Ryan Slattery, AICP, on Resilience, Community Trust, and Tough Conversations

[00:03] - Ryan Slattery

Those are different audiences that we need to have proactive, difficult conversations with. So how do we have those conversations and not get lost in the blue versus red? How do we not get lost in the us versus them? How do we make sure that when we are talking to a community that we are meeting them where they are? But in order for us to be better planners, we're gonna have to be a little uncomfortable. And being a little uncomfortable is okay. It's how you get better at things. I love community engagement. I truly, truly do. Some of the best data points I've ever gotten through community engagement are the criticisms.

 

[00:50] - Meghan Stromberg

Ryan Slattery, AICP, is the resilience and hazard mitigation planning manager at Fries Nichols, a planning, consulting, and engineering firm. In that role and in previous ones, Ryan has helped communities prepare for, withstand, and recover from shocks and stresses. In Houston, where he grew up, storms can mark time almost like birthdays. So for Ryan, resilience is not abstract. It is heat, flooding, hurricanes, freezes, pandemics, and the constant work of planning for whatever comes next. But in this conversation, Ryan says one of the most important tools planners have is not a model or a map. It's the ability to talk with people in ways that are honest, honest and grounded in what matters. Hi, I'm Megan Stromberg, editor-in-chief of the American Planning Association and host of People Behind the Plans, an APA podcast. In this episode, Ryan talks about banned words and when to use them, the title of a session he gave at NPC26 in Detroit. He explains why meeting people where they are is not about avoiding hard truths. It's about finding a way into the conversation before everyone retreats to their corners. He reflects on how planners can acknowledge the impacts of severe weather without ever even saying the words climate change.

 

He talks about criticism as community engagement data, and he explains why the feedback that stings the most is sometimes the most useful, even when it's wrapped in a Texas phrase like, "There's a lot of daylight between you and a good idea." Ryan also discusses working as a planner inside an engineering firm, how AI fits into planning work, and why planners visiting Houston for MPC27 should come ready for biking, bayous, a serious food itinerary, and a city alive with diverse cultural experiences. Ryan, welcome to People Behind the Plans.

 

[02:43] - Ryan Slattery

Good morning. Thank you for having me.

 

[02:44] - Meghan Stromberg

We're taping this podcast from MPC26 in Detroit. There's a lot of excitement and a lot going on, and I'm so glad that you made some time to sit down with us and talk a little bit, Ryan.

 

[02:55] - Ryan Slattery

Of course. Thank you for giving me the opportunity.

 

[02:57] - Meghan Stromberg

I didn't give you an introduction about where you are and where you work. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about yourself.

 

[03:04] - Ryan Slattery

Sure. I am currently a resilience and hazard mitigation planner with Fries Nichols. I'm based in Houston. We pretty much scattered throughout the Southeast United States. I focus on risk reduction and helping communities build good game plans for how to prepare for, withstand, and then subsequently recover from natural disasters. And before that, I worked for Harris County Flood Control doing much of the same thing. And then I worked before that with the City of Houston, again, doing much of the same thing. So I've been in the resilience planning space for a little more than a decade now.

 

[03:42] - Meghan Stromberg

And resilience is a really important topic in Houston.

 

[03:45] - Ryan Slattery

It is, yes.

 

[03:46] - Meghan Stromberg

Houston has been through a lot. A lot of us think about Hurricane Harvey, which I believe is the most recent major disaster in Houston, but as we were talking before, you ticked off a lot of names.

 

[03:59] - Ryan Slattery

Mm-hmm.

 

[03:59] - Meghan Stromberg

Houston has really been through the wringer, and it's a place where resilience is a really important topic, I imagine.

 

[04:05] - Ryan Slattery

It is. As I mentioned earlier, if you ask my mom, I wasn't born in 1983. I was born the same year Alicia hit Houston. So it's how we mark the passage of time, one storm to the next. We know where we were when Allison came to town. We know where we were when Ike came to town. Obviously, Harvey was a huge, flashpoint for not only the city of Houston, but coastal Texas as a whole. It's easy to forget that that storm washed ashore twice, first in Rockport, then on up the coast to Houston. And then in addition to those storms, we also have to respond to things like global pandemics.

 

[04:44] - Meghan Stromberg

Right.

 

[04:44] - Ryan Slattery

COVID-19 was an opportunity for us to really understand how agile our resilience strategies were or are. After that, we had the winter storm, Winter Storm Uri, which shut down all of Texas, not just Houston. Again, we had to see how well we pivoted, how flexible was our planning. I'm talking about Resilient Houston, our resilient strategy for our communities. We released it in February, global pandemic in March, a year later, winter storm, and we really got to see how well that plan could adapt to those significant shocks and those prolonged stresses. It's hot in August. Mm-hmm. We know that every August it's gonna be 110 degrees and it's gonna be that way until September. We know that that's a known quantity. We know that we're prone to flooding. We're 50 miles inland, 50 feet above sea level. It's flat and water moves slow west to east. We know that we're not accounting for a global pandemic. We were not factoring in prolonged freezes like Winter Storm Uri. So being able to adapt is really a hallmark of a community like Houston and really coastal communities, that, that ability to adapt and reconcile past poor planning and making those core necessary adjustments to make sure communities are safe and can really bounce back better.

 

[06:13] - Meghan Stromberg

Mm-hmm.

 

So we're talking about Houston, talking about Texas, we're talking about resilience. You are here, At MPC, you have a session tomorrow. It's called "Banned Words and When to Use Them." Correct. Tell me about that session, why you're doing it, and what you want planners to get out of it. I think there's a lot of planners in a lot of places wondering about which words that they should be using because the planning continues, right?

 

[06:39] - Ryan Slattery

Right.

 

[06:40] - Meghan Stromberg

Despite anything that's happening, any uncertainty at the federal level, the planning has to continue because we need to serve the communities, right? Right. So, tell me about banned words and when to use them.

 

[06:50] - Ryan Slattery

It's a conversation I have almost daily with respect to how to be thoughtful about what I say and to who in a professional sense. Obviously, we have our personal feelings about anything, but really kind of absorbing that and meeting people where they are is the key thing. If you walk away from my session with nothing else, it's we should be meeting people where they are. We should be thoughtful about who we're talking to, what is important to our audience. Words like climate change here in this space, words like resilience here in this space, equity, diversity, inclusion, we can have those conversations openly amongst our friends here at NBC. Mm-hmm. Those words carry different weight with different audiences. And while I could approach a community and say— and the community says, "I'm not here to debate the science. I believe. We believe in climate change." Okay, cool. "I'm not here to debate the science. I'm not trying to have a conversation about climate change." Mm-hmm. It's still, "I'm not here to debate the science," but everybody by and large has to respond to the realities of climate change. Call it what you want, but like I said, we know it's gonna be hot in Houston and we need to plan for that.

 

We know the storms are getting bigger in Houston. We need to plan for that. So, everybody has to respond to the realities of climate change. Prolonged heat, inhospitable weather conditions like hurricanes or— I didn't know what a derecho was until 2 years ago. Mm-hmm. Inline wind events like that, tornadoes in Oklahoma, prolonged cold here in the Midwest. My wife is from Northwest Colorado. They understand the realities of bad snow seasons mean bad wildfire seasons.

 

[08:47] - Meghan Stromberg

Right.

 

[08:47] - Ryan Slattery

So I didn't say the word climate change in any of that, but the realities of climate change are things that we have to respond to irrespective of what words we want to use. So That's a meandering way of saying that if you take away nothing, take away the fact that it is important for us to have the hard conversations, but also respect the community that we're working for and with. Because the meaningful conversation is how do we protect communities?

 

[09:16] - Meghan Stromberg

Mm-hmm.

 

[09:17] - Ryan Slattery

And how do we protect infrastructure? How do we make these systems that we're responsible for better prepared to absorb those shocks and those stresses? So I don't have to say climate change to talk to a community about hardening their infrastructure or economic development or community revitalization. I can use other words. I can find other ways to have the same meaningful conversation with any community that we work for. And I think that I can also be an advocate for climate change and climate science and science-based resilience planning. I can do all of these things from my perch. At, at Fries Nichols, uh, when I was at Harris County Flood Control. Actually, Harris County is a really good example of having to pivot and have deliberate conversations because everybody knows Houston. Not everybody knows where Tomball is or what Tomball is or Bellaire or any of the other 33 municipalities that are in Harris County. So those are different audiences that we need to have proactive difficult conversations with. So how do we have those conversations and not get lost in the blue versus red? How do we not get lost in the us versus them? How do we make sure that when we are talking to a community that we are, again, meeting them where they are and having the important conversations about the systems that they're responsible for, the systems that make it a good place to live, work, and play.

 

Wherever that place is, that's the end result that we're all working toward, regardless of how you identify. Mm-hmm. And I mentioned this earlier, I like the debate. I do. I think that it's important. I think the best form of the argument being made point-counterpoint is how we get to actionable solutions and meaningful programs, policies, projects that are beneficial to the whole community.

 

[11:32] - Meghan Stromberg

Yeah.

 

[11:34] - Ryan Slattery

So we've lost that. We've lost that willingness to engage in the debate. We've lost that willingness to be wrong. And I'm speaking globally, not necessarily here as players, but Can we find our way back to having those meaningful arguments? I love the idea of picking a good fight. And I think that there are other people who disagree with me that are just as willing to engage in meaningful debate and spirited debate. And it doesn't mean that I'm a bad person, you're a bad person. It just means that we are, we're approaching the conversation from different perspectives. But when we drill down into what's really important, we all, we will all agree that roads are important. We will all agree that parks are important. We will all agree that housing is important to protect. We agree on the important things.

 

[12:25] - Meghan Stromberg

And like you said, meeting people where they are.

 

[12:28] - Ryan Slattery

100%.

 

[12:29] - Meghan Stromberg

What I'm hearing is we find the common ground. We focus on the benefits of the outcomes. We focus on the ability to plan for the unexpected and to plan for the shocks and stresses, which I mean, it's something we're all doing right now.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Like, the world is full of shocks and stresses.

 

Yeah.

 

And we could recognize that we have that common ground and we need to do something about the things that we value. How did you learn to do that? It's a skill. It's absolutely a skill, a communicating skill. I could argue it's a planning skill. Planners have to talk to a lot of people, and sometimes their recommendations whether correct or not, are not what the public wants to hear. How did you build that skill? Tell me a little bit more about that.

 

[13:17] - Ryan Slattery

Through getting it wrong a lot.

 

[13:19] - Meghan Stromberg

Oh, gosh.

 

[13:19] - Ryan Slattery

I think that that's an important thing to appreciate and recognize that you're right, it is a skill. You're not just born a great orator or a great communicator. You're not. You have to flex these muscles. They're perishable skills. If you don't practice at it, if you don't really put yourself out there in a position to have these conversations, you're not going to learn how to have them better. Like, you don't just wake up and are good at hitting a baseball. So why would that not be true when it comes to having meaningful conversations? So you have to practice. You have to engage communities. You have to engage communities that don't look like you.

 

[13:57] - Meghan Stromberg

Mm-hmm.

 

[13:57] - Ryan Slattery

You have to shut up and listen to communities that don't look like you because at the end of the day, that's the best way to absorb that information and really flex that muscle is to be a thoughtful and engaged listener. So going to these communities and really not talking at them, but engaging with them in a dialog, that really is the best way to practice, to build that skillset. I think that I'm still practicing and still building that skillset. I don't get the conversation right. A lot. And I think that that is an important reality for us to consider. And if you come to any conversation with that healthy appreciation, you're starting out in a better position than coming into a conversation with the mentality that I'm going to present something to a community. Instead, I'm going to engage with the community, listen to the community. And I think that that puts us in a position to be wrong, which makes us vulnerable. And I don't think people, I mean, I'm confident people don't like being vulnerable, but in order for us to be better planners, we're going to have to be a little uncomfortable.

 

[15:13] - Meghan Stromberg

Mm-hmm.

 

[15:13] - Ryan Slattery

And being a little uncomfortable is okay. It's how you get better at things. And I have, I love community engagement. I truly, truly do. Some of the best data points I've ever gotten through community engagement are the criticisms. We used to have a whiteboard where after a community engagement activity, we would come back and we would write down the most critical comment we received from the community. And we've had some doozies. We've had some— I've been told, "There's a lot of daylight between me and a good idea." That was fun.

 

[15:49] - Meghan Stromberg

I do love a Texas phrase.

 

[15:52] - Ryan Slattery

One community resident told me that my parents should get their money back. So, But like, those are, those are good data points because it is telling you something. It is telling you that you are not coming to this conversation in a way that is helpful or useful, and you need to make that adjustment. So it's not let it roll off your shoulders. It's sit with it, let it affect you because that's what's gonna make you better and you're not going to make that mistake again.

 

[16:23] - Meghan Stromberg

So. Absolutely. You mentioned data just now, talking— in talking with communities, but then earlier, scientific data.

 

[16:33] - Ryan Slattery

Mm-hmm.

 

[16:33] - Meghan Stromberg

Have you found any difficulties getting the data you need to do your work?

 

[16:39] - Ryan Slattery

Sometimes. Collecting data can be a challenge. I don't think sophisticated is the right word, but communities have different levels of ability with respect to how they collect and present information. We work with smaller communities that, you know, planning directors are wearing a lot of hats. Public works directors are wearing a lot of hats. They don't have GIS staff. They don't have a central repository where all this information lives, and that presents a challenge. And then in larger communities, they might be reluctant to hand over what they feel is sensitive information about Communities and how they're impacted by this shock or that stress. So those are early conversations that we have with communities when we're trying to collect as much information as we can to help them build resilient strategies, sustainable initiatives, hazard mitigation plans. And at the end of the day, sometimes you are going to have to provide a gap analysis.

 

[17:42] - Meghan Stromberg

Mm-hmm.

 

[17:42] - Ryan Slattery

These are the things that you need to work on. That's part of the recommendations that come out of this, right? So we can collect as much information as we can, but at some point we gotta call the ball and say, okay, we have all the information that we can reasonably get. This is what's going to inform our plan. And part of the recommendations that we offer a community will be a gap analysis.

 

[18:00] - Meghan Stromberg

What about data like climate data and data one would typically get from the federal government?

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Related to climate science, how things are changing, and specifically how to plan resilient places. Have you had any trouble getting data, or have things just sort of moved on as they always have?

 

[18:21] - Ryan Slattery

This federal government, it has been harder than previous iterations to get good climate data. NOAA is understaffed, the CDC is understaffed, pick an acronym, they're understaffed. But there are also champions out there who have pulled all that information down and have made it available. So all the, uh, social vulnerability indices have been pulled down and they live somewhere. All of the climate data from NOAA pulled down, it lives somewhere. And so the repositories are still around. How they get updated has changed. We're no longer tracking billion-dollar disasters at the federal level. Okay, fine. Somebody is still tracking—

 

[19:08] - Meghan Stromberg

Billion-dollar disasters.

 

[19:08] - Ryan Slattery

Billion-dollar disasters. So it's about making sure that you don't have just one point of contact to extract that information. Even when there was an administration that I agree with, it was not my sole source of information. It's never— the federal government has never been my sole source of information. And I think that that is important, that when you collect this climate data, that you are engaging with not only the federal government, but, you know, LSU is doing really good doing really good, compelling work around resilience and teaching their students about how to go collect this information and be proactive about it and not relying on a single source of information. So that's a long-winded way of saying, yes, I think it is harder to get climate data from the federal government, but again, I do not think that it is insurmountable. because there are other opportunities to collect this information from other sources, credible, reputable sources. I'm not sourcing it from ChatGPT.

 

[20:10] - Meghan Stromberg

Of course.

 

[20:11] - Ryan Slattery

I'm sourcing it from Katherine Hayhoe, or I'm sourcing it from LSU, or I'm sourcing it from, you know, the Water Institute. These are the champions that are still relying on science-backed planning. So there are reputable sources out there.

 

[20:28] - Meghan Stromberg

I want to pivot a little bit to your own career. You mentioned a list of places that you've worked for, and now you're at and Nichols. Mm-hmm. And I think of that mostly as an engineering firm, but of course you are a certified planner. What is it like working in a large engineering firm as a planner and maybe particularly as a resilience planner?

 

[20:48] - Ryan Slattery

It's a lot of fun. I'll start with that. Being at an engineering firm, and we are an engineering firm, we're water resources, really smart humans when it comes to stormwater, really smart humans when it comes to environmental science, uh, water quality, but also planning, really smart humans in our planning shop. And the benefit of being a planner working for an engineering firm is we have a really good opportunity to engage in integrated planning.

 

[21:16] - Meghan Stromberg

Mm-hmm.

 

[21:17] - Ryan Slattery

So when we are developing comprehensive plans, resilient strategies, sustainable initiatives, we can do that in Congress with our, our really smart stormwater folks. We can do that with our really smart environmental planners and transportation planners. And when we bring those humans in to the conversation early, one, we get better comprehensive plans out of that. We get really, really truly comprehensive strategies that are driven by subject matter experts that we have immediate access to in our firm. So now when we're talking about those recommendations, those recommendations have— the credibility of our subject matter experts. And when we hand them off to our stormwater group or our environmental people, those resilient conversations are already baked in. So, I think we have an invaluable benefit. Is that the right word? I think that's the right word.

 

[22:24] - Meghan Stromberg

Yeah.

 

[22:24] - Ryan Slattery

Of having access. We have a glut of really smart people that we get to leverage, and that also makes it really fun because I get to learn from them in a meaningful way. And then the counter to that is we get to help them with things like community engagement. We get to really get down into the fray with them on making sure that we're doing a good job translating English to English.

 

[22:53] - Meghan Stromberg

Mm-hmm.

 

[22:53] - Ryan Slattery

Making sure that we take those really complex, complicated conversations that they're having and making them accessible to as many audiences as as possible. Again, going back to meeting people where they are.

 

[23:06] - Meghan Stromberg

How did you come to planning? I have on very good authority that you were considering being an astronaut.

 

[23:14] - Ryan Slattery

Yeah, you grow up in Houston, you either you want to be an astronaut or you want to be a dinosaur. That's what I wanted to be when I was a kid. And I'm actually, I guess I'm a recovering architect.

 

[23:25] - Meghan Stromberg

Okay.

 

[23:25] - Ryan Slattery

So my master's degree is in architecture. I don't think I was a very good And I was always more intrigued by the systems that intersect a building more than the building itself. I always wanted to talk about the park outside. I always wanted to talk about the road that got you there. I always wanted to talk about the sidewalk that you use to leave one building and get to another. I liked the systems more than I liked the brick and mortar conversation. And I got to planning through another engineering firm. And really my, my planning career took off. I would say it started around Ike doing policy and helping communities plan better around storms from a policy standpoint, but then moving into architecture and Moving from architecture to planning was an easier transition than I thought it was gonna be. It was kind of a natural— I mean, architecture is an allied profession, so it's not completely out of left field that I would say. It's not like, oh, I'm an architect, now I'm gonna be a brain surgeon. It was going to work for another engineering firm that really made that transition possible from brick-and-mortar architect to urban planner, urban designer.

 

And then just by being a Gulf— a resident of the Gulf Coast, resilience planning is kind of baked into those conversations. I think that's a more succinct way of explaining my transition. So recovering architect who went to work for an engineering firm who needed urban planning and design, and then I chased storms.

 

[25:10] - Meghan Stromberg

I really appreciate the way you've put that, put this idea of allied professionals into the conversation. It's a bunch of layers and systems working together, right? And planning really connecting them all, planning being that thread that runs through them. I want to pick up on something else that you said earlier. You talked about these really smart humans in the engineering side, in the planning side, just these really smart humans. I'd like to ask you where you think artificial intelligence fits in planning work.

 

[25:43] - Ryan Slattery

It has a place. I subscribe to the adapt or die ethos because you do, you have to adapt or you are going to be irrelevant.

 

[25:52] - Meghan Stromberg

You'll live your dream of being a dinosaur.

 

[25:53] - Ryan Slattery

I will live my dream of being a dinosaur.

 

[25:55] - Meghan Stromberg

Yeah.

 

[25:56] - Ryan Slattery

And if you think about it, you know, coming from the world of architecture, they used to pen, ink, paper, and then AutoCAD and drafting software. And same can be said for most other professions, like technology is an asset that we should use. We should use appropriately, but we should certainly incorporate. I think AI and these large, like, GPT models are an important component and they help us extract information, right? You can take a notice of funding availability that the federal government puts out. These things are 1,100 pages.

 

[26:34] - Meghan Stromberg

Hmm.

 

[26:34] - Ryan Slattery

Like, who has time to comb through those really dense Documents, you can plug that into ChatGPT, tell it what to extract, how you plan on using the information. I think that there's a really useful tool to do that. At the end of the day, it's still a person who has to develop these prompts. Junk in, junk out, right? Like if you're not being, again, thoughtful, if you're not being considerate of what you are saying to the—

 

[27:01] - Meghan Stromberg

The machine.

 

[27:02] - Ryan Slattery

The machine, then you're gonna get slop out. So you still need those really smart humans to be able to really craft what you want this tool to do. Same with any other tool that architects use for drafting or writers use for editing. So we have these tools that make sense in our profession, but you still need training. You still need guardrails. You still need quality control, and that's only done with human beings because they're gonna have the critical thinking that the machine doesn't have. Like, we call it artificial intelligence. I don't necessarily subscribe to the fact that it is intelligent.

 

[27:47] - Meghan Stromberg

Mm-hmm.

 

[27:47] - Ryan Slattery

It hallucinates. These things give you what you want. They're trying to satisfy you.

 

[27:52] - Meghan Stromberg

Mm-hmm.

 

[27:53] - Ryan Slattery

So being deliberate about how you use these tools is, is really, really important. Now there's a whole nother conversation about data centers and consumption and all of those other things that are really meaningful and have a place in our conversation, in our, our sphere as planners. And we're seeing those conversations in the smaller communities that we work for because that's where those data centers are being put up. And now we're talking about competing for resources, human beings competing with data centers for water. That's gonna be another one of those hard conversations that we need to start having. And it's going to be contentious and people are going to be angry and we have to be willing to sit with that. We have to be willing to let it affect us because it's going to affect how we plan. Again, another long-winded explanation, but all that to say, I think that AI is a useful tool. We should appreciate it as a tool. We should not be using it as the thing that's going to write our plan for us.

 

[28:59] - Meghan Stromberg

Perfectly said. Before we close the conversation, I would be remiss to not mention that MPC27 will be in Houston next year. What should planners be getting excited about?

 

[29:12] - Ryan Slattery

You should be getting excited about Houston. Um, Houston is this really, really interesting incubator. We're not seen as a walkable city, but we have pockets of walkability. We have downtown core, we have, uh, uh, an economic core in the Galleria. We have communities like the one that I live in, in the, in the Heights, just north of downtown that have walkability. These nodes aren't connected really well, but they do exist and they connect people to things, to other people in a really interesting way. The other thing that I think that people are gonna be surprised by when they come to Houston is, well, I can talk about the food all day.

 

[29:56] - Meghan Stromberg

I was just gonna ask about the food.

 

[29:58] - Ryan Slattery

So Houston is this really great place where you can have breakfast tacos in the morning, barbecue for and Vietnamese for dinner all on the same day and all reasonably priced and all in different communities. And I think that that is something that is going to be really compelling is we have vibrant communities. We're one of the most diverse communities in the country. We speak collectively as a city, we speak 140 languages at home. We are really proud of that. I think when you come to Houston, you're going to be struck by the diversity. If you've never been to Houston before, I think you're going to be really, really drawn in by the cultures that intersect in Houston. We just opened the only Ismaili Center in the United States because we have the largest community in the United States. AIA Houston just hosted their Gulf Coast Green Conference. Hmm. At the Ismaili Center. It's a beautiful building. I think that that is also something that you'll be struck by is Houston is often described as a city with no history. It's relatively true. We tear things down rather than restore them. But there are some gems that are really, really impressive.

 

So the history is impressive. The arts, the culture. If the Astros are in town, that's a fun opportunity to really— experience something that the entire community comes together for. It's in downtown Houston. So I'm not sure how familiar you— anybody is with Houston, but the Astros used to play in the Astrodome, which was set kind of south of the city. So bringing that into the core, so the Astros, the Rockets, the Dynamo, the Dash, and now the Comets, the WNBA Comets are coming back to Houston. They all play downtown in this sports— Stadium. Complex. It's a really interesting way how that has reinvigorated downtown, because before you would just go downtown, you would work, you would leave. But now you have these reasons to be downtown. I think people are going to have a lot more fun than they think they will when they come visit. People sleep on Houston and they shouldn't. It's a vibrant town. It's a fun, fun town. If you can get past the 110 degrees in, in August, um, it's a great place to live, work, and play. So I'm very excited about NPC coming to, to my hometown next year.

 

So I think it's gonna be a lot of fun and it's kind of a mulligan. NPC was supposed to be in Houston in 2020 when COVID shut down everything. It shut that down too. So I think that a lot of planners in Houston are excited about finally getting the opportunity to show off a lot of the really cool things that are being done, the parks, the hike and bike trails. Um, my wife and I, we're cyclists, so we live half a mile from the White Oak Hike and bike trail. When I worked at the City of Houston, that's how I got to work. I biked along White Oak Bayou. We started to think of the bayous as not something that we need to avoid, but something that we can appreciate. Mm-hmm. We've made the bayous our front yard in a really meaningful, compelling way. This thing that we rely on to protect us can also be a thing that we enjoy as recreation, for me, as, as a way to commute to and from work. And I think that that is gonna shock people. The hike and bike network and how it's integrated with the Bayou system is really, really interesting and impressive.

 

I hope somebody does a mobile tour for that.

 

[33:34] - Meghan Stromberg

It's almost certain that there'll be one. Yeah.

 

[33:35] - Ryan Slattery

100%. 100%. If you come to Houston, you can only do two things. Check out the hike and bike, eat the food.

 

[33:42] - Meghan Stromberg

That sounds like a great recipe for success.

 

[33:44] - Ryan Slattery

Yeah, absolutely.

 

[33:45] - Meghan Stromberg

Ryan, this has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for being on People Behind the Plans.

 

[33:50] - Ryan Slattery

I, I I cannot thank you enough for having me. It has been a lot of fun and I really appreciate having the opportunity.

 

[33:56] - Meghan Stromberg

Thanks for listening to another episode of People Behind the Plans, an APA podcast. If you want to hear more great conversations with experts from across the planning landscape, subscribe to the APA podcast. You can find the APA podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find our entire library of past episodes at planning.org/podcast.