This City Councilor Is Making Cambridge Safer and More Affordable
Meet Burhan Azeem, a city councilor in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A graduate of MIT, he’s the youngest councilor in the city’s history and has a special focus on housing affordability and street safety.
Burhan has successfully expanded zoning for affordable housing, removed parking minimums, and helped build bike lanes throughout the city. He also helped found a nonprofit that impacts housing policy on the state level. Today, he and Tiffany sit down to discuss how he got to this point and what he’s working on next.
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Tiffany Owens Reed 0:00
Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Bottom-Up Revolution podcast. I'm your host Tiffany Owens. One of the most interesting parts of getting to host this show is hearing how so many people find themselves pulled into the world of urbanism and civic advocacy. Many of the people I've had on this show never planned on becoming an advocate for their city. They never planned on becoming passionate about urbanism or any of the various issues that we talk about. But then something happens, and they begin to see their city in a new way, and suddenly realize they simply must show up and take action. Today's guest did not start out planning to serve in local government, but that's where he is today. Burhan Azeem was planning on a career in Materials Science and Engineering, but now is about to run for his third term on the Cambridge City Council. A graduate of MIT, Burhan is the youngest counselor in the city's history. His primary focuses are on housing affordability, street safety and universal pre-K. In his first term as counselor, he expanded zoning for 100% affordable housing projects and successfully removed costly parking minimums that limited housing development. Now serving as Co-Chair of the Housing Committee, Burhan is focused on expanding housing in Cambridge. His main initiative centers on legalizing multifamily housing up to six stories throughout the city, ensuring that Cambridge remains an affordable and accessible place to live for all of its residents. Burhan, welcome to the Bottom-Up Revolution Podcast. I'm excited that you are joining me today.
Burhan Azeem 1:36
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. It's been a fantastic journey to get to this point.
Tiffany Owens Reed 1:42
I'm excited to jump into your story and share more about that. So to kick things off, can you share a bit about where you grew up and how you came to call Cambridge home?
Burhan Azeem 1:54
Yeah. So I grew up in Staten Island, which is one of the boroughs of New York City. It's a very interesting borough, because I think of it as very car centric urbanism, where there's a lot of, like, single family home areas, but there's also quite a lot of apartment buildings and density. It's just all surrounded by a lot of parking. And so it's a very interesting place I like, took the bus going around, but I also had a car in high school. That's very much where I grew up, and then I was lucky enough in that I both got a full scholarship and a stipend to go to MIT in college. And that's how I ended up in Cambridge, where I've now spent the majority of my life, so it's been the last 11 years.
Tiffany Owens Reed 2:33
Those are also very different places culturally. Can you speak to that a little bit? For people who've never been to Staten Island, or never spent time there anything like that, what was home like for you, culturally, growing up? And what was that adjustment like for you once you got to Cambridge?
Burhan Azeem 2:50
Yeah, it's very different places. I think Staten Island prides itself in being a little bit different than the rest of New York City. You drive everywhere, it has a lot of police officers and firefighters, a lot of people who work in public government, and it has like, a more conservative cultural style. And it's actually very interesting, because I think that the way you get around town, the way that tent city is built up, is kind of the opposite in Cambridge, where it's a lot of single family homes and very dense. Staten Island is not that much trains or bike lanes. It's very much busses and cars and automobiles. But like the busses are very, very effective. I lived right next to the bus depot, and you could get anywhere around town just from there. Versus Cambridge, being, you know, more educated, a lot of master's degrees, PhD, more liberal minded, but also having this more missing middle density style and being a place you get around by walking and by bike lanes, and then there's a train that goes aroundtown, but those being the main ways, less so the bus.
Tiffany Owens Reed 2:50
Did you feel more at home in Cambridge? Or, what did home come to mean to you as you were going through that transition?
Burhan Azeem 3:31
Staten Island is always going to have a piece of my heart. I wasn't born in Staten Island. I was born in Pakistan, and then I moved there. But it's where I spent a lot of my elementary school, middle school, high school years. It's where my parents still live, and I visit them often. It's not the place where I feel most at home now, but it'll always have a warm place in my heart. Cambridge is a very nerdy, very unique place. I think, going to MIT, you can imagine I was very much a math nerd. You know, we have bars called like miracle of science, and places that are named, like Darwin's, as cafes and everything. So it's like a very nerdy, very culturally unique place that I really love living in.
Tiffany Owens Reed 3:57
Yeah. So you've had an interesting professional journey, starting off, like we just mentioned, as a student at MIT, then working as an EMT, then you created a startup and also organized a nonprofit called abundant housing, and then obviously, now you're serving in public service, on city council. So I would love it if you could just share a little bit about this professional journey you've been on. Then from there, we'll talk a little bit about how you came to serving in public office.
Burhan Azeem 5:08
I've always had a fun time trying to solve the biggest problems I see. I feel very blessed in my life, in that I got to the US because of a visa lottery, and then I got into MIT, not because I planned to go to MIT, or even knew what it was before applying, but because my guidance counselor recommended it. And I could only go there because of a full scholarship, but also a stipend, like MIT paid for me to attend. And that just puts a very unique perspective on your life. You were given all these chances and opportunities, and how can you do some meaningful work with your life? So that's a lot of what I thought about, and that's why, in college, I went through the whole MIT training. I worked as an EMT for a year. And then, really after college, I had a startup that was doing, you know, COVID care at home care. That was a really fantastic journey as well. And throughout all this time, there was politics going on, right? I think that we were at the beginnings of this resurgence of urbanism, and there was this bill to legalize four story to six story, depending on exactly where you were in town, low income housing projects. And I was supportive, but for life of me, I couldn't understand why it was controversial, right? Like, I think once you're in housing world, you can understand all the common feedback that you get and the criticisms that people have. But as a young kid who grew up living in apartment buildings and who had lived in apartment buildings in Cambridge -- there was plenty of them around -- it just didn't make sense to me why we were blocked in something that a lot of people needed, where housing was super expensive, for concerns over height and density. And that's really what got me involved into politics. And then, throughout that process, I got very involved. I was like, you know, there's a place here to set up a structure to really make a meaningful difference. And so we started abundant housing Massachusetts, which has grown into this big statewide organization that helps pass housing legislation across the state. It works in tons of municipalities in Massachusetts. It's a very close partner with the governor. We've been incorporated now for five years, but before that, for five years, it was just volunteers. We would just meet up in classrooms and all sorts of other places. Just think about all the fun things we could do if we could design the city that we wanted to. And it's great to now be in a place to do that. And then four years ago, I was first elected to City Council.
Tiffany Owens Reed 7:18
So I want to talk a little bit more about what you were doing at the state level before we talk about what you've done on what you've done on council. Can you break that down for us a little bit more in terms of what exactly you all were advocating for through that nonprofit? And maybe you can just walk us through some of the specifics of what you were asking for, what the conversations were like. Like, was it oriented around rewriting or reconfiguring state policy, around housing that then got translated into local policy? Maybe you can just decode that a little bit for our audience.
Burhan Azeem 7:53
Yeah, absolutely. So I would say, like to think 10 years ago, right? It's the end of the Obama years, the beginning of Trump's first term. That's really the situation we found ourselves in. And like, people were talking about how rent was getting really high, but YIMBYism and urbanism wasn't fully in vogue the way that it is today. And so we were kind of, I wouldn't say, the crazy people in the room, but like, the dreamers in the room, who really didn't know what we were signing ourselves up for. And at that point, it wasn't even about up zoning, rezoning in general, for more housing. People thought it was. We were still in a point where we were dramatically downzoning. Cambridge, but also the state. Just stopping that harm was kind of our first focus. And saying, hey, at least let's not pass negative policy. Tto give you a sense, Boston, which is the big city near us in Cambridge, has the longest zoning code in America, where 99 things and 99% of residential development is illegal by default. And so it'd gotten really bad when, for 50 years, we had passed down zoning such that everything was illegal. And you know, Boston used to be 800,000 people, 75 years ago, and it's now 675,000. These growth controls really, really worked. So both Boston and Cambridge, Somerville, were way down from their peak population. And for a long time, we just tried to make it harder to pass these downzonings. So then eventually we were able to start moving the needle in terms of passing things, but that was many, many years later.
Tiffany Owens Reed 9:24
So what was the nature of that work? So was it mostly like having conversations with state legislators, or did y'all present like specific bills to the state? I might use the wrong terminology because I'm not super familiar with how state politics works, but I just am curious to know how you all were able to affect that kind of change?
Burhan Azeem 9:45
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's helpful to understand how Massachusetts works. Which is that in Massachusetts, every group of 100,000 ish people is its own city and town. So you have Boston, right? But like, you know where it's like New York is 8 million people. Other cities have millions of people. Like Boston is only 650,000 people, and the whole state is like 7, 8 million people. Cambridge is 100,000 Somerville is 100,000 Lin is 100,000. So you basically are in a place where there's 351 cities in Massachusetts, and so it's very balkanized. And so for a while there was interest of, hey, there's a down zone going on in Cambridge. There's a down zoning that's going on Boston. How do we stop it? And so we really formed abundant housing Massachusetts as a way to collect a few volunteers in Cambridge, a few volunteers in this and that place, to kind of come together. One of the biggest changes that we had is, before, there would be a specific development proposed, and people would vote yes or no on that, but it's really easy to find a flaw with any particular development. And there might be plenty of reasons to not like it that are not about nimbyism. So what we were saying is that, instead of going through this exemption process where everything is illegal by default, we'd love to just have fair rules for everyone, and really work on making those rules better. And so what we did is we pushed rezonings in Cambridge, in Somerville and Boston. And then at the state level, we started working on trying to pass the MBTA Communities Act, which is basically like, if you're within a half mile of a transit stop for the MBTA, which is our local transit agency, there should be some zoning for housing, because everyone kind of agrees that near transit stops, the state has invested a lot of money, there should be some people who live near it so they can take the train. And so that's kind of what we started working on and we were eventually able to pass. And then as part of that, every city that had was near transit had to rezone for some amount of housing.
Tiffany Owens Reed 11:33
That's really interesting. Thanks for walking me through that. I feel like I could ask you a bunch more questions. I think it's just so interesting, the relationship between what can happen at the state level and the municipal level. And I'm sure it's different based on every state in every city, but can you share what you've learned specifically about the housing conversation, about how these two levels of government work together? I think a lot of the housing reform conversation in the urbanism world kind of focuses on the local, but you've had an experience working at the state level as well, and I would just love to hear any insights or advice you might have on how to think about the state level and how advocating at the state level could help advance some of our housing goals.
Burhan Azeem 12:18
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's like the key question in the housing advocacy world. So oftentimes municipalities, localities, have the most direct zoning control, and so that's where a lot of votes, a lot of rezonings happen. And so it makes sense to focus some amount of energy there. But what's really interesting and fascinating about politics is that the same resident will have very different views of what they want from a state legislature versus a local city council, town meeting member, type of person. So at the local level, they're thinking, hey, this is my neighborhood. I just don't want new housing here. Like, I get the need for more housing. It'll cause traffic, it'll cost us construction. Like, maybe this isn't the thing that I'm most excited about. But then that same person will get more ideological as they get to higher levels of government. And this is true across the board, but in housing, that means as you go to state, you're like, well, I think that there needs to be more housing. Probably a statewide bill won't affect me as directly. And so I support someone who's pro housing at the state level, even though I don't support one at the local level.
Tiffany Owens Reed 13:17
That is so interesting. So there's a psychological element to this of really understanding how people think depending on which level of government you're talking about.
Burhan Azeem 13:28
Yeah, absolutely.
Tiffany Owens Reed 13:29
Tell us the story of of deciding to run. What was that like? Let's start there.
Burhan Azeem 13:34
Yeah, it was fascinating, right? So I had no sense, like, I went into college thinking I want to do material science. Because what are the big problems the world faces? It's like climate change, which is about, like clean energy, like solar cells, and it's about pollution, like plastic, those are really big problems, right? And then I got into college, I started getting involved in politics as well, and I was like, there's actually a huge policy part of these problems, right? Like solar cells are actually pretty cheap, but installing clean energy is really hard because of permitting and all these sorts of stuff. So that's how I first started getting involved. There's still a lot of audacity in being a young person in a city that you didn't grow up in and running for local office. But Cambridge was a very special and welcoming place. Like the median resident was 28, the median registered voter is like 31, and so those might be off a little bit, but you get a sense like Cambridge is a pretty young city. And at that time, besides, the youngest person on the city council was 53. So there was a huge age gap. And as we were trying to work on this thing of building four story low income homes for people, and only a few buildings a year, I was able to get a lot of friends, a lot of people I knew around town, get active in energy. And it felt like this youth movement. Because the people who are most likely to be renters, the most likely to not have a home and to suffer from this housing crisis, are young people. And I got a lot of people energized, so much so that the mayor at the time -- and this was really my key moment -- was like, hey Burhan, I think you should consider running for city council. And he had been third generation Cambridgian. His parents had grown up here, his grandparents had grown up here. He had a lot of long term connections. And so it was actually incredibly meaningful to me, because, from my perspective, I was like, I'm this young kid. Everyone's gonna be like, Who is this college kid who's just running for the sake of it. And having his validation, where he endorsed me, he was my first supporter, was incredibly, incredibly meaningful to me, and it led me to run for that first time. I ended up coming 100 votes short. But then when I ran two years later, I had that basis to grow on, and then I ended up getting elected. And that's really how I got into it.
Tiffany Owens Reed 15:36
So what is it like being on City Council? I think this is one of those interesting conversations at Strong Towns, or just in the urbanism world in general. Figuring it out how we can see local government. At Strong Towns we say we see local government as the highest form of collaboration, but I don't think a lot of people experience it that way. So I'm just curious, did you experience transformation in yourself and how you saw local government? And then when you actually started working within that world, what have you learned about how we can see local government, really, as a means of collaboration? But also, what are some of the challenges you've noticed as well?
Burhan Azeem 16:17
Yeah, absolutely, I would say that, especially 10 years ago, but even now, like there was such a nationalization of news that came with the internet, right? Like, everyone knows what's happening in Congress at any point. You know what the presidency is doing. And local government became really a missing part of the conversation, like people had no idea what was going on. It was not prestigious. In Cambridge, we're lucky, we get paid. But in most places, you don't even get paid for city council stuff, where it's like a small little stipend. And so it wasn't dramatic or romantic, but it's actually really, really impactful. I'm always surprised by how overlooked it gets. In Cambridge, we have a billion dollars we spend a year, and there's nine city councilors. So like, the impact you can have to move, like, millions of dollars is actually quite dramatic. And even if you don't live in a city as big as or as well-off as Cambridge, there's still millions of dollars that a few people get to really allocate, that makes a big difference about whether you hire more teachers or more firefighters. And all these sorts of different trade offs are really interesting, really fascinating, and they make a really big difference in 1000s of people's lives. So I've had a really great, meaningful experience. I will also say that politics is really, really quite difficult, because, by default, a lot of the people who benefit, even they are not paying attention to local politics. A little bit more now that urbanism has kind of come into vogue, but still, most people don't pay attention. So that's really hard. But then the people who are upset with you, you hear from them all the time. And so there's a lot of negative feedback you hear. Community meetings are always really tough, and it's hard finding consensus. People really, really care about their media environment, their neighborhood, and so you will hear from them, and they will usually be upset about change, or be very critical at the least. And so there's a lot of work to get done to kind of bring people to consensus, to be able to pass things.
Tiffany Owens Reed 18:08
So during your time on council, you focused heavily on housing. I'm just curious, can you share what what is it about housing that resonates with you personally, to that motivates you to to push these reforms forward?
Burhan Azeem 18:20
Yeah. I mean, at this point, housing has kind of become my life's work. It's been 10 years, right, of like, doing this sorts of stuff. And it's hard to devote yourself to one thing in that way, and so it has to be really worthwhile. And I think the thing that I come back to is, like, housing is a single biggest line for most Americans, right? Like, it's 30, 50% of where your salary goes to if you live in a really expensive place. And just imagine in a world in which we just had cheap housing, like how rich all of us would feel. It would be dramatic, right? And I think that's the beauty of all the work we're doing. Forever it felt like there was nihilism, like there was no solution, like housing was just going to be expensive, like all these cities where lots of people wanting to move to, there was nothing to be done. And the answer is, actually, there is stuff to be done, and they're very tangible things that you can make an impact in. And local government is really swung by a couple hundred votes, so there's really high impact on your return. And if we can solve this puzzle, then all of us will feel so dramatically rich. And I think that that is a beautiful thought, right? Like we in the US are the richest country in the history of the world, and yet everyone is always scrambling about their budget and how hard it is to get around it. If we didn't feel that, I think it would be a really pleasant life.
Tiffany Owens Reed 19:31
I feel that way about transportation, and I'm sure you could see how that would transfer over to the transportation conversation. Imagine if we didn't have to constantly worry about gas or insurance or car payments or repairs. I've had that experience because I went to school in New York City and I lived there for a while. So I remember only having to spend $120 on an unlimited metro card, versus 300 something a month the brief nine months of my life I had a car payment. And I wanted to cry every time I made my payment. So I think that's a really interesting way of putting it. Imagine how much richer we would all feel if we didn't have to spend 1000s of dollars on cars, or if the cost of housing could come down. I think that's a really interesting and actually inspiring way of putting it, sort of inviting people to think about. It's almost like the opportunity to consider not just the cost, but to think about what could happen if we were able to bring those costs down and invite people to dream about another possibility for what their lives could look like. So let's talk about some of the reforms you've you've initiated and been able to pass. So I mentioned a couple in your introduction, some reforms around parking and zoning. Let's talk about those first, and then we can tap a little bit into the work you've done on bike infrastructure. So can you just give us an overview of the reforms you've been a part of and been able to pass pertaining to housing?
Burhan Azeem 21:02
Yeah, absolutely, I've been a big proponent of passing one big reform a year. It's a blessing that my colleagues trust me enough to support me in this work, and to also believe that housing can be affordable. And so the first one was that first thing I was telling you about, just making it easier to build 100% low income housing. I think oftentimes in the housing debate, there's this triumvirate of people who don't want any change, like, they're very cautious of change in their neighborhoods, traffic, all those impacts. And then you get people who are like, well, actually, more housing is good. It'll bring down rent. It's good in itself. And then you have this third triumvirate of people who are like, just skeptical about market solutions, but if it's low income housing, they will support. And what was nice about that bill is that it brought those last two groups together in coalition and said, well, at least it's low income housing, like,at least two thirds should be able to get behind it. And so that was really great. And it was the first time that we had done an upzoning in the city's history in that way. And so it was a really dramatic way of trying to say, you know, 10 years ago we were fighting down zoning, which is kind of what had happened since zoning had been introduced in Cambridge. Now here's a first up zoning that's really trying to build a coalition of people who, regardless of how they feel about market housing, just believe in the need for more housing, whatever the type is. And the fact that we got it passed was, I think, very important symbolically, but also it made a huge difference in hundreds of people's lives as we built that low income housing. The second was removing costly parking mandates, which I'm sure everyone on this podcast hears about all the time. I think my unique value add there is that I think it's beautiful to talk about all the other little ways that impacts. Like, it's great for urbanism, of course, but one of my favorite stories was, there was this very old great grandmother, 80 years old, in Cambridge. She was not your ideal customer, so to speak, from what we think of an urbanism place, but she had kids, but they didn't visit her as often as they should. Like grandkids never visit that often, you know. So she kind of lived by herself, and she just took her parking lot that was attached to her house and just turned it into a mint garden. Which I also hear you shouldn't do, because mint girls like weeds, but she was able to do that because you didn't need to have that parking anymore. But it was gravel. It was a mint garden. And then when her kids or grandkids did come to visit, they could still park over it. But now she had a little mint garden to herself that she could really use, and she didn't drive otherwise, right? And so it allowed some flexibility. And there's beautiful stories like that,. Like 1/3 of Cambridge residents don't own a car at all, but lots of other people just want to be able to do other stuff with that space, right? Like, maybe they'll drive occasionally, or maybe they just want to structure their own house in all these different ways. And allowing that to be done was really beautiful, and all the different creative ways that people decided to move their lives. And I think that there's a beautiful part of that as well. And then most recently, we passed a really big, dramatic multi family zoning, which is not just about allowing for all sorts of apartments being built across the city, but saying that they can be up to six stories, just quite a dramatic increase. And I would say it's the first time we've really tried to go from, hey, let's not down zone, we need some amount of housing and there should be some amount of flexibility. To actually, we should fall in love with cities again. And triple deckers or three unit buildings make a lot of sense in a lot of places, but in Cambridge, it's mostly triple deckers already. If we're thinking about the next 50 years of growth for our city, we have lots of housing, we have lots of vibrancy. We're thinking about Paris as our goal. So we try to legalize six story Paris-style buildings all throughout the city, and say that we are affirmatively okay with our city becoming like Paris. From a small city to a world class city. And I think it's the first place in the US where we've really embraced urbanism in that density, in that highlighting way that's new for a place that's growing. And that took forever to pass, but it's really exciting to see it get picked up in the economist and all these places, and to see so many other people fall in love with urbanization again.
Tiffany Owens Reed 25:15
I want to focus on the phrase you've been using around these, which is, you've been able to pass. And I think for myself and for many of our audience who are listening to this, this is a phrase we hear often, but sometimes we don't exactly know what that means. Like, what did you do to get this to pass? So can you bring that to life a little bit for us? Like, in terms of what was it like? Is it being out in the community a lot? Is it mostly working with different departments in city government? Is it conversations with developers? What's the nitty gritty behind being successful with some of these reforms? Can you share a bit about that?
Burhan Azeem 25:52
Yeah. I would say that the context matters a lot, right? So I would say, I'm very lucky in that I'm a city councilor. It's a full time job in Cambridge, so I get paid to do this, and I have a lot of space to kind of work on things. So we write a zoning change, right? Sometimes I would write it, sometimes staff would write it. But for those three, mostly, I took a first shot at drafting them, and then staff improved them. And so I would draft it, and like I said, I would try to pass one year. And so I would say, this was my bill for the year. And I would go around and spend basically all my time trying to meet people in community, try to talk to staff, try to talk to other counselors, try to get it into the press, you know, do podcasts like this, and try to say, hey, this is really important. And this seems like a big change, a big shock, and it is a big change in big shock, but it's necessary, it's important, and it is going to be okay if we pass these. It'll still be a city we love. It's just that it will be a growing city that we love. Taking a lot of time to bring people over. There's people who are excited about this, but who are anxious about, can you actually get it passed? Will there be lots of pushback? There's people who've never heard about it before, which is the majority of the public. It's a lot of time spending time with people, educating them, but also not having those conversations once, but going a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth time. So until they fully get the message. Aand it's been really nice to be in a place where, you know, Strong Towns, the national media has also been picking up on it, so they'll hear about this from all different places, about the need for more housing. And then finally, you have those people who are opposed, but still sitting with them such that they're not as strongly opposed, is still really helpful, because then they can come along begrudgingly, or still be upset, but understand why you're doing it. And so it takes an incredible amount of time in community, and not everyone has the privilege I do, of working full time on this. But it's pretty simple. You know, you just write the language, you talk to people in your community, and then when you feel like you have enough support, you can pass it through the legislative process. It's just that all those things are really hard to do.
Tiffany Owens Reed 27:54
Yeah, so when you say, pass, does that mean that just the council has to vote on it, or was it something that actual citizens are voting on as well?
Burhan Azeem 28:04
Yes, because we're a city form of government, the council has a legislative process. We have to vote for it many times over the course of six months, but then it becomes law at the end of it.
Tiffany Owens Reed 28:14
Okay, very interesting. Yeah. Thank you for walking us through some of those specifics. I think it helps bring it to life and just make it a little bit more specific about what it means to actually pass these types of reforms. Can you share a little bit about what you've been doing on the transportation side, thinking specifically around bike infrastructure?
Burhan Azeem 28:31
Yeah, absolutely. So I think that a funny little story before I got into office. Like, you asked, what was the biggest surprise about being city council. I thought the way that things work is that you run on something, and then you get elected, and then you do the thing, and then people will judge you on it. It was only after I got elected that I was like, that's not how things work at all. You run on something, but once you start doing it, there's all these community meetings that happen. And, you know, I think that community input is very valuable, but some of these are 2pm in the middle of the day. And then based on who is able to come at a 2pm in the middle of the day meeting, you decide whether there's enough support or not. And so, every time we tried to for example, add a bike lane in the city, no matter how small, we would have a bunch of community meetings, and if one or two of them got, more opposition than support, we'd be like, okay, maybe this is not a great idea. We'd have to vote again on it every city council meeting. And then, you know, if at one it failed and it didn't happen, it was very frustrating to everyone involved. It was really hard to build something. We would talk about this for years, and it would not actually happen. And it created all this distrust in what is actually happening in city government. It was very inefficient. So we kind of flipped the table. We were like, Okay, let's just start from the ground. What is our end goal? Like, what do we want cycling in our city to look like? And so we created a map of how it would be nice to be able to get these places. If these roads had safe cycling infrastructure, we really think that people would feel safe getting around, and it'd be the type of change we wanted. And what was nice is that we came up with a plan that included about a dozen roads that we wanted to add cycling infrastructure to. And what happened is that, you know, there's nine counselors. Each of us have one or two roads that we're sensitive about because, a bunch of my supporters live there. Or, like, Jimmy's hardware is on that street, I understand why it would be difficult for them. And even though we supported the majority of these, all of us had our sensitive places. But policy making can be negative sum, where we're all like, I need to be careful about this, you need to be careful about that, and then you don't get very much. Or it can be positive sum, where I'm like, This one makes me a little anxious but if we get the rest of this plan, I think that this is a net win. And we kind of went into that collaborative process where we were like, here's these 12 streets, here's 25 miles of bike lanes that we want to add throughout the city. You know, this is not perfect, but all of us are happier with this plan. And then we voted for it. But we flipped the table. So instead of saying, by default, these are not happening and every bike lane project that comes before us, we have to affirmatively vote to continue this process, we said, by default, these bike lanes are happening, and we can always vote to reverse the whole plan, but we're not going to vote on street by street basis. And so it flipped the incentive structure. We said here's a plan and we're going to do it. And I think that made it a lot easier for the public to see what's happening, what's going to happen next year and the year after that and year after that. And we just started doing things and building bike lanes, I think, faster than almost any other place in the US.
Tiffany Owens Reed 31:25
Kind of a Parisian approach, I feel like, if you've been following the bike infrastructure movement that's been happening there.
Burhan Azeem 31:32
Yeah, it's been fantastic to watch. It's really made such a dramatic change there. But there's so many good ideas coming out of Paris.
Tiffany Owens Reed 31:36
Have you been able to visit Paris since the bike transformation has unfolded there?
Burhan Azeem 31:44
I haven't but it's on my bucket list. Hopefully, the next year, I'll get to visit. I'm so excited.
Tiffany Owens Reed 31:48
Yeah, it's on mine, too. So you mentioned at the beginning of the show that you grew up in Staten Island, which is not super bikeable, or it's not like a main way of getting around. I was just curious if you could share a little bit about what your journey has been like around transportation and kind of seeing the value of bikeability and walkability. What has that been like for you?
Burhan Azeem 32:07
I think it's actually really valuable to come from that place. Because the day after I turned 16, I was excited to get my early learners permit so I could start driving around town. And then at 16 and six months, I got my full license. And it was super exciting. And so I used to be like, you know, a 16 year old kid who's excited to have a car and get around town in that way. And then a) I think a lot of people have had this understanding that the times when you have the most interactions with the police is when you're driving around town. You know, it's just like a place where you have all these checkups, and that wasn't the most fun. As well as when I moved to Cambridge, I realized that there's actually a different way to get around. I was like, biking is very active, I'm not sure I enjoy it, the weather is an issue. But then when you saw how nice and friendly it can be, and there's also just less of a barrier, where I can bike around town and occasionally just see someone on the sidewalk and wave, and it feels very community engaging. I realized there was a beauty in that too. And so I kind of became persuaded by seeing a city that had some infrastructure and the difference that it made on my life. And so that's kind of how I came around it. I don't think it fits for every city and town, but there is a beauty in that it kind of threads the community together because you're so much more aware of your surroundings when you're not surrounded by a metal box. And if it's a dense city, you can actually be pretty efficient, and it can actually be a lot easier and faster to get around by bike than even with cars, because you get stuck in traffic so much more often in cars.
Tiffany Owens Reed 33:37
And back to what you were saying, you feel a lot richer.
Burhan Azeem 33:40
Yeah, you do.
Tiffany Owens Reed 33:43
This has been really fascinating. I really appreciate you coming on to share your story and the insights that you've been able to gather from your experience. In closing, I would love it if you could tell us a bit about your neighborhood. I ask this question of every guest, what do you love about your neighborhood or your city, and what are a couple of local businesses, shops or cafes that you like to recommend people check out if they come through to visit?
Burhan Azeem 34:06
Oh, this is fantastic. So I live in a triple decker neighborhood, so there's triple deckers up and down my block, and then there's some taller apartment buildings around the block over. And then what's really beautiful about my place is like there's a park in front of it. And what I like to say is like, in cities you might not get a backyard, but you get these beautiful public parks that are way bigger than any backyard is. And so I really like that place. I love waking up and seeing all the kids walk into school and playing in the park. It just brings so much life and community. So that's my favorite part. I love this cafe called 1369 that I visit all the time. The owner, Josh, is fantastic, very sweet, local Cambridge parent, and they have the best iced mochas in town. I am not a coffee person. Coffee is very bitter for me, and I have a big sweet tooth, but their ice Mocha, it's delicious. And so that's my recommendation.
Tiffany Owens Reed 34:07
Is Cambridge part of the Boston urban gardening world? So I know that's kind of a thing in Boston. Is that part of life in Cambridge too?
Burhan Azeem 34:07
It is. We have a ton of both urban gardens and parks of all different types. There's actually this beautiful one in Kendall Square called the rooftop garden. Kendall squares is our high density downtown ish area, and they have a rooftop garden that's quite large, where you can play all sorts of games and pickleball, which is now really popular, but also there's little gardening things, and it's also another great place to visit.
Tiffany Owens Reed 34:07
And I just saw someone post on on Facebook about the bike share system y'all have there. What's it called for those of us who love to bike. Is it blue bikes?
Burhan Azeem 34:18
Yeah, and it's been growing. It's economically sustainable, but it's also just nice. Like, you know, I love biking, I have a bike, but when you bike, you have to both get there by bike and then go home by bike. And it's nice to have the flexibility of just walking around, take out the bike, get to where you need to go, and then you can find a different way home if you need to.
Tiffany Owens Reed 36:02
Do you have a favorite bike route, or like, bike destination that you like to tell people to bike to or explore by bike?
Burhan Azeem 36:09
Yeah. So we added a new train system, or like expansion of a train system called the Green Line. As part of it, parallel to that green line, we added this community path, so you can get from one end of Cambridge to the other end of Somerville, which is the city next door, entirely through a protected bike path. And it is the most fantastic experience, especially if you've not been in a place where, you know, community paths tend to be more naturey, but a community path that's built in the middle of a city and really helps you get around town. It's a fantastic experience.
Tiffany Owens Reed 36:43
Similar to what you were saying about how we can look at some of our decisions through the lens of an increase in our own perception of wealth, so to speak, I feel something similar when I go to a city and there's an option to bike a really long distance. I don't know how to explain it, but it just makes me feel kind of powerful, like I biked all the way from one city to another, or I was able to walk like this long distance, because the infrastructure was there and it was connected, and it was interesting and it was beautiful and it was safe. And I don't know the word that I'm using, because powerful is not really the perfect one, but that idea of, oh, we could hop on our bike and literally go from one city to the next, I think there's just something really fascinating about that idea that you just don't get in a car. A car is like, obviously you go long distances in a car. There's something about being like, No, I did this by bike.
Burhan Azeem 37:41
Yeah. I mean, I think that a bike is this fascinating thing where cars have the engine and they can go really far, but when you're in a car, you're just kind of in a car. It doesn't really matter what city you're in. Whereas when you're on a bike, you're still part of that city. You get exposed to it, you have to be aware of all of it, and it's powered by you. And so a city that's beautifully designed to get around by bike, you're always amazed by, Wow, I did that. I went like, 40 miles, and I didn't even notice.
Tiffany Owens Reed 38:08
Yeah, did you ever do the five borough bike ride in New York City?
Burhan Azeem 38:12
I've not actually. Now you've added something to my bucket list.
Tiffany Owens Reed 38:15
Alright, there you go. That one's easier than getting to Paris. But yes, if you ever in need of a boost of your own self confidence and just generally feeling kind of powerful, the 42 mile five borough bike ride can do that for you.
Burhan Azeem 38:28
Alright, I'm gonna have to try it.
Tiffany Owens Reed 38:29
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. And to our audience, thank you for joining me for another conversation. As always, I love to remind you that we have a link in our show notes where you can nominate someone in your community who you think would make a great guest for this show. I'll be back soon with another conversation. In the meantime, keep doing what you can to build a strong town.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES
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Tiffany Owens Reed is the host of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast. A graduate of The King's College and former journalist, she is a New Yorker at heart, currently living in Texas. In addition to writing for Strong Towns and freelancing as a project manager, she reads, writes, and curates content for Cities Decoded, an educational platform designed to help ordinary people understand cities. Explore free resources here and follow her on Instagram @citiesdecoded.