ACFM - #ACFM Microdose: Spatial Equality with Pooja Agrawal

Episode Date: September 8, 2021

What could our towns and streets become after the pandemic? Ahead of the next #ACFM on space, Nadia Idle goes down to street level to discuss spatial equality with architect and planner Pooja Agrawal. As the co-founder of Public Practice, a social enterprise bringing good design into local government, Agrawal spends a lot time thinking […]

This is Acid Man. Welcome to ACFM. I'm Nadia Idol and on today's microdose, I'm speaking to Pooja Agrawal, co-founder and CEO of public practice and co-host of sound advice. And we're speaking about space inequality. Pooja, welcome to ACFM. Hi, Nadia. Thank you so much for having me. You're very welcome, very excited speaking to you about this subject, which I'm very

passionate about. So maybe just before we get into the meat of the subject, a quick summary of public practice and sound advice, the organisations you work with four in. Sure. So public practice is a not-for-profit social enterprise, which was founded about four years ago. And our mission is to build the public sector's capacity and the types of skills that the public sector has with the mission to improve the quality and equality of places. So very relevant to what we're talking about today. The other organisation is Sound Advice, and that is a platform which explores more directly spatial inequality. And we do that through music.

So one of the main topics that could be really interesting to talk about is how the built environment, the physical space around us, the actual buildings and streets and places we walk in, how it makes us feel and structure how we live our lives. So maybe we should start by talking a little bit about that. Sure, I think it's a two-way thing. So how do we shape the places or the spaces around us to work for us? But there's also a reciprocal relationship that our environments also make us feel in particular ways. So if we start by thinking about how we shape the places and spaces around us, I think COVID has actually is quite a good example about how we have been taking spaces around us and using spaces around us and using. using it in very different ways. So we can try and think about that at a lot of different scales. So for example, right now we are sitting at my kitchen table, which used to be my kitchen table, but now I'm using that small little space and place as also my workspace. And I tend to spend a lot of my time now working at home, working at this kitchen table. Also, I suppose COVID has made us use our neighbourhoods quite differently.

especially during lockdown, we have spent much more time in our local streets and our local area. I know a lot of people who have been feeling that way and starting to explore these places and actually building relationships with people around us in a very different place. And suddenly that proximity to what you have and is available to you in your neighbourhood has become very important. And actually, again, you start to think a little bit about what you have access to and that can touch on the inequality, but we'll come back to that. And then you can think about it at a larger scale. So if we're thinking about the scale of the city, how are we using these places very

differently? Like I said, we're working from home. So suddenly, what is the future of places that was initially seen as these centres of commerce? I think there's time and space to kind of think about how we use our cities differently. So that's one way of thinking about how we have that kind of power or ability to shape the places and spaces around us. And I think if you flip it the other way, how do spaces make us feel? I think there's a lot in that. It can be very emotional. Spaces or places can make us feel safe. It can make us feel like we belong somewhere. And it's sometimes hard to unpack that and really define that. Like what makes you feel like you belong in a public square, for example, you can start to question, hold on, is this square really public?

Are you actually allowed to skateboard here? Are homeless people actually allowed to sleep here under the bench? So there's a question here about how people feel like they belong somewhere, if they feel safe somewhere. It can make you feel, you can feel joy. I think we shouldn't forget that. You know, certain places can really make your heart sick. and can make you feel welcoming to be playful and kind of jump around and dance

or streets can be converted for carnivals. You know, again, you can feel that in very different ways. So I think there's lots of different ways that kind of shapes the way you experience places and I guess how people can access that, I think is an interesting point to make. Yeah, totally. I think one of the things that really fascinates

me but also troubles me is and maybe you know you have different answer to this is it seems like the sort of data or information for lack of a better word that's kind of really difficult to um to pin down because often people don't realize that the fact that they're in a really badly designed built environment is part of the reason that's making them depressed is affecting their social life is affecting their safety, etc. Often people do know, but often people don't know. So it's kind of one of those hard things to kind of get around because it feels like it's difficult to jump directly to policy because there's no necessary right or wrong

answer other than the fact that when you see somewhere that's designed well and you see how people move around it and you see how people congregate and you see how people use the space, like you say, and it feels joyful and it feels like it's interactive and it does build that sense of community. Another word that we don't really, you know, is also difficult to define, you know a good one when you see

it, but I'm not sure we necessarily know bad spaces when we see them, and often, I mean, I don't know what your opinion is on this, something was built for one purpose and then it's either gone into disrepair or because of how, you know, housing or high streets

have changed. People don't use the space in that same way. So that's just really my comment on that. But maybe you want to talk a little bit more about, yeah, about what are those things around spatial inequality and feeling free that we need? Or what are those things? And what is spatial inequality maybe we should start with?

For me, spatial inequality is really about who has that access to space and therefore to be able to feel certain ways. whether it's a sense of belonging or sense of safety and making sure that that's equitably distributed across society. In some ways it's hard to define and, you know, you touched on like hard to bring data in terms of what makes the space feel good. But actually, that's where the kind of value of design can sometimes be hard to communicate. But this is actually quite fundamental.

So if we think about our homes, having that space, where we can say is our sense of safety because we have somewhere that we belong to, that place belongs to us. That should really fundamentally be a human right. We should have the right to a safe home. How that home is designed is almost the next step. All homes should have windows. And this sounds completely like so obvious. But there are actually situations and scenarios where if you don't have the right structures or rules or policy in place, you can get to situations where homes are being built, which don't have windows. If you don't have windows, you suddenly don't have access to light, you don't have access to fresh

air. That has an impact on your health. And then you're starting to impact people's life expectancy because the places they live in are not designed well. So in some ways it's hard. to gather that data but in some ways it's not if you can actually start to very directly link health and space to kind of build on that so we're talking about the home again if you look at that at a kind of larger neighborhood level having the ability to access open space and open green space is also a really fundamental should be a fundamental right we should all have access to open space. And again, I think COVID started to show certain parts we're talking about London. This is where we both are. Certain people, certain neighborhoods, had much more access

to public open space within walking distance compared to other parts of, say, parts of South London, where actually it was a considerable distance to get to an open space. That is an issue of inequality, because again, that's totally impacting your life and your life expectancy. So there are really fundamental links here around equality, accessibility, and to touch on that safety issue as well, actually thinking about the tragic loss of Sarah Everard. So how do people who often feel attacked or vulnerable around men? How do we get them to feel safe and public spaces and that can do with lighting and that's often seen as a solution but it can also be broader about who is overlooking places you know are there safe connections between two

different places where do people spend time and that should be thought of in a holistic way as opposed to it being about a single light street light solving the problem yeah that's made me think about things like the concept of hanging out in a public space, you know, on a bench, etc. And it feels like there's real, on one hand, you know, there's the narrative in the UK of like, you know, that's what kids did in smaller towns when, you know, when they were teenagers, they hung around in parks and in benches, you know, drinking cheap alcohol, etc. Like there's that story. But then as if, you know, it's normal, this is what kids do.

hand it feels like at the moment it's there's definitely a discourse that that you know that shouldn't be done that that becomes a dangerous place if you have uh you know a group of young people or you know people drinking or whatever um in the street hanging out under a bus shelter whatever that's there isn't a positive image of that and and i tend to think about my experience going to athens um when i um maybe about 10, 15 years ago, when, you know, there were riots, there was a big demonstrators, riots and demonstrations, and one thing that I noticed was none of the bus stops were smashed. And one of the first things that happens that I noticed, at least in London, and, you know, listeners can tell us if this happens in other cities as well, I think

it does in the UK, is that things like public, you know, goods like bus stops get smashed if there is a demonstration or there's a right. And it didn't, and it wasn't the case in Greece. And I was asking people about this and they said, but people feel like the bus stop is theirs. It's ours. Why would we smash the bus stop in the demonstration? And that was a real kind of light bulb moment to me. And kind of linking between that and the chat about, you know, people hanging around in public is I would love, you know, obviously we live in a cold, rainy country, yes, but I'd love to see a situation which was outside what we've talked about on the show before, a ritual of license, so outside Notting Hill Carnival, outside a carnival, where we use these spaces

can be hung out in quite happily without, you know, women or other people or elderly people walking past and saying, you know, that's, that's danger. And my fascination is, getting to my final point here, is what can we do in terms of design and architecture of a space to allow people sit on a bench when it's dark and it not to feel like it's edgy, scary or that necessarily something wrong is happening. So yeah, I just wanted to bring that up. I think it's really interesting that idea of who owns the city and who has the agency to shape the city. And, you know, young people is a really good example of that. I think there's often this sort of sense, like you said, you see young people hanging out and it's perceived as being dangerous. And that,

there's a kind of actual, a cultural shift there that we need to make as a society. And sometimes I think people think, oh, design can solve this problem. And so often as an architect that used to work quite a lot for the public sector, I would be doing these consultations with people living in an estate, for example. And the solution was always, oh, we just need to have more gates and allow less people into this, into our housing estate because actually that would make us feel more safe. So somehow, sometimes the design response of creating more barriers is what people perceive would help in terms of safety.

And I would argue actually it needs to be much more holistic. You need to think about the whole wider neighbourhood. What are other places that it should be more about making, I would argue that it's about making places feel more welcoming that rather than less welcoming because then people feel like they own those spaces and they have agency over those spaces and therefore would kind of celebrate it or protect it more. You're always going to have different needs and different people of different vulnerabilities that are perhaps actually barring against each other and how you bring that together I think is a really complex problem and design is one aspect of that.

but there is something wider in terms of thinking about policy to help solve these problems. Maybe we should, I mean, I know you wanted, we wanted to talk also a little bit about, like, who owns space and who feels safe in different spaces, but maybe, maybe we can move on from that and then come back to it. It's all about power, and I think it's a really complex thing to unpack. So who should be really leading and pushing a vision for an equal. society, right? I'm talking about space here, so for equal space. I think structurally my position is that the state should be really leading this vision. The state should be radical and hold this vision for all people in a democratic way. That should be their role is serving all people from all backgrounds, probably the most vulnerable people they serve. And they should have the vision to think about this in a longer term way, given the tools and power they

have, whether it be through policy, whether it's through funding, whether it's through their power to convene. So that would be my first kind of immediate response that, from my point of view, structurally, that should be the state that's leading it. So when we were preparing for this and I was chatting to you, I was telling you that I saw this awesome documentary about the South Bank Centre. For listeners who are not in London, which is most of you, I know, the South Bank Centre is on the South Bank of the Thames in London and it was designed as a public space kind of with that vision in mind. So my, I want to be optimistic and push for all of the, you know, for the state to have that role, you know, and I and many other people do through

our kind of activism, I'd hope. But that kind of. of 19th and 20th century kind of visionary collectives of kind of architects that were able to get hold of, you know, public funding to build these big projects of which, you know, the South Bank Centre and the BFI or, you know, like the Barbican, again, I'm talking about London here, were built specifically with the vision that these should be public spaces where people are allowed. to congregate, where there is dancing, where there is joy. And I know we've touched on that, but if we're saying it's the role of the state, like it doesn't feel like we're living in an era where those things are possible. So if it is the state that's the key actor and institution that can hold that kind of long-term vision and, you know, like funds and ability to enact, how does one make that happen in the reality of late capitalism that?

What are the buttons that we should be pushing? Is it municipal stuff? Is it what's, yeah, give us the big answer. It's too big a question. I think it might be helpful to talk through public practice in a bit more detail as one example of trying to look at what the role of the public sector can be. So what I described earlier is I completely agree this really utopic vision of everyone singing and dancing in this incredible. beautifully designed public space that everyone belongs in. Where are we now? We've had decades of austerity. The state has shrunk in terms of its capacity. When I talk about capacity, it is actually around

the number of people that are working in government and in local authorities. So this is at multiple scales of government and public sector. They also absolutely have a completely shrunk funding pot, money. Let's talk about money. We talk about power and their primary function has become quite responsive. So, you know, obviously adults and children's services are primary. It's almost like government is having to deliver their primary services. What I'm trying to get to is we've come to this place where the public sector's being quite reactive. They don't have that kind of space, ability and power to kind of step back and have that bigger vision piece because of the lack of capacity.

One of the things we think would really change this is actually having people, more people with lots of different types of skills in local government, trying to solve these complex problems. And that's exactly what public practice is doing. So public practice brings people with diverse skills, always place-based. So it could be around planning policy, it can be around sustainability, it can be about economic regeneration, coming together, working in government, being able to actually influence some of those kind of longer-term decisions.

And you do that through policy, you try and think, okay, hold on, what is our kind of longer-term vision for this area? And building that kind of knowledge and holding that in-house, I think, is really important. Another aspect, we talk about that utopic idea of the 60s. What we did lack then, you know, there was a lot of social housing that was built in that time by the state we had in-house architects. That's not what public practice is talking about. We can romanticise about that time, but actually what it also really lacked was actual true

relationships with people on the ground. So it was fairly top down in terms of we will build this. Here is loads of social housing, but this is kind of our vision for it. So we have seen a shift in terms of people being much more involved or wanting to be. I don't know if it's about wanting to be more involved. but there's definitely a shift where the state is working much closer with communities. And I'm not saying that it's always works. There's loads of examples where this is not working and it's not going very well.

And it being actually quite a tense, difficult relationship with community groups and with their local authorities. But actually, if you had people in local authorities who had that time and that was their role was to really, really build those relationships with people on the ground, so that they're building that knowledge to then take a longer-term view and influence the policy, the politicians, rather than coming from the other way around where politicians, award counsellors and necessarily, they should be using that evidence built by public sector officers, built with their community groups, to make those decisions in that kind of longer-term perspective.

So how does public practice interact with a local authority? When you, you say we put we want people with different skills so how how does it actually happen how do you make it happen so we have basically designed a placement program where we bring people with different diverse skills into local authorities so local authorities apply with the job description saying this is the type of role we want to bring into our local authority and local authorities actually quite often struggle to get talent I can talk about my own person experiences that I'm an architect that's my background, I would have never thought about working for the public sector or seeing that as a place for career development, one hand, but also as it being a space for agency

of change. So we almost formed that we build that kind of connection between what local authorities are trying to do, struggling to find the right people and bringing all these incredibly talented, passionate people who want to make change and are feeling kind of that they would be able to actually make that longer term impact by working in the public sector. So we bring that together. And it's a one-year placement that we call them associates, so that built environment professionals and experts that we put into local government. And we provide learning and training opportunities to build that kind of transition, often from the private to the public sector. So we almost are connecting the dots

and facilitating knowledge and sharing of skills. Quite often we talked about, we type on the word high streets earlier, post-COVID. There's so many places across the country that are trying to think, okay, what is the future of the high street? What you tend to see is that every single place is trying to solve the similar problems. And another thing we're able to do as public practice is to bring and share that knowledge. You know, we hear about bureaucracy. We hear about siloed working. And public practice is actually able to kind of shift that work in quite a nimble way where a social enterprise and sort of connect those. dots. That sounds amazing and you're saying all of these things I'm thinking

let's be real are the great people that you're bringing in not being blocked from doing amazing work at council at certain council levels because of bureaucracy and red tape. So what's the feedback that you've got? Have you you must have had situations where people have gone in and been like I can't do anything here. No I mean obviously everyone has a completely different experience. Every single local authority is different and I do also want to say There's lots of local authorities who have incredible people there already who are trying really, really hard to do really good work and serve their communities.

So it's the people we bring, just bring a different perspective and are able to work in these teams and able to see these things from a slightly different angle. I think there's kind of blockages in bureaucracy, the kind of time scale thing. Quite often, I think, has been designed into the state with the ambition generally for it to be as fair as possible. So things like procurement, for example, I don't know if that's too technical, but that's the process when you're trying to deliver some project,

whether it's a, for example, a housing project, you have to go through this process of procuring it, so getting different people to apply for that process. You go through a scoring process, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And you're like, oh, God, I'm coming here into the public sector. This is going to take six months. But the purpose of that design is for it to be fair, and for people not just to be giving public money to their mates.

So a lot of what is criticised as bureaucracy has been designed to actually create a framework of fairness. And again, I totally agree there's a lot of nuance and there's a lot of things that are not working well. And there's space to be innovative and kind of tweak these systems. And I guess where we've ideologically placed ourselves as public practice, is by being within the system, you can start to tweak and shift these systems, try and solve these complex problems by being part of the system. That's one way of doing it. And I totally respect and agree that there's so many different ways.

You can try and make change in places to tackle spatial inequality. And I know there's lots of incredible community activists who are pushing for change in a different way. But where we are as public practice is saying, hold on, we think it should be the state that is holding that responsibility and supporting community organizations with the right tools, the right frameworks, with the right funding, with the right policy to be able to make that change at a very local level. I'm so happy you brought up ideology, because I was going to say, isn't the second thing that gets in the way, which to me is linked to bureaucracy, is ideology.

Because I want to be clear about, for example, how I would come, at this, which is, for me, the bureaucracy comes from the private sector and late capitalism. It's when councils have kind of tried to be more like the private sector or have been told they need to be more like the private sector, then you find the level of outsourcing and money wasting and that sort of stuff go on. And that's at the level of ideology, which is this kind of insecurity that basically says private is better. So actually not believing in their own mission and it is that that creates the red tape and bureaucracy and the not the the the improper consultations and frankly the corruption so i'm i'm you know like i'm a big uh supporter of you know

public and the public good and the comments you know i take them on fisher line that that yeah late capitalism and its bureaucracy comes as because of privatization but if the public sector is trying to be more like the private sector which we've seen a lot then you get the kind of corruption. And I do want to call it corruption because for some reason in the UK, when it comes to government or local government, we don't use the C word. It's true. I'm from India. It's so true. We talk about government corruption the whole time. Maybe, I mean, I've only been in this country half my life. And it's true. I've not really heard this word. Mariana Mazukato is a big inspiration who's an economist. She's just written mission economy. And I'm part of her

Institute of Innovation Public Purpose. I'm a policy fellow there. her kind of approach to this mission-led approach that the public sector should be taking is what kind of inspires the trajectory of what we see against ideologically of what public practice is trying to do. So not outsourcing, but building that knowledge, skills and confidence, I think confidence is a really key word here, that what is the public sector for and holding on to that mission-based change, that longer-term vision and being confident that they are thinking about values in multiple different ways. We can talk about that in terms of social value as opposed to commercial value.

And that's a fine line. And I think that's where some of these tricky issues are coming with local authorities when they're being forced to act as developers and having to prove that everything is as efficient as possible. And then what do you compromise on? You start to compromise on things like design and inverted commas, which is seen as being more expensive. But actually, that's what makes people feel like they belong somewhere,

and that's what the role of the public sector should be. To play devil's advocate, I think that's really difficult for local authorities, to be able to invest in places and people say, hold on, you're wasting taxpayers' money. You know, this is going to, you know, what's the point of creating? this beautiful little thing and again that comes to the confidence point of the public sector being able to own that and communicate it perhaps maybe that's something else we need to do better not when i say we i'm sorry i used to work in government before so i still think of myself as

a public sector officer quite often but it's actually learning how to communicate that vision tell us a bit about the before we go on the high streets about the maria matzikato project so what's going on there. So the Institute of Innovation Public Purpose is at UCL and Mariana Masukato, who's its economist, leads it. So I'm a kind of policy fellow there, but I think one of the

projects I've been working on more recently has been the Camden Recovery Project, so they're partnering with Camden Council. So this is Camden Council in London for listeners. Yes, of course, sorry. And Georgia Gold, who's the leader there. So they they partner to try and think about this

what's a different way to think about recovery post-COVID and take that kind of mission-based approach to creating change in Camden. So there's been a group of us who have been feeding into what these missions might start to look at. And then they're also delivering all these different types of projects on the ground and connecting those dots. So it's that example of local authorities taking a confident approach and being quite radical and saying, hold on, this is a moment to think about things in a slightly different way because things haven't been working and I'm not saying using COVID as an opportunity, that's not the right way of phrasing it,

but there's a moment now with larger crisis. Let's not, you haven't even touched on the climate crisis, but maybe that's a whole huge other topic. But, you know, we're talking about the built environment. That's another fundamental thing we need to be thinking about. So how do you start to bring different kind of sectors, skills, that's where public practice comes in to solve these complex problems because we talk about, again, we're not going to get into too much detail, but so far to address the housing problem, the answer is seen as like architects, planners, developers. COVID has shown actually health and life expectancy is really connected to housing. So to solve this, we actually need to think at a much more systemic level and

think about the economy, the economics of housing and land, as well as the kind of health impact, as well as the sector knowledge to solve this problem. So that kind of mission-led approach is about bringing that kind of thinking from different perspectives to solve complex problems. So just to inform me, because I'm ignorant on this, so at this current moment with this, for example, project with Camden Council. And Camden Council has a history of doing really interesting and amazing radical architectural projects, definitely on housing. But are you able to do this work by bypassing like national government effectively? Because I'm just trying to think, who's in government now?

And would they be interested in trying to support this project? And I would assume no. Or do you have open channels with central government or how does this work? I mean, with this project, I'm like an individual as an expert. but I'm just one person who's bringing a particular expertise into this sort of discussions to help shape them, but it's very much the council who are taking a lead and are going to be delivering this on the ground.

And I don't want to speak for them, and perhaps maybe you should bring them on board. But you are seeing local authorities in different local authorities across the country thinking about how they can use their own assets, creating different types of funding. I mean, the Preston model is quite, maybe I'm sure your listeners would be quite familiar with it, sort of thinking about that kind of community wealth building, bringing different partners on board from like kind of universities or the local bank to the kind of public space. And again, you're trying to shape these places and bringing different players on board and finding different ways of tackling this problem with funding.

So yes, you have, of course, you've got the national agenda and approach and policy. coming forward but you're also seeing at local level whether it's local authorities but also very much active community members finding ways to intervene and kind of shift how we use our places sounds really exciting i want it all tomorrow i don't i know very little about this stuff but it's something that i'm passionate about so i'm really happy talking to you about it um let's talk just for a little bit about the high street what do we want from our high streets because you kind of often come up against this defeatist argument of like, you know, retail's changed, high streets won't exist anymore, it's kind of the end of the high street.

I'd like to continue to see high streets thrive everywhere as places that people meet, but I don't know if you have specific ideas or if there are certain projects that we should link our listeners to if they want to, you know, think about how they can input into improving or bringing life back to their high streets. So what are your thoughts about that? What's really interesting about high streets, if you look at the map of London and the GLA have done this where they've mapped all the high streets, is the kind of how it's rooted in places and in local places you have these kind of, you can see within X amount of time you have all of these high streets available to you. So this is London, but actually more generally, the high street

does become quite an, I think, a really important anchor point. So for me, high streets are almost a civic space, so where you can, there is elements of retail there, where you need your milk or you meet, but there's other aspects of what high streets offer around bringing people together. I completely agree is really, really important. So what is the future of that? I'm going to keep banging on about the role of the state here. But there's almost a need to think about those, all of the high street as a civic space and think about what are the different types of uses that are needed or that bring people together. I think it should also form a space where actually local authorities are providing their services.

You think about food banks, how do you take control? How do you see that as that's where you're actually gaining opportunities to meet people really struggling in your local area and provide them with other support networks and other systems. So I think the High Street has that role to bring people from different backgrounds together and therefore it's really, really important. So seeing it in its social purpose rather than its kind of economic purpose in inverted commas retail is where you start to shift what can happen to it. You see places where empty shops could be inhabited by community groups or different services and giving that agency, enabling the structure and framework for people to take agency to inhabit

these spaces, I think is really interesting and important and a way that we can rethink how these spaces are used. Yeah, I mean, there's so many things I'd love to do on various different high streets. I mean, we did a fun, slightly silly, but also a bit serious consultation at one of our live events in Brighton a few years ago. And we told us, we told us, people and we had like a hundred people there and we told them if you were joy consultants and you've been brought on as a joy consultant you've been on by a medium-sized city like what do you want to see and you know you have three things and one of the things that people came up with is for example adult adult crash like people wanted a place that is outside their

home where you know on the night out or they just need some space from their household they can just go and like chill out and like they want a chill out room. And I was thinking, how great would it be if there was a space? Like one of the shops was, you know, a chill-out room for just, you know, local people. Another one, like you say, a food service, like instead of being an empty shop, a food service for people. There's so many imaginative ideas of what can be done. Apart from, in my view, you know, post office bank, those things, coffee shops, place for people sit down and congregate, those are important. But I think it is worth blowing it open and thinking, you know, if you don't have to have retail,

on the high street anymore, fine. But how can we actually use the physical spaces that shops were in instead of bulldozing them down? Completely. And the fear of it all becoming housing is, I think it's really, really problematic. You need different types of uses that are more public types of uses,

even if that's about congregating. That's what brings people together. And I think there's a danger where we could get to this space where you're living in your home, home, everything gets delivered to your home, and you, perhaps you access the city for culture. I'm going to go to the theatre. I think you're seeing it already that you get more and more into your tiny, tiny, tiny little bubbles and you don't get, you're not in these spaces where you

actually bump into people from completely different backgrounds. I feel like when I go to the post office is where I see the biggest cross-section of my neighbourhood. Very simple task that we're all trying to do there but we come from very different backgrounds and that importance of just seeing people who don't look like you who come from very different backgrounds is what the high street is for and therefore supporting it and making sure that it thrives is really important and there is something here around the economics that I will touch on they can be especially in cities quite important cultural spaces for people from different ethnic backgrounds to have small businesses. The cliche is the Indian or Pakistani corner shop, but actually for a lot of

people, that has been a space to start a small business and we should not forget that actually there is a value in that kind of small scale economic business retail opportunity for people to take advantage of. Yeah, I love the corner shop. The corner shop is in so much, so many, so much British media, it's just, I think it's a, it has been a cornerstone of British culture and it's just interesting. Yeah, I don't want to see them go away. I'm just trying to be open-minded about what are the different things that we could have that could serve a community. And I'm completely in agreement with you. I would go one further and say it is, it creates a mental health crisis in populations that are unable to meet other people out in the public that are not your private

friends and family like that and I you know and I know this is how some of the ultra rich live and I think it's psychosis like I'm saying this on the show like I think it's an illness when you don't when you don't interact with other human beings that are somehow in your local area like I think it's a problem and it and and it's not healthy and it comes back to that question of public and why is the why is public space important and also sort of links back to the kind of question of design here actually creating little pockets it doesn't need to be massive but little pockets of space for people just to sit on a high street is really important and not all be kind of only coffee

shops is the only way you can inhabit spaces so actually investing in your pavements in nice kind of places to sit to play have enough greenery for people to feel like they're really welcome that I'm going to go back to the role of the state in investing in public streets. It's so big, though. You're right. I mean, all you need is a little bit of a street corner that's well-minted, but it needs the maintenance again. And if local councils are strapped for cash, and that is the reality, there is a problem with maintenance. And then you have community groups take things over, which is great if you have that, because it also brings people together. But then you get this vicious cycle, which then the council, which then the council

becomes dependent on the fact that there are volunteers doing things and saying, okay, well, we can't afford to water the plants because we can only put, you know, planting in, and I've heard this, twice a year, but we need to have the business or individuals maintain it and you think that's the council's job, but the council isn't going to pay for it because they don't have the money. And so like where do you, and it kind of, it becomes a difficult situation where if you want something, sometimes it has to be done on a voluntary level. And I oppose that politically, but I understand that realistically sometimes that's the way. Absolutely.

And how do we radically rethink? I guess it comes back to the idea of capitalism. It's like, comes back to capitalism. Surprise, surprise. Maybe we should leave that there. Okay. Pujia, this has been great. Thank you so much.

Just before we go, maybe you can chat to us a little bit about what you're currently working on now. I know you've got this great project with sound advice. so talk to me about this fantastic, beautiful document in front of me right now and other things that you're doing. And we'll put links in the show notes to listeners. Sure. So, yeah, sound advice. Sound advice is this platform that, again, I think sort of came into being during lockdown with Joseph, who I co-hosted with. We've basically used different types of media to explore

all the things we've been talking about today. So for, For example, we did what we called a visual podcast in the days when everyone was so overloaded with constant Zoom, back-to-back lectures. We're like, hold on, if it's on Zoom, how can we explore these issues in a more interesting visual way? So we always connected to music and used, so to talk about housing inequality, for example, we'd use a Lawyalkana music video to say, this is a means of talking about these issues that can often feel a bit academic and a bit kind of distance to our kind of day-to-day existence.

So we link that kind of pop culture, music, lyrics, videos to all the things we've been talking about today. So you can find out more about us on that. We use Instagram as a kind of primary platform. And what's really exciting and live at the moment is a publication we brought together. And it, I mean, it was sparked from the death of joy. Floyd and Blackout Tuesday and all of these people posting this black square and Joseph and I felt quite angry and frustrated. So there's a really almost, I want to say, lazy response that by just by just doing that we feel like we're showing solidarity. So at that point we reached

out to our wider network of architects, urbanists, people who are shaping places and people of color to sort of respond and give their advice, so sound advice is about that, like the top tips of how we can make change. So now you know is this book that you can purchase. We're just in our second round of publication because we sold out our first thousand copies. And it brings together over 50 people exploring these issues. So some people take quite a focused lens. We talked about kind of health and housing, and then other people talk more about personal experiences of racism in the industry. So it tackled representation and diversity of the sector as well. Tends to be around architecture. And people have taken quite different formats. So there's some

poems, there's some written, like longer form essays, as interviews, and it all comes together in our very sound advice way, being very provocative with our tips, a song choice that links to their content and the content itself. Irreverent and it smells good as well. I don't know if you can, you can't smell this unfortunately. I'm just doing the, I can say, I think I can say this. It's incredibly beautiful. We have an amazing graphic designer, Joel, who, again, it sort of explores the aesthetics

of pop culture, hip-hop in an architecture world in this world, which never really uses colour. So it's really pushed the boundaries of what a sort of architecture, urban design, plan, all of the things you've been talking today what it can look like. So yeah, grab your copy before it sells out again. Fab, and we'll put a link to that. So thank you so much, Pooja, for coming on to ACFM. Thank you so much for having me. It's been really stimulating and I feel like I'm going to write down all of these things that we've been talking about and think about how can we make more change? Great. Thank you so much. Thank you.

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