'Dr. Peter' receives post-humous award

WestEnder
May 12, 2010

Last Saturday (May 8), Bob and Shirley Young accepted the UBC Medical Alumni Association’s distinguished Silver Anniversary Award on behalf of their son, Dr. Peter Jepson-Young, the namesake of the West End’s HIV/AIDS care facility, Dr. Peter Centre.

Known to most as “Dr. Peter,” Jepson-Young passed away in 1992, at age 35, after battling the AIDS virus for seven years. At the time, he was B.C.’s longest-surviving AIDS patient. The final years of his life were documented through The Dr. Peter Diaries, a weekly three-minute segment on CBC Television’s evening news that followed him through the struggle with his illness. The groundbreaking series put a human face to AIDS, which at the time was still widely misperceived as a mysterious virus that only afflicted the gay male community. The UBC Medical Alumni Association award coincides with the 20th anniversary of the series.

On the phone from her home in North Vancouver, Shirley Jepson-Young recalls the fear she felt when her son told her about the CBC series, which debuted in 1990. “When he told us that he was going to go on television, tell viewers that he was gay, that he had AIDS, and that he was [going] blind [because of the disease] — oh, we hit the roof,” she says. “We said, ‘You can’t do that. You live alone, you have a distinctive name, you might become the victim of a gay bashing. This is just too risky.’

“And he just said, ‘If it helps one person, it’s worth the risk.’’”

At the time, there was such negative stigma around AIDS that patients, even those in hospital, were practically quarantined. “You had to scrub up and [put on a] gown to go in [Peter’s] room; the food was left on trays with disposable plastic dishes outside the doors,” Shirley says of her son’s month-long stay at St. Paul’s Hospital in fall 1986. “At St. Paul’s, I would venture to say that 90 per cent of the patients with AIDS had no one visit them. Families really, really stepped aside. They were frightened — they were frightened of being infected, they were frightened of the stigma and what it would do to their loved one and to their family... It was like a modern-day leprosy in those days.”

Despite the odds, The Dr. Peter Diaries was a hit. Beginning as a one-off feature, it became a weekly series for two years as a result of viewer interest. It also led to Shirley and Bob receiving unexpectedly heartfelt support from friends and neighbours. “For 1990, that was really huge,” she says. She didn’t expect people to understand her son’s condition, and was surprised by the outpouring of sympathy, particularly from her peers. “When you think of our age group, it was really, really incredible.”

Now in their late seventies, Shirley and Bob’s acceptance of the award is the latest in a long line of distinctions that have honoured their late son’s life and work: the Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation was established prior to his death; in 1997, the Dr. Peter Centre began operating out of St. Paul’s Hospital; and, in 2001, the Centre established its permanent home on Comox Street, where it offers daytime health-care programs as well as an around-the-clock residence.

“Men will often say, ‘I was so homophobic before I saw your son on TV.’ Those are really important things to hear, 18 years after Peter’s passed away,” Shirley says. “I think we, as human beings, try to help someone who’s struggling. By sharing your own story, you’re making theirs a little easier. It really opens you to so much love.”

PHOTO: Dr. Peter Jepson-Young, seen here graduating from medical school in 1985, received a posthumous award from the UBC Medical Alumni Association for his work with those suffering from HIV/AIDS — a disease that eventually claimed his own life. Supplied by Peak Communications.

Council approves plans for city cycling

WestEnder
May 12, 2010

A new 10-year cycling plan was approved by Vancouver City Council last week (May 6), with councillors unanimously voting to spend $25 million over the next two years on bike infrastructure. According to a report authored by Jerry Dobrovolny, the City’s general manager of engineering services, the plan will advance cycling as a priority mode of transportation by better integrating cyclists into the city’s transport system.

Proposed cycling upgrades include the bike route from the Canada Line Bridge to Kent Avenue in South Vancouver; routes on Heather, Ontario, and Cambie streets; a bikeway along 45th Avenue; separated bike lanes in the downtown area; and a new bike route running through the West End to downtown along Comox and Helmcken streets.

City staff hope the coming improvements will encourage more people to travel by bicycle. Currently, about four per cent of Vancouver commuters use bikes.

“We talk about eight to 80 — attracting people from [ages] eight to 80 to ride bikes,” says Arno Schortinghuis of the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition (VACC). “The only way you’re going to do that is by having safe bike facilities, like protected lanes.”

While Schortinghuis supports council’s approval of the 10-year cycling plan, VACC Bike to Work program manager Erin O’Melinn points out that a strong public-awareness component is needed in order to get more commuters riding bikes. “A big part of getting people cycling for transportation in Vancouver is showing them how to ride safely, because that makes them feel more comfortable and confident on the road,” she says. “It also makes them more respectful road users, both as a cyclist and when they’re using it as a car driver or pedestrian.”

To celebrate the city’s already strong and diverse cycling community, VACC members will take part in the first-annual Velopalooza, a 10-day Vancouver cycling festival running June 4-13. Inspired by the annual Pedalpalooza festival in Portland, Oregon, Velopalooza will feature a series events and group ridess. Among them, organizer Ron Richings will lead a dedicated ride for cargo-toting cyclists, and a “gelato ride” will play out like a citywide pub crawl for those who can’t get enough of the Italian treat. “You can’t lose sight of that essential thing, that bikes are fun,” he says. “Our real focus is to get more people out riding bikes and using the facilities, but to do it by making the whole thing fun.

To kick off the Velopalooza festivities, Richings and festival organizers will hold a community bike wash (similar to a car wash) in Strathcona on Saturday, May 15, at Union Street Market (810 Union) and the Wilder Snail (799 Keefer), from 11am to 5pm.

COVER: Craft beer week

WestEnder
May 5, 2010

If Homer Simpson availed himself of India Pale Ales, Lambics, and organic Pilsners instead of the cans of Duff he regularly knocks back, he might be a different man. But his indiscriminate, unsophisticated choice of beverage has been fodder for countless classic gags on The Simpsons, a program that enjoyed its popular heyday in the 1990s— much like the popularity of mass-produced (or macro-brewed) beer. But nowadays, with hundreds of superior craft labels spouting up across North America, including several in B.C., the real-life equivalents of Duff are losing ground to artisan brews made with a rigorous attention to craft, flavour, and tradition once rarely seen outside the production of wine and spirits.

To celebrate the growth of craft brewing in Vancouver, local restaurateurs, bar owners, and brewers will host the inaugural Vancouver Craft Beer Week (VCBW), happening May 10-16. More than 25 breweries will participate in the festivities, which include pairing dinners, award ceremonies, and tasting events at restaurants and bars across the city.

The first of its kind in Canada, VCBW is modelled after similar events in the U.S., such as San Francisco Beer Week and Philly Beer Week, explains organizer Chris Bjerrisgaard. “Nobody’s done a full beer week in Canada,” he says over a pint of stout at the Whip Restaurant Gallery in Mount Pleasant. “Previous to this, it’s only been piecemeal events.”

The idea of launching VCBW sprung from casual discussions at “cask nights” at Yaletown Brew Pub and Dix Barbecue & Brewery, where Bjerrisgaard and other craft-beer enthusiasts would gather to sample the latest goods from local brewers and meet other members of the Vancouver chapter of Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), an international organization aimed at supporting craft-beer culture. “A lot of it, for us, is trying to reclaim some taps for the little guys,” Bjerrisgaard says. “You’ll go to a lot of places that only have [mainstream beers]. If you only drink macro-brew stuff, it’s the equivalent of saying that you love pizza but you only go to Pizza Hut.”

Getting more restaurateurs and bar owners on board by putting more craft brews on tap has been a relatively slow process that’s only gained real momentum in recent years, similar to the coming-of-age of Vancouver’s restaurant scene. “When I arrived in Vancouver eight years ago from Toronto, I didn’t have a lot of money, and there were a couple of really good restaurants in town — [but] they were friggin’ expensive. There were a lot of high-end places, but there weren’t a lot of great places just to go hang out and eat,” says Adam Henderson, owner of Raincity Brands, a local importer and distributor of craft beer. “But that’s changed... People were looking for it, and now they’ve done something about it. I’d say the same thing for beer.”

Henderson is helping put together VCBW’s ‘Upright Crawl’ with the Portland-based Upright Brewing, whose ales are French- and Belgian-influenced. As one of only three people in Canada with Cicerone certification — official recognition of beer expertise, as determined by a standardized test — Henderson’s knowledge of craft brewing rivals that of a wine sommelier. “It’s kind of like my preferred art form,” he says. “Some people like to express themselves through music or painting and they like to go to shows or museums. Well, I like beer. A lot of people don’t see it like that. [Factory-produced beer] is ‘Dogs Playing Poker’ — it’s not art at all. It’s pop music. It’s the Spice Girls. It’s crap.”

Vancouver’s James Walton attacks his craft with the passion of a chef and the chemical knowledge of a mad scientist. A home-brewer who worked by day in the pharmaceutical industry, Walton started Storm Brewing in the mid-’90s to help Vancouver catch up to the more sophisticated U.S. craft-beer scene. His signature ales are the centre of attention at cask nights at the Whip and at Dix, and they regularly appear on tap at local restaurants, including many participating in VCBW. Like Henderson, Walton has watched craft brewing in Vancouver evolve alongside our restaurant scene. “No one even knew what the hell to do with a Belgian endive 10 years ago,” he says. “But you get used to something like bitterness or sourness. People are starting to catch on.”

“One of the really cool things that we’ve noticed over the years is that the beers that garner the most excitement are the ones that are sometimes on the periphery,” says Matt Phillips, on the phone from his brewery in Victoria. While Phillips Beer is now a hugely popular and well-established presence in B.C.’s craft-beer lexicon, the brewery had decidedly humble beginnings. In 2001, Phillips set up shop in a modest warehouse to pursue his dream of being an independent brewer, after years of working in other B.C. breweries. Using several credit cards to sign the lease on the warehouse and purchase equipment, Phillips worked and lived alone for years in the warehouse, taking morning showers in local community centres due to a lack of facilities in his makeshift home. Two moves later, Phillips Beer — known for its India Pale Ale, Blue Buck beer, and Chocolate Porter — now occupies a space in downtown Victoria. Phillips’s VCBW beer dinner at Stella’s on Cambie is already sold out. “People are finding that B.C. brewers are unencumbered by tradition,” he says. “We don’t have to follow the rules, and I think that just ends up opening the flavour vault a little bit.”

Restaurateur Don Farion of the Incendio Group, which operates Incendio and Stella’s, has a long tradition of supporting craft brewers by putting their beers on tap. “The craft beer market in B.C., in the last six, seven, eight years, has really become mainstream,” he says. “Trending with the foodies, for sure.”

But trendiness wasn’t the first thing on Nigel Springthorpe’s mind when he took ownership of the Alibi Room in 2006. He describes the previous owners as “movie guys” intent on marketing the restaurant to an exclusive clientele. “They never meant it to be for everybody; they kind of deliberately set out for it to be excluding of people, and to be a certain feeling when you walk in the door,” he says. “That’s certainly the absolute opposite of what we’ve always thought it should be.”

These days, the Allibi Room is one of the most popular spots for craft beer in the city, attracting a motley and enthusiastic clientele from all walks of life. The bar boasts 25 rotating taps of local craft beers, plus three casks that Springthorpe sources from B.C. brewers. “We have to serve the beer with the same integrity as the brewer,” he says. “We’re only as good as what the local guys are doing.”

The Alibi Room kicks off VCBW with the sold-out Hoppapalooza, a celebration of hop-focused beer where Mayor Gregor Robertson will tap the inaugural cask.

The best part of it all? Good beer keeps you honest, Springthorpe says. “No matter what the branding is, no matter what the labelling, no matter what the hype is — all of those things don’t matter. At the end of the day, it’s all about what’s in the glass, what’s in the bottle, how it tastes. If it’s good but not great, it fades away really quickly. But the real, honest, just straight-up good beer — people keep coming back for it.”

PHOTO: Vancouver Craft Beer Week organizers at the Alibi Room. By Doug Shanks.

School under fire

WestEnder
May 5, 2010

Lisa Reimer has stood onstage before hundreds of people in her work as a children’s choir director, but the Vancouver schoolteacher’s life became public in a very different way last week.

Reimer’s coworkers at Little Flower Academy (LFA), an all-girls Catholic private school in Shaughnessy, learned Reimer is a lesbian when she requested parental leave for three weeks in April, at which time her female partner was due to deliver a baby. During the week before she planned to return to work, school officials contacted Reimer for a meeting. She says she was told to work from home until the end of the school year, a directive that effectively removed her from her teaching post. She had planned to return to work last Monday (Apr. 26).

Claiming she was dismissed from working at the school because of her sexual orientation and parents’ complaints about it, Reimer took the information to B.C.’s Pride Education Network (PEN) — an alliance of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered educators — of which she is a member. The group issued a press release on the morning of April 28, and hastily called a press conference that afternoon. Reimer told reporters she felt like she’d been fired with pay. Students’ families, she said, were told she is on personal leave, which, in her view, is not true.

Later that day, LFA issued its own media statement, claiming Reimer had not been fired. “She remains in the services of LFA until June 30, and will continue to be paid accordingly,” wrote Celso Boscariol, chair of the board of directors for LFA. Of the meeting which led to Reimer’s dismissal from school property, Boscariol wrote, “A meeting took place between the school and the teacher to discuss projects consistent with the music theory curriculum. The school understood that her proposed role was acceptable and the matter was resolved.”

Reimer’s experience resonates with Roger Chin, an openly gay man who teaches at a Vancouver private school. “They [LFA administrators] probably thought they could get away with it because most gay employees just walk away, like I did at two teaching jobs and one physics job,” he says.

Chin, like Reimer, faced parental complaints at a private school where he was a teacher. The situation led to his teaching assignment being changed for the following year, and he eventually resigned. “It is more risky working in a private school as a gay teacher. You never know if criticism is hidden homophobia,” he says. “Some coworkers see me through gay stereotypes, and last month there was an incident of homophobia that the administration just bounced back to me to deal with alone. Most teachers here are tolerant but not necessarily inclusive or accepting enough to understand.”

Chin acknowledges that LFA is in a difficult position, in that staff need to respect employment laws but also respond to pressure from parents. “The response from [LFA] is probably the best response they can give,” he says. “In the private school system... there are no protections against the political pressure [or] bullying [from] parents.”

Moreover, Chin is worried about the message Reimer’s case sends to students at LFA. “The school’s actions seem counter to their mission statement...” he says. “Having grown up Catholic, I am still recovering from the homophobia spewed out by the Vatican and Catholic church. It looks like the abuse on gay students still continues.”

As yet, Reimer is unsure if she will take legal action. She plans to return to work with the Vancouver School Board in September, as she took the LFA position while on a two-year leave from Vancouver’s school district.

LGBT education advocate Glen Hansman, of the Vancouver Elementary Teachers Association, questions whether LFA’s actions fall in line with the BC Human Rights Code, which protects employees from harassment and discrimination based on sexual orientation. “[LFA] gets public funds, like any other independent school in the province... Our expectation would be that it, too, has to operate under the BC Human Rights Code,” he says. “There’s no excuse for someone who is gay, lesbian, bisexual, or trans-identified being harassed in the workplace, let alone dismissed because they’re out.”

In the midst of widespread controversy over massive funding cuts to B.C.’s public-school system, Chin advises private-school administrators — who, like their public-school counterparts, receive provincial-government funds — to tread carefully. “I think private schools in general, and especially religious schools, will have to think carefully if they don’t want to be marginalized by the public system,” he warns. “There is great resentment building.”

PHOTO: Little Flower Academy. By Doug Shanks.

Rent-hike conflict

WestEnder
May 5, 2010

Landlords in B.C. usually exercise their right to subject tenants to an annual rent increase as allowed by the province’s Residential Tenancy Branch, which is currently set at a maximum of 3.2 per cent. However, after learning that several rental-management associations want to lobby to raise that annual increase, Martha Lewis, a member of Vancouver’s Tenant Resource Advisory Centre (TRAC), is concerned that renters could be dramatically impacted if their wish is fulfilled.

Lewis says members of the Victoria-based Rental Owners and Managers Association are interested in changing the current rent-increase formula — the cost of living plus two per cent — to factor in utility expenses and property taxes. That would place rental apartments on the same playing field as what are known as ‘manufactured home parks,’ or mobile homes.

“If the landlords are given a free hand like that, the government will have no control, no oversight, into what the landlords are doing,” Lewis told WE in a phone interview, going on to explain that recent interest in raising the annual allowable rent increase may be due to financial pressure from property-tax increases. “[Landlords of large properties] have these big increases in their property taxes because the value of their property went up in recent years, and they want to pass on the cost to the tenant, even though all the benefit goes to the landlords,” Lewis says. “Affordability is a big problem for tenants already.”

Lewis met with B.C. Housing Minister Rich Coleman last week to alert him to the potential implications of these changes. “We want the government to actually put some real thought into this... ahead of time,” Lewis says. Coleman told Lewis he couldn’t deny that landlords’ costs have gone up, but also acknowledged tenants are already facing problems with affordability.

“It’s kind of getting to be a really vicious circle,” says Marg Gordon, CEO of the BC Apartment Owners and Managers Association (BCOMA), who has been in touch with Lewis about TRAC’s concerns. “The problem that’s happening is the rent-control formula is not addressing the real needs of landlords insofar as operating expenses. It’s getting to the point where some landlords, who haven’t experienced vacancies in almost a decade, are now experiencing vacancy losses. That’s not a huge issue yet, but it’s certainly something to keep your eye on.”

Gordon is even more concerned about the potential impact of the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) on landlords. “Unfortunately for our sector, it’s an anomaly, in that there is no tax on rent — we have nothing to claim against,” she says. “The HST, if it’s supposed to be a consumer-inducer tax, it’s not working in our case. We’re asking for the ability to have input tax credits, so that we could, like any other business, claim the expense.”

Gordon acknowledges that landlords can’t transfer the HST onto tenants, nor do they want to. “That still doesn’t solve the problem we’re facing with the average age of buildings in Vancouver being 58 years old — aging and in need of major repairs,” she says. “Our fear is not only attracting new people into the landlord business, but it’s also that nobody’s building purpose-built rental buildings because you can’t make the numbers work.”

PHOTO: Martha Lewis of the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre. By Doug Shanks.

Translink consults public on transit future

WestEnder
April 28, 2010

Those who regularly ride public transit along Broadway between Commercial Drive and UBC know all too well the crowded buses and road congestion that characterize the route. Talk of improving Broadway’s transit system has been on the table for years, yet it was just last week that TransLink embarked on its first public-consultation workshops about the future of Broadway transit. The April 22 session, at UBC’s Student Union Building, was the first of five such workshops; future workshops are scheduled for May 4 at St. James Community Square; May 5 at West Point Grey United Church; May 11 at the Hangar on Great Northern Way Campus; and May 13 at Vancouver Masonic Centre. Each one runs from 6 to 9pm.

TransLink is asking the public to examine a number of transit options. The first is light rail transit (LRT), a driver-operated, electrically-powered system, which would operate at street level, in a tunnel, or elevated above traffic. The system could move 6,000 to 10,000 people each hour in each direction. Secondly, rail rapid transit (RRT) would be completely separated from traffic, similar to the Canada Line or SkyTrain. Depending on the type of system used, RRT could move 10,000 to 25,000 people each hour in each direction. Bus rapid transit (BRT) is the third option under consideration, consisting of low-floor buses running on diesel, compressed natural gas, or electricity, moving 2,000 to 3,000 people per hour in each direction. A combination of LRT and RRT are also possibilities, as well as an extended LRT route that would run from Arbutus to Main Street and Science World.

“We’re asking the public not to choose one, but to tell us if there’s something we’ve left off,” said Mike Shiffer, TransLink’s vice president for planning, strategy, and technology, in an interview with WE at the UBC consultation session. “The whole idea behind this process is to really look at a range of alternatives and an in-depth range of evaluative criteria... and arrive at a locally preferred alternative.”

The impact of construction on Broadway will vary, Shiffer says, and will also depend on which transit option is chosen. “It’s really too early to tell how the construction process would take place, until we know what alternative is decided on,” he says. “One thing I can say, though, is that we’re very sensitive to the context in which the service will operate. The community context is very important.”

Business owners along West Broadway, in Kitsilano, are concerned about the potential impact of Canada Line-style construction in their neighbourhood. A public meeting is being planned by west-side residents and business owners for the evening of May 26 at St. James Community Square.

“Certainly, a month is not nearly long enough to consult with the public... I think a lot more education has to go on with the public before they [TransLink] start asking them to fill in surveys and voice their opinions,” says Donna Dobo, director of the West Broadway Business Association and owner of Just Imagine, a children’s costume shop on West Broadway. “The businesses favour a modern, European-style tram which would be at-grade [on street level],” she says. “They’re much faster than buses. It would be slightly slower than [RRT in] a tunnel, but maybe only seven or 10 minutes [more] on the whole length of the run.”

Others favour different options altogether. Eric Chris, a transit critic and chemical engineer with a background in environmental management, lives near UBC along the current 99 B-Line bus route. Instead of the LRT, RRT, or BRT options presented by TransLink, he is interested in the possibility of a SeaBus-style ferry service from False Creek to UBC, similar to that which he experienced at the University of Queensland in Australia, where he was a student.

Chris contends there’s “no way” TransLink could avoid a situation similar to construction of the Canada Line along Cambie Street, which crippled many local businesses and created daily traffic slow-downs. “You’re going to have exactly the same thing,” he says. “I don’t see how you can not rip up the road. Either that or you’re going to have to bore [a tunnel], and if you bore under Broadway, it’s going to take forever to get to UBC, and it’s going to cost a fortune.”

Chris, like Dobo, is critical of TransLink’s public-consultation process. They both feel as though key decisions have already been made without public input. “You ‘choose’ what [TransLink’s] telling you [they] want to do,” Chris says.

“I want to hear the facts getting out to the people who live in Vancouver, so that they’re making informed decisions and recommending what’s really good for the community,” Dobo says. “Not what they [TransLink] think is good.”

PHOTO: Cars or buses? By Doug Shanks.

Fewer cars, more feet, says visiting speaker

WestEnder
April 28, 2010

Vancouver and British Columbia are well positioned to become leaders in sustainable transportation, according to Dan Burden, an expert on pedestrian and cycling issues. As yet, he says, we’ve only scratched the surface. The 66-year-old resident of High Springs, Florida, visited Vancouver to give a lecture at SFU Harbour Centre on April 21, where he delineated decades of work devoted to planning walkable communities that encourage citizens to become less reliant on cars.

Burden and his wife will relocate at the end of this summer from their current home to Port Townsend, Washington, where Burden will start work on what he describes as his final project, the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute. The organization, which opened its doors in December 2009, aims to train the next generation of people who will build sustainable communities that are walkable as well as bike- and transit-friendly. To achieve this, the Institute will connect people from a variety of professional backgrounds — architecture, engineering, urban planning, and others — so they can better understand how their fields are integrated and, by extension, how they can work together more efficiently.

The Institute is strategically located in the Pacific Northwest, Burden says, because he considers the region a hot-spot for sustainable transportation. “There’s nothing that comes anywhere close to it,” he told WE in an interview last week. “A lot of projects got kickstarted here, and, therefore, give people confidence to do more things.”

Burden counts Vancouver’s recent Burrard Bridge bike-lane trial as one of the city’s great successes. He hopes it will motivate citizens to support other sustainable-transportation projects in the future.

Encouraging people to embrace change, Burden says, has been one of the most significant ongoing challenges of his work. “I find there’s a reluctance for people to support or endorse or get excited about change, simply because they are so used to one thing. They think anything that would be different has to have some problems that they don’t know [about], so they’d rather go for the certainty... That is why it’s so important to come up with projects that prove that new ideas work, and to start at whatever level a community can.”

A case in point is Burden’s current work in Vernon, where he was called in to consult with municipal staff on how to rebuild the city centre. Local retailers are concerned that a possible loss of parking spaces could jeopardize their businesses, but Burden is encouraging them to rethink the situation within the context of revitalizing Vernon’s pedestrian life.

Burden is optimistic for the urban future of Vernon and other cities in B.C., but the future of some North American cities, he believes, is grim. “Some of them are just not going to make it; those that don’t make it are not going to attract the new jobs,” he says. “The new job market is going to be based around place-making, where people want to live... The towns that just simply remain drab, ugly — sometimes frightfully so — they’re just not going to be attracting the new workforce.”

Burden echoed those sentiments during his well-attended SFU lecture. People used to flee the cities for their health, he told the audience. Now, people are returning to cities as a way of improving their health, since cities are planned around foot travel more than suburbs.

“This temporary hiccup that we’re in, which started somewhere around 1930, is nothing more than that: It’s a lack of a focus... to how everything works, because we invented a machine — the automobile — and made it affordable for everyone, so much so that we decided to design our city for our cars,” Burden told WE. “It’s just a matter of time before everybody gets it right again, and understands that you can’t design for anything to be sustainable or to work... until you go back to the human foot. It’s the right scale, it’s the right level of social integration, the right social equity.”