What makes a city special?

I had the travel bug planted in me at a very young age, after a complicated immigration story that took my family across many countries. As an adult, I sought to experience and appreciate different places, people, and environments. While I love secluded, natural places, I learned as an adolescent that I have to live in a diverse and complex environment. I spent most of my childhood in fairly homogenous communities, and always felt like an outsider. It wasn’t until I moved to Oakland that I experienced not just acceptance of my life experiences and cultural history, but value in them. And that valuing of each others’ histories and understandings of the world  is what builds community, and community is everything to me. Cities force us to confront difficult issues around equity, mobility, housing, land use, and social cohesion. I serve on various boards and commissions to help work through these issues, and I value the fact that we are trying, even if we have so much work to do. So in addition to the architecture, geography, arts, food, and general access that we strive for in cities, the diversity of people and the communities it creates are what make cities unique and special, and why I love being in a city so much. 

Where is your happy place?

Internationally, I adore Berlin, Ljubljana, the wildest parts of Australia, Budapest, and all of Italy. Locally, my happy place is either alone in some sort of body of water in the Northern California Coast (hot springs in the winter, rivers in the summer), or cooking food for friends and strangers in Oakland (and sometimes DC, and sometimes Brooklyn. I cook for people a lot).