Norman Garrick is not your typical transportation planner, nor is he your typical college professor. No, in today’s urban planning field of accommodating cars and capitalism, Dr. Garrick stands as an unorthodox champion for transit- and people-friendly cities. Dr. Garrick is not your average civil engineer, no; he is out to disrupt the world of urban planning as we know it, one well-worded scholarly article and unconventional college course at a time.
There are many curious facts about Dr. Garrick that one picks up from his resume — Fulbright Scholar, study after study on urban design and behavior, the list goes on — and yet one gains even greater insight of him via conversation. For example, Dr. Garrick originally hails from Kingston, Jamaica, but only by talking to him was I treated to his soft, pleasant Jamaican accent. Dr. Garrick boasts a diverse educational journey, starting with high school in Jamaica and college in Trinidad & Tobago and ending with masters and PhD programs in the U.S. (Indiana’s Purdue University). And yet, by the time he’d finished his educational journey and had secured a comfortable career, Dr. Garrick goes and upsets the apple cart by deciding, no, he simply did not find studying the composition of pavement to be very interesting and he would rather focus on making cities more efficient and accessible, cities like Cambridge and Zurich which had recently impressed him in his travels.
I became familiar with Dr. Garrick through a CityLab article he wrote last month, “What Does This Street In Zürich Mean?” I was impressed with this engineer’s thoughtful, people-oriented approach to urban planning, an approach accepted in many European countries but novel to the rest of the world. In googling the forward-thinking author of the article, I arrived at his personal website where I learned he currently teaches courses on sustainable cities at the University of Connecticut. (How refreshing, a professor with sound views on planning that is shaping the engineering minds of the future!) After familiarizing myself with Dr. Garrick thanks to his remarkable online profile and list of scholarly articles, I was so eager to learn more from this sage professional that I contacted him for a blog interview.
Dr. Garrick responded almost immediately to my email request, happily agreeing to an interview. Suddenly, I found myself as nervous as an awkward high school kid asking his crush to prom: a million questions come to mind to ask Dr. Garrick, how could I narrow them down to only a handful? Would I be able to keep our conversation to a respectable thirty minutes or would I babble on about people-oriented places? Could I stay on track with the interview script I’d prepared or would we wander down a million urban planning rabbit holes, talking about everything from European cities doing planning right to living car-free to the role of cities in fighting climate change? Fortunately, I sorted everything out before picking up my phone for an enlightening conversation with the respectable Dr. Garrick.
How did you get into the field of civil engineering/transportation planning? And tell us what you’re currently working on.
Well, I didn’t start out in the field exactly. I’d just earned a PhD as a pavement engineer and became tenured and was studying the composition of pavement and… I was not excited. After a sabbatical in Cambridge, England, I saw different land use patterns, people using transit, people using bikes. This was in 1996 and I’d seen it before but this time it left an impression on me, enough that I changed my professional focus to sustainable cities. As for what I’m currently working on, well, that’s another detour: traffic safety and autonomous vehicles. In Zurich, Switzerland, the city is focused on using AVs for public transportation which is quite different from the attitude in America where we are being sold a transportation future that is very much like the present except that the cars will be robots. What could go wrong?
What are popular topics in civil engineering/transportation planning today, in Connecticut and the U.S.? Do you see a growing interest in planning that’s less focused on accommodating cars?
In Connecticut, the current transportation issue is interstate tolls. The state government has yet to enact tolls and has been talking about it, but the discussion is going nowhere; Connecticut is the only state in the area that doesn’t collect highway tolls. In my classes at the university, next year we will have a study abroad program in Zurich on sustainability. We will “set students loose” in the city for a few weeks to let them research, learn, and put together a short movie. We chose Zurich because their transportation system is the best in the world, it’s not flashy with 40-year old trams that have held up over time and require very little funds to maintain. Swiss citizens can buy a one-year unlimited transit pass to be used throughout the country for under $4,000. And to answer your second question, yes, lots more young people are awakening to issue but it’s an uphill battle. As a friend pointed out, with cars, we’ve normalized an abnormal system. We turn on the TV and see car commercials, cars are everywhere and ingrained in society.
You talk about the problems facing transportation professionals — climate change, accommodating growing populations, improving public transit — and how “conventional planners” solve problems, sometimes without foresight for people. How did you break the mold and get interested in planning from this perspective?
My experience in Cambridge really helped me find this niche. Also, in about 2002, I became involved with the Congress for the New Urbanism because of their progressive work, and in 2006 I was elected to their board which got me more involved in sustainable cities.
Your resume is impressive and I see you have experience in this field all over the world. What project or research have you done that left the greatest impression on you?
That would have to be my experience with a project in Freetown, Sierra Leone, a Prince Charles of Wales project through his Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment. When their war ended in 2002, people were living in horrible conditions and the Prince wanted to help improve local living conditions. Unfortunately, the project did not turn out as expected because the government of Sierra Leone was unable to provide the support needed but I still value being a part of that project.
As an urban planner myself, I feel we planners are always impressed when cities do something creative and sustainable, and in my experience, people really enjoy car-free spaces. What do you think is holding us back from really, truly making our urban spaces more people-/transit-friendly? What can we as “unconventional” planners do to change this?
We are beholden to car culture in the U.S. and worldwide. The first thought of planners, the most important thing to them is accommodating cars. Officials don’t like being yelled at by people with money who want parking and other infrastructure. It’s hard to break through the noise, car culture is ingrained in society.
Describe the ideal city.
[Laughing] Zurich comes pretty close, and not just with transportation. There, local government ensures not everything is for the rich, for example housing cooperatives make the city more affordable for everyone. The ideal city is also pleasant and clean; San Francisco is attractive but pushing people out because it’s become so expensive. Great cities temper capitalism and do what works for the entire population, a problem we’re currently suffering. Small businesses, local food, local business ownership, clean and compact public transit: these make for the ideal city.
In wrapping up our conversation, a difficult task as I wanted to keep asking questions to learn more about his work in sustainable cities, Dr. Garrick reiterated how the true cost of cars is hidden and helping people understand the real cost to our budgets, communities, and environment is the challenge we unconventional planners face in a car-focused society. What an enlightening discussion with a truly kindred soul in urban planning, I wish Dr. Garrick and his future generation of planners and engineers successful, victorious careers in sustainable urban planning.
Many thanks to Dr. Garrick for this interview.