Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman on her drive to make Philly the best city it can be

Oct. 28, 2019

Given her professional expertise in urban studies, information technology's tempting to assume that Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman grew upward in bustling metropoles. But the adjunct professor at Drexel University'south Lindy Constitute for Urban Innovation was actually raised exclusively in rural areas, from far-out Montgomery County to farms in Wisconsin and Connecticut.

"I'm one of five kids, and my mom was a foster mom as well, so we always had lots of kids—and animals—in the house," Johnston-Zimmerman explains of her mother's penchant for infinite.

Information technology wasn't until Johnston-Zimmerman became an undergrad in Phoenix, at Arizona Land University, that she experienced city living. "It was kind of scary in some ways," she acknowledges. "Just Phoenix was where I realized that nosotros built cities equally decentralized areas that nosotros really could've planned a lot better."

That budding interest in cities, along with a lifelong involvement in animals and behavior—and a fixation with National Geographic Mag, Discovery Channel, Jane Goodall and Jane Jacobs—ultimately led Johnston-Zimmerman to pursue a masters in urban studies at Portland State University, where she carved out a niche studying public spaces and "spatial ethnography," the concept of really agreement how people use spaces.

Here, she talks near what Philly'southward doing correct, her favorite cities to visit, and the excitement backside a recent stardom she earned from the BBC.

Jessica Press: Before nosotros go further, tin can yous explain the many hats you lot wear? You're an urban anthropologist and your field of expertise is "spatial ethnography"—is the latter a phrase you've coined, or is it a field unto itself?

Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman: It's sort of one of those amorphous things. There are people who call themselves urban sociologists or urban ethnographers; I decided to keep the anthropology in [my title] because I've also conducted, for instance, an archaeological dig. And thinking more nearly the style that we used to live in the past is just as important as looking at how people use, say, a plaza in the nowadays. Anthropology is a broader, more than overarching umbrella term for the study of human beings, rather than focusing in on just sociology or ethnography.

JP: Got it. Can you talk about the piece of work you've done to bring women's voices to the conversation about urban studies, and why—as in all fields—that is so important? ?

KJZ: Nosotros've but been modern homo sapiens for about 250,000 years, and we've been in cities for about ten,000 years. And we've only been in "modern" cities, which is the post-car era, for roughly 100 years. So if you recall about the corporeality of fourth dimension that we've taken to study and practice and iterate and assess, that entire fourth dimension, up until incredibly recently—more or less i generation's worth of a lifespan—it's been entirely dominated by men.

So everybody is an urbanist, everybody is able to impact their environment, and everybody should have the power to make their city a meliorate place for themselves and their neighbors.

And that could say a couple of different things about the surroundings. It could hateful that, implicitly, male-dominated cities take created cities that work well for themselves. But if your experience is limited [to that of beingness a male person], you don't accept the latitude of diversity, which contributes to a better environment for everyone. So at the core of information technology, it's most gender representation, but in reality it's nearly representation of people who oasis't had a chance to take command of it, literally, up until now. That could include women, children, the elderly, people in wheelchairs or with mobility devices. Information technology could include people with other sorts of disabilities with regards to vision and hearing, and so forth.

JP: When yous recollect of Philly now, what form would you give information technology in its current state, and what grade would you give it for its potential, in terms of how accessible and thoughtfully designed information technology is and can exist?

KJZ: I know Philly hates being compared to New York, but when yous retrieve about New York City, where I lived for several years after getting my masters because that's where the jobs were, its livability is quite low, because the prices are incredibly loftier, the commutes are stressful, everything is more than or less unreliable and everything actually is kind of breaking down.

By contrast, in Philly, which I'd started visiting more oft when I was in New York, you lot could live comfortably at a lower wage, depending on the rest of your socioeconomic status and circumstances. I recognize that I'm a privileged individual with a masters degree. But compared to New York, you could really pay insufficiently picayune and have a comparatively high quality of life in this urban center. So I moved to Philly considering I saw its potential. I could see that, at this point in time, it was going to be popular. Information technology was going to become that next centre city that everyone probably wanted to move to, so long as jobs were hither, because places like New York and San Francisco and D.C. and Boston yous can exist hands priced out of.

So my question for Philadelphia was actually non then much is it expert or bad, in that ranking or in that thought process, but more than about what choices will it make every bit a city? And which direction volition it go? Considering it has the potential, past looking to other cities as an case, to make the right decisions and move in a way that retains livability and improves quality of life for the individuals who need it. I hold firm that Philadelphia has the potential to be the all-time biking urban center in the land, it tin be the best public infinite city in the country, it can be the best in any the rankings are; it really does have all that potential because of its good basic, considering of its already-existent public transportation and parks systems and so on and then forth. And considering of the people I know who are in charge at the urban center level as well as on the ground, advocating for improvement.

JP: Well, forth those lines, how can the average citizen in Philly, who's non necessarily involved in planning or politics, better our city'due south livability?

KJZ: And then here'due south what's interesting about Philadelphia likewise, and again this was ane of the things that attracted me here and gives me this hope for the time to come: Philadelphians already do this a lot. It's sort of built into the civilization to bear on your own personal urban environment in this city, I think fifty-fifty more than other cities.

Because a city is an environs that is manufactured—it is something that we make for ourselves, but, more important, for each other. And that needs to be at the core of everything that we practice from city policy to putting a planter outside.

For case, you walk down the street and yous tin can see people put out planters on the sidewalk almost their houses or at their businesses. That's not necessarily something you encounter everywhere. And those planters really do such an incredible job, merely only on their ain, of beautifying the environment. Now someone could say they're blocking the sidewalk or somebody could come forth and smash 1 and that person could retreat into their house and say Ok I'thousand never going to put something outside again for fearfulness of it beingness damaged. But it doesn't seem like that'due south the example: It seems like people still practice this. And it'southward the same with stoop culture.

Existence in public space is something that nosotros take as a role of the culture already. And that kind of guerrilla occupation of the public realm is something that could even be extended to parking, for case: I hateful, I don't know whatever other metropolis where they really park in the median to such an extent equally this city; we experience similar we already have this odd sense of ownership of the city space betwixt buildings in some way. And that should exist extended. That should exist sort of approved by the acme-down, city systems themselves should say, Yep, nosotros encourage y'all to put out a bench, put out a planter, put out a picayune free library. Better your street as you meet it. And I would like to see the city have some sort of system of suggestions for ways that the city could assistance in the citizen-led improvement of the public realm. Which is also ane of the subjects of a report that I put out in my somewhat new position at the Lindy Establish.

JP: What are some of your other favorite cities?

KJZ: I have two favorite cities, both of which are in Europe, which I know is a stereotypical thing to say. Simply I love Stockholm in Sweden, where I go every year to practice invitee lecturing for the Royal Institute for Technology. I love going dorsum there in role because it'southward a very metropolitan urban center for that region, which is still very small past comparison. But I think it's really the beauty of the mural that integrates into the city, the archipelago, and and so of form the really excellent transit arrangement and walkability. Also, I really love the pastries. The other city is Dublin. I but love a good kind of messier urban environment. No crime to the Irish of form, just the Swedish are a little bit cleaner and more than dominion-abiding. I beloved the passion of Ireland, I really honey the state. And, full disclosure, I am from both of those places originally.

JP: And so it's in your claret. What cities are adjacent on your list to visit?

KJZ: The side by side city that I need to go to is Barcelona, and I volition say that is because of some of the most incredible improvements that are taking identify to the streets, cheers to the commencement female mayor, Ada Colau. Her "superblock" program is closing down interior streets and they've turned them into playgrounds and parks and places where you merely walk and bike through them. And I think this is something that so many cities could replicate. A city like Philadelphia, with a grid system, is perfect for this and already has some streets like that, those footling happy carriageways where you can turn them into a block party. That to me is the next level of really best-practice urban design. And I just love that she'due south doing it with equity at the core of all that she does, with the right to the metropolis as her master concept for making those improvements.

JP: You were recently named to the BBC 100 Women 2022 listing, a roundup of women around the world who are making a difference. What has that feel been like?

KJZ: I was floored; it was all just a really huge honor. When I started calling myself an urban anthropologist, I did so at great adventure considering I thought no one would understand what that was. But I decided to do information technology regardless, because I thought that this was something nosotros needed to advocate for. As an applied anthropologist, I'm constantly trying to ensure that the research, the application, the noesis, the commentary, is all out in the open, is all attainable to people. So it's not just silo-ed in bookish linguistic communication only it is something that is really trying to benefit the people of an urban environment.

Honestly for me, half the boxing is just the knowledge; it's agreement that cities are difficult environments for human beings but that we have means to tackle those challenges: We have a lot of research and understanding from past urban environments or contemporary research that tells us what we tin can do and what we should be doing to arrive better for all of u.s.. Because a city is an environment that is manufactured—it is something that we make for ourselves, but, more important, for each other. And that needs to be at the core of everything that nosotros practice from city policy to putting a planter outside.

JP: That's a really empowering way of simplifying things.

KJZ: Well, we all accept a function to play in that because nosotros're all human beings in the same environment, and we're all in this together. So everybody is an urbanist, everybody is able to impact their surroundings, and everybody should take the ability to make their city a better place for themselves and their neighbors.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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Photo courtesy Sarajane Bradley

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/katrina-johnston-zimmerman-drexel/

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