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Fill To Capacity (Where Heart, Grit and Irreverent Humor Collide)
Podcast for people too stubborn to quit and too creative not to make a difference!Join visual artist Pat Benincasa in conversation with a riveting roster of guests to uncover extraordinary stories of everyday people. Listen as they share their quirky wisdom, unlikely adventures, and poignant life lessons! Fasten your emotional seatbelt for this journey of heart, humor and grit!
Fill To Capacity (Where Heart, Grit and Irreverent Humor Collide)
Depave the Way: Restoring Land, Reconnecting Communities
Pavement is everywhere—trapping heat, polluting water, and cutting us off from nature. But what if we could tear it up and bring life back to our cities? Enter Depave, a dynamo organization transforming urban spaces by tearing out unnecessary pavement and replacing it with thriving green landscapes.
In this episode, Katherine Rose of Depave, reveals why pavement is both an environmental and social justice issue—and how breaking concrete becomes a radical act of change. We explore the legacy of redlining, urban heat islands, and flooding, and how communities are reclaiming their land, one project at a time.
Discover the "sponge city" revolution—a smarter way to absorb rain, prevent floods, and cool cities. By replacing pavement with wetlands, green roofs, and bioswales, urban areas can fight climate change and build resilience.
From parking lots to parks, from industrial wastelands to lush neighborhoods—Depave proves cities don’t need to be smothered in pavement. They can come alive!
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Pat:
Fill To Capacity where heart grit and irreverent humor collide. A podcast for people too stubborn to quit and too creative not to make a difference.
Pat:
Hi, I am Pat Benincasa and welcome back to Fill To Capacity, today, episode number 98, "Depave The Way- Restoring Land, Reconnecting Communities." Okay, let's talk about pavement. We walk on it, we drive on it. We barely give it a second thought. But what if I told you that all this concrete and asphalt miles and miles of it is cooking our cities, polluting our waterways, and cutting us off from the natural world. What if we could rip it up and replace it with something that actually gives life instead of smothering it? Enter Depave a dynamo organization that's been on a mission since 2008 to do exactly that. They work with communities to tear out unnecessary pavement and transform it into vibrant living green spaces. But this isn't just about making things pretty. It's about fighting environmental injustice, undoing decades of harmful urban planning and giving people, especially in marginalized communities, access to cleaner air, cooler streets and spaces where both people in wildlife can thrive.
Pat:
Today we're talking with Katherine Rose, communications and engagement manager of Depave. Now, she is passionate about urban sustainability, community resilience, and rethinking the way we live in our built environments. We're gonna dig into the legacy of over paving and how Deep PAVE is tackling everything from urban heat islands to storm water runoff and why ripping up concrete might just be one of the most radical acts of environmental justice. So listeners, are you ready to smash some pavement? Let's get to it.
Pat:
Welcome, Katherine. So nice to have you here.
Katherine:
Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me.
Pat:
Oh yeah, I know we have tons to talk about. Okay. Your journey, what drew you to environmental and urban studies and how did that path lead you to Depave?
Katherine:
Yeah, that's a great question. I honestly attribute a lot of it to my upbringing of growing up on the Oregon coast in a rural setting where I was being home-schooled and I was taught very closely about natural systems and about the, the nature that surrounded the land where I was raised. And I was parented by many different parents in the community who all really valued natural systems and thinking in ways about how we live in concert and relationship to nature. We had a small farm and we would just learn from our surroundings. And so a lot of my early science education was just by walking in the woods with my mom and talking about things that we saw. And so I knew that whatever I ended up doing as a career had to somehow be supporting that relationship. And so I left high school year early because our high school was very underfunded and didn't even have an art program when I was there.
Katherine:
And so it was a large regional high school on the Oregon coast that wasn't meeting my needs education wise. And so I went to a small college on the East coast and early college and started studying mycology and thinking a lot about how interconnected microrisal systems kind of relate to our thinking of how humans relate to each other in space and also how complex our natural systems are and how they're relating to each other. And so then I just kind of continued down the line of thought. I thought I was gonna be a dance major initially I really wanted to, to major in dance. I like to say it was my secret major and I spent a lot of time taking dance classes, but I really wanted to focus more ultimately on environmental studies and our human relationship to our environment. And so I kind of formulated my senior project around this hiking trail in South Africa, thinking about how people move through space.
Katherine:
I kind of conjoined movement with the environment and thinking about mapping and how people move across a landscape sort of in the same way I was thinking about how mycelium travels and connects neurologically between trees and things like that. Yeah, I worked for some hiking organizations, building trails, doing outdoor education and educating people about having a softer imprint on the landscape and did some garden education Colorado and worked with kids to teach them about their food systems. And then I was leading trail crews out in eastern Oregon doing trail work out there. And then I moved to Portland where I had some friends and I started working for the park system building trails out here and doing environmental education and botanical work. And as soon as I heard about Depave, I was like, that is it. This is exactly how I've been wanting to spend my time. And I, I honestly applied a couple times before I got the job and they had my resume on file and they cold called me one day and they were like, the last person didn't work out, we want you. And so I've been here for three and a half years. I love this work and it's resonates deeply with just how I feel responsibility of connecting other people with nature and the way that I got to be connected with it at a young age, which was such a privilege to get to.
Pat:
Oh, what a fascinating background. And I love the fact that you have a passion for dance and I'm an artist and so when, when you have these creativities trying to translate them in how we live, it's not just like for me being in the studio making art or you dancing, you're actually creating almost this kind of physical reality of what dance can mean to the environment, to the world, and to your sense of contribution. I mean, that's really beautiful, so thank you. Now, cities around the world are realizing that pavement is a big part of the problem when it comes to flooding, heat and water management. Instead of fighting water with more concrete places like Wuhan China, Malmo, Sweden and Philadelphia are turning to sponge city solutions. A "sponge city" is a city designed to soak up rainwater instead of letting it flood streets overwhelm sewers and pollute water waste. So instead of relying on endless concrete and pipes, sponge cities use green roofs, wetlands, porous pavement, and other natural solutions to absorb store and slowly release water just like a sponge. It's a nature based way of handling water in an era of extreme weather. So Katherine, how does Depave fit into this global shift and what makes your approach unique?
Katherine:
Yeah, that's a great question. I think this is kind of the core of what we initially started focusing on as an organization. That was kind of the primary purpose of the deep paving movement. Just because we live in Portland, Oregon, which is a very wet city that has a lot of flooding, a immense amount of rainfall, we have a lot of pavement and you know, we started as a, a small group of friends that started back in 2008 before my time doing this work, de-paving parking lots. And initially it was just people's driveways and identifying sites where you can actually literally see flooding taking place, water pooling on concrete, often flooding basements or running off of paved parking lots down into the roads and causing issues down in the roadways. Depaving just literally does that work so directly we are able to respond to, in a very site specific way where the, the low areas in a parking lot are that need to be de-paved and redirected and thinking about how to move water effectively within those spaces. So we definitely have done a lot of storm water retrofit projects where we are adding bioswales and rain gardens to sites.
Pat:
A bioswale is a vegetated shallow channel designed to collect filter and slow down storm water runoff acting as a natural alternative to traditional storm drains and improving water quality. Okay. Back to Katherine.
Katherine:
Redirecting water away from next to buildings and into new lower areas of the, the site where we were able to actually like do earthworks projects. We've lowered storm drains before to help with that infiltration. Ideally we are reducing the amount of water that's entering storm water facilities and storm drains by recharging groundwater and directing the water into a more dispersal. I think we're pretty unique in that we actually start from the beginning of that process by first removing the pavement. Not many other nonprofits are focused so much in that they're often doing more of the restoration of existing spaces. And we, we are really like, we're literally breaking ground to help move this water,
Pat:
Especially given the extreme weather that we've experienced in the last 10 years. When we get downpours, even here in St. Paul, Minnesota, when that rain comes down, streets start to flood. You know, sewer systems weren't designed to handle this kind of overflow of water. So what you're doing, you're like a safety valve in a sense, a green safety valve.
Katherine:
Yeah, totally. And we've estimated that for every square foot of pavement we remove, we're actually redirecting 10,000 gallons of storm water from our storm Wes every year. So if you think about one of our larger project sites where we've actually depaved 20,000 square feet, you're getting up to the millions of water, you know, that we're mitigating from just entering rivers directly. And we are on a sponge here in Portland. You know, this isn't estuary this, this originally was a very swampy area. There's a confluence of two rivers. This would've been a natural floodplain. Now the landscape is super industrial concrete and so we're helping to reconnect the sponge .
Pat:
Yeah. So to speak, now Depave isn't just about removing pavement, it's about justice, resilience, and community. How does Depave bring these values to life?
Katherine:
We have really done a lot of work as an organization in this area. We started kind of just responding to all of the projects that people wanted us to do. As soon as we started this movement, people were reaching out to us from all across the city wanting to depave their driveways or their schools, which is awesome. And we did do a lot of projects that way. But as the conversation started to get more complex with thinking more about spatial distribution of pavement and what communities are actually benefiting from our work, it became much more clear that if we're just de paving schools from more affluent neighborhoods where people have the, the intel about our work, which ends up being people who are more connected to the conservation movement or who have just been more in the loop. We're not actually serving the most under-resourced communities that need to see this work happen the most.
Katherine:
And so East Portland tends to be an area where communities were displaced to when the large freeways were put in and when really like communities of color were displaced due to development in the city. And those communities lack access to green space. They lack access to large form tree canopy. And so we've really focused our work in those. There's neighborhoods, we have a whole equity matrix that takes into account racial demographics, connection, walk-ability of neighborhoods, household income. We really focus our school projects. Ideally we work with schools that have a higher free and reduced lunch program. So we're trying to do that responsibly. Also nothing we do is prescriptive to like a top down model of telling communities what they should see in their space. Especially when we're working with culturally specific groups, we're really slowing down and taking the time to hear from those communities what plants they would like to see, what ways we could transform their space into something that's actually more useful for them. And by doing that, we have slowed down the process of doing these projects, but are able to have much longer lasting, more meaningful work happen in these communities.
Pat:
Oh yeah. Last September, Marty Holtgren, fisheries biologists and social scientist came on and talked about dam removal in Michigan. He shared insights into the delicate balance between science, culture and community and how they changed their model to talk to the indigenous people who lived in that region. And I'm marveling that Depave is also doing that. The people that grew up around those lands, they should be asked, it's their home and I love how you slowed down. And the attitude is working with the community there, asking them what they need, what they see, what their part in is in it, and then proceed from there.
Pat:
And that brings me to something called redlining. Redlining is a housing policy where banks and government put red lines around neighborhoods, mostly black and immigrant communities to deny them loans, mortgages and investment. This forced generations of people into poverty and neglect. The impact is still visible today from underfunded schools like, like you were talking about, to hotter, more polluted neighborhoods with fewer trees, fewer green spaces. So it wasn't just discrimination, it was systemic, it still dealing with the fallout. So the connection between redlining and urban heat is striking. Can you explain how pavement plays a role in this legacy of environmental racism? What do you do to reverse it?
Katherine:
Yeah, this is something we think about a lot. And like I said, you know, we've identified geographies in Portland where you actually see it and, and you can trace that back to these redline neighborhoods where people were displaced from. And you know, pavement directly relates to the cheapest way to manage land. You know, often is paving it. And neighborhoods that often are historically disenfranchised communities are more likely to be closer to on point source pollutants or large industry or large highways are put through those neighborhoods. And all of that is often primarily paved. You know, you're not gonna see a park next to industrial waste plant or something. No. And, and as we've seen with these, the heat domes that we had in 2020, and we are continuing to see these, you know, massive heat waves through the west. Communities who are living in high rise apartments who don't have access to green space are more likely to be affected negatively.
Katherine:
It's, you know, there's a huge amplification of heat on pavement. And so parts of cities are becoming unlivable and the people most affected by that are people who have been historically disenfranchised. And so we're trying to actively undo that history and think critically about it and continue to push other groups in the community to do that as well. And think about that. And there is a, a lot of people to are doing this work together. And so I think we're seeing a real movement towards this greening of cities. But I do want to also acknowledge that there's this phenomenon of green gentrification that takes place as a result of these kinds of projects that also complexifies. This is today as we're doing this screening work and creating park spaces, we're also at risk of displacing people today in this work and increasing property values. There's still a risk of us proliferating ways in which people get displaced through reg greening work. And so I think it's something be aware of is yeah,
Pat:
I understand that as an artist. I had a studio downtown Minneapolis for 12 years. Artists would go into areas, they would take these beat up old buildings, you know, put the sheet rock in, hang windows, fix them up. And as you're talking about green gentrification, the next thing that happens is gentrification. The rents skyrocket, the artists have to move out and then they find another unclaimed area. What you're talking about is very real. I mean, how do you deal with that? I mean, you can't control, once you've made this beautiful green area, you can't control that kind of gentrification, can you?
Katherine:
I mean I think it's something, you know, we can advocate for low income housing and support people's, our politicians and trying to, you know, advocate for creating more sustainable housing policy. But our focus is in the green work. Again, it's an interconnected system of none of us should be doing the work we're doing in silos. Like we should be cross-pollinating and talking with other types of organizers and activists. To make sure that we're all seeing these systems and all and issues as interconnected. And so I wish I had a better answer for that, but I think just to be cognizant of at the very least,
Pat:
But I do like how you are responding that as a group, you're reaching out to other groups, other organizations, communities and you're not doing it as like, we're coming in, we're doing it goodbye. You are reaching out and trying to make this systemic reality of investors. I don't mean money investors, but people who live in those communities. What I found so fascinating about depave projects, they aren't just technical but deeply community driven as you're talking about. I want ask you, what's the most surprising or powerful transformation you've seen either in physical space or people involved? Do you have a story? I bet you have a lot of stories.
Katherine:
Yeah, there's been so many. I mean, when I first came on, we were just at the depaving stage, which actually means we were on like year five of the development of a project with the Native American Rehabilitation Association Center out in East Portland where we worked with this indigenous rehabilitation center for youth to de pave one of their parking lots and carved out this incredible space for them where they, their elders identified first foods and medicinal plants from those tribal groups and put in this healing garden and sweat lodge space. And it's not accessible to the larger community, it's really for their community. But seeing that group come together the whole time, we were depaving there. They, the elders were drumming the way they held space for that very land-based project. There was extremely moving and felt really well, like really grounded the work in a true land back notion.
Katherine:
But yeah, project I'm really excited about right now is our first right of way project in the street in the central city of Portland in this area called the Central East Side Industrial District, which is part of the city that has historically been an industrial center for manufacturing and freight and you know, moving material through the city. And, but it's a part of the city that actually is seeing future housing by 2035. There's an estimated 7,000 new households moving to that area because they're putting in a lot of low income mixed use housing for the city as the city's growing. But that's a part of the city with the lowest access to urban tree canopy and green space. And so we've been working, doing outreach for a project there where we're creating a parklets site and actually closing a section of street to install a green plaza.
Katherine:
And so for the past three years I've been working to host these pop-up basically events that celebrate people and music and art in the street in, in replacement of cars. That for me has been a really beautiful interconnected project where we're working with the Portland indigenous marketplace that's gonna be moving into this, uh, building next door. We've been working with a group called Ground Score that is this amazing worker-owned collective that employs houseless people to do camp cleanups. And we've been hiring their workers to maintain these temporary planters that we've moved into the site and yeah, have done outreach into the houseless community of that area to, to hear from folks living on the street what they would like to see in a park space and really just having these celebrations. We, I brought skateboarding, skate features into the street 'cause we closed the street. So we've had, like last summer we had three month long skate park in the street that we actually worked with the city to like permit and accept and then like yeah. Hours of live music and we had a giant puppet show and it's just been a really fun, playful way to kind of merge my personal interest in art and people power with the, the notion of a future green plaza. Yeah. It's been very multifaceted and had tons of different partners and people involved. So
Pat:
What I love about your stories, uh, the first one with indigenous people is how as you're trying to dig up the concrete and doing all of that and they're drumming. I love the idea of ritual, actually acknowledging it almost makes it a, a sacred process of reclaiming the land. And then when you bring in the arts and the performance and the skateboarding, it seems like what you're doing is really celebrating what's life affirming. It's not just saying, oh, we're gonna make Green Canopy and do this. It's, it's a totality of a lived experience when you live in this community. We have these green spaces, we're doing reclamation, you're reclaiming spaces, but you're making celebratory. You're making it something to be to be honored and enjoy. There's a joy to your work and I think that's really, really a wonderful component to what you do.
Katherine:
Yeah, I fully agree. I think that like play is too often forgotten and joy is too often forgotten in this work. You know, people are thinking about the bottom line and concerned about maintenance challenges and it's just, it loses track of what we're really trying to do, which is like just in community and and survive as our climate's changing and our political structures are oppressive and our built environment is oppressive, you know, it's the only thing we can do as you know, little fleshy beings that are in this hard landscape is really like creating spaces for us to exist. Like the porous sponge-like creatures that we are too. Yeah. Yeah. It brings me a ton of joy. Something that we really value in our, all of our work. We try to do most of the actual deep paving by hand. I think that's important to note.
Katherine:
We gather groups of volunteers sometimes up to like 200 people to all work together to actually physically rip out the pavement together using, we have a whole protocol and lot lots of crew leaders and we manage the safety of it quite well in those events. We're playing music, we are meeting people sometimes we even have a live band playing and people, they feel carved into the space through that memory. Often I'll tell people I worked for DePave and people who they'll have worked on Depave projects like 10 years ago and they tear up and they're like, oh my God. I remember depaving my son's school at the time and I helped do it this one part of the project. And it's, it's beautiful. It really, yeah, it continues to grow and, and give people a lot of meaning.
Pat:
I like the fact that you don't see it as, oh, this problem to solve instead what's the opportunity here? And anybody who's dug, dug up concrete and I've done it. I've built buildings and done concrete work. It is awesome physical, I mean this is not for, let's pass the chocolate bon bons kind of work. This is, I mean this is work work and the fact that you can have a, a band going and the fact that 10 years later someone experienced something like that and they talk about it as if it happened yesterday, there's something very precious in that there's an ownership in that. Yeah, I worked on that project And you offer that to people as well. You offer that kind of ownership.
Katherine:
Definitely, yeah. And I think it is what makes our project successful is people want to steward a site or a space that they have physically built themselves. I mean, just on Friday I was working with a University of Utah school group that came out to spend their spring break doing different service projects in the city and they help me remove a bunch of invasive species, some like Clematis and Tree of Heaven. And we were installing some signs 'cause there was this bioswale at a school site that no one, you know, you wouldn't even know it as a Depaving project site 'cause there wasn't a sign up. So, and it was really, it was a great workday and as we were out there, somebody, two different people from the neighborhood came up and they're like, oh, we, we de pave this eight years ago. And yeah, I, I was actually the one coming out here and connecting my hose to irrigate this, these plants when they were getting established and wow. It was just, it was so validating to be like, okay, great. We are here for a reason. Yeah. Like always am about to cry when I talk about it.
Pat:
Listen to do work like that, it doesn't get better than that. It really doesn't. Yeah. So with climate change accelerating, how do you see Depave's work fitting into the larger movement towards climate resilient, sustainable cities? Like do, are you just Portland focused or do you see yourself in a larger scope?
Katherine:
I love this question. First off, I guess just wanna say, contextualizing our work, two years ago we did this awesome project with this NASA developed group, which is a science-based workforce development program that NASA does.
Pat:
N.A.S.A. NASA, yeah, that one. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Katherine:
So we actually worked with NASA scientists who used infrared satellite data to actually show that from space from NASA satellites, they could see that our projects have reduced urban heat, surface temperature heat in cities really by up up to two degrees, which is pretty significant. You could see that from space satellites for a site that was only an 18,000 square foot parking lot. And that was at a school where we reduced heat considerably for the, the students in their classrooms. So we actually have hard data to show that our work is responding to climate change and these urgent needs of reducing urban heat. So in general, with just storytelling, I think there's more work for us to do with connecting with the science behind this at a larger scale showing cities and policy makers that this is actually an effective way to combat climate change in a very tangible way, at least our experience of heat as we're moving towards hotter and hotter days.
Katherine:
But in terms of our work, we've actually connected with groups all across the country and across the world. There's now a Depave Canada group. There's a group on the, in the Puget Sound. There's a group in Chicago we're training right now, we're hopefully gonna Depave with them next year. There's a group in Boston, I think Santa Cruz, there's people all across the world. We trained someone a group in France two years ago. And we have this thing called the Depave Network, which you can find on our website. And we're actually working right now on putting together a symposium for next year. We're trying to figure out funding for this, but we're hoping to host a international gathering of organizers and activists in, in Chicago. So anyone could come and join us and learn about our work and learn about the, the how of, really the bread and butter of how to do the physical deeping itself and then also kind of situate it in the conversation of everything we just talked about with, you know, climate justice, environmental justice concepts.
Katherine:
Yeah. Framing it to be kind of like this iterative group process where people who have experience from their own communities can come in and tell us about their best practices for doing this work and spreading the word, joining the Depave network. We're always looking for more folks to just take up the helm. You know, I think we technically have like a patent on the word Depave , but we want other groups to be, you know, Depave whatever, do whatever. Yeah. You're in and I'm actually about to leave in a couple weeks for a road trip across the US and I'm hoping to connect with groups throughout the cities that I'm going through to basically do more outreach and set up work communities with, um, knowledge about Depave .
Pat:
Now we hear a lot about urban development projects, adding infrastructure, not removing it, you know, developers. What challenges do you face in advocating for less pavement? Do you get pushback from developers when you wanted depave an area?
Katherine:
We have to work with the land owners to do our work. I wish we were doing more rogue depaving in areas where there's just large parking lots at like empty shut down strip malls or whatever. But we, we don't do that. We work very intentionally with the landowners. So, you know, there has to be a lot of buy-in for our project work to happen. I like to think that we're, you know, a threat to developers and that people are seeing us and, and making the connection that we need less development happening in cities or less behaving at least. But honestly, a lot of the challenges we face is with permitting and with the city.
Pat:
The permits.
Katherine:
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Katherine:
In Portland there's a, there's a very just antiquated, clunky system of red tape for getting this work done. Even though the work we're doing is closely aligned with the city's identified goals for livability and reducing heat and all the things, we just depaved a site at a church, a historical black church where we depaved 20,000 square feet of a back parking lot and we actually got slapped with a $7,000 fee just to undo a a, this antiquated parking requirement from 1972. I, I believe it was just a piece of red tape and it was just a parking mandate issue from the seventies that, you know, the church community didn't care about that parking lot, it hadn't been parked in for years. Yeah. But we still face that all the time. And I think that's, that's something that's just hard and that's gonna be hard, probably even harder in other cities where they're not as focused and on green space as Portland is. S,
Pat:
Well you kind of leading into my next question I was gonna ask, is Depave also involved in advocacy? Like what systemic changes, let's say at the city, state or national level would make it easier to create these greener more livable urban spaces? And what you just identified is reviewing permits and old statutes for permits for cities to do that. I mean, that's the first thing right out the gate.
Katherine:
Yeah, I think that one is huge. Removing all parking mandates. You know, that's something we really promote is parking reform and reducing the, the requirements of parking in cities. You know, we know that there are so many other ways people can get around a urban space and pushing cities to have better non-motorized transit options like bikes and busing and trains and all these things that will actually help with urban density in the ways that cars really don't. So that is definitely one in Portland, there's been a whole movement for updating like the pedestrian use guidelines and widening curbs, you know, plantable medians next to sidewalks and, you know, pretty much all policy around street trees and the importance of maintaining and creating more urban canopy is something we always advocate for. And work with other groups like Friends of Trees in Portland for just continuing to like grow our urban tree canopy because that always, you know, that connects directly to our work as well. Yeah.
Pat:
You know, when I look at Depave's model, your inspiring projects beyond Oregon, what advice would you give someone in another city, they're listening to this and they're, they're thinking, whoa, we wanna start depaving in our own community. What advice would you give them?
Katherine:
That's a great question. You know, it starts with one project, I think, um, is identify a site that you can get agreements for to do the deep paving itself, to like get approval to do the, the depaving of a site. Ideally work with the community space like a school or a church or a food pantry or somewhere where your work is gonna help the most people and create green space for the public to appreciate so that people can get involved and really see the benefit of the, the work. It's boring, but fundraising is really important. Thinking about where is your funding coming from? Looking for soil and water conservation district grants or storm water related grants, private funders or foundations, thinking about who can fund the work. And then getting community buy-in is super important. You know, start talking to people about your idea and, and see who else is crazy enough to wanna do it with you. And start to build coalition of people who are gonna go push up against, you know, the building parking requirements and are gonna push the cities to allow them to do the work. And talk to Depave too, you know, we'd be happy to do a training on this work as well.
Pat:
Oh, okay. Okay. So they could go to your site and get information.
Katherine:
Yeah, and we actually have a Depave manual, like a how to Depave manual on our website that you can download. Yeah, it's a DIY kind of approach if you wanna depave your, your driveway. And it kind of walks you through that process.
Pat:
Listeners, I will put the link to their website in the show notes. Now, you know what I, I find really interesting. You really have a remarkable background. I mean, the way you were home schooled your background in aesthetics dance, and you've talked about it a little bit, but how do you see art design and storytelling playing and active role in environmental change?
Katherine:
I think it's everything. I think the future needs to be beautiful. I think we lose sight of that very easily. Yeah. The future needs to be beautiful. We need to see and value aesthetics in our cities. I think there's nothing more depressing than a clearly under planned under designed space that could have been a, a place for people stop and gather and spend time and, uh, invite leisure. You know, what art offers us is the, is the leisure to appreciate ideas in abstract ways. And even with all the urgency of climate change and the urgency of capitalism that is oppressing us and making it hard for us to just literally exist. I think it's the greatest response and greatest revolution is just to also still take time to play music and share art with people and invite in different ideas and continue to stay limber in this work. Yeah, I think it's everything. And that's why like with these block party events, I've been getting these groups of people together who are artists, muralists and artistic welders and skate crews from New York City and all these different groups of people who all care about design from these more abstracted lenses who aren't just landscape architects or urban planners because they continue to push us in ways that if we just work with the urban planets, we're never gonna get to a vision of community that's realistic and livable.
Pat:
So if listeners walk away with one takeaway from you today or an action that they can take to support urban greening, what would it be?
Katherine:
I would say just never stop dreaming. Never stop looking around yourself, your community, the streets you're on, the parking lot, you're in. And never believe it to be true for what it is because I think everything can change. And you have the power to ream and re-imagine your communities and the sites, the spaces you're in. And I would invite people to continue to do that and get involved. If you see somebody who needs help moving their groceries into their car, I help them. And if you see someone who's unloading a truck of soil into their yard, help them. And if you hear there's a planting event at your local community, church or school, join in, have a conversation with a real person that's democracy.
Pat:
Yes, it is. And I guess the bottom line is we are in this life together.
Katherine:
Definitely. Yeah.
Pat:
Well, Katherine Rose, it's been wonderful listening to you and the wonderful work that Depave is doing. Thank you for coming on today. It is awesome to have you here.
Katherine:
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me and caring about this work too. It's clear that you have a lot of passion for this as well, and that's exciting.
Pat:
Are you kidding? When I saw your website, I just got, so it was sadly it was like midnight and I couldn't just like, I just wanted to get all over it. And it warms the heart to know around this country, people like you are out there making change, change that benefits the many, not few. So thank you for what you do.
Katherine:
Thank you. And
Pat:
Listeners, thank you for joining us today and if you enjoyed today's podcast, please subscribe or tell your friends. Thank you.
