Critical Conversations in Transportation Planning: CNT's Nina Idemudia, AICP and Jacky Grimshaw

[00:00:06.730] - Divya Gandhi

Welcome to Critical Conversations in Transportation Planning, where we bring you a series of interviews with pioneers and industry leaders who are offering their insights into some of the most challenging issues facing our field. This podcast is produced by American Planning Association's Transportation Planning Division. The Transportation Planning Division facilitates the exchange of knowledge to efficiently move people and goods, shape urban form, enhance economic vitality, and improve the quality of life. I'm Divya Gandhi, a Transportation Planner and a member of the Transportation Planning Division's Executive Board of Directors.

 

[00:00:46.840] - Em Hall

And I'm Dr. Em. Hall, an urban planning consultant and member of the TPD Board of Directors. In this episode, we speak with Jacky Grimshaw and Nina Idemudia from the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago. We truly enjoyed this conversation. Let's get right into it. Jacky, we'll start with you.

 

[00:01:05.780] - Jacky Grimshaw

Okay.

 

[00:01:06.710] - Em Hall

Tell us a bit about what you do at the Center for Neighborhood Technology, also known as CNT, past and present. How has this work How did that impact you engaged over the decades?

 

[00:01:17.360] - Jacky Grimshaw

I multitask, as I did today, coming here. But my work at CNT is really around transportation. I started the CNT's Practice in Transportation right after I see the federal transportation legislation was passed back in 1991. And one of the things that intrigued me about that piece of legislation was the fact that it mandated as you understand, a citizen participation in a transportation planning process. And that was a particular interest to me because I lived through the construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway, and it happened without us in the community knowing what the heck what they were doing, why they were doing it. Just my classmates were disappearing, didn't know why they were disappearing, but they were being moved out of the neighborhood. And it always bothered me as that, why didn't we know? Why was our neighborhood being destroyed? So I really wanted to focus in on making sure that people were engaged in these transportation decision planning, planning processes. So I started there. And of course, when you do transportation, there are other externalities like like the air quality. And so the folks that I organized around transportation, some of them were interested in what was the quality of the air.

 

[00:02:39.260] - Jacky Grimshaw

So then we came the transportation air quality project, and it just kept going and going after that. So you get transportation, you get air quality, and then, of course, you move into community development. All those things are intersectional, and you can't do very well with one without focusing on the other. So that's what I do. I do I don't do as much air quality as I used to, although we do have a climate program at CNT, and our transportation director is our climate expert, so I let her take the lead. But the work that I'm doing right now in Springfield also includes the air quality portion. Again, the externalities from transportation. Right now with climate change, it's a big deal. So I focused from there and got into more community development. In fact, CNT popularized trans-orient development in Chicago. Took the RTA a long time to understand what we were trying to do, but they finally did. And we found out the negative of trans-orient development, and that was that deep pocket developers were snatching up all the land around transit and building luxury apartments and displacing people who have been in those communities for generations.

 

[00:03:55.200] - Jacky Grimshaw

So then we started a project of Equal to ALD. We're going to have to ALD, we have to have I got some equity involved. So that's how my life has gone. And so it's an ever-changing job. So what I started with is what I do now, but I do a lot more. And then there's policy around all of that. So I work on policy with the city Council's General Assembly, and with the Congress. You know what I do now?

 

[00:04:18.270] - Em Hall

Thank you. I do. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, a tiny inkling. A drop in the bucket. Yeah.

 

[00:04:24.020] - Divya Gandhi

Thank you, Jacky, for your thoughtful response. It sounds like your journey at CNT began with a personal drive to engage citizens in transportation planning after witnessing the impact of decisions made without community input. Over the years, this has evolved into a broader focus, expanding to integrate transportation, air quality, community development, and equitable policy, ensuring all these elements work together to create fair, inclusive, and equitable urban spaces. Next up, over to you, Nina. You're relatively new to CNT and to your role as well. Tell us a little bit more about your decision to join the organization as it relates to your journey.

 

[00:05:07.350] - Nina Idemudia

And I just want to acknowledge that, Ms. Jacky, the amount of work that you have done over time, I just hope I'm able to do a 10th of what you've been able to do. I think for me, my CNT journey starts in my childhood, actually. Really, growing up in Detroit, I'm from the East Side of Detroit, East Side girl. And being Being born in a place that at the time was so devastated by the loss of its population and growing up in a place that didn't have mainstream grocery stores. So we grew our own food in our gardens, and it's a predominantly Black city, and we didn't have snow removal and things like that. We have a certain resilience about us. But as I was growing up, I was always questioning, Why does my neighborhood look like this? And then once I got to college, understood what planning was, I realized, Oh, it's really important for people who look like me to be at those tables in those conversations. And I always say my purpose is to make sure that the other little Ninas don't have to go through what I have to go through or what I had to go through.

 

[00:06:15.280] - Nina Idemudia

And so by the time I started in government with the city of Los Angeles, and then I moved to Chicago about five years ago, my entire purpose has always been, how do I make sure that the little Ninas of the world have access to opportunity? And in a lot of I think CNT exists in order to make sure that people can thrive in the places that they're born if they choose to. And what I mean by that, if you are born in a certain zip code, we know there are certain outcomes that are attached to that. And it's because of structural inequity in how we think about land development, how we think about planning communities, that's that structural barrier. And so CNT exists so that if you're born in a certain zip code, you can stay, you can thrive, you can have access to transportation and opportunity to jobs to economic benefits without having to leave. And so for me, once I got into the city of Chicago and saw the impact of CNT on Chicago, its history, its legacy, Ms. Jacky's history and legacy, I was really impressed and worked with CNT when I was in government.

 

[00:07:19.950] - Nina Idemudia

So I was in the planning Department. We worked on ETOD work together. I was able to, on the government side, help to pass the ETOD policy plan. So I presented that to to the CPC. And again, me and CNT were playing that inside-outside game. Based on my values and CNT's values, how can we move the needle inside City Hall? And then we were able to update the Connected Communities Ordinance together. We were able to designate $10 milliona year's worth of ARP funding for ETLD. And that was all in collaboration with Elevated Chicago, which was members of government like myself, and then obviously partners like CNT. When the opportunity presented itself to go to any organization outside of government, I think there was no other place but CNT that was really the physical manifestation of the values that I had from birth, but also the lessons that I had learned inside City Hall, which is that you have to be able to not only think theoretically, but also implement. And CNT has mastered their ability to not only think theoretically, research, be community-oriented, be people-centered, but then also implement changes in the built environment that actually change to change lives, that move the needle.

 

[00:08:33.040] - Nina Idemudia

And so I'm really excited to now have been at CNT for a year and continue that work and build on that 45-year-old legacy.

 

[00:08:41.000] - Em Hall

That implementation is so crucial. Appreciate your candid responses. We want to turn now to the emergence of millennial leadership across the planning community. How do you think this generation is addressing some of the biggest issues facing this sector in new and different ways?

 

[00:08:57.630] - Nina Idemudia

I'm squarely millennial. I was born in '90. And I, in a lot of ways, am standing on the shoulders of the people like Jacky. It's not that we didn't exist before. It's not that these topics have not been talked about before, but I think there is a momentum with the millennial generation just because of the types of institutional effects that the world has had on us. And so I think our leadership, as we're ascending into these spaces in which we're saying, even the pandemic, our relationship to work is different. We don't want to feed into capitalism to the point that we're working until we're dead and we have nothing to show for it. No life that has been lived. As millennials, we have these connected histories around the globe that we can't deny. I'm Nigerian, and I'm also the descendents of enslaved people. Those are both facets of me. So I can't ignore what's happening on the continent because it affects me personally. And I think we're also bringing that as aspect into the work environment and saying, how can we do better and be better and not just think about ourselves, but think about the global economy and how we make a difference on a larger scale, which is really exciting because we're not held back by the status quo.

 

[00:10:16.710] - Nina Idemudia

In fact, our elders got us in the room, and now we're redesigning the room. And so I think it's a really exciting time to see us at the helm of leadership and also to be prepared by our elders of how we're going to lead, but then also lean into our own experience and say, This is how we want to lead, and this is how we see really confronting these problems. And so it's been an interesting time for me, especially dealing with four generations in one workplace, which I think is a little different, where we have our boomers, we have our Gen Xers, we have our millennials, which, yes, I still got to manage millennials, and then I have my Gen Xers. And so trying to manage the expectations of all four of those generations in one workplace, I think is also unique.

 

[00:11:03.380] - Jacky Grimshaw

Well, see, I would add on to this point. I agree with everything Nina said, but I think the generation before the millennials messed up the world. And so they now have to clean up our mess. And I think that they recognize where we made mistakes, right? That they understand that global climate change is real. They understand that we need to have many modes of transportation not just the automobile. So they understand that people's ability to not have to get in a car and get a gallon of milk is important. So I think the also the millennials and the the nexters are also more health conscious. They understand a lot more than those of us who preceded them understood about, again, the connection between all of these things, health and transportation alternative and clean air and all the rest of that and clean water and blah, blah, blah, goes on. So I think that the millennials will help to clean up a lot of the mess that we made, and I am grateful for that.

 

[00:12:11.610] - Divya Gandhi

Thank you, Nina and Jacky, for such rich reflection solutions on the unique strengths of this emerging generation. Nina, you describe millennials as building on the foundation of past leaders while bringing in a more global purpose-driven and resilient approach to leadership. And Jacky, you highlighted how millennials and Gen Z are not only aware of the world that they have inherited, but are also motivated to address issues like sustainability, public health, and equity in ways that previous generations might have overlooked, creating a truly dynamic shift in planning and policy. Jacky, over your 40 years with CNT, you have driven major policy changes and navigated complex political landscapes. Could you share the policy change you're most proud of and walk us through how you led it to success?

 

[00:13:07.110] - Jacky Grimshaw

Well, the one thing that I believe in is think big. So again, starting back to that had Transportation Bill ICT, 1991. In addition to mandating citizen participation, they also had this value system that transportation should serve land uses. Now, here Here in the Chicago area, we had two different agencies, one doing land use, one doing transportation. And how they put together a land use transportation plan is that they would do their own thing at the end of the year, and it had to be passed by the Metropolitan Planning Organization, they would get together, smash their two plans up, and say, Here is our land use transportation plan. And they had nothing to do with each other, right? And so my thought, and those are my organized groups, said, Why aren't we doing it the way the federal government says we ought to be doing it? And there was no good answer to that. So we set about changing our planning agency here in Chicago. So I organized, I think it was over 110 different groups of all types, CBOs, municipalities, academics, the whole gamut of the society. And And we put this coalition together, and we started knocking on the governor's door.

 

[00:14:34.320] - Jacky Grimshaw

And just so happened, we got a new governor who put together a new transition team, and he named as head of his transportation team for former legislator, Congressman Bill Lepinsky. And Bill Lepinsky had been in Congress when the ICE bill was passed. So then I had a new target. So I went to the Congressman Lepinsky, and I'd say, Hey, you wrote this bill. This is what it says. Why don't we have this in Chicago? And he said, Yeah. He says, What do we need to do? I said, We need to get rid of CATs, which was a transportation agency, Chicago Area Transportation study in Nipsey, the North Eastern Illinois Planning, something or another, Planning Councils? I can't remember. And we need to create one new agency. So out of that came our current planning agency, which is C-MAP, the Chicago Metropolitan Metropolitan Agency for Planning. And so not only did we have one agency, but they also expanded their focus beyond just transportation and land use and looking at housing, looking at environmental justice, a broader... Like planners should have been looking at, right? So now that's what they do instead of having these two separate agencies just smashing their plans together and say, Hey, look at us.

 

[00:16:00.590] - Jacky Grimshaw

We got a plan. So I'm most proud of that because a lot of the stuff I've done has really come from the result of having created a single planning agency in the region.

 

[00:16:11.570] - Nina Idemudia

Can I just add to that, Ms. Jacky? Now I sit on the board. That's true. With CEMAP. So just again, how your work has affected me and given me the opportunity to effect change. And I just wanted to name that and say thank you.

 

[00:16:28.670] - Jacky Grimshaw

Anytime.

 

[00:16:30.170] - Em Hall

Full circle.

 

[00:16:31.600] - Jacky Grimshaw

I love it.

 

[00:16:33.270] - Em Hall

So, Nina, I was at an event at CNT. I hadn't been there before, and I happened to be sitting next to two women who were chatting to me. They said, We hadn't been downtown forever. We've never been in a building like this, and you will probably remember one of them. She stood up and asked a question at the end, and I think it was more of a comment than a question, but it was basically like, I didn't know these types of places were here. I didn't know these types of people were here to talk about these things. I was really moved by that. And it also highlighted what CNT is doing out in the community, and people throw that phrase around, but literally door to door on the streets. So my question for you is, how can planners with a capital will P, and a lower case P, many of whom have wrought harm over the years to a lot of communities. How can we invite people into this work and these processes, especially when they don't think they belong there, or maybe they've been flat out told they don't belong there before? What is new there?

 

[00:17:34.390] - Em Hall

What efforts is CNT doing? Are other things that you would encourage planners to think about?

 

[00:17:40.830] - Nina Idemudia

I think about this a lot, especially since I decided to be a planner. And to me, being a planner is not something that you're not neutral. I think being a planner is a political act. In fact, calling myself a planner when the planning system has hurt me individually, my community Community at a large scale, the communities I care about it, the even larger scale is intentional because I want to reclaim what it means to plan community, plan with community, not plan for community. And I also think for so long, the system of planning in America is a tool of white supremacy. It is a tool to dissect, to separate, to keep the haves and the have nots, to feed into capitalism. There's lots ofisms that I could go into, but I'll keep that from you, at least in this conversation. But I think when I say that, it usually evokes an emotion, right? When I say it's planning is a tool of white supremacy. And I think I use that as an example, one, because I do believe it, but then two, to say we have caused harm, but we can also actively uncause harm.

 

[00:18:56.750] - Nina Idemudia

And the reason why working in government was so important to me, because for a lot of people, including myself, government has caused harm, has perpetuated violence, and has, without accountability, been able to continue to marginalize, again, the identities that I hold and also the identities of people I care about. So I think for planners, especially millennial and Gen Xers who are now coming to the industry, what has been really nice is seeing them understand, and as Jacky and I were talking earlier, of saying, they see the writing on the wall. They understand how these systems has failed, and we're literally experiencing it in real-time. And so I think if you join this profession, and I take it very... If you join my profession, be here to do work, be here to make a difference, be here to undo harm. If you are not going to do that, you are not worthy to call yourself Capital Beat Player, period. I take it very seriously. And also it's like, you can't make friends when you need them, right? That's not how That's not what community means. It means being in community and being able to do somebody a favor, drive that person to the airport, show up at somebody's house when you know that they haven't eaten.

 

[00:20:12.510] - Nina Idemudia

That's how I grew up in Detroit. We didn't have grocery stores. Guess what? We had a garden. Everybody shared the garden. When my mother went to prison for four years, my aunt took us in, and they call her Sugar. It's like, if you needed money or you needed food, go talk to Sugar. She's... And that's how it was. We were generous. I grew up like that, but I also grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood. With the absence of whiteness, there was a sense of camaraderie, generosity that was not something that was... Where It was like tit for tat for something. It wasn't like, I'm doing this because I want something from you. I'm doing it because you're in my community, and that's how I grew up. But then when I left that hyper local community, community and went to school in the white suburbs, I understood that's not how the world operated, right? And then as I went to college at Michigan or I went to LA to go to grad school at USC, I understood, okay, this is the crux of the issue with planning is because we see ourselves as experts, and yes, we have some technical expertise, but really, again, people have existed in our communities.

 

[00:21:22.980] - Nina Idemudia

People have said, we don't have access to these things. We are being left out in the cold. But people just have, again, ignored it because they could. And I think we're at a point in our society in which people are no longer willing to ignore it, and they like answers. Again, my advice to planners is, yes, lean on the expertise that you read in books, but also you have to understand that the expertise is out there. The expertise is in people. The expertise is in Ms. Dolly down the street, and Jose, the kid who walks past you every day at 3: 30. That's where the expertise lies, and you can't separate that from your professional obligation or your professional experience of, again, how do we undo harm to make sure that everybody can thrive. And for so long, only a subsection of our country has thrived And I think this goes back into the millennial Gen Z, where we're like, Hey, you told us that if we did X, Y, and Z, we were all going to get a piece of the pie, and that's not how it's working out. And so, yeah, I think planners have to be self-aware, especially if you are someone who's You're not a part of a marginalized group, being self-aware and doing the work yourself.

 

[00:22:34.480] - Nina Idemudia

Even if you are part of a marginalized group like myself, I'm very self-aware. I am a cishet Black woman. So I understand, for trans Black women, their life expectancy is the age of 35. How can I... I know it's terrible, but it's like, how can I, with my privilege, be able to think about people who have less privilege than me and then plan for them? Because if you plan for the most marginalized, vulnerable people of society, you are planning for everyone. Period. And so, again, approach this work with the seriousness and the severity that it needs, because we have seen in real-time the outcomes of what happens when people don't.

 

[00:23:15.840] - Jacky Grimshaw

Great. There's not much for me to add. Thank you, Nina, for such a powerful perspective.

 

[00:23:24.190] - Divya Gandhi

You emphasize that planning is a responsibility to undo harm by centering community voices, particularly of those historically marginalized, challenging planners to approach the work with humility and commitment to real change. This actually ties in really well with our next question, which is about execution and how can we move forward? Cnt has a rich history of impactful work in transportation, equity, and sustainability. So looking ahead, what are the top three priorities for the organization and And how do you envision guiding CNT to address evolving challenges in urban and transportation planning?

 

[00:24:08.640] - Nina Idemudia

It's a good question. I think for me, coming into CNT, again, working with them, the impact I felt, I saw, I experienced, especially being a career service, government employee opposed to an elected position. I think CNT's ability to create those relationships and say, How do we change these systems? How do we work together to to change these systems. So I say that to say for the last 45 years, CNT has been at the helm of major innovation in our industry. Ms. Jacky, you brought car sharing And I go to Chicago in the 1990s before Uber and Lyft were even a thing. Those weren't even words in the dictionary. And that is something that we should be proud of, that CNT and Ms. Jacky should be proud of. A green cleaner There's green roofs. These are all things that CNT was talking about, and everybody... You can tell me, Ms. Jacky, I'm sure everybody was like, these crazy folks, these hippies, what are they talking about? But now this is normal. And so I want to keep that innovative spirit Over the years, CNT has experienced lots of ups, but with any nonprofit, downs. In the changing landscape, administration changes, funding changes, funding issues, anti-DEI rhetoric, Especially since on our mission, we're talking about low income Black and Brown communities.

 

[00:25:35.440] - Nina Idemudia

And so for me, I want to be able to make sure that CNT can last another 45 years and beyond. And so that's really just about how do we make sure that as much as we are feeding to our external partners and making sure that we're making an impact externally, that we're holding those same values internally, less making sure our employees are being paid fairly, and that we We are making sure that our house is in order and that our knowledge is being documented and shared and that people are hearing about the work that we're doing, lifting our heads up. And the thing about CNT, everybody has their heads down doing the work, right? And that's good. That's important. That's why CNT is successful. And it's my job to help people to bring attention to the work that CNT does so that we can continue to grow. I think also one of the things But CNT has done a lot in its 45-year history and just thinking about what do we do best and where do we make the most impact. And so for the next year, we're going to be going through strategic thinking and planning so that, again, that innovation spirit of what's next, CNT can get back to that.

 

[00:26:44.940] - Nina Idemudia

Especially through the pandemic, where we were all now remote and disconnected, I want to make sure that we're coming back together and focusing and say, Where does CNT feel as though it's effort? Because we're small Small but mighty staff of 22 people. Where is our effort in time most valuable to change the lives of the most people that we can work on our mission? And so being more nimble about that. And then also just thinking about how do we scale our pedagogy so that other cities, because they already do this, they come to CNT and say, Hey, you did this in Chicago. Can you help me do this in Austin? Can you help me do this in Charlotte? Can you help me do this in LA? I want to make sure that we're prepared for that. I want to make sure that we can share our pedagogy with the most amount of people and not go into their neighborhoods and tell them what to do, but coach them. We're coaching CBOs. We're coaching Career Service, Government Workers. We're coaching electeds on how to do these problems to a point where CNT may not have to be in the middle of it.

 

[00:27:49.940] - Nina Idemudia

It's like that instead of feeding into the nonprofit industrial complex, where we're only putting bandaids on problems, we want to get to the root cause of those problems so that maybe in 100 years, CNT doesn't need to exist. I would say those are the things that I'm working on. Cnt is strong the way it is currently, but we have a plan to be more sustainable and to scale our impact in a way so that, again, 45 years from now, we can look back and say, Yeah, we did that.

 

[00:28:23.020] - Em Hall

What's your vision?

 

[00:28:23.630] - Nina Idemudia

What are you doing the next 45 years with CNT, Jacky? Yeah, I love it. You're like, What are your hopes and desires for CNT?

 

[00:28:33.530] - Jacky Grimshaw

No. As I say, there are always problems to be solved. We have has a background. We have this foundation that our ability to share, like Nina would say, is very important, but we have to keep inventing. And as I look at my world, transportation consultation and community development, the city of Chicago is full of opportunity to advance that. And so hopefully not 45 years, but maybe in the next five years, we can make this part of the city's development policy that we have a priority of developing around our transit stations in disadvantaged communities so that we can have that catalytic effect of changing the entire neighborhood.

 

[00:29:28.950] - Em Hall

Well, guys, thank you both. It's been tremendous to hear from you. Our audience is transportation planners and beyond. I appreciate the way that you speak of all these things as being integral, right? So yes, we're members of the Transportation Planning Division, but we all care a lot of different things and understand the importance of being interdisciplinary and all those things. So it comes through loud and clear. Is there anything else you would like to share with an audience of transportation planners across the country? Yeah.

 

[00:29:59.840] - Jacky Grimshaw

Can I talk about something CNT has done that's not transportation, but again, related? Yes, please. And that is the whole thing about flooding. Everybody talked about flooding, but it was always a pure and flooding. But here in Chicago, we have urban flooding, and CNT raised that to the folks who are decision-makers because they did not focus on that. In fact, we even had a session at CNT where Senator Durban came. And so that started the whole process of focusing on urban planning. Our President of the Cook County Board, who was then my Alderman, also came. So we were like that education awareness. So as an Alderman, Tony Prequinkle learned about urban flooding. And so what is Tony Prequinkle now? She's taken. She won. I had CNT look at the Southern suburbs, which flood an awful lot. And CNT came up with a plan for how to deal with the flooding. And then she took, and once there was available funding, she's funded CNT to implement. But the thing that's important, I think, in terms of planning is that we tried to convince the Metropolitan Water Reclamation district that green infrastructure was a real thing, and it could be just as important in terms of dealing with rain and runoff as their great big reservoirs.

 

[00:31:34.940] - Jacky Grimshaw

And resistant, just like the RTA was resistant to us talking about TLD, the Water Reclamation district was resistant to us talking about green infrastructure. And now they've suddenly discovered green infrastructure works. All right? Yeah. So another big system change for CNT. A big feather in our hat.

 

[00:31:54.410] - Nina Idemudia

In addition to what Ms. Jacky just said, I would say for your listeners, use CNT as a resource. We have lots of tools that practitioners use, that advocates use, that community members use. We pride ourselves on being able to, again, take all of these different data sets and things, we're like, Oh, this is so confusing. Government or people try to make these issues seem confusing because there's an end game there for them. And for a CNT, we're trying to demystify and teach people not only how to work in the system that currently exists, but also to create and imagine the system that they haven't seen yet, that they need and deserve. So we have our Housing plus Transportation Index on our website that helps people think about the cost of housing and transportation, depending on where you want to develop. We have our ETOD Calculator, which also does similar things. We have our Urban Flooding Baseline tool, which is one of its kind. You won't find a similar tool out there. So please do visit our website, reach out to us, your municipalities or your organizations, your CBOs. Reach out to us for guidance because we are really, again, we've set the standard over the last 45 years, and we know how to help you get to where you need to go in a way that is grounded in equity, that is grounded in people, that is grounded in making sure that we're taking care of our society's most vulnerable.

 

[00:33:19.850] - Nina Idemudia

So, yeah, reach out to us, come to our website, send us a note on LinkedIn. We're here to help you.

 

[00:33:25.600] - Divya Gandhi

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Critical Conversations in Transportation Planning. To learn more, visit our website at transportation.planning.org.