Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Tamlyn Shimizu: Oh, I need to do that.
Welcome to Smart in the City, the BABLE podcast, where we bring together top actors in the smart city arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations. I'm your host, Tamlyn Shimizu, and I hope you'll enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
Welcome back to another episode of Smart in the City. I am on the ground in Chicago, gaining insights into the city's vibrant urban life and the work being done to build stronger, more sustainable communities. In this episode, we're exploring the power of identity, leadership, and resilience and driving positive change for our cities. If that sounds interesting for you, make sure to stick around. I have a wonderful guest with me today whose work has been pivotal in creating more equitable, sustainable, and resilient communities.
Without further ado, I'd love to introduce you to our guest today, Nina Edemuria. She's the Chief Executive Officer at the center for Neighborhood Technology. Hi, Nina. Thanks for joining me.
[00:01:10] Nina Idemudia: Hi, good morning. Thanks for having us.
[00:01:12] Tamlyn Shimizu: It's a really big pleasure of mine to sit with you, and I'm really excited to learn more about your work and all the amazing things you're doing on the ground here.
So I like to start off with a little bit of a teaser question to get us warmed up into the flow of things. So. So the question I have for you today is if you had to describe Chicago's neighborhoods and infrastructure with three emojis, what would they be?
[00:01:34] Nina Idemudia: Oh, my goodness. This is a tough one. This is a tough one because Chicago is just such a dynamic place. I guess one is a skyscraper, the skyscraper emoji. Because obviously Chicago's downtown is like, bar none, like, you can't compete with what Chicago's architecture looks like. So I would definitely say that.
I would probably.
What other emoji would I put? Maybe an emoji of biking.
A lot of the riverfront. I mean, sorry. Whether it be the Chicago river or the Michigan lakefront, I mean, people are biking, people are walking. People are just attracted to the water and having a place to really come together with community, meet strangers, meet friends. And so I would say, like, that makes me think of the path along the lake. And then I would also say, say, like a tree. Like the tree emoji, because it's always growing. There's lots of roots in Chicago, and especially Chicago, in its place in American history, has very deep roots, but it's also growing very Differently than how those roots were planted. And so there's lots of people here. We're always inviting new members of community, whether it be immigrants or people from other states, into Chicago. And so just like myself, I'm a transplant. So it's like the roots are there, but the.
The branches are growing in all sorts of directions.
[00:03:03] Tamlyn Shimizu: I love it. I also got the chance to walk along the lakefront. Actually, I walked like 40,000 steps or something over the weekend all over Chicago.
[00:03:11] Nina Idemudia: Chicago will do it.
[00:03:12] Tamlyn Shimizu: And it was amazing. As you described the buildings. And then also I love the lakefront and the river.
[00:03:18] Nina Idemudia: Yes.
[00:03:19] Tamlyn Shimizu: So that was.
[00:03:20] Nina Idemudia: And the neighborhoods are also beautiful. And the fact that the lakefront spans across Chicago into different neighborhoods, I think also exposes you to. From the very south to the very north of what Chicago is like. Yeah, Yeah.
[00:03:35] Tamlyn Shimizu: I really have loved it more than I expected. So I'm definitely going to come back.
[00:03:38] Nina Idemudia: I hope you do.
[00:03:39] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yes. But I want to learn a little bit more about you as a person. So you said you're a transplant. I want to know about your journey. Where did you start off? What led you here and what led you into your role today?
[00:03:51] Nina Idemudia: Yeah. So, I mean, it's a bit of a windy road, but that's okay.
From Detroit. Born and raised from the east side of Detroit. If there's anybody listening who has any Detroit ties. What up, though? How are you?
That is really the start of my story. And really for me, my roots, where I kind of understood and learned what community was like, what resilience looks like on the ground. I grew up in a very working class neighborhood, and my father is an immigrant from Nigeria, and he met my mother, who is the descendant of slaves. And so I have these two parts of my culture of the black diaspora that literally have made who I am.
Maternal grandparents are from Sunflower County, Mississippi, and so they came up to Detroit during the Great Migration like many other black families. In fact, some of our family stopped in Chicago while the others went up to Detroit. And so being of that kind of mixed heritage has also given me insight into what it looks like to be first generation on one side, but then also understand the systemic inequities that come from being the descendants of slaves in America. And so at a very young age, I kind of understood community differently than when I left Detroit. Detroit is a predominantly black city. It is a city that has seen lots of ups and downs. And it is a city that, when I was growing up in, it, had seen a lot of economic downturn because the auto industry had been leaving and a lot of our taxpayer base had left as well. But who was there? The native black and brown Detroiters who make Detroit what it is today. And so, you know, community for me was always about sharing. It wasn't about scarcity. It was always like we were growing our own foods because we didn't really have access to grocery stores. We were, you know, sharing communal meals. And at the time I didn't have the language for it. But now as a, you know, adult, I'm like, oh, that's what kind of community looks like outside of the context of kind of white western culture where we, where we share a lot of things. And When I was 10 years old, my mother went to prison. And that, that was a very devastating time for my brother and my sister and I. My sister was 15, I was 10 and my brother was 6.
And so during that time there was a lot of uncertainty in my life. And unfortunately, when she was convicted and was sent to prison, the legal system didn't take my sister, myself and my brother. So my sister, my 15 year old sister had to take care of us for about a month without any parental supervision. And so because I have, not only have I lived in a city that has been riddled with its own social economic issues, also being able to experience how systems are broken and leave people behind, I think has motivated me to understand how I can help to undo the harms of a lot of those systems.
And so eventually, when child protective services did come to, to finally follow up on where are her children, My aunt was able to step in and take us in for that four years instead of us having to go into the system.
And so because of her, she was actually a city bus driver in the city of Detroit. And so we went to school in the suburbs. It's an east side suburb, Curlhopper woods, which I think the statute of limitations has probably ended. But it's very illegal to use somebody else's address to go to a different school. But my family was very adamant of wanting us to have access to what they considered a better education and more resources. Now, Harperwoods is still mostly a working class, middle class neighborhood, but it had more resources than our local school. And so because we were traveling from where my aunt lived on the east side of Detroit to Harper woods, we were taking the city bus, the 8 mile bus. Every day we would walk up Dequinder, which we lived on 7 mile and Dequinder and walk up to 8 mile and take the city bus to Eastland Mall. And being able to take the City bus to this suburb really opened my eyes to how the landscape changed between my neighborhood and the suburbs, how there were less vacant lots, how there were more active storefronts, how, you know, the single family houses looked compared to where I lived, how the parks looked compared to I live and where I lived. And I think I started to gain a consciousness that there was a difference, but I didn't understand why that difference existed. And so that really drove my passion to understand more about, like, history, social movements, all of those different things that my family had already always instilled in me because we were resilient people telling me the stories about, you know, white flight and, you know, how, you know, a lot of our family members worked in the auto industry but were eventually laid off. And so once I, you know, started to gain my own consciousness about, you know, history, I really loved it. And so by the time I decided to go to college, I went to the University of Michigan, which is Ann Arbor. Go blue. For anybody listening out there, we have a large international alumni base, which is really cool. I decided to actually major in African American studies and women's studies. And, you know, my mom jokingly says I got a degree in myself, but I saw it as an opportunity to again, give me the academic backing of what social movements, what, you know, everything from, you know, the Atlantic slave trade to emancipation to reconstruction, you know, civil rights, all those different things. And on the same side of thinking about gender and what it means to be a woman or a fem presenting person in this society. And so I really feel like they gave me the foundation and the understanding of seeing how human patterns really do repeat themselves and how the power dynamics come about. Right.
And so when I was about a junior in college, going into my senior year, my academic advisor, Cathy Weathers, she said Michigan Women's planning department is recruiting and they'd love to have some more diverse applicants. And I really think that's something that you would be interested in because I was really involved in childhood education, mentoring, thinking about how people can have their own agency to change their circumstances, because that's how I was kind of brought up and understanding that not everything is about you not wanting to. It's the systemic barriers. And so we Googled it in her office at that time, and I think we read the first few sentences, and I was like, oh, that sounds good. That sounds great. And I also was able to be exposed to a great environmentalist scholar, Dorseta Taylor, who now works at Yale, but at the time was at the University of Michigan. And she Talked about racist environmental practices. And so for a summer, I got to kind of learn from her. And that's when I was like, oh, this is giving me the language again of saying there are people behind the scenes pulling these strings. And so I decided to move out West. I went to the University of Southern California for my master's degree in urban planning. And when I got there, I hated it.
Have you ever been to la?
[00:11:29] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah. And there's family out there. Oh, you see, my mom went to USC for her masters.
[00:11:34] Nina Idemudia: Yeah. Oh, look at that.
[00:11:35] Tamlyn Shimizu: My dad went to ucla.
[00:11:37] Nina Idemudia: Okay, that's okay. That's okay. Well, you know, whatever. I mean, honestly, I'm a Wolverine till I die. And grad school is a little bit different, but I am a Trojan, so that's beautiful. And so USC is this very prestigious, rich institution in the middle of South Central, surrounded by a fence. And I think that amount of wealth and whiteness I was not really used to. Now, South Central itself, I always used to joke, is like Detroit with palm trees.
We have a shared lived experience of the things that, whether it's in Detroit or South Central la, the things that black and brown people, specifically black people, have had to go through.
When I entered that university, I felt intimidated at first because all of my classmates, they were architects, they had urban studies degrees, they had engineering degrees, they had business degrees. Here I was with my little African American Studies and Women's Studies degree. And as I started to go through classes, I realized during that experience how disjointed their information was about what life was really like in the same cities that they were trying to study and theorize about, as if they had never actually entered these neighborhoods, which I know that they hadn't. And so I kind of became known as the person who had pushed back. I would be in classes and raise my hand when my economics professor would say, you know, if I want a different type of milk, I'll just drive. Get in the car and drive and go get it. Like, that's. That's. And I'm like, that's not the experience of most people. And so I'm always somebody who. I don't just complain about it. I like to do things about it. So I went to the administration and I said, you know, I don't think we're doing enough. You know, there's this. Where this institution in the middle of this neighborhood, and we're not actually helping people or helping people understand how planning can help them. And so, you know, I went on my little rant and then they said, okay, well, you have a plan, we'll fund it, go start a program. And I was like, oh, snap, I actually have to do this now. And so I created this program called Planning for College, where we brought 100 youth from the surrounding neighborhood to USC to learn about planning over two different weeks. Weekends or no, two different. It was two different field trips. And I think that experience really solidified that it is so important to know who you are and be okay with the experiences that you have. Because again, people who have experienced broken systems know how to fix them. And I think understanding and kind of demystifying what urban planning is to youth is actually an important move. Because I don't call myself a planner because, you know, I grew up wanting to be one. In fact, I did not, I call myself one as a political actor to say, like, the people that you usually think of when you think of urban planning are usually older white men. And here I am, this young 35 year old black woman who is sure of herself and sure of her experiences and also my knowledge. And I'm a planner, and that's okay. And I'm gonna reclaim what that means at a larger scale. And so when I did that program, I got a lot of notoriety. I actually won an American Planning association award for that program, which led to the city of Los Angeles actually asking a classmate of mine, like, hey, this girl, I think she's in your class. Like, we read the article and we think this is a really cool idea. We'd love for her to intern for us. Can you convince her to intern for us? And so he came up to me in class and he was like, hey, my bosses at the city of LA would like to talk to you. They want to do a youth program.
And at first I was like, I'm not going to do that. I thought I was again, I thought I was going to be working at a community based organization leading protests and those types of things. I was like, I'm not a bureaucrat. Working in government is not what I do. But I went ahead and had the meeting and then I realized that with their general plans, with general plans, which are these kind of policy documents that cities use to understand the growth of what their cities are going to have for like 30 to 50 years in the future, L.A. requires them by law. And so Los Angeles was updating their general plan and they wanted to have a youth component.
And so I, you know, it was unpaid internship, but I said, okay, I will go ahead and intern for you and make this youth program. So we made a youth and planning component to their general plan update. And at the time it was something that had not been done at that scale. And we won another planning award for that work. And so I was able to kind of go from there. I was the president of almost every club. You know, like I was really just in entrenched in trying to understand community. And I think the beautiful thing about learning planning in a place that you're not from is that you're forced to learn to listen. And so my entire career I have been forced to humble myself and really be in community with people to understand problems from their POV and then try to translate that into what policy and planning can do for them to address those concerns. And so once I graduated from the program, I worked.
The city of Los Angeles takes a long time to hire. It's the largest planning department in the nation. It has about 400 employees. And so I actually started working full time for another city called the city of Hawthorne, which is where SpaceX is. Elon Musk, we love him, right? Not really.
And so I got to just really be in a smaller context, working at the counter, working with people, understanding.
Now, I will say when I interviewed for that job, I did so well in the first interview, by the time I got to the interview with the director, he said, I almost threw your resume away.
I almost threw your resume away because I saw that you had an undergraduate degree in African American studies and women's studies in it, and to me it didn't make sense, but you did so well in the first round interview and everybody said that you were their top candidate that I had, that there was no way I could not interview you.
And I share that story. To say that even with the amount of professional experience that I have, even with the amount of awards that I had, even with my master's degree in planning with the INC still wet, even in those cases, people will still try to use your identity against you. Even though I had done so well, and I had done so well because of who I am, not despite who I am, right.
And so I was able to kind of be in that environment and understand what that looked like. And then eventually I went over to the city of Los Angeles with a full time offer there and I got to work on all sorts of projects. I got to work on under lots of zoning administrators. So I got to write zoning code, I got to write letters of determination, which are the legalese ways of giving people kind of what we call land use entitlements in America. And then eventually I got so tired of having to enforce what I would consider very poorly written policy.
I went to the director of Current planning and I said, I would like to transfer to policy planning. And she looked at me and she said, oh, my God, Nina, you're doing so well. People like you, you're learning. You're learning under the zoning administrators. Why would you ever want to transfer? And I told her the same story. I said, I'm on this side having to enforce planning that I don't. That I don't think actually reflects the needs of the community.
And so I was then transferred to policy planning. I did transportation. Neighborhood planning is what we call it. So, you know, Los Angeles doesn't have the best public transit, even though I did take our proud bus rider every day to and from work. It can be hard. And so I was able to transfer there. I worked on a lot of different cool projects, one of which was to prepare for our Olympics bid for 2028, which is now coming up. So my largest project was being the planning assistant on what we call the land side access modernization project. So it is to make Century Boulevard more accessible. It is to make the land use around LAX more inclined to have that type of intensity of travel. And so that was one of my largest projects that I did at the city of la, and I was really, really proud of that. Then Vince Bertoni, who is still the planning director there, he plucked me from the transportation team into what we call the performance management team, which Mayor Garcetti at the time setting up for the first time, he was setting up these performance management units in different departments to really think about how does data inform our policy making? And I know that sounds simple, but for government, it's not. Right. You probably talk to lots of people who are like, yeah, there is a disconnect between using data to inform how we make policy. And so I was really excited to join that team and really thinking about not only what are our goals and how are we going to get there, but also if our house is not in order, then anything that we put out is not going to be at its fullest extent. How do we train our employees to make sure that they have the latest knowledge on how to approach a particular project? The zoning code is always changing, so making sure that they're up to date in those things, thinking about bias, training, all those different elements. Because if you think urban planning is apolitical, you're in the wrong field. It is a very political game. Planning, at its essence, is a very progressive tool that has been used in ways that aren't great.
And so I think being able to do that for the city of Los Angeles really taught me how to operationalize equity in a way that isn't something that you can cross off a box that you actually ingrain into process, that you actually grain into policy, and that you actually grain into culture.
And so from there, I decided to move to Chicago. I decided to move to Chicago and work for the Department of Planning here. It was a great experience.
I will say I was a little shell shocked when I first got to Chicago because planning in Illinois and planning in California are so different. And so where in California, the planning department has about 400 people. The planning department here has at the time, around 130, 140, which for a city this size is vastly understaffed. And so for me, the first few months I was there, I was just turning to everybody, like, how, why are you guys doing it like this? You know, you don't have to, you know, you don't have to live in spreadsheets. You know, there are other ways to approach planning. And people would just say, well, this is how Chicago is. And I say, but that doesn't mean that that's how Chicago has to be. And so, again, I was kind of known as the person kind of pushing those things forward.
After a while, I decided to leave the department. I think I got there February 2019, and I had put in my two weeks notice by October because I just felt as though I wanted to do more proactive planning. I had come from a history of being able to do that in Los Angeles, and I didn't think that Chicago was there. This is around the time that Mayor Lightfoot won her election and she brought in Maurice Cox, who was the planning Director at Detroit. Now, I did not know him, although I had been following his work that he had been doing in Detroit. And so by the time he came in, I think I only had like, maybe one or two weeks left. And I got called down to the commissioner's office. I'm like, what do they want with me? And so I walk into his office, he's like, hey, I just got here. I'm asking people, who do I need to talk to? You know, like, trying to come up and everybody's saying, you need to talk to the girl who just came from la. You need to talk to the girl who just came from la. She has all these great ideas and she's, you know, bringing things up to the surface. And so I was like, oh, I didn't realize. I was making that much of an impression. But I had a great conversation with him and I said, you know, I can't stay in my current capacity because in order for the things that need to change in this department to change, I need to be in a leadership position. And so I eventually went back as his chief of staff, the first chief of staff, to the planning department.
And that was an amazing opportunity for me to really like. He was the visionary, he had the foresight, and I was the implementer, because I had known that department really well over the time that I had worked there, built relationships, and was thinking, okay, how do we change this from a current planning department to one that thinks has more foresight, and also one that embraces community not every once in a while, but again, systemically, operationally, how do we make sure that happens?
This is around the time Covid has started.
The American Rescue Plan Funds was coming from the Biden administration.
Luckily, because Maurice and I had known the pulse of the department had known some of the challenges that we were facing, especially with our budgets, we were able to quickly think about what programs we would want to fund to further some of the things that we weren't able to do and also help people. During COVID that's when I transitioned to being the Chicago Recovery plan director, overseeing $250 million over 10 different programs. And I was able to really think about how DPD is what we call it. Department of Planning Development was doing our grant making.
There were lots of people, lots of stories of people saying, I've been applying for tif, which is our tax increment financing. I've been applying for a neighborhood opportunity fund. I've been applying for these funds from the department, and I'm having issues trying to access it. It was like, like PDF applications. You know, somebody to know somebody, the alderman has to like you. It's all these different things. The stars have to align in order to get access to this capital. And so what my team and I did is completely try to revamp how we did our grant making. So we put the application online, we made it a universal application. So no matter what grant program you were applying for, you used one type of application. We took a lot of the burden off of the applicants and did a lot of the work on the back end. So if you apply for one program, but we felt like you were more competitive program, we would do that work on the back end to make sure you were more competitive. We also embedded equity into the objective criteria of the program. So, for example, depending on where your Project was you would get extra points for being near transit. You would get extra points for being in a low or moderate income area. You would get extra points for being near a housing, affordable housing complex or one of the projects that Chicago was working on. We had this Invest Southwest initiative under Mayor Lightfoot if you were in those neighborhoods. So these are all things. And without having to do any extra work, we were able to embed that in how we did our objective criteria. And then when it came to how our employees reviewed essays or more subjective criteria, we would also do. We would also, at the end of each round, do a standard deviation of scores. So even down to how our employees scored, we would say, hey, you scored really harshly statistically or you scored really lightly. And let's have a conversation about that because again, people come to work as themselves with their lived experience. And whether you know it or not, you have bias. Right? And so it's not just about the objective criteria, making sure that's objective. It's also about constantly having that check in. Not to vilify anybody, not to punish anybody, but to say, hey, we need to make sure that we're all using a similar criteria when we're grading these applicants. And because we were able to do that, we were able to get grants in a lot more people's hands and in a lot more communities than had previously been done. And I'm super proud of that work. And in my time in working in the department, one of the organizations that I worked with a lot was the center for Neighborhood Technology. It was me working with community to say, hey, I know how it is. The people that you represent are me. I come from the same type of neighborhoods. I don't have this exact same lived experience. But I understand what you're trying to do, and I hope you understand what I'm trying to do. Let's work together. And so we really played that inside, outside game as far as, like, how to move legislation forward. They were very instrumental in what we call the equitable Transit Oriented Development Policy plan. So I was the staff person who was taking that to cpc, but they were one of the groups kind of cheering, I mean, putting the work behind the scenes to champion that legislation, I mean, not legislation, sorry, to champion that policy plan. And then we had the Connected communities ordinance, which was another program to incentivize development in black and brown areas around transit. Because a few years prior, the city had done an ordinance, but 90% of the development that had happened only on the north side. And it's because if you don't start writing legislation or ordinances with equity at the center. You get outcomes like that.
[00:28:55] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah.
[00:28:55] Nina Idemudia: And so it's really important to think of it on the on site. So I really loved working with cnt. And so when the opportunity came about to join cnt, at first I didn't see myself in this role at all. It was actually Erin Elman, who is the executive director of our regional planning agency, cmap. She texts me and she said, hey, did you see this? And I was like, yeah, I' sending it around to people. She was like, no, no. Did you think about applying? And I was like, no, Aaron, I'm not like, that's not what I do. And she said, no, I really think you should think about it. You have a lot of the skills that a CNT needs in this moment.
So I applied and here I am. That was a very long winded way of telling you how I got here.
[00:29:33] Tamlyn Shimizu: You took all of the exits and everything. But I love the journey, so thank you so much for telling me about all of the journey. So I loved it. I have a very quick follow up that I want to ask you. That was going around in my mind while you were speaking and that's because you mentioned a lot about community. And I was wondering if you think the definition of community is different in Detroit versus LA versus Chicago. Is that definition different for you?
[00:30:02] Nina Idemudia: That is a really good question. I would say community for me is mostly different across cultural lines. And what I mean by that is like how I described that I grew up in a place that didn't have a scarcity mindset, that we, we kind of relied on each other, we lifted each other up. And I do find that whether I was in South Central LA or, you know, or now that I'm in Chicago and I live on the Southwest side, it is a similar type of network where, you know, if you need something, you can rely on someone. Even again as a transplant. I've been able to really get, have really deep roots in some places here because I, you know, I have this saying, you can't make friends when you need them. So for me it's just showing up to a community event and talking to people. For me, it's just doing informational interviews with somebody who I think does something really cool.
And not a lot of people are able to do that very organically. Right. For them it's an end goal. It's force. They want something out of it. And so I think because of the way I grew up culturally and it could be, I mean Culturally could be whether it's race, whether it's ethnicity, whether it's class. I think there's things that I just learned from the way that I grew up. All of those things ball together that have me think about community a little bit different. And there are other people like me in different communities who think the same. Same way.
[00:31:30] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah. No, thanks so much for, for that response. I'm wondering if we can dig a bit more into CNT and the work that you're doing. I don't know if people know this, but it's March 2025. It's a bit of a crazy time here in the US And I know CNT has been vastly impacted by what's going on. So I want to ask you, I know Reconnecting Communities Institute stellar. Different initiatives that you have going on at CNT have been impacted by the federal freezes.
How are you responding and what does that mean for the communities these programs are supporting?
[00:32:04] Nina Idemudia: Yeah. So the center of Neighborhood Technology was founded in 1978, and it was founded by Scott Bernstein and Stanhalet because they wanted to have a more grounded approach to all of the different things that were going on in the state of the world even at that time. Right. Thinking about environmental sustainability, thinking about access to transportation, thinking about urban flooding in communities. Those were all things that have been happening for a very long time. And so C and T has always kind of been propped up as an organization who is people centered at its start, and also data driven. And what we mean by data driven is, yes, they're like, we think about data, data points on a map, things like that. But it's not just about the quantitative data. It's about the qualitative data taking the community's lived experience, which is often kind of scoffed away as, oh, oh, you know, that's a one off, or that isn't that important. And saying like, no, there's actually scientific relevance to people's lived experience. And we need to be adding that into the conversation as we shape policy. And so CNT has, has been that voice for a very long time. I mean, between what. What I say is, you know, CNT exists so that no matter what zip code you're born in, you have the ability to thrive in place if you choose to. Right. And for me, growing up in Detroit, I did not have the ability to thrive in place as in be able to have access to health care, to grocery stores, to higher education, all within a reasonable distance of where I was raised, born and raised. And so C and t in its 50 year history has been able to do that through lots of different administrations. But I do think that the Trump administration is a different beast that we have not seen before.
And a lot of our, what we call. So we, you know, in the simplest form, we're a think and do tank. So we do a lot of research, analytical practices, and we create tools to make it easier for advocates, community members and practitioners to access information that will help them push forward initiatives and policy. And then we also do a lot of what we call democratizing. So we convene a lot of different partners. Like we have our transportation equity network, which is made up of over 40 community based organizations that are not related to transportation. They may be related to affinity group, they may be related to housing, they may be related to issues going on in a certain neighborhood. But what we have come to understand and what we live by is that all of those different community based organizations doing very crucial work on the ground, all of their constituents need access to opportunities.
And usually public transportation is how that happens. And so that's how we're able to convene people who wouldn't usually see themselves as advocates for transportation or advocates outside of maybe what their community organization does and say like, no, not only can we empower you with more information, but we're building power so that we can change legislation.
And a lot of the federal projects that CNT is working on, some of which you named the Reconnecting Communities Institute, which came out of the Department of Transportation. Previous Secretary Buttigieg put together a program so that states and cities could understand how transportation has been used deliberately to dissect communities, specifically dissect communities of color. And how can they undo that harm over time? We were one of the TA providers providing information to the grantees, the states and the cities who received this funding to understand what is anti displacement policy look like as you're thinking about how do you undo the harm of this transportation infrastructure, dissecting communities and stunting economic vitality for a lot of communities.
Another program that you mentioned is stellar. This is with the Department of Energy.
It's actually meant to broaden and think about how do we as community members think about the decarbonization of transportation and the use of whether it be electric vehicles or otherwise. And yeah, it's one thing to go tell everybody to get a Prius, but that's not realistic. Especially when you have billionaires and private jets riding around. Like, is that really the answer or is there a larger communal way that we can talk about these problems and Then also the offset of what it means to go electric and how that has cascading impacts on natural resources in the continent of Africa. Right. And so it's not about, again, vilifying. It's about saying, here's all the information on the table to community members. How would you like to perspective in doing this work here in your community? And so we actually were that week about to write ten $80,000 checks to those CBOs so that they could do the work on the ground to work with their community members, and we were not able to write those checks. And so the federal freeze is, yes, it's about Medicaid, it's about Medicare, it's about cancer research, but it's also about pulling back so much of the progress that we have made and will be making in communities that need resources and deserve resources that they have been counted out of for decades for as long as this country has existed.
Given that CNT is still going to push forward despite this freeze, and it does have implications not only on our organization, but on the sector. This freeze is less about them being able to. For these things to hold up in court. Right. Because we know that most of these things are probably constitutional violations is to choke out our sector before we can even get to a lawsuit or before we can even get in front of a judge. I know organizations are laying off employees. One of our partners laid off 20% of their employees already. Our smaller nonprofits and CBOs are almost shuttering entirely because they rely on federal funding. And even for C and T, a third of our budget is passed through to CBOs because we take on the burden of having these federal projects so that we can not only influence and coach and train very hardworking, committed public servants, career service public servants who know that this is the direction that we need to be going in. So we're helping and coaching them, but we're also helping and coaching our community partners. Partners to empower them and build power around these things.
[00:38:45] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, it's such a crazy, tough time, I know, for so many organizations right now. And really, we're going to be seeing the impact on our communities in the future. So I'm hoping that. I mean, we just have to hope that this is a bit of a fluke, I guess, right? I mean, forward.
[00:39:02] Nina Idemudia: I will say that is part of the hope, but I also don't want to undercut the.
The impact that this is having on American society right now. And I know that we're still only two or three months into his second term, but what I Hope that the international listeners and also the listeners in the United States understand is that the majority of Americans voted for this. And we have to confront that this is the America that people wanted, whether they were sold a dream or not. And so I think there's a lot of kind of institutional racism and kind of anti blackness that we have to confront in order to move forward and know that yes, this is in four years, we're not going to just elect another president and all of these things are going to go away. These are going to have lasting, lasting long term implications. And that doesn't mean that you throw up your hands and you're like, okay, let me disassociate, which I totally understand. Understand you have to have totally one.
[00:40:07] Tamlyn Shimizu: Of those days once in a while.
[00:40:08] Nina Idemudia: You gotta have one of those days every once in a while. But I think for me and for cnt, it's like, okay, how when, when there is a chaos agent trying to disrupt which, which is this. A lot of the playbook that we're seeing is exactly what he told us he would do and he's keeping his promise of that. It's like, how do you ground yourself and say, okay, I have a mission, I have constituents to think about. There, there are vulnerable populations that we still need to fight for. How do we focus our energy on that? And it really is going to be about people power. And that is what C and T does best. We understand people power, we understand how to harness, whether that be again, quantitative, qualitative data.
We know how to convene people, we know how to energize people and we know how to change laws, we know how to change legislation. CNT has been doing it since the beginning of its, of its existence. And so we'll continue to do it. But yeah, it, it is, this is going to have decades of effect.
[00:41:07] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah. Just going to let that sink in a little bit for everyone.
But I would like to, to dig a bit deeper maybe into some of the projects that you've been a part of, some of the initiatives. I know you mentioned the Chicago Truck Count data portal.
[00:41:23] Nina Idemudia: Yes.
[00:41:23] Tamlyn Shimizu: As an example of environmental justice.
[00:41:26] Nina Idemudia: Yes.
[00:41:26] Tamlyn Shimizu: I'm wondering if you can explain a bit more about this tool and how it helps shed light on transportation inequities.
[00:41:34] Nina Idemudia: Yes. So CNT has been working on lots of different environmental issues that has been brought up from our community, our community based organizations that we work with. So we work with the Chicago Environmental justice organizations or networks I or CGEN for short, which is comprised of a lot of different environmental justice CBOs here in Chicago. And one of the things that they brought to our attention was, hey, I feel like our community is suffering from bad air quality, but we don't have enough data to prove that. What are some of the ways that we could work together in order to do that? And that was with Little Village Environmental Justice Organization or Elvejo for short.
We said, okay, well if we need to create the data set, let's do it and see if the hypothesis is true. So what CMT did at the time was we put up these cameras around different access points around freeways throughout Chicago, strategically placing them based on community input. And then now we have a live truck county website and it does indeed show a lot of data that says that a lot of the especially like cargo pollution, cargo truck traffic in specific neighborhoods, especially on the southwest side, which is known for being, being a very Latino, Latino area or like has a high Latino population, are indeed having lots of trucks go through their neighborhoods. And then now we're able to say, okay, based on that, let's also study the air quality or how do we turn that into the next phase? So we may have one off projects, but they all connect to each other so that we can advocate for larger systems change, whether that be at the local level or at the national level. And so at the local level we've been working with the City of Chicago who has a great sustainability and Department of Environment. They actually just got the Department of Environment back I think last year or the year before, so it had been gone for a little while and just working with them of saying how can we address these problems together? So that's one way that we've been able to one show up for community, say these are your concerns. How can we help you and how can we turn this from, you know, again, a, a, a community based kind of hypothesis which again their lived experience does actually mean something. And how do we turn that into, and translate that into something that decision makers and policymakers will understand.
[00:44:09] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I love your focus on the data driven approach, but also listening to the stories at the same time and having that quantitative plus quality qualitative approach. So thank you for sharing about that project. I also have another project I wanted to ask you about, which is the Evanston Green Homes project. Can you tell us about it and what it aims to do?
[00:44:27] Nina Idemudia: Yeah. So although C and T doesn't work exclusively on like building affordable housing or thinking about building housing, our equitable transit oriented development work does have us think about housing and transportation and how those things Work together. In fact, one of our most famous tools is our Housing plus Transportation index that we came up with decades ago. That helps people think about the cost of housing and transportation depending on where they would like to develop so that people can make different decisions based on, you know, if their employees or people will have access to those two things. And so with Evanston Green Homes, this is our way of saying, okay, you can get somebody into a house, right? There's lots of lending products to get first time home buyers into a house, but there's not a lot of support or products to actually keep some someone in a house. And so that includes maintenance and that includes thinking about extreme weather, extreme cold and extreme heat. In 1995, Chicago had an extreme heat kind of phenomenon and hundreds of people died in the city of Chicago, not because a hurricane came through and took away their house, just simply because they didn't have the air conditioning in order to withstand the amount of heat that was coming. And so they died. Those are deaths that could be prevented with the proper retrofit of houses, whether it be public housing, affordable housing or market rate housing. Right. And so we are trying to find ways in which we can incentivize and provide those types of source resources to low and moderate income neighborhoods. And so we had the opportunity to do this specifically in Evanston. They're using their American Rescue Plan funds in order to do this project, which is really exciting. It does cost more than the million dollars that we were given during, I mean, you know, allocated. But that's okay. We're kind of piloting what it looks like to have this government kind of intervention in making sure that low income people actually have access to homes that are sustainable and healthy. Right.
And it's really exciting to be able to lift that up. And in Chicago we had a similar project when I was the Chicago Recovery Plan director called the, the Climate Infrastructure Fund. And so we were working with nonprofits and businesses and commercial corridors to retrofit their properties. And so there's all these different examples of, in which I've worked in, where we're like, oh, we're trying to prove that there's a case here and that we should be looking at this and seeing things will continue that work, whether it be in Evanston Green homes. But we're also looking at a larger swath of land in Chicagoland generally in order to say, okay, how can we get private entities like banks and also governments to invest in this type of kind of retrofits so that people can actually stay in their Homes. I mean, same thing with urban flooding. If during redlining, if you were kind of confined historically to a specific neighborhood and those neighborhoods are in flood zones, then you know your. But your basement floods every year, your premium goes up, and then you're one or two paychecks from not being able to keep your house. Right. And so there could be this false dream of selling black and brown people saying, like, oh, homeownership is the way to generational wealth. But is it really. Is it really if. If. If I. If I don't actually have the support to stay in my home and to make sure that it's a healthy home for. For my family and my kids and generations after me to grow up in. My mother has owned her house on the east side of Detroit for 25 years. And I don't think that it will amass, like, the property value will amass a lot. Right. But that's the story that we don't talk about when we talk about homeownership. And again, talking about race and class and how those same dreams that people say, like, this is the way out, out in. In. In the American context is not the way out for a lot of us. And so I think the Evanston Green Homes Project is one way of us addressing that systemically.
[00:48:46] Tamlyn Shimizu: Love that project. Thank you so much for sharing. You've talked a lot about leadership, actually, when we've been speaking about what leadership means to you as a leader and what, what leaders need to be to really serve the communities. Right.
And I want to ask you, during this journey as a leader, what's a piece of advice that you've heard? What's the best piece of advice you've ever heard? And what's the worst advice you've ever heard?
[00:49:14] Nina Idemudia: Hmm. This is also a really good question.
And so I do teach a class about leadership at the University of Illinois, Chicago. I teach a class called Leading for Change, and it is specific specifically for urban planning and policy students to teach them how to be like, what transformational leadership looks like in institutions that are not meant to change. Right. That aren't meant to be inclusive, and how do you still affect change in those environments. And I'm using a lot of my experience for being a practitioner, but also the wisdom that I've gained from all of the amazing leaders I have been under or been able to learn from from over the years. So let me see. The best piece of advice I've probably ever gotten is to quote, unquote, have the same confidence as a mediocre white man and this came from another woman of color. And I think a lot of times you'll walk into a room and you'll be intimidated, just like I had described as I was intimidated at usc and then realizing, like, no, no, no, there's. There's. Especially as I get higher in my career, I'm like, how did you get this job? Because I know how I got this job. But I'm looking, I'm like, oh, I see. You knew somebody who knew somebody, maybe.
And so I think it's a lot of folks, especially people who look like me, we are often made to doubt ourselves in rooms that we were never meant to be in. Right.
And I think it's funny, but it's not. But have confidence. You are here for a reason. My purpose is to make more opportunities for the other little Ninas. I carry that on my back. Whether I was when I was a waitress at Chili's or I'm the CEO of Center for Neighborhood Technology, my purpose has stayed consistent. Now, how I execute that purpose may look different, but it has stayed consistent. And that is what I wear on my back and in my head whenever I. Whenever I go into a room. So there was even when I was at the city of Chicago those first few months, and that's why everybody was like, oh, you know what? You need to talk to Nina. Because I was sure of myself. I knew. I knew who I was. I knew what I knew. I also knew what I didn't know. Right. But I wasn't gonna let anybody intimidate me from speaking truth to power, because I can lay my head down at night, and I've been through the worst of the worst in my life. And so there's nothing that you can take away from me that would make it okay for me not to again make more opportunities for the little Ninas of the world. And so, yeah, have the. Have the kids are a mediocre white man. And then the worst advice I've probably gotten has been, if you can't work in an ethical gray area, this job is not for you. Yeah, that was a tough one. That was a tough one. I no longer work there because you can't work.
I can't work in a gray area. And I do sit on the board of the American Planning Association. I sit on the national board. I also sit on the board of cmap. And so I've had lots of different leadership positions. And what I will say is that my morals and my ethics are not dictated by politics. As in, like, it does not matter who the President is my morals and ethics are consistent. It does not matter who my boss is. My moral and ethics are consistent. And so what I would say is that again, if you're sure of who you are and what your line is and who you're trying to, to help, no one should be able to dissuade you from that. And the good thing about being a planner is that we do have a code of ethics that I hold very dear because not only does it protect me professionally in a lot of ways, but it's a good reminder of saying no. This is why I'm a planner. This is why it's important for me to say I'm a planner. This is my code of ethics. This is what I work by. This is what I live by. And if I'm not able to do that in the spirit of what, of how I like to, I need to exit and find another way to do it. And so, yeah, that's the best and worst advice I've ever gotten.
[00:53:17] Tamlyn Shimizu: I love it. Really good. Well, really good and bad advice.
We're running out of time, unfortunately. But I always like to also give the chance for an open floor because I know that there's probably many topics that we didn't get the chance to talk about. Is there one topic, just briefly, that you can touch on that you really want listeners to know about that we didn't get to yet?
[00:53:41] Nina Idemudia: I would say, I think at this point in American history is going to be very vital. And so that's why I was earlier kind of saying, I hope your listeners, both international and in America, understand kind of what's at risk. And there is a lot of people who are silent. The people are either scared, scared or they're complicit. And the thing about the time that we're living in right now, which definitely reminds me of post reconstruction, it reminds me of just using laws in order to separate people. I think it's really important that if you have the ability to speak truth to power, this is the time to use it. This is the time to say what you need to say. This is the time that if you're an ally, that you stand up and, and use your power and risk your privilege in order to effect change. Because I think it's very noticeable when some of our elected officials don't speak. I think it's very noticeable that some states are not suing. I think it's very noticeable that certain organizations and corporations are bowing down without there actually being any legal implications on the line.
I. I think that Again, when we think about who voted in this country for this regime, we know it was the majority of Americans. But that does not mean that we're defeated.
It means that we need to be more nimble and more creative about how we affect change, how we operationalize equity. C and T and myself, we are here to be a partner to anyone, career service professionals. I mean, career service, government workers, to philanthropic partners, to private industries, to banks who still want to and who still want to do this work and are committed to affecting change in a way that will actually help the most vulnerable people in this society come to C and T. We're here to help you, and we have lots of ways in order to work, navigate through these times and also prepare for the times that are going to come after.
[00:55:49] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, thank you. I'm really inspired by your work. So thank you so much for. For speaking to me. Now we get to play a little game.
[00:55:55] Nina Idemudia: Yes.
[00:55:56] Tamlyn Shimizu: It's a segment, and today I chose for you, actually my favorite segment. That. That's how you know it's okay.
[00:56:02] Nina Idemudia: You know, I got a special one.
[00:56:04] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, it's called roll with the punches, which you're already very good at, I can tell.
[00:56:08] Nina Idemudia: Yeah, I was a drama kid. I was a drama kid in high school, so that's why. Yes.
[00:56:13] Tamlyn Shimizu: And it's answer answering this or that questions with your first instinct. So we just run through them very quickly. They're meant to be a bit tricky. And then if you want to explain anything afterwards, don't worry, you can explain yourself. So just go with your first instinct.
[00:56:24] Nina Idemudia: Okay.
[00:56:24] Tamlyn Shimizu: Okay. Ready?
[00:56:25] Nina Idemudia: Yes.
[00:56:27] Tamlyn Shimizu: Biking or public transit?
[00:56:28] Nina Idemudia: Public transit.
[00:56:29] Tamlyn Shimizu: Skyscrapers or historic buildings?
[00:56:33] Nina Idemudia: Historic buildings.
[00:56:34] Tamlyn Shimizu: Smart sensors or public WI fi?
[00:56:36] Nina Idemudia: Public WI fi.
[00:56:38] Tamlyn Shimizu: Affordable housing or sustainable infrastructure? Infrastructure.
[00:56:40] Nina Idemudia: Oh.
Oh, that's a tough one. Affordable housing.
[00:56:45] Tamlyn Shimizu: Data driven planning or community driven design?
[00:56:49] Nina Idemudia: Ooh, data driven planning.
[00:56:52] Tamlyn Shimizu: Tactical urbanism or long term master planning?
[00:56:57] Nina Idemudia: Tactical urbanism.
[00:56:59] Tamlyn Shimizu: Oh, I'm gonna change the last one actually. Knowing now. Detroit style pizza or Chicago?
[00:57:04] Nina Idemudia: Oh, Detroit immediately eat. I will die on this hill. Chicago, I love you. Y'all not touching. Detroit style pizza.
[00:57:14] Tamlyn Shimizu: Deep dishes in fr.
[00:57:15] Nina Idemudia: It's not. It's cool if I'm hungry and there's nothing else but Detroit style pizza with the little. With the little cheese on the side and the crust, it's so good. So, yeah, I am biased, but Detroit style pizza all day. I will die on that hill.
[00:57:31] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, very good. Do you want to explain any of your other choices?
[00:57:34] Nina Idemudia: I mean, with sustainable infrastructure and affordable housing, I'm like, oh, my God. Both are. Both are very important. Yeah. Healthy homes. Yeah. But if people, but if people don't have healthy homes, affordable homes, then nothing else really matters because people, I think housing is a, is a human right. And what was there may have been another one.
[00:57:51] Tamlyn Shimizu: Data driven planning and community driven design.
[00:57:53] Nina Idemudia: So the only reason I said data driven planning is because to me, data driven includes qualitative data which includes the lived experience. So I, but just to be clear, like community is, is. Community is included in that.
[00:58:05] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, you surprised me with that one yesterday when you had data driven.
[00:58:08] Nina Idemudia: I was like, yes, it's because. Yes, yes, yes, I am a data minded person. But data includes talking to people and getting their opinions about what's next. Sounds good. No, that's really fun.
[00:58:17] Tamlyn Shimizu: Now the final question that we ask every single guest and it's to you. What is a smart city?
[00:58:24] Nina Idemudia: A smart city is exactly how I describe kind of what CNT's mission is, which is to create, I mean, so that no matter what zip code you're born into, that you're able to thrive in place if you choose to. A smart city takes care of its most vulnerable populations because that means it's taking care of everyone.
And yeah, smart cities are able to adjust and be nimble to how the people of that city change, while also protecting those who are, who are vulnerable.
[00:59:00] Tamlyn Shimizu: Love it. I love your human centric approach, the way that you describe the work that you do and the people that you serve. So thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Chatting.
[00:59:10] Nina Idemudia: Yeah, no, I appreciate it. And yeah, so excited and yeah, hope to hear from you in the future.
[00:59:16] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we'll chat, we'll chat more, I'm sure in the future. So thank you so much also to all of our listeners. Of course you can always create a free account on BABLE SmartCities EU. You can find out more about projects, solutions, great leaders like Nina and implementations. Thank you very much.
[00:59:33] Nina Idemudia: Thank you.
