democratize real estate and highlighted Small Change’s performance as strong evidence of Eve’s success: over half of the projects have either a minority and/or female sponsor, 65% have included affordable housing and 78% have been located in underserved communities.

Connect CRE also reported that the US News & World Report has ranked Small Change as one of the top seven real estate crowdfunding platforms.

To read more visit https://www.connectcre.com/awards/2022-women-in-real-estate-awards/national/eve-picker/

Image courtesy of Eve Picker

Not a Snowflake.

Elizabeth Timme is one of four co-founders of a brand spanking new design and planning office based in Los Angeles: Office of: Office. Elizabeth, a third generation architect, born in Texas and raised in LA, is best known for her work as founding co-director of LA-Más, a small but notable non-profit, “designing and building initiatives that promote neighborhood resilience and elevate the agency of working class communities of color.”

In its early days, LA-Más worked with the Northeast LA Community Plan Riverfront Collaborative. Their work ranged from affordable housing to storefronts for small business owners, shining a much needed spotlight on homelessness, housing shortages, and how to stabilize communities ahead of gentrification. Projects included ADUs (Backyard Homes Project), the Watts Community Studio project, the Reseda Boulevard Great Streets Initiative, and Backyard Basics, a proposal for affordable housing in Elysian Valley.

Elizabeth loves the field of architecture, but she is cognizant of the industry’s warts, including lack of diversity and accessibility in both the industry and its clients. She has said “I fundamentally challenge the layers of bureaucracy that strangle our ability to service environments that don’t have the resources to challenge, or to lobby, or to invest in something better than the status quo.” At Office of: Office the mantra is always community first.

LA-Más was named as an 2018 Emerging Voice by the Architecture League, and Elizabeth has been on the Women of the Year list by Los Angeles Magazine, a Curbed’s Young Gun of the Year, and recipient of the Vanguard Big Idea Challenge in 2019. She has written for Manifest Journal, Log 48, and Tablula Plena. Before LA-Más she served as project manager and development officer at MASS Design.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:05] Hi there. Thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate for good. I’m Eve Picker and I’m on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. I love real estate. Real estate makes places good or bad, rich or poor, beautiful or not. In this show, I’m interviewing the disruptors, those creative thinkers and doers that are shrugging off the status quo in order to build better for everyone.

Eve: [00:00:40] Elizabeth Timme is no snowflake. Strong and outspoken with degrees in architecture under her belt, she’s building an alternative career on the strong beliefs she holds. That great design should be a right, not a privilege. A third generation architect born in Texas with childhood years spent in Italy and West Indies, Elizabeth has made roots in L.A.. First, she co-founded La Mas in northeast L.A. and now Office of Office, a nonprofit focused on designing joyful and careful places in collaboration with communities. You’ll want to hear more.

Eve: [00:01:23] If you’d like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do share this podcast and go to rethinkrealestateforgood.co, where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Eve: [00:01:48] Hello, Elizabeth. It’s really nice to have you here today.

Elizabeth Timme: [00:01:51] It’s wonderful to be here.

Eve: [00:01:53] So, you’re an architect by training, but you launched LA-Más now office of: Office, which are really not typical architecture firms. And you’ve been heard to say great design should be a right, not a privilege. So, how does that all come together?

Elizabeth: [00:02:11] Well, I think it really starts from having the perspective of being a third generation architect. And also, my father really came from a blue collar family, household, and so did my mother. In Texas doing industry trades, working for Howard Hughes oil and, on both sides of the family. And for me, I saw how far and how hard my father worked to be able to kind of become middle class. And so, it’s always really been important to me that architecture was broadened and widened to include individuals perspective and voice who didn’t have the privilege that I had to come into an upper middle class family where a college education was assumed. And I think there’s so much really profound substance to the dialogue of architecture in city making and place keeping that is not a part of the table when people who have challenges, who don’t have safety nets and have a lot of pain associated with living in modern cities or anywhere, their perspective isn’t represented and their perspective doesn’t fundamentally shape how we go about building cities and keeping cities. Right. So, I think that my perspective around these two different practices and even going back from the naissance of my professional career, is that architecture should and can be of service and really wanting for there to be more diversity in the field and the conversation.

Eve: [00:04:05] So then you launched LA Más and now Office of: Office. And how, how do they, take me on that journey.

Elizabeth: [00:04:12] Well, I think it really began in 2008 when I went into my graduate career and, as a graduate student. And that was the beginning of the Great Recession. And that was very different than my undergraduate education, where in 2005 I was being offered 401Ks and really cushy things and architecture seemed.

Eve: [00:04:43] Yeah, ofcourse.

Elizabeth: [00:04:44] And my friends were negotiating for that. They were like, Where are you picking? Like, Who has the best 401K and what is your health insurance? And it was so wild and so different and architecture seemed like a very stable place to have a professional, lifelong career. And then when I went back into graduate school, it was because I was really frustrated with the lack of innovation and curiosity that was present in the architecture firms that I was working in. And I graduated in 2010, and there was no career opportunities. The architecture profession and, neck and neck with law, was the most unemployed professional discipline in the United States.

Eve: [00:05:32] But it makes sense, right? Like all of those developers went out of business and boom, everyone else attached to them went out of business.

Elizabeth: [00:05:41] Absolutely. And I think that also the schools, and I’ve been witness to this, they churn out tons of kids who really have a lot of strong ideals about shaping the world and supporting a better future. And there’s not a real clear professional conduit for getting a job.

Eve: [00:06:02] I think that’s right. Yeah. I think architecture has been treated as a really precious career. And yet architects are so well trained to do so many things, right?

Elizabeth: [00:06:14] Absolutely. And also the numbers and the NCARB AIA and the licensing process has gotten better. But if you look at how many architects graduate school every year versus how many, and we’re I’m a little off topic, but how many licensed architects are active in our profession? I want to say it’s in the thousands of licensed architects, whereas it’s like hundreds of thousands of architects graduate.

Eve: [00:06:43] Interesting.

Elizabeth: [00:06:43] And so, we have a really impoverished process that supports really curious young perspectives, being able to call themselves architects. And so, I graduated in 2010, and the career that I knew and the career that I had watched my father had, for instance, was not an option for me. And it wasn’t just not an option for me. It wasn’t an option for any of my peers. It wasn’t an option for people who I had gone to undergrad with and they had lost their jobs. And so, it was really a. Paul Nakazawa, who was one of my mentors in grad school. He was a business, he got his major in business and architecture. He always said the recession was the most valuable time for him to retool and recalibrate about why he was doing anything.

Elizabeth: [00:07:39] And so, to graduate in that climate, it made me really question what the value of the architectural practice was and why I would be a part of it. And so, this was radical for me, where the values in which I grew up in, in the household I grew up in, instead of going to playgrounds, I was going to Roman ruins, right? So, it was very hard to unlink that from some core identity that I had. And so, there, you know, I worked at another kind of nonprofit architecture firm, really saw the kind of inner workings of that. And I founded LA Más, three months pregnant with kind of coming back from grad school in 2012 and seeing a conversation happening with urban planners and landscape architects around the future of the city, and about the kind of early underpinnings of gentrification and displacement and really, really being curious about what that meant, but also wanting to add value and support that conversation and not see it being had in the discipline of development and architecture.

Eve: [00:08:52] So what sort of projects did you work on in LA Más when you launched?

Elizabeth: [00:08:55] So when I launched, we started working on the Northeast L.A. Community Plan River Riverfront Collaborative, and this was kind of early. So the CRA also, the Community Redevelopment Agency, had been dissolved by Jerry Brown to balance the budget in maybe 2010, or between 2010 and 2012. And there were the early seedlings of all of that lack of investment in the state of California and in specifically Los Angeles. So what that meant is new library sites were not being identified and developed, storefronts and small businesses weren’t being supported. The public realm and the public right of way didn’t have a clear conduit for investment. There were all of these ways in which there wasn’t an agency that was proactively developing and supporting existing communities and neighborhoods. And so, we were starting parallel with the mayor at the time, Eric Garcetti, who was doing a lot of urban planning initiatives like Great Streets and Parklet work.We were starting a critical conversation in parallel to that about how are we going to be stabilizing communities ahead of gentrification.

Elizabeth: [00:10:13] And so, the neighborhood plan for northeast L.A. was about identifying sites where there was community power and community stakeholders and the built environment didn’t match the kind of thriving residents and thriving cultural activity that was happening there. And so, from there, we went into doing some of the great streets work where there were 15 boulevards identified by 15 councilmen in the 15 council districts that were kind of these quasi vanity projects around, let’s do something cool to really make L.A. Streets great. And we started off by saying, listen, the the metrics that you all have for success don’t match the ways in which you should make it accessible to invest in communities. Why are you talking about $100,000 of steel furniture when we could do something out of marine grade plywood with a certain type of finish and it would cost us 10,000. Why aren’t you doing it in coalition with community members and non-profits? Why are you doing it in a silo and a political process? Why are you not considering the small business adjacent to the public realm and their right to expand their operating and stabilize their income through being able to access the sidewalk?

Elizabeth: [00:11:37] And so, we did a lot of work that was design plus in that period where we were doing community engagement, but we were really partnering with the small business owners to redefine what it meant to invest in the public right of way. That the storefront and the small business owners right didn’t end at the store, at the beginning of the sidewalk, that it extended to the middle of the street. And that the pedestrian needed to really have a visible imprint in the city and that a pedestrian oriented public space was more important than a car oriented one. And so, it’s all these “duh” things that were very easy for us to establish in those first half of our existence, to be able to have a conversation in parallel with the political one where we’re actually implementing projects with very different short term time frames, in partnership with community members and with drastically more accessible budgets.

Eve: [00:12:39] Sounds like really hard work.

Elizabeth: [00:12:41] It was. Yes, it was. And in tandem with that, I was building my family. I have three kids and I was pregnant every two years, and in not a strategic way at all, while we were doing the majority of that.

Eve: [00:12:58] Just makes you work harder. Being a mother makes you very focused, doesn’t it?

Elizabeth: [00:13:03] Yeah. And for me, it was a huge amount of creative energy that came from that process, kind of birthing some very early seedlings of ideas as well as birthing children. It was pretty powerful and I don’t hear women talking about that very much. And I’m guessing it’s probably because there’s not clear avenues by women led conversations, but it felt very organic to be creative personally and professionally at the same time.

Eve: [00:13:35] You know, for me as a mother, I think what fell away was everything else I was wasting my time on. I had to be ultra focused on the family and the work, and the rest of it was like, poof, you know, no time for that, you know?

Elizabeth: [00:13:49] And it is interesting because I have had periods where I’m not the best mentor because I’m at home doing that work.

Eve: [00:14:00] Yes.

Elizabeth: [00:14:00] And I think that there’s a real backlash professionally if women aren’t willing to do the work of mentorship.

Eve: [00:14:07] Oh, really?

Elizabeth: [00:14:08] Yeah. I think that, you know, and I kind of battled that in my office. And I think I’ve been able to walk a middle line. But the idea that you wouldn’t come to the table to nurture other people in a in a professional environment, I think in some ways you don’t realize it’s expected of you until you graduate into a profession that is so reliant on mentorship. And yet you see people who are excelling, not giving any of it, not offering any of it. And that was one of the biggest challenges with me having working in a traditional, quote unquote architecture practice is there was no conduit for me to be mentored by anyone in a position of power. I had to find it myself.

Eve: [00:14:50] Yeah, I think that’s true, yes.

Elizabeth: [00:14:53] Across the board, you know. I think the kind of boomer mentality is that everyone’s a special snowflake. And I don’t think that that really extends to, how do we mentor a younger group in some of these kind of hard skills.

Eve: [00:15:07] Right.

Elizabeth: [00:15:08] So anyhow, I think the expectation was that you have to do that, offer that mentorship in a kind of nurturing environment. And I think that that was a real limitation that I had early in this career that I’m talking about, because I didn’t have that creative ability.

Elizabeth: [00:15:28] Interesting. So let me ask you about the very playful and bold architectural language you use and how you arrived at that. How does that fit into the story?

Elizabeth: [00:15:39] Well, it really did begin, I lost both of my parents when I was 23, the year that I was graduating from college, four months apart from completely preventable. And my my father had lung cancer that could have been prevented if caught earlier and my mom had a stroke that could have been treated if it hadn’t been misdiagnosed. And so, I’m an only child and my parents were very work focused, so I didn’t have a strong relationship at the time with our extended family, and I felt very alone. And very placeless. And I really immersed myself in the different communities of Los Angeles. In Little Tokyo, and my favorite restaurant or in Little Ethiopia. Having a conversation with some store owners about how they kind of weathered the civil unrest or the earthquake and the kind of network of community members that they relied on over coffee. Ethiopian coffee we were having together, or even going up to Northridge and working in a clothing store. And so for me, through small business owners, mainly, I developed this kind of extended network of understanding and being connected to people’s oral history. And every instance everyone was a person of color or a black individual, right? Kind of bringing me into something that felt larger.

Elizabeth: [00:17:20] And I went from feeling so alone and empty to so full and full of joy. And I think I got to move through that grieving process because I was able to connect and share a kind of much richer collective community experience that doesn’t exist within the white framework. And I felt so much, and I continue to feel so much gratitude and joy about what it means to live in Los Angeles, and joy when I connect to others and I am kind of brought into community that I want to celebrate that and I want to kind of have the world reflect all of that incredible exuberance that exists. And it makes me upset when people move from New York and they come to Los Angeles and they talk so much shit about the city. And it makes me really mad because I know moving from Houston when I was 13 and then losing my parents ten years later how much play, how much fun, how much vibrancy exists in this city. And it’s because of a bunch of dead male planners that existed nearly 100 years ago that the city looks the way it does. It has nothing to do with the people who live here.

Eve: [00:18:45] Yeah, it’s going to take a lot to change it.

Elizabeth: [00:18:48] If we could all remember that it was made by a handful of people, if not less, over a very short period of time. And we’re just kind of playing that out rather than challenging it.

Eve: [00:19:00] So then it was really top down, and what you’re doing is this bubbling bottom up stuff that we hope is going to seep through to everything.

Elizabeth: [00:19:09] I think that if you present a parallel world that is the one that people could choose and you show them how, then you build in where they have the agency to choose it and the ability for their identity and their lived experience to shape it. I think that that’s far more sustainable and powerful than whatever these kind of starchitect solutions are that are pretty boring and age terribly and look dated so quickly. I mean, you know, our culture moves so rapidly now and thanks to the Internet and technology that people finish construction on these projects and they’re already getting made fun of, and it’s because they’re just not very resilient systems in which we could put forward civic investment and institutional investment in the city.

Eve: [00:20:03] So tell me, like Office of: Office, how is that different as a practice and is it for profit or nonprofit? was LA Más non-profit?

Elizabeth: [00:20:13] Yeah, we were a non-profit. And so, what happened is during the beginnings of the pandemic, we were already looking at restructuring so that we could be place based. And this is a strange bucket to think about, because outside of Los Angeles, we are place based in Los Angeles. Inside Los Angeles, you understand the city to be a region. The county of Los Angeles includes 88 cities. And the city of Los Angeles is a kind of gerrymandered, strange object that touches all of these different 15 council districts that in and of themselves are different cities. And we really wanted to look at what it meant to be doing community led community development. And so we began that process. And when you say that what we’re doing is grassroots, I wouldn’t say, or bottom up. I would say that the process of making LA Más something that was truly bottom up was a really deep education in what that line is between where you are from outside a community, regardless of your identity, and what your place should be in supporting community members in their agency to shape the world they live in. And so, we switched to mutual aid efforts. We switch, we paused, all of our storefront work, all of our small business support, our public realm work, our Section eight ADUs, all of that thinking, to have and support community members leading the thinking. And after two years, it became clear that that was just going to be the best place for LA Más to be. And it also became clear that those of us who had been leading the programs around small business and public realm and affordable housing alternatives wanted to continue to do that work at a larger scale and really understand that mechanism between supporting and being in partnership and coalition with community based organizations, right? So it was going through that process of becoming a community based organization that really got us a very deep amount of insight into what that sweet spot is for a group of policy weirdos and architecture dorks and graphic design geeks to really be able to stand in our power and be of greatest assistance, right?

Eve: [00:22:59] One of my questions was going to be, what does meaningful community engagement look like? And I think you’ve answered it. That’s a really big struggle, right?

Elizabeth: [00:23:07] I think that the thing is, is if you are doing it, you are of it, right? You don’t, it’s not a pop in, pop out, check off the box thing. It’s something where, you are a community based organization, you were led, and you are a community member and it’s not the community, it’s your community. And so, the best possible situation would be, you know, you’re from a different community in L.A. or you’re from a different city or you’re a city agency or a council office and you want to support that community based organization, those community members, and you let them continue to do that work and you further that work, and you let them lead that conversation, right? And you’re all in the same space together. There’s no bullshit table where there’s flawed negotiations. And so, the community engagement process is kind of a fiction because it’s an organic, living, ongoing, continuous thing that others can be invited into or not. And we shouldn’t pretend certain projects are for communities when they’re really not. And I think being able to be transparent about those distinctions is half of it, because so many communities have been told something is for them when it’s clearly not. And so, it’s kind of a little bit of a complicated thing to answer, but I hope I’ve.

Eve: [00:24:34] It is. What is it the new practice focuses on then?

Elizabeth: [00:24:37] So the new practice is really, although we’re based in LA, it’s really centering the kind of community knowledge and leadership in being foundational to the built environment and that we are and we have always been great collaborators and we have all of these tools that we are very clear about being tools that we are using to be at the service of a community conversation. Right. And that we’re really not centering those tools in the conversation, but using them to be in service of the conversation. And so, I think that’s an important distinction. And we’re a nonprofit and we have these programs that we had at LA Más. But I think the big difference is the way that we are talking with and in coalition with community based organizations. From the outset, all of that is something that we are in deep partnership with our community based partners rather than in a perfunctory or kind of transactional one.

Eve: [00:25:43] So, can you tell us about a project you’re working on and how it works?

Elizabeth: [00:25:48] We are working with the city of Southgate and we are helping to inform how they roll out all of their ADU policy and programming, but also how they are building affordable housing units and meeting their housing goals. So, that is an example where we are very purposefully reflecting back to the city of Southgate, what it looks like to have a contextual ADU approach that really matches a lot of the unpermitted and informally created affordable housing and thinking about a network strategy so that as we upgrade that housing, we’re not displacing any existing residents that are benefiting. And we’re not putting any residents in a precarious economic situation by getting into the big unknown of permitting something that’s unpermitted. So, that’s one example. I think there’s some others, kind of continuing this affordable ADU work as a program. And a lot of that is kind of really understanding the expanded voucher system that exists now and didn’t exist when we started the program. And being able to understand the nuances between these different housing providers and where they link up and match with the residents. And I think we’re now in a place where at this current phase of our work, we’re expanding the tent and partnering with groups like the Casino Coalition so that we’re capacity building these different nonprofits, rather than just ourselves, to have an affordable housing program. So for us, that kind of 2.0 is expanding the tent and bringing in others to do this work and having a kind of nurturing network where everyone’s benefiting from each other’s kind of hard knocks rather than everyone doing it in silo and us kind of supporting that conversation based on our ten years of experience.

Eve: [00:27:54] So going back to architects, should architects be trained differently? What’s missing?

Elizabeth: [00:28:00] I think that the training of architecture. How do you think about prioritizing and organizing discretely different buckets of technical information and having those result in something ephemeral and perceptual like rooms or space? It was one of the most impactful experiences I’ve had as a human, is to be a part of that educational process. It was also one of the most traumatizing. And the room for me as an individual didn’t exist. The way in which I came into that program with some cognitive differences, there wasn’t room for that, and there wasn’t room for the people that I felt had the ability to shape the profession the most, which is my friends who were black and my friends who were Latino or Pacific Islander, you know, kind of backgrounds, Filipina. Like that wasn’t really on the table. And so, I think also watching my friends and with those different identities and backgrounds, struggle was really traumatizing and scary. And it sent a clear message to me that as a woman, I didn’t have a place. And my place was best guaranteed in the profession if I could support men or if I could be masculine myself. And so, I think that the education of architecture has a lot of really powerful things and a lot of potential, but the culture of architecture is profoundly toxic.

Eve: [00:29:46] Well, that would be true of the whole real estate industry, I think, on the whole. So, that’s definitely where the power is held. And I think it’s shifting, but maybe not fast enough, right?

Elizabeth: [00:29:58] Absolutely. However, it was very clearly told to me when I entered school as a young architect that it was going to be as hard as becoming a doctor. And if I wanted to opt out of that, I should as soon as possible so I didn’t waste anyone else’s time. And being in that process, you get really brainwashed over those five years or let’s say four, and then you go on to do a three year post professional degree. I don’t know, I think that the challenge is, is that you kind of get enculturated and you get, and if you don’t fit into that model, you’re not even in the peripheral edges of the conversation around what things like beauty and identity and context or culture and community, you don’t even get to bring that to the table. And so, you see all these terrible white projects, these terrible quasi pseudo organic things, because there is no reference point anymore to the conversation. It is an art without subject.

Eve: [00:31:13] Yes. I mean, I love architecture. It’s pretty hard to damn it all. But, you know, I hear what you’re saying that certainly, you know, I go back a few years earlier than you do. And certainly women had a very precarious place in architecture then. And it’s just profoundly depressing that it hasn’t changed a lot. I suppose that’s my takeaway. I can only imagine what it’s like for someone who’s of a different culture. It’s just got to be much worse. But that’s true of real estate, like across the board construction, real estate development. It is just heavily dominated by white men. It’s going to change. It has to change, right?

Elizabeth: [00:31:59] Yeah. It’s very hard without banks lending in different ways, without lenders kind of. And I think it will change because there is more diversity inside banks. But the kind of racist underpinnings of the redlining and the kind of, then that period of time still exist.

Eve: [00:32:22] Yes.

Elizabeth: [00:32:24] There’s all these other things that exist that are barriers to people being able to get into the profession or become developers because they’re able to seem like a sure bet when in reality, 90% of Angelinos are living $400 away from being completely bankrupt? Yeah, homeless. And so, how do you have there be development models that reflect the kind of incredible resilience and vibrancy to which people are surviving in that context in a way that’s far more sustainable than these Rick Caruso terrible, displacing, unsustainable foam and marshmallow projects that are.

Eve: [00:33:14] Foam and marshmallow. I’m writing that down.

Elizabeth: [00:33:17] They’re just like terror, like Italianate, Mediterranean esque, you know, terrible things that are going to be so impossible to make work in 10 to 15 years when we have a different climate and a different kind of world, they’re going to become wastelands. And I think the idea that we’re not lending and we’re not allowing, there’s not more room for communities of color to be developers or to have resident led development is just such an oversight. The banks took huge risks in building suburbs and malls, and they can take those same risks in allowing for resident led development in communities of color.

Eve: [00:34:05] Do you think they can or they won’t?

Elizabeth: [00:34:07] Well, they won’t.

Eve: [00:34:08] Well, they should.

Elizabeth: [00:34:10] They should. They can. They’re not.

Eve: [00:34:13] Yes. Yeah.

Elizabeth: [00:34:15] And so, I can say anecdotally, we were talking about architecture and diversity and women. And I think the hardest conversation to have is that white women do not structurally change the profession of architecture. And if they did, we would be seeing a different kind of context and climate and conversation.

Eve: [00:34:35] What do you mean by that?

Elizabeth: [00:34:36] I think that our proximity to power makes it really hard for us to challenge it. I think that you know what I have seen.

Eve: [00:34:46] But then there’s you and there’s me. So some of us challenge it.

Elizabeth: [00:34:51] I’m challenging. I’m not changing. And I.

Eve: [00:34:54] That’s true.

Elizabeth: [00:34:55] I can speak to the ways that these constructs are racist, but I can’t talk to the lived experience of someone who’s black and terrorized. And so, if we’re not having black women, if we’re not having people of color being able to inform that conversation and also be at the helm of structurally changing it, you know, as a white woman, I’m not capable of structurally changing something that’s racist without perpetuating it. And so, all I can do is just kind of unveil and expose, but I don’t have the ability to offer sustainable models for the future. And so, I think that that is the kind of crux of it, is for there to be a return to white women being in that supportive environment so that we’re really clear that we’re accomplices, but we’re not foundational underpinnings of diversity and change.

Eve: [00:35:50] I’m feeling really depressed now.

Elizabeth: [00:35:53] I know it’s rough, but then it’s like you sit on that for a while and then you realize how powerful it is to support there being radical change and that you know, that we don’t have a legacy of talking about white women and how they’re doing that rather than co-opting that work. You know, and they exist, I know so many white women that are great accomplices. And so, it’s just being really clear about what our role is. And so, I felt like it was a misstep to not kind of say that because I don’t want it to be confused that somehow I’m structurally changing anything. I think that it’s more so just trying to offer a kind of parallel conversation so that there’s more room for there to be a bit more depth in how we do development and architecture.

Eve: [00:36:41] What I like is that you’ve taken this really extraordinary education in architecture, which is, you know, a problem solving education that makes you really think about how to take nothing and turn it into something. And you’ve shifted away from, you know, those glamour buildings into an area where you can really use exactly the same skills to make something out of nothing. Right. And I really think that architecture is a very unique education in that way. It’s pretty powerful. It’s pretty rare to find someone who has those creative problem solving skills from any other profession. I think so. I think it behooves the architecture. It’s just not my, I shouldn’t be saying this, it’s not my interview. But I think it behooves the architecture profession and architecture schools to think really hard about what else those students can do with these skills because they could really change the world. Right.

Elizabeth: [00:37:43] Absolutely. And I think it does really begin with your education and those who are leading that process, but also the ways in which people have access to it and their exclusive, notoriously known expensive schools like USC, University of Southern California in Los Angeles. They do a really good job of offering scholarships and being diverse and inclusive. But the, and the planning school and there are other schools that do a really great job of including the identity and the kind of pathway for there to be a USC alumni network at the disposal of these young graduates. And it does not exist in the school of architecture. And I think that’s not happenstance. I think that there’s no economic or professional, how do you call that limitation or what is it when you do something bad.

Elizabeth: [00:38:39] Consequence.

Elizabeth: [00:38:40] Consequence, thank you! There’s no consequence at this point for the architectural education to not structurally be rethought because it is a machine, an economic machine.

Eve: [00:38:53] Well, that’s true of universities and schools across the board, right?

Elizabeth: [00:38:57] Well, potentially. But I think that with planners, planners that don’t represent the communities they’re in, it’s very hard to get those projects done. Architects that are doing projects for developers, you know, we have, I think, the consequences the architects and the architectural profession is getting smaller and smaller. And the amount of things that architects do is getting kind of whittled down into something quite impoverished.

Eve: [00:39:22] Yes. So the planners also don’t think about the built environment. Right. So, I mean, have a masters in urban design because because at the time I really wanted to think bigger than buildings, how the buildings shape cities. But, surely there’s got to be something that’s, you know, a masters in something else that thinks about the physicality of architecture and how it can improve places. A master of community design, community place building. I don’t know, maybe urban design just has to change.

Elizabeth: [00:39:57] Yeah, it is. The other thing about it is that the amount of things you have to be an expert in is so wide. When you touch architecture, it’s green building design, environment, anthropology, context, politics, permitting, building construction, space, aesthetics, color that is very hard to pretend that you’re going to be good at all of it.

Elizabeth: [00:40:25] No, I think that’s true. That’s really true. I’m working on a project in Australia and actually this is really interesting because I’ve been wondering about the way architects perform there and they use a lot more consultants than I’ve ever seen in the States. They have consultants for every corner of accessibility and sustainability. Exactly, I think because I think they’re remaining focused on design and place. Maybe it’s harder there. I don’t know. But I was sort of, I’ve been fascinated by that. Very different.

Elizabeth: [00:40:57] It is very different. I mean, I think that that’s a far more collaborative model than the one that tends to happen here in the US, where all of that stuff can get done in a very half assed way, if not completely ignored around the kind of, just supporting the aims of a developer and being able to check off the boxes of the things that the city requires you to do.

Eve: [00:41:24] Yeah.

Elizabeth: [00:41:24] And also just regurgitating the plans that you did before because it’s a terrible business model to be an architect because you have to do too much stuff. Right.

Eve: [00:41:33] Right, right.

Elizabeth: [00:41:34] Is a really hard business model. And so, I think we would be in a better place if we had power over capital and or we were comfortable being intermediaries and negotiators and facilitators instead of centering our really cute, the really precious creative idea. Which is a kind of absurd pretext right now when we have such a diverse, kind of multifaceted conversation that’s happening across so many different technology and communication platforms. So, I think architects would do better to de-center themselves from the conversation. But I think that’s very hard with the kind of Frank Lloyd Wright, Rem Koolhaas precedent for what it should look like to be an architect.

Eve: [00:42:24] A starchitect, right.

Elizabeth: [00:42:26] Yeah a jerk.

Eve: [00:42:29] So, what excites you most about the work you’re doing and what potential do you think Office of: Office has? Where do you want to be in five years? Horrible question, but I’m going to ask it. What’s your hope?

Elizabeth: [00:42:42] Someone asked me that. What was it? It was like, I don’t know. I’ve never been able to plan, and this isn’t a good thing, beyond a day. I do get a little depressed, and I guess we all do, if I don’t have anything I’m looking forward to. But, it’s never been work for me that I look forward to. It’s always been spending time with my friends or we have a trip planned for me and a couple friends to go to Guadalajara and some other places. I’m looking forward to that. I am looking forward to being surprised by the growth of the people I work with and I’m partnering with for Office of: Office. I’m looking forward to, when you have children, I don’t know what they’re going to be like. It’s so wild. And the same thing with LA Más, when I created LA Más, or now that I’m a part of creating Office of: Office with my partners. I think I just love that potential of, you don’t know what’s going to happen and you don’t, you’re kind of surprised by that. And so, every day it’s better than what you could imagine. I love, what I love is working with our partners like Tom DeSimone, who you had on. They’re just so cool. Like, they’re just so, I’m not proud of the projects I’m proud of the people that are crazy enough to want to work with us and that are okay with this level of transparency in our conversation. Because the conversation you and I are having is the conversation we have with our partners.

Eve: [00:44:22] I love it. So this is almost like a child that’s going to grow up and you’re going to be surprised along the way, right?

Elizabeth: [00:44:30] Yeah. Like if I had an idea, like, oh, I’m going to have three kids, I’m going to get married, I’m going to, you know, I, ugh. I don’t know. I was probably voted least likely to get married or least likely to have kids in high school. I don’t have any landmarks really.

Eve: [00:44:48] Well, I have one more question. You probably are not going to have an answer for this, but what keeps you up at night, if anything?

Elizabeth: [00:44:56] Oh my God. So many things.

Eve: [00:44:57] Oh, really? I’m surprised.

Elizabeth: [00:44:58] Like Anne wakes me up in the middle. So many things. Like I think about this crazy. I’m going to think about this conversation and all the stupid shit I said and all that. I’m absolutely going to think, oh, I should have said that.

Eve: [00:45:14] And I’ll probably get a ton of emails from people saying, I love that conversation you had with Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: [00:45:19] Well, I’m going to think about little things. I’m going to think about like I canceled a dentist appointment. I’m going to think about like the people that were inconvenienced by that. I obsess about the ways in which I was not thoughtful enough when I spoke or interacted with people usually. I also think about the commitments I make professionally that I can’t follow through on because I overcommit myself, because I’m excited about everything.

Eve: [00:45:47] That’s scary. I do that a lot.

Elizabeth: [00:45:49] So much. I don’t think as much about not doing the things that I should, or not being the person that I thought I would be. And that used to happen more. I would say, at the beginning of my career. I used to stay up at night thinking, how am I going to become, how am I going to be in a position where I can become the person I’d like to grow into?

Eve: [00:46:16] That’s interesting. Well, as you get older, you just tend to not care anymore.

Elizabeth: [00:46:20] Yeah. And just like, okay, well, if I can’t go, you know, I don’t know. Like, if I can’t go do that, then I’m going to go do something else.

Eve: [00:46:31] Well, Elizabeth, on that note, I’m going to end this. I’m going to be really interested to see who you become, because I’m sure it’s going to be someone you’re already someone pretty fabulous. But I’m building on that. So, can’t wait to see what else you do. Thank you very much for joining me.

Elizabeth: [00:46:47] Thank you so much. I’m so honored to be a part of your prestigious list of interviewees.

Eve: [00:46:51] Oh, for heaven’s sake, not prestigious, but thank you.

Elizabeth: [00:46:55] Very much so. I was very proud to have you extend the invitation. Thank you so much.

Eve: [00:47:00] Okay. Well, thank you.

Eve: [00:47:12] I hope you enjoyed today’s guest and our deep dive together. You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at RethinkRealEstateforGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. You can support this podcast by sharing it with others, posting about it on social media, or leaving a rating and review to catch all the latest from me follow me on LinkedIn. Even better, if you’re ready to dabble in some impact investing, head on over to smallchange.co where I spend most of my time. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music. And a big thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon, but for now this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy Elizabeth Timme

People first.

In 2000, Helle Søholt and her (professional) partner, Professor Jan Gehl (a Danish architect and urban designer) launched Gehl Architects (later Gehl), which grew into a notable urban research and design consulting firm based in Copenhagen. The firm, now over two decades old, focuses on improving the quality of urban life, in part by prioritizing the pedestrian and the cyclist in urban design. Jan Gehl was Helle’s professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and after completing her master’s degree at the University of Washington in Seattle, she started working with him on urban design projects in Copenhagen. Shortly after this (she was 28) they co-founded Gehl. Today, as CEO, Helle’s role at Gehl focuses more on the overall strategy of the firm.

Gehl has grown significantly, with projects in over 50 countries and 250 cities globally. This includes the New York City DOT, the Melbourne City Council, the Energy Foundation in Beijing, the Brighton & Hove City Council in the UK, the Institute of Genplan in Moscow, to name a few. Today, they have offices in Copenhagen, San Francisco and New York. Helle describes their approach to be “people first,” which comes down to exploring the needs of the people living in said cities or communities, with a focus on walkability and access to greenery and public space.

Today Helle is a prominent leader in her field. She has acted as an advisor to the City of Copenhagen and other great cities in Scandinavia like Oslo, Stockholm and Gothenburg, advocating for a new alternative to traditional planning. Internationally, Helle has worked in cities such as Cape Town, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Seattle, New York, Vancouver, London, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur and Melbourne adding to her global experience in the field of urban design and development. She has extensive international urban design experience at various levels of intervention and at a multitude of scales – from urban research and analysis, visioning and strategy to design development and implementation. In 2010, Helle was awarded membership of the Danish Arts Society, as well as the Danish Dreyer’s Prize of Honor for Architects in Denmark. She also serves as a member on several boards of foundations, organizations and committees, such as the Realdania Foundation in Denmark and the Danish Federal Realestate Development Agency.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:09] Hi there. Thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate. For Good. I’m Eve Picker and I’m on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. I love real estate. Real estate makes places good or bad, rich or poor, beautiful or not. In this show, I’m interviewing the disruptors, those creative thinkers and doers that are shrugging off the status quo, in order to build better for everyone.

Eve: [00:00:46] Helle Soholt was just 28 years old in 2000 when she co-founded Gehl Architects with Jan Gehl, her professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Together, they built a commanding firm, now over two decades old. Gehl focuses on people first in urban design with a focus on walkability and access to greenery and public space. In 2016, Helle took over as CEO and the firm now has offices in Copenhagen, San Francisco and New York. People first has gone from its humble beginnings in Copenhagen, to work that spans over 50 countries and 250 cities globally. You’ll want to hear more.

Eve: [00:01:38] If you’d like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast and go to rethinkrealestateforgood.co where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Eve: [00:02:05] So welcome to my show Helle. I’m so honored to talk to you.

Helle Søholt: [00:02:10] Thank you so much Eve.

Eve: [00:02:12] How did urban design come to take center stage in your professional life?

Helle: [00:02:18] Oh, I think very early on as an architect, I found out that I was really interested in not just the buildings themselves, but actually the neighborhood and the context around the building. And I was just very interested in sort of political processes and how society is created. And that made me sort of relatively quickly in my studies, way back then in the nineties, shift from building architecture and then moving into to urban design at a fairly early age.

Eve: [00:03:00] So, that led you to meet Jan Gehl and you launched Gehl with him. How did that happen? That was pretty early on, you were young.

Helle: [00:03:11] I was very young indeed. I was 28 at the time and I had, first I finished a master’s in Urban Design at the Architecture School and Royal Academy in Copenhagen. And I worked for Jan actually for about half a year. And then I went to the States, to Seattle, actually, Washington University, and got another master’s degree there. And when I came back, I started working in a different firm, actually coming back to Copenhagen. But, I kept doing some side projects with Jan. And after about half a year back in Copenhagen, he invited me to start the office together with him because until then it had primarily been him running sort of a sole consultancy. So, I accepted the challenge and we started Gehl together at my age, 28. And Jan was in his late career at the time, 64 years old.

Eve: [00:04:16] So, it looks like he made a wise move. What was the primary focus? What were you planning to do with this firm when you started?

Helle: [00:04:24] Well, we started out in the year 2000 and back then there was not a lot of focus in planning on people, on behavioral aspects of planning, sustainability or was something that mostly was thought of by extremists and it was not part of the sort of general planning processes. So, we really started out with this ambition to change the paradigm within planning. It was a rather big sort of move and bold ambition we had because we focused globally from the very beginning, and we were able to do so due to Jan’s vast international academic network.

Eve: [00:05:11] Interesting. So, you’ve also been heard to say mission is not to Copenhagenize the world, which wouldn’t really be so bad because Copenhagen’s lovely. So, what is the mission then? Just generally project by project maybe.

Helle: [00:05:28] Yeah. Well, I don’t like the term Copenhagen-izing because it really sounds as if we think that all the solutions in Copenhagen is fit for every place and we certainly don’t think so. So, our method is much more based on urban anthropological studies, ethnographic studies, where we go to places, and we use our public life methods to investigate what is the local life and how can we best understand the needs and the behavior of the local people there to then develop strategies and plans and so forth. And by that come up with customized, localized solutions that still brings the place towards a more people-oriented position. So, our ambition started out, as I said, to change the paradigm of planning, and I had that ambition for ten years together with the Jan. But when he retired and I sort of bought the company from Jan at the point, this was back in 2011, the ambition changed and became a bit more sort of action oriented because at the time we had already sort of changed somewhat the planning paradigm after talking about it and sort of advocating for it for ten years. And since then, I would say we’ve been more focused on making cities for people, making actual change and creating what we are now focusing on. Places for all.

Eve: [00:07:10] So then what type of projects do you work on right now?

Helle: [00:07:14] In Denmark at the moment we are part of a couple of large projects. One is actually working with the National Foundation for Social Housing, and we are advising this national entity on how to make sure that their investments, they are investing about 40 billion Danish kroner into real estate development for the social housing across the country. And we want to make sure that that money that is poured into mostly renovation projects, that they actually have a social and equitable outcome and is benefiting not just the buildings but the people and the wider community in those areas. So, that’s a big project that we are helping on and working on at the moment. We also in Denmark engaged in a new sort of masterplan for development where we are actually designing the lived experience for people who are going to live in this new neighborhood. So, going all the way down into master planning and landscape design of public spaces in the area.

Eve: [00:08:32] That’s in Denmark but I think you look all over the world, right?

Helle: [00:08:37] We do.

Eve: [00:08:38] What other cities and countries have you worked in or are you working in now?

Helle: [00:08:44] We have quite a large team actually at the moment in the US and we started out back in 2014 with an office in New York and San Francisco and we actually have three teams now up and running in the US, one focusing more on cities and foundations, a second team focusing on the real estate sector, really being engaged in introducing a new type of master planning approach to the US market. And then the last team focusing more on corporate clients, working more with placemaking and the impact on communities from larger corporations.

Eve: [00:09:30] So, how large have you grown from just the two of you? How many people now?

Helle: [00:09:38] Today we are 100 staff and seven partners.

Eve: [00:09:43] That’s quite large. So, I have to ask, do you have any favorite cities and why?

Helle: [00:09:51] Oh, I’m often being asked that question. I have to say Copenhagen, because this is where I live and the place that I call home. And as you alluded to as well, I think at a point in our conversation, Eve, Copenhagen has become one of the most livable cities in the world with time and having worked here myself in that transition for the past 20 years, it is a place that I really deeply love. But of course, there are so many other places in the world that I’ve come to love so much. You know, messy cities like the city of Buenos Aires in Argentina, for example, where we have worked as well since 2017, Melbourne, that you know yourself so well where we have worked also for about 20 years. I like cities that have an ambition to do better and to strive for that quality-of-life aspect and sustainable ways of living. And if I feel that there is that ambition, I can become very attracted to the place.

Eve: [00:11:00] Yes.

Helle: [00:11:00] Regardless of how messy it is.

Eve: [00:11:03] Yeah, I think I like messy cities too. I think if they’re too cleaned up it worries me.

Eve: [00:11:09] Yeah. Yeah. And Copenhagen, of course, has become more clean or nice with time. But then I supplement, you could say, with going to more messy cities around the world, working there to further develop.

Eve: [00:11:24] Yes. Can you tell us about one of your favorite projects that you’ve done over the years and how it changed the place?

Helle: [00:11:32] Yeah, there’s quite a few important projects, I think having worked in Mexico City, for example, with their bicycle strategy. That was the first time I worked in a really large megacity, a real sort of hard one as well, where the traffic is intense and the processes are intense and hard and it’s, the engagement piece is difficult. But we managed to drive a process that ended up with some beautiful results in terms of implementation of bicycle ways and a public bike system and I believe a culture and positions that has remained within the city organization. So that work is being and has been continued over the years. A city like both New York and San Francisco where we are based, I’m also very proud of the transition projects we’ve been a part of, both in New York with the Public Plaza program, transforming Times Square, Madison Square, introducing bikeways in New York, as well as the transformation of Market Street in San Francisco. A big reference project, I think, from across the country, actually. So, these are just to mention a few.

Eve: [00:12:59] Right. Well, the one I’m very familiar with is New York, which I watched unfold. The Plaza Project and it was astounding to watch how it transformed the city. I studied there and every time I went back it was just a different, walkable, less congested place. Pretty fabulous use of, I suppose it was a reorganization, of streets to become friendlier to people. It was really fabulous to watch. So, congrats for that one. So, how has your you know, I suppose the big question is, is what are cities demanding now that they didn’t ask for ten or 20 years ago?

Helle: [00:13:41] That’s a great question, I think when we started out, it’s been a sort of a transition, I would say, because when we started out there was not a focus on delivering public spaces, having a focus on public life, neighborhood communities and so forth. But I would say that has certainly become something that the cities are now looking for, planning for, caring for, to a much larger extent. And now after COVID and the COVID crisis, we’ve seen further changes in this direction where there is now a strong, strong demand from people in cities to have access to green space, have access to places where you can meet people and socialize outside of your work and your living conditions and so forth. Much more focused on inclusion and equity. Diversity and inclusion, I would say, is something that most people, most cities, sorry, are struggling with. How to engage people locally, how to ensure proper processes, how to ensure processes and efficient decision making at the same time, and how to ensure how do we get more out of the investments that we are pouring into cities? Those are some of the challenges that I feel that are more urgent now after the COVID crisis.

Eve: [00:15:19] I think that’s right. So, I think the outdoors has taken front and center stage over the last few years, and that’s a good thing. So, in all of that, what do you think is the future of cities? Because, you know, certainly a year or two ago, there were a lot of grim forecasts about people fleeing cities forever, right?

Helle: [00:15:38] Yeah, I don’t think the concept of city is dying. We’ve had cities for thousands of years, so cities will definitely continue to exist and flourish. We come to cities not just because we are going to and from work, but because that’s where we can offer services. We can be closer to education and other health options and offerings and so forth. So, there are many, many reasons for coming to cities and living closer together. However, I do see an opportunity to have much more flexibility in our lives. And we see that also with a lot of companies offering more flexibility, people working from home, having much more of a fluent work-life situation where you don’t necessarily have to come into work every day. And that requires a change in cities where we don’t have these business districts and mono functional areas and cities, and we sort of transport ourselves from one end to the other. I think we need to move in a direction where neighborhoods are more diverse in terms of functions, allowing people to have that much more flexible lifestyle, live urban so that you can walk and bicycle on an everyday basis and have access to public transportation where the density of people is needed. So, I think we have a ways to go in terms of still being able to move in a direction where the neighborhood level in cities are developed to allow that type of lifestyle to happen rather than these mono functional urban areas as we are seeing it right now.

Eve: [00:17:36] So I think you’re talking about the tantalizing terms, 24-hour neighborhoods and 15 minute cities, meaning that you can walk anywhere in 15 minutes. Right? That’s a pretty big goal. Also, I noticed on your website something called Inclusive Healthy Places framework. What is that?

Helle: [00:17:58] Very happy you mention it. The inclusive, Healthy Places framework is toolkit that we developed actually with the foundation, Robert Wood Johnson, and the idea with this toolkit is for real estate developers or community developers or place makers to use this tool to help make sure that we think about equity and health as we develop places and public spaces. The tool came about in a process where we collaborated in Gehl with health practitioners from across the states and community developers. And for the past couple of years, we’ve worked together with various organizations, including the American Planning Association, to spread the word about this tool so that more organizations can approach planning in a more holistic way. So, it’s out there, and there is also a website now where you can go in and read some a bit about the cases.

Eve: [00:19:11] Oh, okay. When you move towards making places that work for everyone, everyone feels comfortable in, are there basic elements that you always think about? Basic elements for great spaces.

Helle: [00:19:25] Well, first of all, it’s important to, as I mentioned, not just to think about the place as a very closed entity but think about the context of the area. What’s the history of the place? What’s the culture of the neighborhood? Then there is both the physical and the program aspects, the, you could say the activities in the place as well as the design. And then lastly, the fourth element, which is the whole sort of, how are people actually engaged? How are they, also how is the institution around the place set up in a way that allows people to continuously feel ownership and engagement within the area? So, that’s more of a political, organizational, economic, you could say, structure around the place. Those are the four categories of topics you could say that we are looking into.

Eve: [00:20:29] Okay. So, you know, I have to ask how like, are cities focusing on making sure that good design is available to everyone no matter whether the place is rich or poor, that everyone has access to beautiful urban spaces. I know some cities have more money than other cities, but typically in the past certainly, great spaces have been in higher end neighborhoods, you know. Do you think that is shifting at all?

Helle: [00:21:00] It is perhaps shifting, but I don’t think quickly enough at all. And this varies a lot across the world, I would say. In the US, unfortunately, we still see many, many neighborhoods across cities that are disinvested in and has been for ages for decades.

Eve: [00:21:22] I live in Pittsburgh, so I know what that looks like.

Helle: [00:21:25] Yeah, yeah.

Eve: [00:21:26] It’s half its population, so, you know.

Helle: [00:21:29] Yeah, exactly. And in other parts of the world where sometimes the public sector might be a little bit stronger and have more means, we see a stronger effort to actually even out some of the differences and inequalities in terms of investments. So, I definitely feel that this is an area where we could, especially in the US cities, could do so much more because it’s a rich society and there should be possibilities to actually ensure high quality, proper public spaces for all and it doesn’t have to be expensive granite pavements and what have you. We saw that in New York. It is a matter of the geometry of the space and the prioritization of the people above cars, for example, and just plain access to open space and green space. So, it’s not so much design as it is the pure access and availability of space.

Eve: [00:22:41] I mean, New York’s a great example. It was really paint and some bollards and plants and some furniture from a supermarket originally, like a Target or Walmart, right?

Helle: [00:22:55] Exactly.

Eve: [00:22:55] Just to completely transform the city. Yeah. It isn’t about granite, as you said. I wish we could move along faster. Do you notice different sources of funding coming to the table? Foundations, or other than public sources? Is that shifting? Because there’s a lot of talk in the foundation world about sort of rectifying the inequality, but I wonder if it’s filtered through to urban places.

Helle: [00:23:24] I think that’s a great collaboration and this is also in the US and we are learning from that, I think in Europe with a strong collaboration between foundations and public sector NGOs, community organizations. And that’s admirable because sometimes in our part of the world the public sector is perceived to deliver all of it. So there is a collaboration. I think the collaboration could be more action oriented, more testing, more actually willing to actually get your hands dirty, so to speak. I mean, make some real changes. And I sometimes worry that too much effort is lost in planning processes and strategies. And one of the approaches that we really advocate for is to, yes, you need to have a strategy and a plan. Yes, you need to analyze your conditions properly, but you also need to engage through actions. And in that way, you actually really show the willingness to commit and to make change locally. And too often I think we we don’t get to that level of engagement.

Eve: [00:24:41] I used to work at the Planning Department years ago in Pittsburgh, and we used to call that analysis paralysis. There were many, many plans on the shelves that had never been enacted because of fear or inability to take the next step or I really don’t know what, but a lot of money wasted that way. I totally agree with you. That is actually one of the reasons why I loved what happened in New York, because it was very quick and dirty. They tested it out. They tested it out with not even very nice bollards just to see what would happen and then move forward. And that I, I love that. I think it’s great. I’m going to ask you another hard question. So, I want to know is Denmark more supportive of female leaders than the US? And if so, how are women encouraged to take leadership roles?

Helle: [00:25:39] I do know that the Danish Society is one of the most, sort of, equal society in terms of men and women having equal opportunities. So, there is definitely something in our societal model that allows women to have a career. And the fact that we have so good public childcare system and school system and so forth enables many women to have a career. So that’s for sure part of it. It’s also been a process here. I mean, when I started out in real estate, in planning 20 to 25 years ago, it was much more male dominated. So, I would often in my early career be the sole woman in in a room. And I can see over these last 20 years or so in Denmark how that has changed. And also, in architecture education. We now have 60% women, actually. That is not to say that, we don’t necessarily have 60% women when it comes to leadership positions. So, there is still a gap even in even in Denmark on that front.

Eve: [00:26:58] What about women who control money? I mean, I think the problem we have here is maybe not in architecture, been in real estate in general. There are very, very few women in positions of control in real estate in the US. It’s a very heavily male dominated industry. And when you control the money, you control the decisions, right?

Helle: [00:27:22] Yeah, and that’s definitely the same here. I think the problem with real estate in general is that it’s a very conservative business and it’s a market that is used to developing a model and then sort of really refining that model and copying so that you can sort of earn more and more money over time. And there is very relatively little experimentation actually, and that’s actually what is needed more possibility to experiment with different types of lifestyles and different types of ways of living. I think many of ours.

Eve: [00:28:04] Different solutions.

Eve: [00:28:05] Yeah. I always think about affordable housing in Pittsburgh where I’ve lived for many years. I mean, affordable housing is absolutely important and was heavily supported by the city and I am not criticizing it, but it became a cookie cutter thing. You could drive down a street and you could point to the subsidized house because it had a very certain look to it. And that’s a shame. I mean, again, that speaks to good design shouldn’t only be for people with means. There are people who need affordable housing who want to live differently. It’s a little depressing.

Helle: [00:28:44] Yeah. And Denmark, we have a special model for social housing that is more than 100 years old. And I’ve often tried to export this model even to the US. Generally, it’s called common housing, or it’s called general housing because it’s not social for the people who need support from the government. Actually, in Denmark everybody can apply for general housing or for common housing. And the way it works is that it’s actually run as a separate private company, and all the private companies that run these estates, they pay part of their rent, after having paid back relatively cheap loan to the government, after 30 years, then they can start paying rent into a national fund and the national fund then repays back in a circular system. You can apply for money from the foundation whenever you need to do renovation or social projects in your estate. So, this basically means that we don’t have any common housing estates in Denmark that are badly maintained. We have money to run social programs and job training programs and health programs and renovate public spaces and stuff like that in the public housing estates across the country. And in our planning law, in new developments, you are required to have 30% common housing in your area.

Eve: [00:30:39] Interesting.

Helle: [00:30:40] So, it’s super interesting, sort of circular, sort of, at least in money terms, circular system that has existed in Denmark for 400 years. And I think there should be ways to set up similar types of mechanisms, maybe at more of, sort of, a regional level also in the US. It would be super interesting to think about.

Eve: [00:31:09] Oh, that’s really fascinating. I will look into it for sure. Yeah. So, what’s your ultimate goal?

Helle: [00:31:22] My ultimate goal is I think, currently my ultimate goal would be to try and create a sort of more of a community of thinkers and doers around our approach to development so that we can hopefully impact even more places to create even more sort of visionary projects that can be references and lead impact behind, so that it can inspire others. And do that through more strategic partnerships globally. So, I’m really still very focused on the sort of more global transformation, you could say, within our field.

Eve: [00:32:20] Well, I’d be really fascinated to see what you do, and I think I’m going to make up a list of places that you’ve worked on to go see next. As travel opens up a little bit, and certainly back to Copenhagen, which is an amazing, amazing city. Although I have to say I almost got run over by a bike there. It’s a little scary crossing the bike lanes. And then I actually brought a bike in Copenhagen back to Pittsburgh, so I have a little bit of it there.

Helle: [00:32:47] It’s fantastic.

Eve: [00:32:48] But the bikes certainly rule the road, don’t they, in Copenhagen?

Helle: [00:32:53] They certainly do. And I would say, Eve any time you’re welcome to visit. We have also done a bit of a collaboration with the city of Pittsburgh actually, but I don’t believe any of it has been implemented yet.

Eve: [00:33:08] Oh, I can’t wait to hear.

Helle: [00:33:11] If any of our team is there. I’ll connect you.

Eve: [00:33:14] Absolutely. That’d be fabulous. Thank you very much for joining me today. Bye.

Helle: [00:33:19] You’re welcome, Eve. Bye.

Eve: [00:33:31] I hope you enjoyed today’s guest and our deep dive together. You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at RethinkRealEstateforGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. If you like what you heard, you can support this podcast by sharing it with others, posting about it on social media, or leaving a rating and review. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Even better, if you’re ready to dabble in some impact investing, head on over to smallchange.co, where I spend most of my time. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music. And a big thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon, but for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Helle Søholt

$3.22 Trillion.

“We want to champion the power of investing, and the power of female investment, in order to demonstrate that inclusivity and diversity matters—and that the time to act is now.” Hanneke Smits, CEO, BNY Mellon Investment Management.

The 2021 report The Pathway to Inclusive Investment was compiled from 8,000 interviews with women and men, 100 asset management firms representing assets of US$60 trillion, and an independent advisory panel. The report found that if women invested at the same rate as men, an extra $3.22 trillion could become available for investment.

What is stopping women from investing?

  • Engagement. Only 28 percent of women worldwide feel confident about investing. This varies with different countries and cultures and with age. Data suggests that younger women are more engaged with investing.
  • Income. Globally, women believe that they need almost $50,000 a year of disposable income before they invest any of that money. In the US, that amount is even higher.
  • High risk.There is always some risk in investing, but 45 percent of women believe that any investment is too risky.

We know that women are more likely to invest in causes that they believe in and are motivated by the impact that their investments make. 55 percent of women say they would invest (or invest more) if the impact of their investment aligned with their personal values.This is particularly so with young women investors (under30) who see their money as a powerful force for good.

More women investing might change the world!

So many things have changed over the last few years but some industries such as the investment industry are slow in moving along. It’s time to move the focus from a male audience to a diverse one, and to find a way to reach women, with their different motivations. Giving women financial power and control over their wealth will benefit everyone.