Podcasts about cnu

Jahn Hines, Christopher Newport's first 4x All-American joins this week's episode of ​⁠. Hines originally committed to Hampden-Sydney post leading Norview high school to a state championship. Soon after he committed to Hampden-Sydney, he decided to decommit and take his talents to Christopher Newport. His first season was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, Hines has been recognized as an All-American each year. His career was highlighted by leading CNU to their first ever National Championship in the 2022-23 season. Hines led the team averaging over 17 points and just under 6 rebounds. The following year Hines repeated as the Coast to Coast Player of the Year and led the Captains to another NCAA tournament appearance. This past season capped off his legendary career- once again being named the C2C Player of the Year. The fifth year averaged a career high 19.9 points per game along with 6.9 rebounds. Hear about his favorite memories throughout his career, playing for the historic program in CNU, and what's next for his basketball career. This episode is available wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to subscribe to the podcasts YouTube channel ​⁠ for more sports content. Enjoy the episode!Sneak Peak- 00:00-00:27NBA Finals Discussion- 00:27-12:35Intro- 12:35-18:17Graduating from CNU, Jahn's Background- 18:17-21:062024-25 Year for CNU/Jahn, Roanoke Game Recap, Dealing with Adversity- 21:06-28:22CNU Support, Alumni Connections, Emotions During Jersey Retirement- 28:22-32:03Proudest Part of Individual Game Throughout Career, Relationship with Coach Krikorian, Recruitment out of HS- 32:03-47:382023-24 CNU's Decreased Roster Situation, NCAA Tournament Games, Playing with Brother @ CNU- 47:38-56:45Break- 56:45-56:54Favorite Memories Throughout Career, Team Trip to Canada, Favorite Matchups in the C2C- 56:54-01:11:58What's Next for Jahn Hines, Signing with Agency- 01:11:58-01:15:47Rapid Fire (Top 3 MCU Movies, Mixtape Chris Brown / Lil Durk Songs, Standout D3 Player)- 01:15:47-01:20:11Starting 5: Best Players Played Against During Career- 01:20:11-01:22:19Outro- 01:22:19-01:22:55

Title: Languaging in Hampton RoadsEpisode 17: Third Culture KidsHosts: Jill Winkowski and Prue SalaskyDate: June 13, 2025Length: 26:10In this episode of Languaging in Hampton Roads, co-hosts Jill Winkowski and Prue Salasky talk with Molly Dye (Williamsburg/Richmond), Jody Conibear Tangredi (Virginia Beach), and Sina Whitley (Newport News) about their experiences growing up globally as Third Culture Kids. The term third culture kid (TCK) was coined by sociologist Ruth Useem in the 1950s, while she was studying the lives of Americans living and working in post-colonial India. While Useem was studying the cultural intersection of the professional lives of Indians and Americans, she noticed the unique situations of the children accompanying parents abroad. Third culture kid experiences vary but, commonly, they grow up outside of their parents' passport countries. Molly's father worked for the U.S. State Department and her family lived in Switzerland and Spain; Sina's parents taught for U.S. Department of Defense schools and her family lived in Cuba, Spain, England, and Japan; Jody's father worked for the oil industry, and she lived in Iran, Indonesia, Australia, and Singapore. Living in multiple countries as a child offers adventure and excitement. It also provides a way to experience different cultures and viewpoints during important formative years. Third culture kids can become very adaptable and commonly learn to understand many points of view. Jody, who not only is a third culture kid, but has also studied them, describes how TCK adaptability and ability to understand others' viewpoints makes them highly suitable for international careers. While growing up as a TCK has its up sides, the loss that TCKs experience over the years often goes unacknowledged. Moving from place to place, repeatedly saying goodbye to friends and having to make new ones and having to readjust to new languages, cultures, and systems can add up. TCKs don't always have permission or time to grieve their losses. Here in Hampton Roads, with one of the largest military communities in the United States and with multiple international organizations and industries, including an international port, the third culture kid childhood likely hits home. Third culture experiences aren't exclusive to moving from country to country. Children who move state to state with their parents' jobs also have to adjust to new cultural systems and to different ways of interacting and speaking. In this episode, we refer to a book: Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds, by Ruth D van Reken, David C. Pollock, and Michael V. Pollock, Published: Nicholas Brealey America, 2009.  Send feedback, questions, ideas for topics to languaginghr@gmail.comWe are grateful to Carlene Klein-Bennett, who researched the topic and developed a questionnaire for and reachedout to local TCKs. Welcome to our summer interns: Sarah Phillips from ODU andKaitlyn Asato from CNU. Original music is by Skye Zentz; Our Languaging logo is byPatty McDonald. Languaging in Hampton Roads is written and produced by Prue Salasky and Jill Winkowski.

It's couples week on Stories as Kerri Cobb Harrison joins the podcast. Her husband Tommy Harrison just talked to Paul the other day and Paul started by commenting that he has not met a couple so compatible as Kerri and Tommy. Kerri grew up in New Kent, Virginia and told Paul that she had a great childhood playing sports and spending time on the James River with her grandparents. Kerri was a two sport athlete in college where she played basketball and softball at Lynchburg University and Christopher Newport University. Kerri had been teaching softball since her senior year in high school, but after graduating from CNU, she turned it into a real business. She has been teaching and/or coaching softball for 34 years and 2025 will mark the 24th year of her All American Fastpitch Softball camp. They discussed Kerri's teaching philosophy and how she teaches life lessons along with softball fundamentals. Kerri is also a competitive body builder and they had a great discussion about what they entails on a daily basis and overall. They finished by talking about her family including her parents who have had a huge influence on Kerri.  Info on the 2025 All American Fastpitch Camp can be found at https://www.allamericanfastpitch.org/camp-landing-page

Fraude no INSS: 742 mil aposentados apontaram descontos indevidos no 1º semestre de 2024. Faculdade de SP expulsa 12 alunos de medicina por faixa com alusão a estupro; atlética segue interditada. CNU 2025: lista de cargos, salários, cronograma e mais; veja o que se sabe e o que falta saber. Lady Gaga veio! Popstar desembarca no Rio para megashow em Copacabana.

The first NPI — the NCAA Power Index, a replacement for RPI— has been released. With that has extreme implications for the NCAA Tournament and how it is seeded. Kap and Caleb are back with that, plus a ton of big-time results: Salisbury's victory over CNU, Tufts' OT thriller with Wesleyan, and a Roanoke vs. Lynchburg game that immediately was tagged as a classic.  There has been goal controversy with a pair of games involving the Jumbos that the guys touch on, too. This year, Inside Lacrosse is proud to partner with the NCAA to offer you, our loyal listeners, $5 off all single-day ticket options (men and women) by using the code ILPOD at checkout. So head to NCAA.com/LaxTickets and enter ILPOD at checkout to purchase your tickets. You know you're going to go to Championship Weekend, so why not get $5 off and help us show the NCAA how awesome our listeners are by purchasing your tickets today.

O procurador-geral da República, Paulo Gonet, enviou ao Supremo Tribunal Federal parecer contra o recurso da defesa do general Braga Netto que pedia mais prazo para se manifestar sobre a denúncia da trama golpista. A defesa do militar pediu ao STF prazo de 30 dias para se manifestar nos autos, enquanto que o determinado é de 15 dias.O Giro de Notícias mantém você por dentro das principais informações do Brasil e do mundo. Confira mais atualizações na próxima edição.

Alckmin diz que preços não cairão em '24 horas' e reforça pedido para que estados reduzam ICMS de produtos. 21,4 milhões de brasileiras sofreram algum tipo de violência nos últimos 12 meses, diz pesquisa. 'Qual crime cometi? O crime de ser preto?', questiona estudante baleado por PM reformado no Rio. Crise de saúde mental: Brasil tem maior número de afastamentos por ansiedade e depressão em 10 anos. Governo alerta para golpe e diz que inscrições para o CNU 2025 ainda não começaram.

STF começa a julgar plano do Congresso para pagar emendas com transparência. PIX por aproximação começa a funcionar hoje. CNU divulga lista final de aprovados de nível superior. Cerveja, glitter e mais: preços disparam e deixam Carnaval mais caro. De Inocência a Eunice Paiva... g1 já viu TODOS os filmes estrelados por Fernanda Torres e analisa papéis.

Kap and Caleb return with a pop-up episode, talking early Salisbury scout, explaining the seven-game NPI concept a bit better, and previewing the weekend. Christopher Newport coach Mikey Thompson hits on everything from Coach's all-time CNU 3x team to goals and aspirations for the 2025 season.

CNU: lista de aprovados é divulgada; veja como acessar. Operação prende traficantes do PCC que importavam armas da Turquia e movimentaram R$ 20 milhões em dois anos. Violência psicológica lidera denúncias em serviço de atendimento à mulher; Ligue 180 recebeu 2 mil chamadas por dia em 2024. Após sofrer abuso sexual na infância, mulher se torna policial e prende próprio agressor em SC. Karla Sofía Gascón é afastada de campanha de 'Emilia Pérez', diz revista.

Dólar opera em alta com tarifas de Trump; bolsas pelo mundo vivem dia de queda. Musk diz que deve fechar principal agência humanitária dos EUA: 'é ninho de vermes'. CNU, Ibama, MPU e mais: veja a lista de concursos previstos para 2025; salários vão até R$ 20,9 mil. Xantelasma: o que é a condição que fez homem 'vazar' colesterol pelas mãos após dieta rica em gordura. Mulher completa mais de dois meses com rim de porco e se torna a primeira a sobreviver tanto tempo com órgão de animal.

O Ministério Público Federal recomendou ao Ministério da Gestão e Inovação em Serviços Públicos e à Fundação Cesgranrio a suspensão da divulgação dos resultados finais do CNU, prevista para o dia 4 de fevereiro, por conta de falhas no cumprimento das regras de cotas raciais. O Giro de Notícias mantém você por dentro das principais informações do Brasil e do mundo. Confira mais atualizações na próxima edição.

O Ministério da Gestão e da Inovação em Serviços Públicos antecipou em uma semana, para o dia 4 de fevereiro, a divulgação dos resultados do Concurso Nacional Unificado. Nessa data, terá início o prazo para a confirmação de participação nos cursos de formação previstos para os blocos 1 a 7. Os candidatos terão dois dias para confirmar o interesse em participar da primeira convocação do curso de formação. No caso do bloco 8, de ensino médio, não será necessário os aprovados fazerem o curso.O Giro de Notícias mantém você por dentro das principais informações do Brasil e do mundo. Confira mais atualizações na próxima edição.

Fianna Fail Cllr Donagh Killilea is very disappointed to learn that HIQUA are sitting on the approval of 25 Step-down beds in Tuams new CNU while GUH A&E is in crisis and backlogged. Gaillimh le Gaeilge, in collaboration with Galway City Tidy Towns and Snap Galway, is delighted to announce Tigín as the winner of the Comórtas na Nollag 2024 - a Christmas competition designed to encourage local businesses and organisations to embrace and showcase the Irish language in their festive window displays. Calling all Washer-Uppers in Galway - Oil I want for Christmas is clear drains!

Preached by Peter Lyon of Reformed University Fellowship at CNU | www.cnu.ruf.org | www.bygrace.cc

A Coreia do Sul está em choque. Acaba de ser declarada a lei marcial no país e um general comanda a emergência, embora as autoridades do estado permaneçam no lugar. O que se passa e que tipo de relação existe com o conflito Rússia-Ucrânia? Enquanto isso, em Bruxelas, reuniu-se a segunda secção mais importante (a seguir aos chefes de estado e do governo) do CNU, o Conselho NATO-Ucrânia. Trata-se do conclave dos Ministros dos Negócios Estrangeiros, que ouviu o chefe da diplomacia de Kyiv, Andrii Sibya. Este pede o impossível: uma adesão imediata à Aliança da parte da Ucrânia que não está ocupada. Ouça a análise de Nuno Rogeiro e de José Milhazes na versão podcast do programa Guerra Fria, emitido na SIC Notícias a 3 de dezembro.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What happens when a sidelined athlete takes a stand? In 2019, Kelo traded his football gear for activism, rallying his university to recognize MLK Day. Hear how he tackled systemic indifference and scored a win for justice at Christopher Newport University.Kelo's Petition: https://www.change.org/p/paul-trible-in-respect-of-martin-luther-king-jr-classes-should-be-canceled-mlk-day-january-21-2019Uprooted: https://www.propublica.org/article/uprooted-documentary-christopher-newport-university-black-neighborhoodsRestorative Justice follow up: https://www.propublica.org/article/christopher-newport-university-black-community-uprooted-task-forcehttps://www.whro.org/virginia-center-for-investigative-journalism/2024-04-23/the-university-uprooted-a-black-neighborhood-then-its-policies-reduced-the-black-presence-on-campus8% Article: https://issuu.com/thecaptainslog9/docs/issue_17https://issuu.com/thecaptainslog9/docs/clogvol50iss14realhttps://willardmaxwell.org/

Mallory Baches returns for a conversation on the highlights of the 2024 CNU congress in Cincinnati, where restorative urbanism and connected communities policy were focal points. We talk the CNU transect and its application in urban planning, emphasizing the importance of landscape architecture. We also examine the challenges of branding and public perception of new urbanism. The chat finishes with reflections on Providence and Pittsburgh, and positive changes along their urban riverfronts. We discuss: 00:00 Recapping the CNU congress in Cincinnati. 03:29 Highlights from the congress. 09:28 Upcoming congress in Providence, Rhode Island. 16:36 Landscape architecture X urbanism. 36:59 New urbanism X faux urbanism. 50:00 On Pittsburgh. 54:18 Wrapping up. For context: The rural-to-urban transect. Connecting with Mallory: On LinkedIn. Connecting with me, Brad: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠On Instagram.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠On TikTok⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠On LinkedIn⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠

Se registran dos microsismo en la alcaldía Iztapalapa con magnitud de 2.1 y 1.8  ¡Alerta de fraude! Si te llega mensaje al celular con la temática de Halloween o Día de Muertos   Concluye la Conferencia de Naciones Unidas sobre Biodiversidad en Bolivia  Más información en nuestro podcast

Rede social X paga multa na conta certa do governo. Trabalhadores são resgatados da fazenda de Leonardo em situação semelhante à escravidão. Governo quer encerrar saque-aniversário e usar multa de 40% do FGTS como garantia no consignado. 'Enem dos concursos': notas do CNU serão divulgadas nesta terça. 'Caçadores' voam dentro do olho do furacão Milton para coletar dados.

Em tom de despedida, Biden faz balanço de governo e passa o bastão para Kamala: 'Trump vai conhecer o poder das mulheres'. Israel recupera corpos de seis reféns no sul de Gaza. Suel pagou R$ 2,5 mil por Cobalt usado no assassinato de Marielle e Anderson, diz testemunha. Gabaritos oficiais do CNU saem nesta terça; veja próximos passos. Calor intenso segue no Brasil, mas trégua já tem data: onda de frio chega ao Centro-Sul até o fim da semana.

Faustão relembra quando Silvio tentou contratá-lo e diz que apresentador 'veio para uma missão: trazer alegria'. CNU: veja os gabaritos extraoficiais. Quatro são mortos em ataque a tiros em praça lotada em Vila Isabel. INFOGRÁFICOS explicam como é o vírus da mpox, um dos maiores e mais resistentes vírus de DNA. Sem interessados em leilões judiciais, castelo de R$ 15 milhões do cantor José Rico acumula sinais de abandono; veja antes e depois.

Maduro rejeita novas eleições na Venezuela e diz que ideia é 'intervencionista'. Eleições 2024: Campanha eleitoral começa nesta sexta-feira; saiba o que pode e o que não pode no período. CNU: que horas serão as provas do 'Enem dos concursos'? O que precisa levar? Tire dúvidas. Golpe do 'PIX errado': bancos alertam para aumento de ocorrências; saiba como se proteger. Com nova onda de calor, 17 capitais brasileiras devem ter máximas superiores a 30°C.

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CNU: governo divulga novos locais de provas do 'Enem dos concursos' nesta quarta; veja como acessar. 'Taxa olímpica': Receita diz que não pode abrir mão de imposto sobre prêmios e que segue a 'mesma norma' para todos os trabalhadores. Ministério 'apaga' Rebeca de foto histórica no pódio das Olimpíadas, deleta post e pede desculpas. Operação na Cracolândia: polícia procura 2 ex-GCMs suspeitos de integrar milícia que extorquiu mais de R$ 3 milhões de comerciantes. Lei Maria da Penha completa 18 anos, mas violência contra a mulher segue crescendo no país. 'Golpes do PIX' podem causar perdas de R$ 3 bilhões até 2027; saiba como se proteger.

We must talk about your parking regulations. In fact, we must mock them. In no other area of life do head spins quicker, and people's opinions take on truly bizarre forms, than we we talk about parking. I get it, we are a culture obsessed with driving and parking. It's part of nearly adult's daily routine. In this episode, Tony Jordan of the Parking Reform Network and I have some fun with it, while also diving into the nitty-gritty of how to make change in your community.As a bonus, Tony describes some of the most bizarre, and most hilarious parking requirements he's run across.Here's a link to Donald Shoup's article, “Roughly Right or Precisely Wrong.”Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin's Substack page.Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you'd like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.Intro: “Why Be Friends”Outro: “Fairweather Friend”Transcript:Kevin K (00:00.92) Welcome back to the Missy City podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg. Today we're going to talk about everybody's favorite topic, parking. The bane of my existence for most of my professional career, but we've got Tony Jordan here with us today from the Parking Reform Network. And I'm really looking forward to this conversation so we can get into the weeds a little bit on what's actually an incredibly important topic. So Tony, welcome. Tony Jordan (00:28.617) Thanks so much. Happy to be here. Kevin K (00:31.064) Well, it's a pleasure to have you. I ran into you in Cincinnati at the Strong Towns National Gathering and seeing you and we were chatting over a couple of beers and it just seemed like, you know, as soon as we start talking, it feels like, well, this probably should be a podcast. You know, we should spend more time getting into things. So I'm grateful you were able to make some time to be able to join. Tony, before we go too far, why don't we tell me what is the Parking Reform Network and how... How long has it been around? Tony Jordan (01:03.081) the parking reform network is a, 501 C three organization that was founded, founded in the spring of 2019 and we launched in March of 2020. and it, yeah, it was actually okay for organizing a national organization because everything moved online. Like we, we, people were much more amenable to slacking and, using zoom calls, but we, the idea behind. Kevin K (01:16.92) Good timing. Tony Jordan (01:33.641) The need I saw, I had been doing parking reform locally in Portland, Oregon, where I'm from, or where I live, for years, helping to get rid of parking mandates that had been added back in and removing them entirely from the city and worked on upzoning projects too. And the whole while I really felt like one of the things that was missing in advancing parking reform was, having an advocacy organization and a community that really was helping to educate the public and advance these policies. The practitioners and the city council even often knew that these policies were bad, the existing ones, but the public support wasn't there. So founding the Parking Inform Network, it's a community of practitioners, academics, activists, policymakers who... We exist to kind of build a community and a movement around educating the public about parking policy and accelerating reforms. And we do that through a number of research and outreach and advocacy avenues. Kevin K (02:47.352) That's cool. So how did you, what was your background then getting into this? Were you in planning or transportation or talk a little bit about like how you came to this, to this spot. Tony Jordan (02:57.641) Yeah, I mean, I grew up in Los Angeles in San Pedro, the port of LA, and went to school at Santa Cruz and got a politics degree. And then I moved up to Portland and I mostly worked in tech for most of my career, web design, backend, server services programming. And I also, but I also did a couple, I worked at a couple of jobs as a labor organizer. So my background was not at all in planning. I got rid of my car. We got rid of our household's car in 2008. I had a two year old. We had another child in 2010. And I feel like that kind of primed the pump. I started looking around transportation a little differently. And then in 2010, I read a blog post very randomly on a website called Metafilter that was about the high cost of reparking, about Professor Shoup's book that had come out years before. And I am the kind of person, if I hear something interesting, I'll go look up the Wikipedia or I'll look into it. And so I got the book on inner library loan and started reading it. And I was just like, my mind was blown. Shoop has asked me, you know, one time, what did you think when you read the book? And I was like, man, I felt like I was eating a hamburger and reading the jungle. Like it was really like, what is going on? You look once you your eyes are open to this, you look around. I live across the street from a parking lot. I worked overlooking a parking lot and I just like your. to understand why, how much these things cost and then why they're there was just like, why doesn't everyone know this? I looked at my own zoning code in Portland and actually at the time Portland was a pretty, was pretty Vanguard city. We had no parking mandates on our corridors, on our bus, our frequent service corridors that had passed in 2002 kind of to little fanfare. And, but then a couple of years later, In 2012, all of a sudden, they started building apartments on a couple of these corridors. Division Street was one, North Williams. And they were building like 30, 40, 50 apartments in a building with no parking. And they were leasing up. And then someone proposed someone got permitted at 81 unit building on the street with no parking and the neighborhood just went nuts. And they started petitioning the city council to add parking mandates back. Tony Jordan (05:18.633) And so there was a pro they started considering this and I said, Hey, I just read this book a couple of years ago and I started going to city council and I met people who were interested, but they weren't really very organized. And so I started just like creating a mailing list and, and, you know, we lost, they actually added parking mandates back in, but that kind of got me totally started. That was when I first reached out to professor Shoop. He wrote an op ed. And I started just that, that really kicked off. the fuel of like, okay, we need to be better organized on this and next time we're not gonna lose. Kevin K (05:52.152) Interesting. So if I could go back like you said in 2008, you got rid of your car. What prompted you all to, and you had a two -year -old. So what, do you like hate America so much you decided to get rid of your cars? What was that all about? Tony Jordan (06:06.665) You know, the check engine light went on and I took it into, I just afford focus 2004 focus second car ever owned. I took it to the dealer and I mean not to the dealer to the repair shop and they thought, this is the transmission. I thought, man, that transmission on that car has always been weird. Sure. And they, it was going to be $2 ,000. And, and I said, okay. And then they called me back and said, you know, it's not the transmission. We looked at it. Like we haven't charged you anything, but we think it's the computer maybe. So here. Kevin K (06:10.104) Ha ha ha. Tony Jordan (06:36.233) put this little dongle on and drive around for a week. And I said, how much does the computer cost? And they said, $2 ,000. And I was like, okay. And then I drove around and they came back and they said, nah, it's not the computer. We think it's this. How much is that? And I was like, they said engine or something, engine rebuild. And I was like, $2 ,000. And I was just like, man, if I pay for this to get fixed, I obviously expect that either the computer or the transmission will break next. And that will, so I just thought like, this is going to be a never ending money pit. So I told my wife and I discussed it and we had. We lived in Portland, we lived near Transit, I had a bike, we lived near Zipcar, right? Zipcar, it was kind of in the center of Zipcar. And so we said, let's put the car in the garage and just try six months without driving it. And we did. And then at the end of six months, I sold it to the dealer for $2 ,000. And so I was up $4 ,000. And then I never really looked back at buying a... Kevin K (07:22.52) What a cool idea. Kevin K (07:34.936) And that's just, hey, I really like, I mean, that's a great way to just like, let's test it out. Let's see if we can handle it for a while. And so then in terms of like having small children, I know myself having small children, it's not the easiest thing in the world because it's just, you know, there are so many things that you might want to take your kids to that you just need a car to get around. How did you manage that? Tony Jordan (07:55.945) I mean, some of it, we just didn't do as many things. My son took offense to this when I told him when he was older, but I said, one of the nice things was it does kind of make some decisions for you. It simplifies your life. So you're probably only gonna go to one birthday party in a weekend unless they're very close to one another, right? Like, or in a day, right? So some of it, initially we used Zipcar quite a bit and... Kevin K (08:15.608) God, that sounds magical. Tony Jordan (08:24.489) you know, tapered that off over time. And obviously with small, small kids, it's a little bit harder, but we know we carried the kids on our carriers. We never did, you know, when they got a little older, I had a bike trailer I would take to preschool. But it does, you know, you kind of adjust your life over time. It's not, it's not easy. I feel like we are a bit of like, you know, first adopters, still people who are voluntarily living in solidarity with people who can't drive. or can't own vehicles, right? Those people exist in our communities. And so, you know, I experience a lot of the same frustrations voluntarily, but I also have the capacity to try and, you know, argue for it. So, I mean, I think that, you know, my kids do sports or my daughter dances, my son does ultimate frisbee and other things, and he rides his bike to work now at Trader Joe's, and they take the bus, and they're just very independent. And I'm sure there are, you know, opportunities that... we can't do, but I mean, that's kind of life. You make decisions and in exchange, they really are, you know, they know how to get around. And I think they're gonna, I think it's gonna really give them a good leg up when they get to, you know, college or, you know, as the world has to adapt and reduce car dependency, you know, it's not gonna be as painful for them, I think, as you make these changes. Kevin K (09:51.224) How do you know, do you notice much of a difference then between like them and their friends and just other families that they, that you might run around with and like just their own habits and behaviors in that regard? Tony Jordan (10:01.769) Yeah, I mean, a lot of even though we live in a place that's pretty walkable, like obviously a lot of the other parents do drive frequently. I don't begrudge them that. My children get rides with other parents sometimes, too. I mean, we're you know, I don't think we'll offer to pay sometimes. Or, you know, like it's it's not like we're trying to be complete moochers or freeloaders on this. But, you know, like I think it on one hand, like my daughter, When she started middle school, other parents were often driving and we said, hey, we're not going to drive, so let's get our kids riding the bikes. And so our kids had their own mini bike group. And then as she didn't want to ride as much anymore, she would take the bus and other kids would learn to take the bus with her. So there is, I think, by just living a lifestyle that is less car dependent, sometimes I think people find it grating, like, these holier than thou. anti -car people, but at the same time, like it is an example. Like you can see it being done and other kids do it. My son now is 17. So he, you know, some of his friends are getting driver's licenses, but a lot of them aren't. One of the bigger conflicts is he's in film class and a lot of film is done. Well, not only logging, lugging gear around, but obviously, but it's a very common set piece, right? Is to be in a car or driving a car from point A to point B and Kevin K (11:28.248) Hmm. Tony Jordan (11:30.313) So one of his frustrations is he doesn't have a card to do these film transitions, you know, but it's, you know, I think it's worked out mostly okay. Kevin K (11:39.512) Have you ever tried to like quantify, you know, like how much money this has saved you over the years? Tony Jordan (11:47.337) I mean, I have not, other than the initial calculus I did where it was like, I'm up $4 ,000 on, and I can use that for zip car or whatever. I mean, I know it does. It definitely, I don't, I'm not the best budgeter, honestly. So I don't keep a spreadsheet, but I mean, the fact that we haven't owned a car for these years has definitely, you know, we take cheaper modes. And to some degree you do less, you do just do less stuff and that. Kevin K (12:04.26) Yeah. Tony Jordan (12:16.873) you know, simplifies your life and makes it a little bit cheaper. Kevin K (12:21.912) Yeah, I mean, I promise I'll get off on other topics, but I just find it's interesting when people are able to live in a way that we're told you can't live. So have you found that not having the car has opened up ways for you to spend money on other things in your life that maybe you wouldn't have been able to do otherwise? Tony Jordan (12:25.705) No problem. Tony Jordan (12:45.289) once again, I don't sure specifically like how much it impacts that. I mean, obviously the cost of buying some nice bikes is, you know, still much cheaper than, than spending on a car or the gas. I still have to pay for insurance. I mean, I still voluntarily pay for insurance. I don't have to, but I have a non -name donor policy, which is kind of expensive. you know, I think more, it just, it just, I find it is a much. more, it's a much more peaceful and relaxing way to live in most times. Like driving is so stressful, especially if you live in a larger city. Like it's, at least to me, it's scary. You, you, if you think about it, it's not like you're kind of making life difficult for everyone else who's not in your car at the expense of your convenience for the most part. And so I just find the ability to not have to like one of the best dividend is I never have to worry about like, you know, like that responsibility or that pressure or that inconvenience. If I'm on the bus, even if it's in traffic, I can be on my phone or be talking to who I'm with and not be worrying about piloting. Kevin K (14:00.408) Yeah, and you don't have to sweat finding a place to park wherever you're going. So that's kind of a nice thing. So then were you working in tech pretty much all the way up through the beginning of forming the Parking Reform Network? Tony Jordan (14:03.209) Exactly, yeah. Tony Jordan (14:14.025) Yeah, I mean, mostly, even when I worked for, so I worked two times for unions. I worked for the University of California, professional technical employees before I moved up to Portland. And then I worked for AFT organizing nurses. In both those jobs, I still often did the backend database or the website. And then I spent the 13 years before that working at a company that did online admissions applications. So yeah, I was mostly in. Kevin K (14:19.256) Okay. Kevin K (14:38.52) Okay, that's really cool. So then when you formed this nonprofit, who else kind of formed it with you or was this pretty much like you're taking this initiative on or were there others that really said they wanted to jump on board with you? Tony Jordan (14:51.561) I had been in discussions. So Portland has a great advocacy scene. So I had initially formed or after where I left off the story about the losing and parking mandates coming back. A couple of years after that, I started an organization called well, initially it was called Portland Shoopistas and then at Shoop's suggestion, we changed it to Portlanders for Parking Reform. And that was kind of just a low, I had a blog, a website, a newsletter, you know, an advocacy org that worked in partnership. Kevin K (15:02.488) Yeah, yeah. Tony Jordan (15:19.657) with other coalitions to just kind of like keep an eye on what was happening with various, you know, on street and off street parking policies in Portland and in the region and, you know, organize testimony and events and just kind of build awareness. So in that process, I worked with many. Portland has just, you know, freeway fighter this year. We have, you know, housing activists. It's a great scene. Michael Anderson from Sightline Institute and I had been talking about the concept of he proposed we should have a green lane project, which was a project of people for bikes to propose protected bike lanes. He said, you know, we should have, there should be some sort of project for parking similar. Like the idea was like, maybe get a cohort of cities together and take them on a discovery trip. And then they pledged to go review their parking code. And so we had pitched, he helped pitch that around to a couple of places and no one was really interested in hosting a similar project. that kind of consensus was it's hard to fundraise for parking reform, which is true. And so a couple of years later, I was in Chicago speaking at the Parking Industry Expo with these two women, Jane Wilberding and Lindsay Bailey. And... we kind of started hatching a concept around like, you know, like what, how do we, like, what would be a larger organization or, you know, a movement around this. And then I went to APA in San Francisco in 2019, Shoop was talking and there was, you know, a bunch of parking people there. And we met another student, we met a recent grad, Mike Kwan, who had graduated from Santa Cruz and now lives in DC. And so I said, you know, I asked, basically we were out at, at, at dinner with Patrick Sigmund, who is the original Chupista. And kind of we're just talking about like, you know, I think there just should need there needs to be something there needs to be an organization that is focused holistically on parking reform, not just the mandates of the on street management. And and really, I wanted to bring this organizing capacity. So we agreed you need three, you need four people to start a nonprofit organization. And so Mike and Jane and Lindsay were the. Tony Jordan (17:44.073) three original board members and it took a couple months to get the certifications and then set up a website. And then, you know, we went public with it in March and started bringing more people on March, 2020. I mean, yeah. Kevin K (17:57.08) That's terrific. That's terrific. So obviously, one of the big pushes has been in the parking reform world has been to remove or reduce minimum parking mandates. As you've talked about these things, what are the arguments that you are using or you see other people using that are most successful in sort of moving the needle related to that issue? Tony Jordan (18:23.305) I think the problem we've had is largely just lack of information, low information about what these mandates are, what we're talking about. So what are we talking about? We're talking about rules from the seventies, sixties, fifties that are anachronistic and completely based on nothing that are these like, Sorry, hold on. Just one second. Kevin K (18:57.048) No problem. Tony Jordan (19:12.297) I might need to take a redo on that section in one second. Kevin K (19:14.552) No, it's fine. Go ahead. Kevin K (19:24.504) All right, so talk about the most effective arguments. Tony Jordan (19:25.481) Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what we're talking about are these anachronistic rules that are based on nonsense from the 70s. But, yes, and we're talking about just getting rid of these mandates and not eliminating existing parking, you know, generally not severely restricting the ability of people to build parking in their new developments or with their businesses. But I think the other key is really showing people like, how much parking costs, how much space it takes up, what are the other impacts on things they care about, fiscal viability of their cities, the tax -based stuff, water runoff management or urban flooding and pollution, urban heat effects, just walkability, all these things come back to these rules. And what I found really effective lately is to just, you present that information, but in the context of, you know, I'll go look at, for example, bowling alleys. I'll draw a circle of a hundred miles around a city and find examples of bowling alley parking requirements, which are hilarious in themselves because it kind of shows you when they were written. And you'll find one per lane, two per lane, three per lane, four per lane, five per lane, six per lane, seven per lane, right? In just like an area around. And so it's like, what could be the difference between a bowler in this city? where they require two per lane and this one was seven or funeral homes. Like you'll, I, it's not uncommon to see one city require one parking space for 50 square feet, which is a pretty high requirement. You're talking the parking lot is going to need to be six to eight times bigger than the funeral home. And then another place will, will require only one per 500. So that's like a, you know, or, you know, like that's a pretty large difference. You know, 10, we'll find 10 to 12 times difference in. a city that's just 50 miles from another city. And I think that when people see that, that contrast, it really undermines the faith in like, why do these numbers exist? And their first reaction is, well, maybe we can just fix them. And you're like, no, like you can't, like just X them out and get working on the real work that it takes to repair your city, right? The parking mandates is just like... Tony Jordan (21:48.713) That's just clearing a hurdle. It doesn't actually change anything. That requires a developer -friendly zoning code, or it requires transportation management on the ground. But you're never going to get anywhere if these rules exist. Kevin K (22:06.072) Yeah, I was thinking about, and I think we may have talked briefly about this, but obviously, you know, Shoop's book, The High Cost of Free Parking is kind of like the gold standard for the field. It's a really, it's an incredible book. But I remember years before that, he wrote this little magazine article called Roughly Right or Precisely Wrong, which was maybe like three or four pages. But just that alone was such a devastating takedown of the stupidity of most minimum parking requirements and where they come from. And it's always wild to me that people think that those requirements are actually based in something real. Tony Jordan (22:48.169) Yeah, I mean, I have a slide that's called roughly right, precisely wrong based on that same concept. And it highlights this poor little town in Georgia, Woodbury, Georgia, that is really very small. And they have so many land uses with parking requirements and they have like, they're specific to two significant figures for things like, you know, hospital employees, like 1 .26 or 1 .72 for students. And then this place has two requirements. Like they have a separate land use requirement for parking for a hella port and a hella stop. Two, like it's different. Hell if I know what the difference is, right? And it's like, I like you point these out or North Carolina, when we went to CNU last year, we were looking at North Carolina cities because it was in, you know, it was in Charlotte. And there's all these parking requirements in cities in North Carolina for drive -in movie theaters. Like, and they literally are like, Kevin K (23:23.992) What is that? What the hell is that? Tony Jordan (23:46.569) one per speaker box. So it's like you're like telling a drive -in movie theater, which once again, no one's building them, that they have to have a parking space for every park. Like what is going on? One of my favorites is in Dallas, there is a parking requirement for sewage treatment plants. And it's one parking space per million gallons of capacity at the sewage treatment facility, which, and if you look at, Kevin K (24:12.264) my god. Tony Jordan (24:14.409) There's a sewage treatment facility. If you look at it on Google, it has this gigantic parking lot and there's like 20 cars in it because it's like it has like 300 million gallon capacity. So the parking lot is and this is the city telling it's who builds a sewage treatment plant, right? Like the city. But a water treatment plant in Dallas, like for drinking water, only requires two parking spaces. And you look at the you look at a satellite picture of the parking of the water treatment plant and there's like 20 spaces they didn't just build two. They built what they needed. Right. And so like this is really it's like. Kevin K (24:27.032) Yeah, no kidding. Tony Jordan (24:44.009) why are cities even saddling themselves with these requirements? It's insanity, right? Like something really went wrong in, you know, what in the urban planning profession and it just is kind of, we're trying to stop the bleeding and, you know, yeah. Kevin K (25:02.616) Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just hilarious, some of this stuff. When you detach yourself from it and you're just like, it's so, some of it's just so utterly ridiculous. But I think there's something you said that was really important there, which is like, you know, you're really, you're trying to just go about the business of like clearing a hurdle. So like you're not trying to say this is going to solve every problem. But what this is doing, you're trying to remove an impediment to. especially to more like walkable urban style development that really prevents a lot of good things from happening in cities all over the country. Tony Jordan (25:40.649) Right. I mean, it's it. I use an analogy sometimes like if you want to grow a garden, the garden in this case being like a walkable community, you can't go throw, you know, vegetable seeds in your lawn and expect it to work. You've got to remove the rocks and the weeds in the grass first. That's getting that's your parking mandate removal is just prepping the zone. You still have to do all the other stuff. You have to, you know, create the zoning code and you have to. manage on street parking so that it doesn't create spillover or whatever. So it's really a first step. The other great thing is that it's not just housing, right? Like this is a policy, one of the reasons I work on it. I can hardly find a better way to spend my time than one policy area that works on housing, transportation and climate, right? Like it's a piece of, if you have a climate action plan, it's not gonna work. with parking mandates. If you have a transportation plan to build more transit or get people to use other modes, it's not going to work if you have parking mandates. If you have a housing plan, it's not going to work if you have parking mandates. So this one thing, it doesn't fix everything, but it unlocks and makes your other plans actually gives them a fighting chance at success. Kevin K (26:58.2) So then how do you respond to, I mean, I can probably, I'm probably going to test like some of the arguments that people, that I hear all the time and I'm sure you hear them all the time too. but I'm just curious and it's good for the audience to kind of hear how you think about these things. But you know, one thing that I certainly hear a lot is, well, you can eliminate that, but people, people are still going to drive. So what's the point? You know, we live in a big city in a big region that's spread out and people, people drive. That's what they do. So, you know, that, and that seems to me like that's a common. objection that people have to removing some of those standards. Tony Jordan (27:31.561) Right, well, I mean, it's kind of ironic because your arguments are either it's not going to have an impact or it's going to be a disaster and it can't be both at the same time, right? So I think that's true. And to that I say, yes, the world is currently, most of our country is built for people who want to drive. And so on one hand, that should be comforting to the person who's worried about. I've got kids and I don't want to take them on the bus or, you know, my grandma likes to shop at this Walmart. Like the Walmart's still going to be there unless they just close it and build a bigger Walmart farther away, right? Like, I mean, they're still going to, these places still exist that people will drive to. Your house still has a parking space. So no one's asking you to change. We know that there's intense demand for a different way to live. That's why walkable communities are very expensive because... people want, there's not enough of them and people want to live in them. So I think like this just, it makes it possible to build these places. And then we'll see whether it's just consumer preference shows that, you know, people see these places and they want to move into them and we can build more of them or retrofit more of our communities to be like this way. Or frankly, there's a distinct possibility that we will be forced to make some decisions about not driving as much, you know, based on, you know, climate or just geometry issues of traffic. So like one way or the other, I think we have to come up with a solution. And this is, you know, it's just stop digging. First, the first thing is stop digging. And these parking mandates are just requiring everyone to dig the hole a little bit deeper every time they start a business or build a building. And, you know, so that's, I think that's one argument is, you know, well, if the demand is not there, then what do we have to lose by trying, you know, like these. the rules are just in the way of even trying to provide that thing that people seem to want. Kevin K (29:32.696) So another thing that I hear a lot, especially this is much more so like in urban communities, this is where these issues really come up more often anyway. You don't really find a ton of this discussion in a lot of our suburban communities. But I mean, there's some of that, but not a lot. But like in the parts of town where I live in the more urban part of Kansas City, one of the really common objections, let's say there's a large new apartment proposal or there's a commercial. There's a business that wants to go in and if they want to have no parking or very little parking, one of the objections as well, people are still going to drive and all they're going to do is they're just going to park up all the streets in front of my house in the neighborhood nearby. And they're just going to spill over into that. So you're really just making my life more miserable by taking parking away from our streets. Tony Jordan (30:25.449) Mm hmm. Yes. This is the spillover issue can be real, right? I mean, obviously, if you have successful businesses that have parking and they attract more people, since we know these numbers are incorrect, right? There's nothing that says a restaurant, the minimum ratio is actually providing enough parking for the customers or not. Right. I mean, so there's spillover anyway. But, you know, so there's one I would say. The. The solution to that is cities need to mind their own business when it comes to parking. They own the curb. The community owns the curb. It's a public asset or liability, depending on how you look at it. And, and, you know, if sure, if it's free or underpriced, then people will take advantage of that. So manager, you know, the city also knows when permits are coming in for new businesses or for new buildings and should be able to pretty readily anticipate that demand might increase in an area. and create a permit district or a meter district or some other management, which are great because they actually can return revenue to the community to help, you know, make things more walkable with more lighting or crosswalks and help people actually get to these places in other ways. I think that it's also what this gets to me really interesting is just like, I'm often asked like who opposes these reforms and why, and, and it's incumbents, right? Like incumbents, people who, already are using the business that doesn't have enough parking supposedly, right? Like if, hey, you want these ratios because supposedly they provide enough parking. So if you support them, provide the ratio for your own business, and then you don't have a problem. But no, you're using the on -street parking. You're using the asset, and you're worried that another business is going to come in and attract more customers than you do. That's a business issue. Or you know, you... want to park on the street, you know, or you're develop, you know, you're using the asset already that exists, you're using this thing. And so you want to moat. I think one of the things people think developers fund this work. and I wish they did, but the fact is, I don't think current, the developers that are making a lot of money or building a lot of projects, they usually are, they've evolved to exist in the ecosystem that includes parking. Tony Jordan (32:44.265) Do they really necessarily want someone else coming in that's got a more nimble business model that's going to compete with their buildings? I don't know. I think that's one of the reasons why some of this has taken longer is like, you know, you're competing with a status quo and everyone who exists, they've evolved to operate in status quo. And this is a disruptive change potentially. This could change, you know, how your main street works. And so I think there's a natural pushback there, but the... You know, the solutions are easy. We know how to manage parking. So like, if that's really your concern is just that there might be congestion on the curb. Well, we've got a solution for that, right? It's, yeah. Kevin K (33:27.96) Yeah, it's funny because I think about like my own neighborhood, which was largely built in the first two decades of the 20th century. And so it has that sort of a neighborhood main street and that there's a portion of the main street that is built with sort of classic American early 20th century buildings, you know, right up to the sidewalk, very popular. numbers of restaurants and everything else. And it's a really popular little area. And it's been popular for years and years. But on that same exact street, like if you wanted to build a new restaurant, the zoning would require a minimum of 10 spaces per thousand square feet, which would make it completely impossible to actually build what's there today. And there's this really funny disconnect that. we've talked about forever, which is we have these places that people obviously really love for very human reasons. It's great to be in a place where you can just like walk around and see other people and you can sit at a table and just enjoy the street life and activity. And so these places are extremely popular in most places where they exist, yet our rules and regulations don't allow you to build it again. Tony Jordan (34:52.137) Right. Yeah, I think, yeah, it's true. I show a picture of, you know, like of Main Street. I have a slide where I show a picture of Main Street and then just a shopping center. And like you can't this isn't I am not the first person to do this, but you count up the number of businesses in there and they're roughly the same number of businesses in a big shopping center as opposed to like one block of a Main Street. Of course, the bigger businesses are bigger, but partly that's because they have to they have to support because we don't allow. We don't allow localized commerce either. I mean, that's a whole big part is there's a lot of the talk is around residential parking requirements and allowing more infill housing, but we need a lot more infill commercial too, right? I mean, my friend Neil Heller, you know, with his accessory commercial units, like, why don't we allow these, like, if you think about trip reduction, cities will spend so much money to try and get someone to take the bus to go get their hair done, where if you allow someone to open a hair, you know, just. Kevin K (35:35.64) Yeah, yeah. Tony Jordan (35:50.857) do hair in their basement or in their garage, you know, legally or open a little storefront, the person might just walk or ride a bike to that. You're reducing the trip for free. Kevin K (36:01.528) it out. So what is what's going on then? One of the things that you all do is you track what's happening nationally in terms of parking reform state by state. What are some of the most encouraging things that are happening across the country that you're seeing? Tony Jordan (36:16.041) Well, for one, I think we're just seeing more and more cities get rid of their parking mandates entirely or do large scale reforms. This is obviously, you know, just a drop in the bucket. Municipal, you know, we've got I think I was just looking at it yesterday and we're right around. There's like 70 or 71 cities that we know of in the United States that have gotten rid of their parking mandates citywide for all uses. Most recently, Tualatin, Oregon, I think was the most recent. when we've added to the list. So that's great because it shows other places that they can do it. It shows that the sky's not falling, there's momentum behind this, these cities are, you know, someone will say, well, we have, I was in La Crosse, I was talking to people in La Crosse, they said, well, we have snow. I said, well, you can talk to the people in Duluth or the people in Anchorage. They also have snow. You know, so there's, we're getting more and more comps. We finally just got a city in the center of the country in Colorado, like, you know, Longmont, Colorado just did it, so it's. Kevin K (37:13.08) Okay, good. Tony Jordan (37:13.705) It's great to see that momentum, because I think it emboldens people. And then that starts to trickle up into the statewide and regional planning areas where we're seeing the conversation start in, you know, Minnesota. They had people over parking act, which proposed to eliminate mandates statewide. Oregon has pretty strong reforms that are requiring. That's why we have so many cities with no parking mandates, because the state's kind of making requiring cities to make a choice between getting rid of their mandates or managing their off street parking. So I think that the encouraging thing is that the conversation is moving forward. The solutions are much less incremental at this point. There's a recognition that like we don't have time to mess around, you know, checking every couple of years. It takes so long to build things is one thing. It's like, you know, I tell people, it's like, you know, you're not going to see the impact of this for years. We don't have time to wait. So that's, I think that just the general awareness, all of these reforms then. create buzz or opportunity for buzz. And so just, you know, every time someone hears about this, there's an opportunity for another Tony Jordan to get hooked on the topic and get active in their local community. So like, you know, you hear about the city next door and maybe you're going to go down to planning commission next and start banging the drum around parking reform. Kevin K (38:35.672) What are some of the larger cities that have done dramatic reform? Tony Jordan (38:40.201) The largest in the US is Austin, which did it last year. In North America, Mexico City has no mandates. Toronto, Edmonton, Montreal is about to do so. San Francisco, in the United States, you got San Francisco. I'm trying to think of who's on the, St. Paul in Minneapolis. San Jose was, is a, is a large city that's done it. Portland has no parking mandates and Portland, because of our statewide rules, many of our suburbs are also starting to have no mandates. So we're starting to build a metro area that we'll have, which I think will be very useful to see how that interplays. Cause that's one thing, you know, Dallas could get rid of the parking mandates tomorrow, but you know, the Dallas Fort Worth metro area is such, or Los Angeles, you know, there's so many other cities that are requiring it and cars don't. car demand doesn't stop at the city border, right? So there's a bit of where everyone kind of needs to make a commitment together, you know, to not like, you can get rid of parking mandates in your downtown, but if all of your surrounding community is car dependent, it's going to be very hard to redevelop parking lots in your downtown because the demand is just going to be there. So I think like, you know, we're starting to, these larger areas will, will, will be helpful, but I, but it's also great to have smaller cities get rid of mandates too, because. That's the majority of cities in the United States are smaller places that aren't megopolises. Kevin K (40:13.56) Are you able to track like winds that come from the policy change at all, like in terms of maybe development activity, other stuff that would have happened, would not have happened without the reform? Tony Jordan (40:26.161) Starting to, so some of our partners like Sightline, Katie Gould at Sightline who covers parking the best. She covers this in the Northwest and in some other places. We just actually are, we have a blog post that's about to come out tomorrow based on a Twitter thread where someone was highlighting changes in Anchorage. One of the issue here is, you know, many of these, I mean, when we talk about 70 cities, There were about 15 cities at the end of 2020 in the United States, maybe 13, maybe it's 13, somewhere, you know, not many more than 10 that had gotten rid of their mandates citywide. So we've, you know, had about 55 cities do this reform just in the last four years. Seeing what happens, I mean, there are, Katie Gould has shown some great examples of, you know, projects that, you know, immediately when the reform has gone in. will go in and submit a redesign that doesn't punch a hole through the middle of the building to access the parking lot or adds a certain number of apartments or homes. There was great examples out of Fayetteville, right? When Fayetteville was an early adopter of no commercial mandates, they need to catch up on the residential side. But, you know, where buildings were getting reused all of a sudden that had been vacant for many years. So that's going to be, we're trying to track that. We're a small and growing organization and so capacity to do that. But, Those stories are the critical ones, I think, to show people the benefit of doing this. Kevin K (42:02.584) What about anecdotally from Portland, which you're most familiar with, where you didn't have mandates and you did have mandates and then you went back to not having mandates? Have you seen some good wins there? Tony Jordan (42:13.897) Well, I mean, in a way, the best example from Portland is in the opposite direction, right? We had, as I mentioned, buildings going up on this division street that had 30, 40, 50 apartments. They were very numbers, right? You look at the permits, the number of apartments being built, and they were all over the place between 30 and 80, right? What we did in Portland was we instituted a When they took a step back, they said, okay, you can build up to 30 units with no parking. But if you build 31, you have to have a 0 .2 parking ratio, one for every five apartments, which is relatively low, but it was retroactive to the whole building. So you had no parking to 30 units. And then the 31st apartment, you had to have six parking spaces on site. And what did we see? No one's gonna study on this, but I looked back, you know, you saw a haircut. All of a sudden, a bunch of apartments had exactly. 30 units. I think this marginal impact, it's harder to quantify, but I think honestly, the biggest thing is if you think of every apartment that's been built in the United States over the last 70 years, and you know, they might still, even if you say they built the exact same amount of parking that exists right now, if developers were allowed to just max out what was practical apartment -wise on that site with that same amount of parking, we'd have 10, 20, you know, five to 20 new apartments. in every apartment building in the United States. We would have no housing crisis if we had just let that happen, even with parking being built. So I think those marginal increases where you're just adding five or 10 apartments in a building that would have had a lower number because they couldn't meet the parking requirement, that's kind of the invisible benefit, I think, that is harder to quantify but is already, I'm sure, taking place, right? Cities with no mandates. They still build with parking, but they build a bit more housing. And that's, you know, that's important, you know, is to build. And then over time, maybe they start building a lot more housing and a lot less parking. But initially right away, you know, you might just add two or three more units because you can, or you might add bedrooms on the units because a lot of times the parking requirements are based on bedrooms. So you're going to build studios because they have a lower parking requirement. You know, I mean, I know there's many factors to layouts, but that's one of them sometimes. Kevin K (44:41.752) Yeah, it seems like it's probably a classic like hockey stick, you know, adjustment curve where it'd be really slow and minimal for a number of years potentially, or just kind of modest. But then there comes a point where there's an inflection and other things, other things that don't really work well right now, you know, like better public transit, better bike, but just better alternative transportation all of a sudden starts to work more. And, and you probably get more things that are within a walking distance that you didn't have before. What do you say to people who say, well, you know, the parking requirements really don't matter because the investors, the lenders are going to require a certain amount anyway. And that's really where the stumbling block is. What do you, what do you say to that argument? Tony Jordan (45:28.585) I mean, I think if we're talking about apartments with zero parking, sure. I mean, I think that's, you know, it took, it took 10 years for Portland to find a developer who was willing to build a large, a mid -size apartment building with no parking. Once they did and it rented, then the investors were very happy to do it. So some of it is just the market's not proven. This is what I mentioned before, the inertia of, of just these people have business models. They have relationships with bankers, they have funding streams, people understand the product and so they know what to invest in. You're trying to change that. To build an apartment building with much less parking requires not just the developer but brokers. There's a lot of players that have to align. So in a way, yes. Now the fact is that we can't even start working on fixing those other problems that the parking mandate still exists. So like, if you know, like it's absolutely worth it. They're just overhead on your city too. I mean, like they just cause city staff spend time on this that they could be spending approving other permits. So like get rid of them and you know, if nothing changes, then nothing changed. But if we are actually then can, can be successful in, you know, I think a lot of the work like incremental development Alliance or other people who are, you know, trying to, you know, there's a whole set of education and building capacity for building these kinds, remembering how to build these kinds of communities. And so that's going to take a little while to build that capacity. But if we haven't prepped the garden, once again, that can't take root. That can't happen. Kevin K (47:12.792) You know, it's always so funny also when I think about like the politics of some of these things and the politics of this issue. I mean, you're talking about something which is essentially removing a requirement from your local government, which is typically thought of as like a conservative political approach. And yet almost all the reform happening is in blue states and blue cities, which is just kind of bizarre. I always think about it, it shows how upside down a lot of people's thinking is in regards to these issues. So, I mean, that being said, obviously, you know, a lot of the places you've mentioned, you know, are pretty dyed in the wool blue places politically. What are you seeing as any kind of positive trend in more like conservative or red states as well? Tony Jordan (48:08.553) It surely is confusing, right? Why some people would support these regulations. I think there's a bit of just team opposition that goes into this. Whoever proposes the policy first might receive opposition. Yeah, I think some of the reason why these reforms took root first in... Kevin K (48:23.832) Yeah, sure. Kevin K (48:28.216) I've got to be against it. They're my enemy. I've got to be against it no matter what. Tony Jordan (48:38.761) in liberal, more liberal or blue places was, well, that happens to be where the housing crisis hit first. There also are, there are very good reasons for every one of every political stripe to support parking mandates, but there may be more reasons if you are politically, if you're, you know, liberally aligned, you might believe, you know, you might be more concerned about climate change, right? And you might be more concerned about transit access. So those issues tack on to the, you know, you know, general market problem. and they give you a little more reason. There's more coalition members. I think, you know, now that said, Anchorage is an example where, you know, it was a mixed city council that had broad political support from both conservatives and liberals. You know, there are a lot of Midwest cities that are doing this that are not necessarily very liberal. I think it's just the messaging is taking a little... it's a little harder, you know, because of just coding to break through, but this should definitely be an issue that we can win on across the political spectrum. I think it's just, it has to be intentional and continue that education around what we're actually talking about here. And to some degree it finds out if people are really for real about what they say about, you know, markets or business, you know, activity. I... Kevin K (50:01.4) Yeah. Tony Jordan (50:06.121) If you're in chamber of commerce or something, I had a woman complained to me. She came up to me in Chuck Morrone in Minneapolis and St. Paul and said, you know, I'm from the such and such Avenue business association. I said, and she was opposing the bill in, in, in Minnesota. And I said, do you, does your association just, it only supports existing businesses, right? Like you don't care about entrepreneurship. Do you? And, and, you know, she was like, well, of course, but I was like, no, of course you wouldn't. I will say one group that is on the. like kind of more conservative side of the spectrum. You know, some like I went to a conference in Arizona, a one day symposium that was about like doing business in America. And it was from like kind of like a, you know, economic, you know, libertarian side. And some of those folks really understand the parking mandates. Like they get that this and, and the like Institute for Justice is like they work not only on parking mandates, but just other barriers to people being economically free, like, you know, licensure requirements for hair braiding and things. It's one of those things that kind of fits into this, you know, once you see what this is being used for, which is often manipulation, right? Cities want to keep the parking mandates in place so they can sometimes just have more control over what businesses get to open or where they get to open. So. Yeah, exactly. And no one wants to give up their power, right? Like, that's one of the reasons it exists is because. Kevin K (51:26.04) Yeah, or leverage for negotiations. Tony Jordan (51:34.377) Yeah, people use them to decide where a restaurant can go as opposed to, it's not really about parking, right? Because they'll grant the variance somewhere else. They just don't want to have the bar next to where they like to hang out. Kevin K (51:50.072) Well, I mean, I do notice that on your map, Missouri and Kansas are not represented. So I hope that at some point we are within the next couple of years, we're working on some stuff to try to get us there locally. But yeah, it's a big hole. You're right. That's right. Branson eliminated theirs. Branson, interestingly enough, also has no building code. Or they were like, Missouri was one of the few states. Tony Jordan (51:59.817) What? Branson, Branson's got no mandates, right? Kevin K (52:18.712) God, my memory is going to fail me now because this has been a few years since I've thought about this issue. But for a long time, they were one of a handful of states that had no statewide building code adopted. And so cities and counties had to actually opt in to adopt one. And Branson did not have one for forever for a long time. So it's pretty interesting. Tony Jordan (52:28.329) huh. Tony Jordan (52:40.297) I think we're going to see a lot more activity. There's a lot of cities too. I know this isn't, you know, there's cities that have like Norman, Oklahoma is not on the map as a red dot because they maintain parking mandates for frat houses and some other housing alignments. So we're, we're pretty strict about who gets to be on the, on the dot. And, but there are a lot of places that are, that have done significant reforms. Hopefully we can tell more of those stories and highlight that. We just hired a policy director, Dan O 'Hara guess from, from strong towns. Kevin K (52:56.888) Okay. All right. Kevin K (53:08.312) Yeah, yeah. Tony Jordan (53:10.345) And we have an intern working this summer on kind of helping us to get more of an idea of where we can have a bigger impact in providing education and resources to the people on the ground. So I'm very excited about the potential for, you know, to see these. Right now reforms happen. Sometimes we know, like we knew Birmingham was going to, was working on getting rid of their mandates, but then other cities pop up where we haven't even had any contact. They might use our product, our maps or our resources, but. I wanna know, I wanna really, like I wanna know where the heat is coming from next so we can really, you know, hype it up and celebrate it. Kevin K (53:47.224) Yeah, I know. It's going to create like an impossible test for you since there's so many municipalities around the country. But there are those like, you know, the one I'm in, in Kansas City, Missouri, we have actually had some pretty good, I would say incremental reform at the city government level. And especially in Oregon, so it was passed last year that really is very helpful for infill residential development, sort of missing middle scale that basically just waived all parking requirements for that, which was nice. But we still have pretty onerous stuff in other parts of the city or other parts of the code. So it's very much piecemeal. Tony Jordan (54:27.561) Yeah, I think, I mean, obviously there's statewide reform progress and I know people are mixed, you know, that's tough because the cities want their local control. I think like, obviously if we're going to really deal with this problem, you know, that's probably necessary in a lot of places. It helps certainly to have a number of cities though, get rid of your mandates initially so they can be examples. And even I think anything that requires cities, I like it like if you can just get a city to open up and. and actually examine what these are and reckon with it. Shoop says one of the best pieces of advice he has to like someone who wants to get their city to get rid of mandates is take that paper, the pseudoscience of parking reform and, or pseudoscience of parking mandates, sorry, whoops. And, and give it to, you know, have a, have a planning commissioner, a city council person direct the staff to read this paper and prepare a memo as to why it's correct or wrong, right? Like, Kevin K (55:19.896) Hmm. Tony Jordan (55:20.393) I like it until like you go in your garage and you open up an old cooler and sometimes there's something really bad that you forgot in there. These mandates are like a fish that someone left in a cooler for 60 years, right? Like it's bad. You open it up and if you can force people to actually defend it, like I think that's what we need to do is say, okay, you don't want to get rid of these mandates, then it's on you to tell me why that they are correct. And so if we can shine some light on it, I think we'll start to see, you know, cities. in other communities get rid of them more readily because, you know, no one's going to want to step up and defend them anymore. Kevin K (55:59.928) It's pretty hard to defend. So when I think about Shoup and the work that he's done, especially if I go back to Pasadena, which is one of his favorite examples he loves to use in downtown Pasadena, I think about as much about parking management as anything and sort of balancing the on -street and off -street needs and figuring out the economics of it so it actually makes sense. How much of the parking management side do you all get into or track as part of your work? Tony Jordan (56:35.241) Well, one of our first things we ever put together was a or one of the first products we released that we actually are very proud of is a guidebook on parking benefit districts. It's a handbook for activists, right? And so this was written by one of our first interns, Evan Kimler. And it's like, I felt there was a need to. You have parking in the city, you have high cost free parking, you have, you know, various papers, but they're not. Kevin K (56:45.432) Okay. Tony Jordan (57:03.113) necessarily accessible or activism oriented. So we do promote parking. Parking benefit districts are a great idea. It's there's not it's such a synergistic thing. You know, you charge for parking, which would which helps to manage the demand and then you reinvest, which helps drive the demand lower. And then ideally, some point in the future, you don't have much more revenue because no one's parking, but you don't need it because you spent the money on making it more walkable. Great. We promote that. I talk about parking management every time I give a lecture. It's harder to track. We're starting to do this. We were just talking with some folks at IPMI, like, where are the data sets for this? How do we know? And so trying to figure out where there's good examples of data -driven parking management and good examples of permits. It's also a problem, potentially a problem. A lot of states have rules that prohibit cities from you know, actively manage their curb, maybe in a best practice. Like they don't allow them to, you know, charge parking for people with disability placards, which is leads to a lot of placard abuse and makes streets unavailable for people. Or they limit them from using demand -based pricing for permits. The permits can only be cost recovery, or they limit what they can spend money on, you know, from parking. Like you maybe you can only spend it on. parking garages, or maybe you can only spend it on, I mean, transit's not a bad thing, but San Francisco, I think, spends a lot of its net revenue from SF Park on transit. That's great, but there's also other things that maybe could be more impactful at a local level. So I think that's one case where I think we need to find out what the lay of the land is and then really start to highlight these examples. It's a harder political press because... Charging for things is not popular. But I think the other thing is that I think cities a lot of times don't go far enough. So they charge you, but you're not getting a value, right? If you paid a park and you still can't find a place to park, you're not happy. If you paid a park and you had a good experience, you know, that you're not, of course, I don't want to pay for anything in my life. I don't want to pay for a cup of coffee, but if I pay for one and it's bad, I'm upset. If I didn't pay for one and it's bad, you know. Tony Jordan (59:27.305) I'm not as much. So I think like once you're charging, go all the way and charge enough that there's an open space on every block, right? Like Shoop says, you know, maybe 85 % or whatever it is so that someone driving down the street can find a space, even if they have to pay for it. Like we're willing to pay for things as American consumers. We do it all the time. Kevin K (59:46.168) Yeah. So it does seem to me like this kind of work is the sort of work that developers and investors and lenders would want to support. But you say you're not really seeing much of that at this stage? Tony Jordan (59:59.945) Yeah, I think that, I mean, the funding in general for this is tough because we're a national organization. A lot of people are locally focused, a lot of developers, right? They're locally focused. So they want to see, like they're more concerned about what's going on in their community. And if they either, you know, if they have parking mandates, you know, like we can't promise we're not an organization that comes in and drops people out of a helicopter to like, you know, to work on something. We're helping to build just a national environment and movement to make these policies happen better. So, and I think once again, the developers that make a lot of money right now make it in the current regulatory environment, right? Like that's the end the ones. So we need the small scale developers as they start to, or the incremental or the ones that get it, as they start to maybe prove this point, maybe we'll see some people paying it forward. Kevin K (01:00:45.848) Do you know? Tony Jordan (01:00:58.377) you know, on what it is. But I recognize like, you know, yeah, the people who get it, they're just trying to get their, they can't build the projects that will make them the money because they're, you know, they're not legal yet. Kevin K (01:00:59.256) Yeah. Yeah. Kevin K (01:01:12.216) Yeah, that is an interesting twist. It probably is more of like the smaller and mid -sized developers who stand to benefit the most from parking reform. The large ones are going to negotiate their projects no matter what anyway. It's a different animal. But the smaller and mid -sized ones are less likely to have the kind of extra cash sitting around to support these efforts. Tony Jordan (01:01:23.881) Right. Tony Jordan (01:01:33.769) Right. I mean, and I'm not saying that the bigger developers, they don't fight the reforms at least generally. They're just not, they're not at contrary. I think this is, we find this across the whole housing zoning reform spectrum. You know, everyone thinks that it's developer, you know, developers financing this and it's, it's not, it's, I mean, mostly it's not even finance. Most of this work is done by people who care passionately about the place where they live or the, there's the, the future of, you know, for their children. And they're driven by that passion. And we're just all trying, you know, the more we can fund these endeavors, they have a ability to have a larger capacity because not everyone can, you know, can spend their time on these things without being paid. So I think, you know, I think the awareness is getting there, you know, and eventually, you know, I think we'll start to see more resources. put towards this, you know, some of it is just similar to when it took a lot of people. People wanted to see a building work in Portland before they would build more without parking. People want to see this as a viable organizing area. They want to see the successes coming and then, you know, then the, then they'll invest in it. Right. You kind of kind of prove, prove the point first on it when you're doing something a different way. Kevin K (01:02:58.2) Yeah. Well, Tony, this has been great. I really appreciate the conversation. Before we wrap up, I have to know, so how many Don Schupe posters or bobbleheads do you have? Tony Jordan (01:03:10.825) Those things don't really exist, unfortunately. I don't have nearly the collection of parking paraphernalia as I'd like. I've got an Andy Singer cartoon, you know, No Exit, that's about parking that I got. I have a weird poster on my wall here that's of a mural someone did on a garage door in Seattle. It's Jesus. Kevin K (01:03:14.264) I'm out. Tony Jordan (01:03:36.521) trying to find a parking space because there's a church across the street from this person's house and the people would park in their driveway. So they made this mural.

Dr. Jonathan W. White is professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University. He is the author or editor of 17 books covering various topics, including civil liberties during the Civil War, the USS Monitor and the Battle of Hampton Roads, the presidential election of 1864, and what Abraham Lincoln and soldiers dreamt about. Among his awards are the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia's Outstanding Faculty Award (2019), CNU's Alumni Society Award for Teaching and Mentoring (2016), the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Prize (2015), and the University of Maryland Alumni Excellence Award in Research (2024). His recent books include A House Built By Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House (2022), which was co-winner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize (with Jon Meacham); Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade (2023); Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves (2023); and an exciting new children's book, My Day with Abe Lincoln (2024).A Quote From This Episode"I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views." - Abraham LincolnResources Mentioned in This EpisodeYour New Playlist by Acuff, Acuff, & AcuffPhronesis Episode with Dr. Laura EmpsonAbout The International Leadership Association (ILA)The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Register for ILA's 26th Global Conference in Chicago, IL - November 7-10, 2024.About  Scott J. AllenWebsiteWeekly Newsletter: The Leader's EdgeMy Approach to HostingThe views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.

Lisa Valentine, Head Coach of CNU women' lacrosse www.cnusports.com/sports/womens-lacrosse

Aaron Lubeck and I sat down in Cincinnati, during CNU 32, to talk a lot about housing, policy, and how to actually make change. Aaron writes a Substack called On Housing, where he frequently explores these issues. And, he's one of the founders of Southern Urbanism, which has a terrific array of writers and feature pieces.Some of the posts we discuss:I am Going to Gring Back the Sears HomeWhat's Next for Jane Jacobs' Sidewalk Ballet?A Brief Detour to Honor My Old LadyHow North Carolina became a leader in building code reform to enable affordability.From my archives:Let Urban be Urban, Let Suburban be SuburbanThe video of my presentation on Suburban vs UrbanMomFind more content on The Messy City on Kevin's Substack page.Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you'd like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.Intro: “Why Be Friends”Outro: “Fairweather Friend” Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

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Chuck Marohn, the President and Founder of Strong Towns, joins me to talk about his newest book, “Escaping The Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis.” Along the way, we also discuss the upcoming Strong Towns National Gathering in Cincinnati, a different way cities can think about building and financing new sports facilities, and our different takes on the place-making of Disney World.If you have an interest in attending the National Gathering in May, I highly recommend it. Register at this link, and use this code for Discounts: KEVINK2024For some background on Walt Disney's history in Kansas City, check out Thank You Walt Disney.Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin's Substack page.Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you'd like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.Intro: “Why Be Friends”Outro: “Fairweather Friend”Episode Transcript:Kevin K (00:00.964)Welcome back to the Messy City podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg. I'm delighted today to have my friend Chuck Morrone on the show. Mr. Strong Towns, Chuck, it is so good to see you and I'm really excited to talk with you today.Charles Marohn (00:16.848)Hey, I'm really happy to be here. And here's the amazing thing. I listen to your podcast. You have a great voice for this. I mean, I have this horrible voice that people have grown used to. But when you turn on, you're like, hey, this is the messy city podcast. I'm like, yeah, man, you should be doing way more of this.Kevin K (00:37.38)Well, at least you didn't say that I have a great face for radio. So.Charles Marohn (00:40.72)Well, you and I both.Kevin K (00:44.484)Oh man, well, it's fun. You know, I'm still very much an amateur at the podcasting gig. And it's been fun to learn and experiment with it. You've been doing it for quite a while. And so I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you on this show. And we've got a couple of, a couple of fun topics, but in a couple of things that I think will get more serious and interesting as we go. And we'll just get through whatever we can get through. But.Charles Marohn (01:11.568)That sounds great. Well, you've been having all my friends on, you know, so like, yeah, here's Howard. I'm like, wait a sec. That was a blast. And then you had, you had Seth Zeran on recently. I'm like, that's really cool. So yeah, it's been fun. You know, I, I know you and I know, uh, you know, some, some of the ways that you think about things. And I really am. I love chatting with you, um, hearing you have these.Kevin K (01:15.172)I try to do that.Kevin K (01:19.076)Yeah.Yeah.Charles Marohn (01:38.704)fun conversations that we sometimes get to have in person. Hearing you have them with other people is just, it's a delight for me. So yeah.Kevin K (01:46.02)Well, that's very great, very flattering to hear. You know, it's one of the fun things you've probably experienced this too. One of the fun things about having a podcast is you get to choose who you want to talk to. And there's a lot of people that we know and we've all known for a long time that I get to learn so much more about. And for me, that's been one of the most enjoyable aspects of this is just getting to really know people's backstories a lot more. And so that's been a great pleasure.Charles Marohn (02:04.496)Sure.Kevin K (02:16.036)So.Charles Marohn (02:16.4)Yeah, yeah. Well, you you know everything about me, so we don't need to talk about.Kevin K (02:20.1)We know a lot about we know a lot about Chuck. Chuck, fortunately, shares his backstory a lot, although I'm sure there's tons we could get into. I'd rather save the time for some other topics, but you. You do have an awful lot going on right now in this moment, and I want to talk about a couple of those things. One is you have a book, a new book, the strong escaping the housing trap, the strong towns response. This is your.Charles Marohn (02:32.24)Yeah, it's the least interesting part.Kevin K (02:49.636)third book, right? Yeah, okay. Tell me a little bit about why an engineer wanted to write a book about housing.Charles Marohn (02:51.12)Yeah, yeah. Number three. Yep.Charles Marohn (03:01.52)Well, the reality of the story is that I, in the early days of writing the Strong Town's blog, was thinking about a book the entire time. I mean, I started writing this three days a week blog back in 2008, and to me, it was building up to a book. I had a couple publishing companies and agents contact me.And when I gave them my book proposal, it was just blah, blah, blah. It was, it was like 2000 word book. Like it didn't make sense. It was only when I got hooked up with Wiley publishing where we stepped back and we said, okay, this is actually multiple books, put this together in like the compilation of what you think it should be. And I said, well, I, I think I should write the book on finance first. I think I should write the book on transportation. Second, third would be housing. And then there's a couple others that are coming.And so we kind of agreed to a five book series that would kind of encapsulate the strong towns conversation. Housing happened to be the third. And the crazy thing about it is I didn't plan to release it in the middle of a housing crisis where everybody's talking about housing and housing's like on the lips of, you know, every political debate and every public policy conversation. It just so fortuitously happened that we're dropping our ideas in the middle of this kind of housing.you know, policy feeding frenzy right now. But.Kevin K (04:27.556)Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting aspect of that. I know obviously there's a long timeline to write a book anyway, to write it, get it published, edited, and all that sort of stuff. So I'm curious, like, what has changed in your mind from the point when you first started thinking about writing this book to actually getting it out today?Charles Marohn (04:48.624)It's, so Daniel Hergis and I co -wrote this, and I know you had him on a couple weeks ago. It was a really good conversation. The two of us, I think, encapsulate in our thinking the trap that we were trying to illuminate. Because I, we both went through the same graduate school program, and we both maybe took different things away from it. He was really focused on housing and kind of the,the mechanics of zoning and how the government has intervened in the housing market and all the kind of things that I would just put under an urbanist label. And for me, I was really fascinated with the financial side of the whole thing. That was the thing to me that when I was in grad school, I didn't think the housing people made any sense, quite frankly. You have to take some of that. And I was like, this is really dumb. I don't get it. AndI think I didn't get it because as an engineer, I was more plugged into the finance side. I spent a number of years just reading every book on finance that I could. I actually watched for like two years straight, I had CNBC on in my office. Not because I think CNBC is like a good channel or like has revealing things, but because the lingo that they use, the finance lingo that they use, I didn't understand.So when they said like MBS, like what is an MBS? It's a mortgage backed security. When they were talking about interest rate spreads and swaps, like I'm like, what the heck is that? Once I learned that language, to me the fascinating thing about housing was how it really is at its core downstream of the financial conversation that's going on in this country. So Daniel and I really tried to merge those two together, first in a set of insights that the two of us could agree on.and then in a narrative of the book that we could publish and share with the world.Kevin K (06:45.348)So, without giving away too much of the book, obviously we want people to go buy the book. And I think you can pre -order it right now, is that right?Charles Marohn (06:48.656)Yeah, yeah.Charles Marohn (06:55.248)Well, it's not like it's a murder mystery, you know, like I'll tell people the core insights, but you know, there's a lot of depth there beyond that. So.Kevin K (06:57.892)Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. But maybe how about just tease out a couple of the key insights that you think are critical to share related to what the housing trap actually is.Charles Marohn (07:12.912)Well, the housing trap is the situation we've gotten ourselves in where housing as a financial product needs to go up in value. So the price of your house needs to go up for the economy to churn. But housing as shelter, when the price goes up, everything falls apart. Lots of people can't get into a house. If they get into a house, they're very financially strained. Once they're in a house, it's tough to move, take another job.So these two things compete against each other and they're both necessities. I mean, shelter is in Maslow's hierarchy of needs and we've literally structured our entire economy to where mortgage -backed securities, your house bundled with a bunch of other houses, sit as the bank reserves for every bank in the country. Housing prices can't go down. They have to go up financially. Housing prices can't go up. They must actually come down.for us to be able to function as a society. And that is the trap because both of those things are true at the same time.Kevin K (08:17.412)Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think probably the word of the decade has been financialized. And it seems like we've used that to discuss a lot of the foundation of the economic system we have today. And it certainly affects housing in all forms of real estate.Charles Marohn (08:23.76)Mm -hmm.Charles Marohn (08:35.184)Well, Daniel and I reached this understanding quite a while ago, I mean, way before we started working on the book, that if you if you look at the market for housing today, it represents the market of financial products. So when you see developers out building single family homes on the edge of Kansas City, what you're seeing is the manifestation of a financial instrument. The mortgage bundled with other mortgages.securitized, sold off as a mortgage -backed security. There's a lot of liquidity. There's a lot of money and capital put into that product because it's a really good financial product. When you see the five over ones being built, the one story of concrete with five stories of wood construction, whether it is an apartment building or a condo, whether it's a high -end condo or a mid -level condo, whatever it is, those also are financial products.Those are really easy to bundle with other similar structures from all over the country. Again, securitized, sold off, bought up by pension funds, put on the books of banks, all this stuff. What you don't see is you don't see the single family home converted to duplex. You don't see the single family home where we take the fourth bedroom that nobody's using and put it, make it an accessory apartment. You don't see the backyard cottage. You don't see the small 400, 600 square foot starter home.because there's no financial product for those things. But those are the products that if they were available in the local market would actually anchor the market at a lower price point and keep the rest of it from going crazy. And so the conclusion that we've come to is that we just need a policy to build not more single family homes and not more five over ones and more apartment buildings. We really need policies to build lots of this starter stuff.And the cool thing about it is that cities can do that on their own. They don't need federal grants and approvals. They don't need state support and funding. They actually have the capacity to really shift their local housing market, make it more locally responsive, and they can do it all on their own. They just have to do it with intention.Kevin K (10:50.436)Yeah, I think one of the things that you've talked about and written a lot about too is the notion of how after the financial crisis, 2008, 2010 or so, that the housing recovery in many ways has been kind of re -inflating a bubble. And I'm fascinated by this because obviously I'm not an economist, although I play one on TV. And it certainly seems like...Charles Marohn (11:07.248)Hahaha.Kevin K (11:17.604)the signs of stress that we've seen in the banking system even the last, let's say, year, year and a half, is putting a ton of pressure on the local community banks and continuing to centralize the banking system into larger and larger banks, including the four banks that are essentially protected by the federal government. So in essence, it kind of seems like we haven't really...At a federal level, we're almost doubling down on this approach that has given us these large products that we don't really like.Charles Marohn (11:53.84)There's no doubt that our strategy when housing starts to level off or go down, as in like 2007, 2008, when housing went down in price, our strategy is to pump more money into the top of the financial funnel in order to keep housing going in the other direction, in order to keep housing from falling. And so, yeah, you have this weird thing where every economist looks back at 2001 to 2008,And when you say housing, what they'll fill in the blank with bubble. They'll say, yes, it was a housing bubble. And you say, OK, well, in 2008, it started to go down a little bit. And then 2010, it hits bottom and it starts to go back up. And it's way, way higher than it is today than it was in 2008. That was a bubble. What is this? And they say, well, that's a housing recovery. Right. Like we recovered to a bubble and then beyond. This is.You know, I think we don't know all of the things that we will know after the next reset. Warren Buffett has the same. You don't know who's swimming naked till the tide goes out and the financial tide has not gone out yet. So we really don't know where the bodies are buried. But if you listen to financial news, you'll hear a lot of fretting over regional banks, commercial real estate.A lot of people when they hear commercial real estate think Walmart or strip mall or franchise restaurant or what have you. Those are certainly part of commercial real estate, but also part of commercial real estate is apartment buildings. You know, multifamily, multifamily buildings is a big part of commercial real estate. And those are financed with at least partially with short term financial products at local banks that have to be rolled over. And there is a huge incentive to extend and pretend.to pretend that they'll someday be rented out at high margins, at high prices. And that works when interest rates are low or very stable. But when interest rates rise, those financial products actually decrease in value, those bonds do. And so banks are less willing to, or less able to really pretend that...Charles Marohn (14:10.544)You know, the in the hundred unit apartment, the 50 units or 40 units that aren't rented will someday be rented at this really high rate. The bank can only pretend so much until, you know, the grim reaper of finance comes for them. And it kind of feels like for regional commercial banks, like that's going to be the shakeout that will make a lot of cascading things in the apartment market. Be very, very different six months, 12 months from now.Kevin K (14:39.684)Yeah, if I were to maybe tie together a couple of different things, one, you had a recent, one of your recent podcasts where you talked about, uh, this is an election year and you kind of went through, uh, this, which was great. I really enjoyed it. Uh, and, uh, I have long enjoyed the way that you have talk about politics and the sort of reframing of the top down versus bottom up, you know, instead of like left, right all the time. I think that's incredibly helpful to think about.Charles Marohn (14:49.808)Haha.Kevin K (15:09.764)But you mentioned, you kind of talked a little bit about the old Tip O 'Neill phrase and the all politics is local, you know, and how that shifted to all politics is national today. And I can't help but think about that in relation to like this real estate discussion and financing where real estate used to be hyper local and it feels more and more like all real estate is national in that respect in terms of how we plan, design and finance whatever is being built.Charles Marohn (15:40.4)I think that's a brilliant insight. To me, the question is, what is the price of the house sensitive to? And a lot of us think that it should be sensitive to the buyer's ability to pay, right? You have a product in the marketplace, there's someone coming to buy it. If that person can't afford it, the market will have to adjust and figure out, is it smaller units, is it smaller rooms, is it less appointment? What is it that will make thatunit affordable to the person buying it. But our market is completely insensitive to the ability of people to pay. What it is more sensitive to is the macroeconomic funding stream. If we can lower interest rates, if we can print money at the Fed and buy mortgage -backed securities, if we can create massive amounts of liquidity, if we can funnel this liquidity to hedge funds and others that will invest in single -family homes as rental products or in a commercial -backedreal estate, what we can do is we can really drive up the price. And so I think from a consumer standpoint, you have to ask, like, what is the product here? We think that the product is us buying a house where the consumer, the house is the product. But the reality is, is that that transaction is incidental to creating what the real product is, which is a mortgage or a commercial real estate certificate, something that can be bundled, can be securitized and sold off.That is what the market is sensitive to, not to your inability to pay. We are, in all sense, not the consumer, we are the product.Kevin K (17:18.436)Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's right. And well, I suppose this topic, since the book is fresh or will be freshly out, will be a big center of discussion at the Strong Town's national gathering coming up in a couple of weeks.Charles Marohn (17:34.736)Yeah, no doubt. I mean, I know that I'm scheduled to do a little bit of housing discussion there. You know, the National Gathering is really we don't call it a conference. We don't call it we call it a gathering because it really is Strongtown's advocates from all over. I would say all over the country, but it's all over North America. And we've got people coming from around the world for this thing. It really is a chance for people to see and learn.what other people are doing bottom up to build strong towns. And housing is certainly part of that and will be part of the discussion. But a big, big emphasis of the gathering is just to, there's a phrase that I used last year that I'll probably talk about this year again, is just like, you're not alone. Being an advocate in a city can feel, you can feel very alone. Like you're the man or the woman against the machine. And the reality is, is that when people join together in a neighborhood,when they start to gather more people together with them, there's so much that can be done from the bottom up. It's really empowering to get these local heroes in a room, let them see each other, let them talk to each other, let them hear each other's stories. I feel like that's the most powerful part of the gathering, really.Kevin K (18:50.371)Yeah, yeah. Well, I certainly enjoyed it last year and then the first one you had a few years ago in Tulsa. And this one's coming up in Cincinnati, May 14th and 15th. It precedes the Congress for the New Urbanism and both are well, well worth attending. So I hope folks who are listening can get out. And if you get a chance to attend, that's great. If you can't look at it for next year, it's really a cool way to meet.Charles Marohn (19:03.055)Yep.Kevin K (19:19.556)people who are interested in the same things. I was really fascinated, Chuck, last year in Charlotte at the, I talked about this with a number of our CNU friends, the difference in the dynamic between the Strong Towns crowd and the CNU crowd. Seeing that like back to back was really fascinating. And it's completely and utterly anecdotal and just judging by what I saw. But I felt like there was a lot.Charles Marohn (19:30.64)Yeah.Kevin K (19:47.268)of energy in the Strong Towns room and Strong Town side of things. And generally speaking, a younger crowd and less, you know, like the senior crowd long has been focused on the design and building professions, architecture, engineering, planning, and the Strong Town, which is great. You know, it's fine. We need, we have to do that, but the Strong Towns crowd was really different. It was much more diverse in terms of the backgrounds of the people that were there.Charles Marohn (20:16.24)So you and I are, I'm gonna say I'm a little older than you, right? I'm 50 this year.Kevin K (20:20.836)No, I'm 54, my friend.Charles Marohn (20:24.112)Okay, okay, well, all right. I assumed I was a little older than you. You just look younger, that's what it is. You and I have been hanging out together at the CNU for many years. And I remember when I first started going, this was the place of super high energy, right? Like I would go, I would meet all these thinkers and all these people doing stuff. And we would like,Kevin K (20:30.436)It's just, I just kept my hair color longer, that's all.Charles Marohn (20:50.48)debate things in the hallway. And there was all these like side things going on. Remember in Salt Lake City, when we did the first debates, it was just this like crazy wild party of, and I say party, I don't drink. There was no like, this was a party of like intellect. Like it was just like electric in the air. I have, I have, I have been searching for that the last few years. I've been like, where's that? Like I want, I want to be in the room with that energy. And I showed up at,are gathering last year with high expectations, but really, you know, knowing, having been on the road and met with people, knowing that our movement had a lot of this bottom up energy, a lot of, you know, just very different people from people who are doing retail and like, I sell flowers and I, you know, have a bakery to people who are, I'm out building homes, I'm doing this stuff, I'm on a planning commission, I'm a mayor of a city.There really is a, when you say diverse, it's a crazy group of bottom up people all who self identify as like, I love my place. I want it to be better. I walked into that room at the opening last year and I'm like, this energy is out of this world. It's amazing. I'll give you a little like under the hood. I'mI wanted last year, like, let's get some music. There should be a party. Like we're having a party here. Like everyone's coming together. Let's get some music. And when I got there and like I had a thing where my daughter was graduating, like that was the week of her graduation from high school. And I could, I flew in at the last minute and I had to fly out right away. So it was just like the timing didn't work well for me, but I got there and like, we didn't have the music because like logistically it wasn't going to work and the sound system wasn't going to work and all that.And I kind of was like a little disappointed. I'm like, Oh, I don't, I don't, I kind of want the vibe to be up here. I walked in the room and the vibe was up here. And I'm like, if we would add music, like they would have blown the roof off this place. It would have been a little too crazy because people were amped. They were excited. Um, I have been re I've been assured that this year there will be music. So we'll see what, we'll see what happens in Cincinnati. If we can, uh, yeah, get, uh, get things even more, uh, more excitement, let's say.Kevin K (22:53.284)Yeah.Kevin K (23:02.564)Oh good.Kevin K (23:11.364)Yeah, well, I look forward to that. I mean, I think like you, I have, you know, it used to be like the CNU, we would come back from a CNU and the adrenaline rush was so crazy that for like a month afterwards, all you could do was think about the stuff that you heard and talked about and you're like, we've got to do X, Y, and Z now. And, you know, I honestly haven't felt that rush in quite a while with CNU. Part of that might just be that I'm getting older and...It's harder for me to feel that and things change. But there's definitely, I love the excitement of the debate and the discussions and seeing a lot of younger people there I think is really cool. So kudos to you guys and hope it continues.Charles Marohn (23:57.488)Thank you. Thank you. It definitely will. We're committed to it. And, you know, I mean, this thing is going off here in a couple of weeks and we're almost full. So, I mean, we've sold hundreds of tickets, people flying in from all over. It will be, it will be, it will be really cool.Kevin K (24:08.164)Yeah, good.Kevin K (24:17.092)All right, well, let's shift and talk about something a little more lighthearted, perhaps. But I want to talk, first, let's talk about baseball, something that both of us share an interest in, both American League Central Division fans of different teams. And obviously, there's a rivalry. But honestly, there isn't really much of a rivalry because both teams are never good at the same time.Charles Marohn (24:24.464)All right.Charles Marohn (24:43.152)Who do you like legitimately consider your top rival?Kevin K (24:47.076)Well, I think for years, the weird thing is it was like the Cardinals, right? But they're not even, but they're National League. Right, so when interleague play started, I think that became a really, really big deal and those games were enormous in both cities. It's tapered off a lot and it's probably, you know, the Cardinals have been such a great organization for so long, they probably kind of laugh about it amongst themselves.Charles Marohn (24:51.312)Okay, right, they're not even in your division, right?Charles Marohn (25:03.248)Yeah, yeah.Charles Marohn (25:12.976)Sure.Kevin K (25:14.468)Uh, so, uh, any more, I don't know, you know, when I was growing up, um, it was the Yankees, it was the Royals and the Yankees. Um, because in the seventies, the Royals had those great teams that won the division every year, 76, 77, 78, and then went to the playoffs and just like lost to the Yankees every year. And, uh, finally turned around in 1980 and won it and world went to the world series. But.Charles Marohn (25:21.104)Okay. Yep.Kevin K (25:41.732)So for years there actually was a pretty fierce rivalry between the Royals and the Yankees, but that was again not in the same division. So it was a little odd.Charles Marohn (25:50.8)We share this in common because the twins, I think we, I mean, we did have the record of all sports for most consecutive playoff losses. And losing consecutively in baseball games is hard to do because you, even, you know, even coming in with mismatched teams, you've got a like 40 % chance of winning statistically any game. So the idea, I think we lost 17 or 18 in a row post -season and almost all of those were to the Yankees. And so we had a deep,Kevin K (26:04.228)Yeah.Charles Marohn (26:20.912)I mean, I told my daughter growing up, you know, she's two years old. And I said, in this family, we don't hate anybody, but we do hate the Yankees. So that's, that's an acceptable, but for me in the division, it's the white Sox. Like I, I'm not a fan of Cleveland. I, I don't really care about Detroit all that much. I gotta say Kansas city does not, like I don't get, you know, foaming at the mouth when we're playing Kansas city, but.Kevin K (26:29.38)Ah yes.Charles Marohn (26:49.712)When we play Chicago, the White Sox, I like go ahead and hit every ever the batter like I don't care. Like I'm I don't like those guys.Kevin K (26:56.868)Yeah. Yeah. And the White Sox, they just have every misfortune. I mean, come on. I think ever since they tore down Old Kamisky, it's been like a curse on that team. So speaking of, go ahead.Charles Marohn (27:06.192)Yeah. Yeah. Well, I took, let me, let me tell this story real quick. Cause this will solidify Chicago for me. I took Chloe, my oldest, she came, I was speaking in Chicago once and she, she's probably like five or six young kid. We rode the train, the Amtrak to Chicago and we were just there for a couple of days. I spoke at this conference. The White Sox were playing a game.And so we went to the game because she likes baseball, you know, dad and daughter go in the game. We showed up. She wanted to wear her twins jersey because, you know, the twins weren't playing. It was the White Sox versus some other team. I don't even remember. We walked in to sit down. Little girl with a cute little pink twins jersey on. People started booing her and yelling at her like literally like she started crying. She felt bad. I'm like, these people don't deserve this kid. This is the White Sox. I hate you guys.Kevin K (27:52.164)Oh my god.Charles Marohn (28:01.296)I'm sorry I came to your dumb stadium with my beautiful daughter. Get lost. So.Kevin K (28:06.02)Well, it is their punishment for tearing down a nice stadium, building a horrific one, having a lousy owner. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was probably the worst new baseball stadium built in that entire era. So speaking of new stadiums, one of the things I just want to chat with you about and get your perspective on is we are having a big debate here locally regarding baseball stadiums because the Royals ownership.Charles Marohn (28:11.984)Yeah, it was a bad stadium. Yeah. Yeah.Kevin K (28:34.884)which is a new ownership group. They bought the team, I guess, three years ago, local people led by John Sherman. They want to build a new park. They want to leave Kauffman Stadium and build a new park in the downtown area. And which in theory, you know, I'm, I and many other people are like, great, let's do it. Sounds awesome. But, you know, obviously we're having this kind of age old debate about,how to finance and build a stadium. And in a smaller market like Kansas City, that comes with fairly large public subsidy one way or another. And the projects themselves just balloon in size incredibly. So we're talking instead of a baseball stadium that might be, I don't know, let's say $600 million, now it's a stadium in a district that's two billion.And the public is expected to underwrite a significant share of that. So there's, you know, we have this, we, there's been this knowledge within our world for years that a lot of us, the economics of this are just kind of silly, but how the, how the hell do cities escape this discussion and this trap? Because I'm completely mystified as how we ever get out of the situation where we are subsidizing major league franchises.Charles Marohn (30:04.784)I have some weird thoughts on this. And yeah, I don't think that, I think that people who are gonna hear this and I'm probably just gonna make like everybody angry. Because I do have like very strange thoughts on this. So let's go out to the edge of Kansas City where the DOT and the city are actively building interchanges because they wanna get more development.Kevin K (30:06.692)please share.Charles Marohn (30:32.816)What I find frustrating about that, when you go build an interchange and you've got on ramps and off ramps on the highway, you're in a sense robbing the highway capacity, right? Because an interchange creates friction and slows down traffic and all that. In order to get the development on the side of the highway, the frontage roads, the interchange, all the big box stores and all the stuff that will go there, and then the housing subdivision that will go adjacent to that.The act of building that interchange makes multimillionaires out of a bunch of randos out in the middle of nowhere. It might be the guy who like inherited it from someone who inherited it or someone from inherited it like. And that's probably the most palatable. What generally happens is someone by bought it from him a decade ago and like a land speculator just sat on it and then worked with the D .O .T. to get it developed. But either way, it's a massive cash transfer from the public.to private property owners. And I have always said, if we're gonna do that, we should do one of two things as a public. We should go out and buy up all that land around where the interchange is gonna be. I'm thinking like a mile in each direction. You know, we should buy that ahead of time at pre -interchange rates. We should build the interchange and then the interchange makes the land more valuable.We should then sell the land back to the market at that higher rate and use that amount to pay for the interchange. That or a more conventional way to do it would be to do a special assessment, which cities do all the time when they're out building sewer and water, they special assess the whole thing.I'm cognizant of the fact that like the Colosseum in ancient Rome was not built in order to get ancient Rome. Like ancient Rome was what it was. And then wealthy patrons came in and said, I want everybody to think I'm awesome. So I'm going to build this Colosseum and, you know, deck it all out and do all that. I feel like our stadiums are, in a sense, the same thing. And if I were a city.Charles Marohn (32:41.36)working with some very rich people to try to build what is in a sense a monument to them and their play thing, this major league baseball team. I would want to use the tools of either imminent domain and development, or I would want to use the tools of special assessment to recoup my part of the investment. Because if I'm gonna build a baseball stadium,I want it to be Wrigley field in terms of the intensity of the development around it and what that actually means to the land values in its vicinity. If I'm going to build, I can't remember what the Atlanta one is called. I hate that state, the new Cobb field or something like that. It's a junk park. Like it might be a nice place, but I like, don't like anything about its development. Even, um, you know,Kevin K (33:21.028)the new one.It's truest. Is it truest park? Yeah.Charles Marohn (33:36.112)Target Field, which is like one of my, I think Target Field is my favorite park and I'm biased obviously, Minnesota Target Field. But I think it's a great park. I think the way they financed it is really backward. And the development around it has trailed the park by 10 to 15 years because we didn't have the right kind of financial.I'm going to use the word incentives, but I don't mean giveaways. I mean, incentives by like now you've got a $10 million special assessment in this land. You better build something that's a hundred million dollars on it or, you know, you're going to pay a high tax rate year after year after year. You got to make use of this property. We didn't have everybody's incentives aligned when we made the big public investment. And so we didn't get the private investment out of it that we should have got. That's.I could buy into stadiums if we actually had that mindset because then the public is not only going to recoup their investment ultimately, but you're going to get a really nice product at the end.Kevin K (34:44.804)Yeah, I think that's a really interesting way to think about it. And unfortunately, I don't think we don't really have public officials who think about it that way. Yeah. Well, yeah, we don't have the stomach for it. And it's a good point.Charles Marohn (34:53.36)the stomach for it? I mean, Chuck says, imminent domain, everything within a mile. I mean, that's crazy. But if you were responsible with your finances, you would do a special assessment.Kevin K (35:08.932)Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of logic to that. And maybe you don't even recover all of the public investment, but you could recover a substantial portion of it. Who knows?Charles Marohn (35:20.72)What I think you can, I think you recover some of it upfront, right? Like you can, you can have your upfront and then you'll have the after effect of basically having the incentives aligned where people will then develop and then you will collect the rest of it in terms of long -term taxes. I mean, I, I've watched Kansas city Joe, our friend, Joe Mancosi did some, some analysis of tax increment financing deals that Kansas city's done that would make your stomach churn. I mean, just giving away.tens of millions of dollars to the most ludicrous kind of things that will never cashflow. I've watched Kansas City build monstrosity things out on the edge of town and call it growth and call it public investment when the city's guaranteed to lose money on every single one of these things. You don't even need more than a napkin analysis to figure that out. It makes me sad. I would, if, if Kansas City were to become more sophisticated about the public purse, I think they could build a stadium.responsibly, but they can't do it without, you know, in a sense, demanding that everyone who's going to get rich on it contributes proportionately to what is being built.Kevin K (36:28.74)Yeah, yeah, I like that. I mean, it seems to me almost like it's sort of a third way thought, you know, thought pattern about it because as I tried to talk to people locally about it here, unfortunately with the reality of sports and sports economics today, like a city the size of Kansas City, you're just not going to build a new facility without public investment in it. It's just not going to happen or you're going to lose the teams. And that sucks, but that's where we are.Charles Marohn (36:55.408)Did New York, didn't New York have public subsidy on their ZO2? I mean, I'm.Kevin K (37:00.612)I think they might have. I know in San Francisco when the Giants built their new stadium, they built it all themselves. And I can't remember some of the new football stadiums they have. Yeah. Yeah.Charles Marohn (37:10.704)I know the 49ers, the 49ers got a huge subsidy on theirs. So, I mean, you're like, I'm with you because you and I are both told that we're mid -market teams, you know, and you've suffered the trauma. No, I was going to say you've suffered the trauma of having a football team lead, but that was St. Louis that had the football team lead. That wasn't Kansas City. You guys have the glorious football team.Kevin K (37:30.308)That was St. Louis, yeah. Uh -huh. Nope.We do. We had a baseball team leave, but that was before I was born. So the Kansas City A's. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we lost an NBA team and an NHL team in my life.Charles Marohn (37:40.048)Okay, so that that trauma is is gone.Charles Marohn (37:47.984)Really? What was your NBA team? I don't remember that.Kevin K (37:50.276)It was the Kansas City Kings. They went to Sacramento. Yeah, in the 80s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, at one point we were the smallest city in the country that had all four major sports leagues.Charles Marohn (37:53.104)Sacramento, no kidding. I did not know that. Huh. Huh. Um.Charles Marohn (38:05.52)We've been told that that Minnesota can't support four because we're too small for that. And there's always the, you know, I feel like it's one of those things where each team can kind of threaten to leave because they're the we're the fourth one that can't be supported without a public stadium. Yeah, it here's here's so you have a you have a background in architecture. Here's what I struggle with with stadiums. I feel like.And I'll say this even about my beloved target field. We don't build stadiums that will be around to be excavated in the future. Like the Roman Coliseum, we can look at and we can see this grandeur and like it's been there thousands of years. We don't build anything that isn't in a sense, it might have a nice fancy facade and it might be nice. And we've used some decorative brick to make it look good.But the reality is, is like, like we just built a plastic band box with some good veneer on it that looks cool. And I like the dimensions, but these aren't like massive public investments meant to endure beyond really a generation. Right? I mean, am I, am I misunderstanding something about how we build these things?Kevin K (39:25.38)Well, I think there was an era where they were built differently. I think that's probably more commonly the case now. I mean, even Kauffman Stadium is a pretty incredible structure in and of itself. There were a lot of impressive structures, though, built in that era in the 60s now that basically are all gone. They're all torn down and replaced. It seems more like they're thought of more like a consumer product.Charles Marohn (39:48.4)Yeah. Yeah.Kevin K (39:55.076)now that is like you build these stadiums and they're wildly expensive and they're huge, but essentially they're built to last maybe two generations. And then we're looking to either completely overhaul it or replace them.Charles Marohn (39:55.888)Yeah!Charles Marohn (40:11.952)Well, I realized that the Metro Dome, which the Metro Dome was a special case product where we built the dumbest stadium at the end of the dumb stadium era. And like, I think the year after we built the Metro Dome or two years later, Camden Yards was built and everyone had buyer's remorse right away. But, you know, you're talking about a stadium that at the 18 year mark.They said needs to come down and we're going to contract this team and actually have fewer baseball teams because of this bad stadium. We got target field in 08 or 09 somewhere in there. I think somewhere in that range. So, you know, the the the Metrodome era lasted 24, 25 years. And I remember that like the roof caved in on it and like you blew it like no one was sad really to see it go because it was really like a plastic box.It seemed to me like it's a consumer good, like it's just designed. And I wonder if, because Wrigley Field, you know, say you could tear that down and rebuild it in place, right? I don't know what it would take to do that. I mean, people would flip out if you did that. They're going to maintain it till it can't be maintained anymore. But.there's really no question of where the Chicago Cubs will play. And I don't think that's because it's iconic as much as it is embedded in this ecosystem around it. You know, so to I'm sorry, Kevin, to me, the key to having a good public stadium investment would be that you have to actually grow the ecosystem around it. So there's some codependency. So that thing actually like could never leave again.Kevin K (41:45.7)Yeah, yeah.Kevin K (42:03.428)Yeah, as our as our friend, Philip Bess would say, he wrote a great, great little book called City Baseball Magic, which actually was a study of what the White Sox should have done when they replaced Comiskey Park. But he talked about it's just the best ballparks are neighborhood ballparks. It would then emphasis on the neighborhood park. So check out one fun little bit of baseball park trivia for you.Charles Marohn (42:24.784)Yeah.Kevin K (42:30.436)One of the very first projects I worked on as a young architect right out of college was at the Metrodome. You remember at one point they put in these big vertical screens to block off parts of the seats. Yeah, to block off part of the seats to make it look more full for different events. I did that. It was a ridiculous project.Charles Marohn (42:30.8)Uh oh.Charles Marohn (42:44.336)The baggy? Yeah, the baggy.Uh huh. Uh huh.man, I hated you then. Because it was so weird because what it was, the Metrodome was built like a football stadium and then they overlaid this baseball stadium within it. And I had season tickets for a while. My brother and I, when I was in grad school, I got them. We went up, the twins had been historically bad for many years and they were selling season tickets at an event. And my brother and I said, well, let's...Let's go look at them. If we can get front row seats, we'll do it. Well, we got front row seats down by the tunnel where they come out for the football game. So it was like by the bullpen. It wasn't it wasn't by the dugout or anything. It was like maybe like what would be in the corner today. But front row is front row. I mean, they were really cool. Like we were right there. You could yell at the right fielder and talk to the guys in the bullpen. It was it was awesome. The problem was you were facing the 50 yard line.which was like center field. So if you wanted to watch the game, you had to like crane your head over the left to actually see the game going on. Those when those banners went up, I think the what you tell me, I feel like the thing was to try to make it feel less empty because you took out like 20 ,000 seats by by putting up this big curtain to say, hey, it's not as empty and it's a little more intimate. Yeah, it didn't work.Kevin K (44:12.164)Yep. Mm -hmm.Kevin K (44:22.148)It was a funny deal. Just the sort of project you give a young architect to work on.Charles Marohn (44:22.288)Hahaha!Charles Marohn (44:28.88)So did you, you came up to the metronome and like, you know, what was your level of involvement with?Kevin K (44:33.988)The funny thing on that, I was just the kid in the office doing the drawing work, so I didn't actually go get to do a site visit for any part of it. But when I was a little kid growing up in Albert Lee, I mean, we went to the Metrodome a lot. I have a lot of great memories of going to games at the Metrodome.Charles Marohn (44:38.352)Sure, sure.Charles Marohn (44:49.648)Now hang on a sec, you're not Minnesotan, are you?Kevin K (44:52.836)No, not really. We lived in Albert Lee.Charles Marohn (44:55.536)Okay.I mean, I like you, I like you, and you have some positive characteristics about you. I didn't want to automatically attribute them to being Minnesotan, but now things are falling into place.Kevin K (45:05.54)No, we lived in Albert Lee for eight years. And yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. And it was when I was a, you know, elementary school kid and junior high. So, you know, those are great years and great, great memories. My parents, I think my parents really were happy to get out. They thought it was way too cold and, you know, they weren't, they weren't too fond of that. But well, I was a kid. I was a kid. I didn't, you know,Charles Marohn (45:09.68)OK, OK, so you got a little of the vibe.Charles Marohn (45:21.456)Yeah, yeah.Charles Marohn (45:31.376)You didn't think it was too cold though, did you? Cause you're, yeah, bring it on.Kevin K (45:36.548)So, last thing I just wanna kind of touch on a little bit, cause it's a fun topic is you've been, you've shared a lot in many podcasts about your love for Disney World and your enjoyment of Disney World. And I just wanna touch on this a little bit. And I've probably like, you know, thinking way too deeply about all this stuff, but we took our kids there, I guess it was about a year and a half ago. I have actually no experience with Disneyland in California, just Disney World in Florida.Charles Marohn (45:47.824)Yeah.Charles Marohn (46:04.752)Mmm.Kevin K (46:05.7)And of course we had a fantastic time. It was absolutely magical for the kids for the age they were. And everything about it was really, really nice. And I just want to talk a little bit about it because it's fascinating to think about because if you could think about like the un -strong towns, it would be like Walt Disney World. It's...you know, if you think about the most incredible, or at least this was the thought I had at the time. If you thought about something that was like the most top -down, large enterprise you could conceive of, it's Disney World. And yet we both really, really enjoy it and find a lot to admire. And I wonder if you could maybe expand on that a little bit or talk about it.Charles Marohn (46:40.912)Absolutely.Charles Marohn (46:51.984)Well, let's start with this. I think the thing that I have always loved from the time that I was, I think 13 was the first time that my family went up until today, is that it is some of the best designed urban spaces in America. If you want to experience, you know, you and I hang out with a crowd.where there's actually a debate over, do you like your urbanism gritty or do you like it fake? And there's a whole strain of people who like, if I can't smell urine in the street, it's not a real city. And I'm from a small town. I actually like things nice. So the idea of going to Disney World and riding transit and having it be beautiful and comfortable and fun, the idea of not having a car and going to places and walking around and...Yeah, there's a lot of other people there, but it's so well designed and proportioned. And the hyper attention on the human experience, not just standing, how you stand in line and wait, but how you actually get the transition from one place to another, to another. You know, like the sight lines that you have and the smells, like all of this, the music, as someone who is an auditory person,The idea that you would walk between different places and the music would not clash with each other as you would go from one place to another, but actually blend. I try to explain this to my wife decades ago and I didn't do a very good job. I said, it's comforting to me because it's so well designed. I used to take my, when I ran my own planning and engineering firm, I used to take my team down to just show them.Here's what good urban design looks like. And like, let me look at the way these buildings are proportioned and laid out. Look at where they've done with the lighting. Look at this. It wasn't like we were going to come back to Brainerd, Minnesota and build Disney World. But my gosh, you look at the lights we put in the park, they're just like ugly street lights because, oh, we need light here. The attention to detail is so deep and thorough. And the stories are just legend of like, you know.Charles Marohn (49:10.416)They would they would put a tree in a spot and what would come and he'd look at him and be like, oh, geez, I should be three feet over this way. And be like, why should it be three feet? Well, look at like here's where it blocks this view and that like this and that. And then he'd walk away and they go, we had to move the tree three feet because now I'll never be able to walk by this and see it that way again. Our cities. Could spend way less money and be vastly more beautiful if we had just.a tiny bit of the understanding of urban design that like the base Imagineer has. And I think that is the thing that, you know, it is Disney World is not meant to endure. It is. I mean, they call it a stage. You're on stage when you're there at the park. It is, you know, like a stage in a theatrical production. It's false fronts. It's like not.Not like super high quality construction. It's meant to be ripped down and rebuilt after a certain amount of time. But your city is made to endure. I mean, you want your city to be around 100 years from now, 200 years from now. None of us build thinking that, well, this neighborhood is going to be disposable. If if we grasped 10 percent of what the Disney Corporation grasp about building great places, it would be a revolution in this country of.of urban design.Kevin K (50:38.66)Yeah, I think one of the things that struck me or maybe it just occurred to me differently this time as well is since I'm in professionally now, I'm running this place management organization here in Kansas City. And so I have gotten a whole lot more exposure in day -to -day work with just management of public space and how difficult that is and just the challenges.Charles Marohn (50:51.888)Yeah.Kevin K (51:07.652)I started to look at it a little bit through that lens. And I think when I started to do that, I'm just completely and utterly impressed with the management of everything that Disney does from beginning to end, from the entire experience, from when you arrive through the process of going through security. Oh my God. The thousands and thousands of people that go through security per hour. And it's just this utterly seamless experience that you're just like, why can't the airport be like this? You know?Charles Marohn (51:37.072)Yeah. Yeah.Kevin K (51:37.092)And, you know, all the aspects of it really makes you say, this is what I think a lot of us are really hoping. This is how we wish our places were managed on a daily basis, including the cleanliness of it. And I know it's a fake world. It's a theme park. But I think that's part of it seems to me like that's part of the attraction.Charles Marohn (52:00.464)Yeah, and I actually think we can discount it and say it's a fake world, like I totally get it. But I also feel like what they've recognized that we all could easily recognize is that a huge part of creating value is the experience. We were having a chat here internally today about an article that one of our writers is working on about transit.and just how a lot of the wayfaring is being taken out in New York and in other places because it was old and it just didn't get replaced. And you can go to a place like Vancouver where they've got new parts of the system and those parts have great wayfaring and great signage. The reason is because the way we finance transit focuses on massive one -time investments.but it doesn't really look at long term the user experience and how do we improve that? How do we put money towards that? And how do we make that fun? We would rather have double the size of the transit system and have it be really crappy for everybody than to have half the transit system and have it be marvelous for everyone who uses it. And that is really a byproduct of like our macro economy, right? Grow, grow, grow, build, build, build more, more, more. Disney builds a lot, butThey never build anything without having a strategy for how it will be exquisitely maintained, for how it will really be conformed and contorted to match the experience. They're always willing to check their assumptions, check their understandings based on how people use stuff. And I think that we could learn a lot from that.The four step process that we use at Strong Towns, the idea that you humbly observe where people struggle and you ask yourself what's the next smallest investment and then you do that and you repeat the process. Part of that comes from really Walt Disney himself. This may be a apocryphal insight, but there's a story about Walt that feels like it's genuine.Charles Marohn (54:21.232)He had an apartment at Disneyland and he would go down in the morning and walk around in his bathrobe watching people get the park ready. And one day he's out walking around and they're putting up a fence. And he's like, why are you why are you putting up a fence there? And he's well, people keep cutting across the grass. We want them to stay on the sidewalk. And his answer was, well, you've got it wrong. Rip out the sidewalk and put it here where people are walking. They're showing you where to go.anyone who's been at one big box store and trying to drive to the next big box store and recognizes that they have to drive half a mile up the highway and then do a weird U -turn and come back and use a right in right out and do all this. Anybody who's tried to cross a street and recognize that they have to walk half a mile to a street light to cross and then come back appreciates the idea that Walt has, which is observe where people are struggling, observe where this is hard and just make it easier for them.To me, this is a genius insight, but it shouldn't be a hard one for us to do.Kevin K (55:27.46)Yeah. Yeah. And I think the other thing is the other observation that I think ties into all that is what you see with Disney World, or at least what I saw with it, is we're in this weird time and place in our culture where there's just not a lot of feeling that we're doing a lot of things really well. And even at the big corporate level,very large corporations, it seems like there's more bad news than good when it comes to all that. And here you have this massive corporation. The Disney Corporation is absolutely massive and owns so many things. And they own this enormous complex of Walt Disney World. And I think when you go there, it's like it kind of, I can understand how my parents would have thought about that era, that America.does big things really well because Disney World epitomizes somebody, an organization doing big things really, really well down to the smallest detail like you describe.Charles Marohn (56:38.096)Well, Walt Disney embodies, for better and for worse, I mean, I think there's obviously two sides to this, the immediate post -war mentality. I mean, Disneyland itself is a hubristic undertaking to transform an orange grove out in the middle of nowhere into this dreamland where you can take your kids, you can take your grandparents, everybody can go and have this wonderful time.His vision came about because he was sitting at like an old carnival, watching his kids go on rides that were dirty and not well taken care of and grounds that weren't very fun. And he's like, as an adult, you're kind of ostracized from participating. Let's build this dream world. I think it is in many ways the best of that era because he did have aa dream and a vision that was very, I'm not gonna use, I want to use the word inclusive, but I think that is probably wrong in our current context. But he would have said, a place for everybody to come. He was also criticized for it being too expensive like it is today. So there's limits to what is very expensive. But I think it's also the worst.Kevin K (57:55.3)It is expensive. Yeah.Charles Marohn (58:00.912)of what we did, because it is this idea that you can create perfection. All like it is possible to build to a finished state and have it be done right. And when it comes to magical make believe places, I think that that's probably right, because they don't have a mindset that it will always be there. They are always redoing and refixing things and all that. But we when we take that mentality and we bring it into our neighborhoods and our cities and we're like, well, we can build this.with a Disney mentality where we go out and build it perfect the first time and then walk away. Sure, we'll get 20 years where it's the nice neighborhood and the good place, and then it will become a downward spiral like every place else. And I do think we have not, it's almost become a place that allows us to believe in the wrong things. Like we, to me, I feel like if my mayor went to Disney World, he would come back,not with the mentality of we need obsessive maintenance and to humbly observe where people are struggling and to respond to the human condition and have great urban design. He would come back and say, wow, we can build big stuff really quickly and have it be awesome. And I'm like, that's the wrong takeaway, buddy.Kevin K (59:16.196)Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think it does espouse a lot of those contradictions. So that feels like probably a good place to leave it. I should also mention in case you didn't know that Walt Disney is from small town Missouri. And Marceline. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, everything in Missouri is pronounced strange. That's just the way it is. It's also Missouri. So I should say that. You know.Charles Marohn (59:22.032)Yeah, yeah, yeah.Hey, thanks, man.Charles Marohn (59:31.696)He is, no, I definitely knew that. I've been wanting, it's Marceline, is that the name of the place? Marceline, okay, I'm saying it like I'm Minnesotan.HahahaDo people actually say that? Missouri?Kevin K (59:47.619)If you're if you are not in Kansas City or St. Louis, it's pronounced Missouri. Oh, yeah.Charles Marohn (59:52.336)Seriously, I did not know that. You know, I spent a summer at Fort Leonard Wood, which was one of the most miserable summers of my life. So I had clay, you know, Minnesota, we have this beautiful glacial outwash. Doesn't mean like the engineering geek, but we have this nice glacial outwash. So when it rains, the water drains into the ground and I'm in Kansas City or I'm sorry, I'm in Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri and I have a tent that I'm sleeping in because I'm a soldier.Kevin K (59:57.316)Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, that's it.Charles Marohn (01:00:21.392)And it rains and guess what happens to the water in Missouri? It just runs into the lowest area and floods it, which happened to be my tent. Oh my gosh, it's horrible. Just wretched.Kevin K (01:00:24.548)Yeah.Kevin K (01:00:29.124)Yeah, yeah, and you just get mud everywhere. It's wonderful. Yeah, but yeah, but yet continuing the story just briefly, Walt Disney then as a young man went to Kansas City and got his start in journalism and his professional career in Kansas City. And he worked at a place called the Laffagram Studios, which a friend of mine here, a developer is trying to restore and they're trying to make it into an attraction. But yeah, it should be a cool thing when it gets done. So.Charles Marohn (01:00:41.328)Yeah.Charles Marohn (01:00:54.128)Oh nice.Is that where he did the first, because there was a first iteration before Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse was the second prototype after he had a falling out with his business partner. Yeah.Kevin K (01:01:01.348)Yes.Kevin K (01:01:06.628)Yes. Yeah. There, there is some, you know, urban legend that the first one was here at the Laffagram studios. But I think, I think that's, uh, I mean, we'll claim it, but it's hotly debated. Uh, well Chuck, thanks so much for doing this. Uh, for again, um, the book, uh, coming out is Escaping the Housing Trap, the Strong Towns Response. And then the Strong Towns National Gathering is coming up May 14th and 15th in Cincinnati.Charles Marohn (01:01:13.392)Sure. Let's go with that. Yeah, yeah, let's go with that.Kevin K (01:01:35.844)So I can't wait to see you there and see our other good friends and look forward to a great week in a city that I've been looking forward to spending more time.Charles Marohn (01:01:48.624)Thank you, my friend. And I'm, I'm happy, uh, to introduce a whole bunch more people to your podcast. Um, if you're not listening, if this is your first time listening and you're listening, cause of me, put this on your rotation. Cause this is a very good podcast and Kevin, uh, has a lot of my friends and our mutual friends and a lot of other interesting people. Um, we talk about more than just Disney and, uh, Kansas city and baseball. So yeah, thanks friend. Absolutely.Kevin K (01:02:10.052)Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, thanks, Chuck. I appreciate that. All right. Take care. Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

Preached by Peter Lyon of Reformed University Fellowship at CNU | www.cnu.ruf.org | www.bygrace.cc

In this episode Justin Chezem, the Christopher Newport University head men's soccer coach, and I welcome his former coach and boss, Steve Shaw. Coach Shaw brought the CNU men's soccer program to the national scene when he took over in 1996. His team was the first in school history to reach a number one national ranking; he continued winning until he retired in 2018. More importantly, Coach Shaw has impacted lives globally through youth coaching and charity work around the world. This episode is filled with great anecdotes from a great man. Thanks Coach Shaw!

Kap and Caleb hit the studio to reflect on a week of results and look ahead at the biggest games ahead. The guys officially launch a POTY of the year campaign, touch on an underrated and under-the-radar goalie to know, and hint at a request for Salisbury on behalf of DIII fans. The pod includes a shout out to Ohio Northern for their win over John Carroll, and discussion on CNU's late-game comeback — one of the most memorable 15 minute of DIII lacrosse in recent game action.

Kap and Caleb are back and in classic form ahead of the 2024 Mustang Classic. The guys dive all the way in on the past week of results and breakdown a ton of that action. A big chunk of the episode is focused on Mustang Classic preview and which 1v1 battles, matchups, and other aspects of the 10 games they are looking forward to most. Friday 11:00 a.m. York vs. St.Lawrence 1:15 p.m. CNU vs. Dickinson 3:30 p.m. RIT vs. Washington & Lee 5:45 p.m. Tufts vs. Hamilton 8:00 p.m. Stevenson vs. Lynchburg Saturday 11:00 a.m. York vs.Dickinson 1:15 p.m. CNU vs. St. Lawrence 3:30 p.m. Lynchburg vs. Hamilton 5:45 p.m. Tufts vs.RIT 8:00 p.m. Stevenson vs. Washington & Lee Be sure to listen close as you might just catch a fun announcement involving your favorite D3 pod and the upcoming Mustang Classic game broadcasts.

Mallory Baches — President of the Congress for the New Urbanism (or, CNU), and urban designer — is in good traffic to hash out the details of the New Urbanism movement, and the overall progression of urban design, urban planning, and urban development in the U.S. We discuss: 00:00 On Mallory, and the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). 04:10 How have urbanism and urban development evolved in the U.S.? 04:43 What is a “congress” for urbanism? 06:06 A background on new urbanism. 08:36 The history and criticism of the New Urbanist movement, and of urban planning movements as a whole. 15:53 On transit-oriented development, and density, in the U.S. 21:06 Southern urbanism: walkable cities in the Sun Belt and American south. 29:12 Selecting cities for an urban planning and design conference. 34:15 A commute into Chicago. A couple of quotes: “Sprawl is continuing. And so 30 years later, [CNU's] mission to reverse that trend is still as important as ever.” “We call ourselves a Congress and we talk about intentionally being based on the idea of debate, exploration, and critique where necessary. That sort of approach to understanding cities is fundamentally evolutionary in nature. “The idea of connecting transit with new development — transit-oriented development, transit-accessible development — there are a lot of acronyms, a lot of ways to describe the idea of designing your mass transportation systems and your higher intensity development to happen in conjunction with each other.” For context: On New Urbanism. On CNU (the organization). On CNU 32 in Cincinnati, Ohio (the annual conference). Connecting with Mallory: On LinkedIn. On Twitter. Connecting with me, Brad: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠On Instagram.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠On TikTok⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠On LinkedIn⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠

Of all the parts of this enjoyable conversation with Seth Zeren, now of Providence, RI, the part I liked the most was this quote:The worst fight is with your allies that betray you.The quote, which is mostly about perception, says a lot about people who are frequently in heated agreement with each other, but find themselves disagreeing on something that's very minor in the big picture. We discuss this as we discuss his post called, “When New Urbanists and YIMBYs fight.”Seth has a great Substack, talking about all the overlap in his interests from city planning to development and more. His path and his passion are impressive. From his early days working in local government, to now the cold, hard reality of making development projects work. And what's next? Perhaps some place management, perhaps some housing policy advocacy, perhaps just more really interesting redevelopment projects.Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin's Substack page.Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you'd like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.Intro: “Why Be Friends”Outro: “Fairweather Friend”Transcript:Kevin (00:01.269)Welcome back to the Messy City podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg. I'm excited today to have Seth Zarin here with me on the podcast. Seth and I have met in the past and corresponded a little bit. Seth has a sub stack that I definitely recommend called Build the Next Right Thing. And he's in Providence, Rhode Island, which is actually, I think, one of the sort of most underratedsmaller cities in the country. I've always really liked Providence, enjoyed it. So Seth, welcome to the podcast. I know we're going to have a lot of good things to talk about. We're going talk some housing and some other stuff, but glad to have you on so we can do this.Seth Zeren (00:43.574)Thanks Kevin, it's nice to be here.Kevin (00:46.261)I think, you know, Seth, I want to kind of start by talking about you're another guy who has a really interesting path and background into becoming into the development world, which is what you're doing now, but certainly not at all where you started. And I wonder if you could kind of walk people through your professional background and then even like why you wanted to do a sub stack.in the first place, as some of us silly people do to put thoughts out in the world.Seth Zeren (01:19.862)Yeah, absolutely. I usually introduce myself when I meet people by saying that I'm a former climate scientist, recovering city planner, turned real estate developer. I usually get a laugh on recovering. Much like people who have all sorts of addiction issues, city planning is something that you always kind of in the back of your head, always kind of want to work on, but can be really challenging.Kevin (01:35.381)Ha ha ha.Seth Zeren (01:48.918)I'm actually from California. I grew up in the San Francisco suburbs, south of the city in Silicon Valley, basically. And by the time I graduated high school, it was quite clear that I would never be able to afford to live there. At that point, houses were selling for about a million dollars for a little ranch. Now it's about $3 million. And so by the time I left for college, I sort of knew that the housing situation there had been a little bit of a mess.broken so much that it was really unlikely that I would be able to find a good quality of life there for myself at that time. In college, I ended up studying geology and climate science. So I was a geology major, geosciences major, and I narrowly averted the PhD. I dodged it, fortunately, and I found myself really becoming interested after college. I went and lived in South Korea for a year and I taught English there. AndIt was such a different experience than growing up in an American suburb or in a small town where I went to college. And it really got me thinking a lot. And when I came back to the U S and I went and worked at a boarding school while I was figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. And I started to read about cities and urbanism and architecture. And I realized that, Oh, actually at the time I thought I wanted to go to school and do architecture, but I was really intimidated by portfolio and drawing. And I had, I was a scientist. I mean, I could do data.I understood geology, but, um, so I was really intimidated by that. I ended up going to an environmental management program at Yale where I could kind of moonlight in law and architecture and business. And so that was kind of my entree. And I discovered I really liked zoning at the time. Uh, and I like to say like, I like board games and zoning is basically just the biggest board game imaginable. It's a huge map, bunch of colored spaces and a really long rule book, which was totally my jam. And.Kevin (03:38.485)Yeah. Yeah.Seth Zeren (03:46.038)So I was a zoning, big zoning nerd. I interned with the planning department, but you know, in between the two years of graduate school and then got a job as a zoning official after graduate school for Newton, Massachusetts, which is kind of that wealthy first ring suburb outside of Boston where the doctors and professors go to have children. And, uh, I was there for about three years before I kind of realized this was not the place for me. I wanted to do stuff. I wanted to shake things up and.One of the dynamics you'll encounter when you find a sort of a wealthy sort of trophy suburb, right, is that people buy there because they like what it is. Right. So the political dynamic in a place like Newton, like many wealthy suburbs around many cities in America is people are buying a particular place and they want it to stay that way. That's what they bought. And so there's a real change aversion there, which was just a bad fit for someone in their twenties, whose master's degree and wants to get stuff done. And.I had also at the time had the opportunity to work with a bunch of developers. And this was coming out of the financial crisis. So there wasn't a lot happening right away, but slowly, slowly things started to get back in gear. And after about three or four years there, I decided I was going to jump ship from the, from the planning side and eventually found myself working at a development shop as a development manager, kind of coming in to do the permitting work. Right. So I just basically switched sides. I was going to go do permitting for the developer.moving complex projects through design review and master plan approval and stuff like that. And I did that for my sort of early apprenticeship for about three or four years. And got to the point where, you know, I got married, we thought about buying a house and realized Boston was also too expensive. So we started considering other places and Providence was nearby. We'd visited, we had friends here. And at the time, certainly it was massively more affordable than the Boston Cambridge area.So we moved down here about eight, maybe nine years ago, about. And so I was working as a development manager, you know, for a larger firm. And then when I came down here, I was still working remotely, but I connected with some local developers and eventually joined a local firm, Armory Management Company, which is a 35 year old, almost 40 year old partnership now that has done historic rehab.Seth Zeren (06:09.782)Main Street revitalization ground up in field development and came on board here, you know, also as a development manager and kind of worked my way up. Now I'm a partner and working on kind of the future of the firm and future of development in the Providence area. So that's kind of my, my origin story. It's one path. I haven't met a lot of other people who've come through the planner path into development. I would say that I was one of those people that you probably remember this, Kevin, you know, whatever eight, nine, 10 years ago at CNU.There was this whole conversation about why are you working for shitty developers? You know, to architects, planners, engineers, go be your own. And I took that very much to heart and was trying to find a way to do it. And I've kind of managed to find a way to do it, come through that.Kevin (06:54.709)Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have met a few other folks who kind of started in the planning route and then ended up in development. But yeah, you're right. There's not too many. I mean, one thing I'm curious about, Seth, so like I'm a Midwestern or so. I don't have that experience of growing up someplace and then realizing like I'm never going to be able to come back. I mean, so a lot of Midwesterners like myself leave at some point.And then often we find our way back home, but it's like, and there may, there's lots of reasons why people do the things, but there's never seems to be this like logistical issue that says, well, I'm just not going to be able to afford to come back where I grew up. What, what's that? And what's that like to at some point have this realization in the place you grew up in, which you probably have some really fond feelings and memories for that you just, you weren't going to be able to make it back or you weren't going to be able to afford to.make it back. That must be a strange feeling.Seth Zeren (07:55.414)It is, and I will say it becomes a lot stranger when you have your own kids, which I have now. I have two young children and we go back to California, you know, once maybe twice a year visit my parents who are still in the house I grew up in. And you know that neighborhood that I grew up in, you know, hasn't built. More than a couple net new homes in the last 50 years, right? Homes get torn down and they get replaced by bigger homes, but.Kevin (08:00.501)Yeah, sure.Seth Zeren (08:24.246)There's no net additional homes. But my parents raised three kids in that house who all have their own households. My parents are still in that house. So sort of mechanically, if you have a neighborhood that doesn't add any homes, you're essentially, but you have, but you have children, those children have to leave, right? Mechanically, right? And if you then multiply that across an entire region, well, then they have to leave the whole region, which is like why people have to leave California. And I, so I have a very,like complicated relationship with it. It's like, obviously, it's my home, it has like a smell and weather and just like the culture that is what I grew up with. It's it's I have nostalgia for that. But I also go whenever I go back there, I'm like, this place makes me crazy. Because it's not like you couldn't build more buildings, you know, you couldn't, it's not like the soil can't support more buildings, right? There's no physical limitation, really. It's the self imposed limitation. And then when you go back, especially,after the last 20 years or so, and you look, you know, here's a region in the world that is the current sort of nexus of tremendous wealth accumulation, right, the Bay Area. And what did we get for it? Right, we got kind of mediocre drive it strip malls, and the, you know, single family houses that go for three and a half million dollars to $5 million. You know, it's similar times in the world, we got, you know,London, Paris, New York, Chicago, Shanghai, Tokyo, like these metropolitan areas were built and there's this tremendous physical capital that's created by economic growth. But in the Bay Area, it's, it's, it's, it's, so it's kind of depressing for me. I feel like it's helpful to go back as a, as like a cautionary tale, you know, it's, it's a, it's a practice, you know, you have to go to the meditation retreat and struggle. And that's a little bit like what it is for me. Um,So you would ask why I write and so I'm a full -time developer. I run, you know, commercial development, residential development, run commercial leasing, a lot of architecture design permitting, you know, I would say, you know, there's a lot of different backgrounds. One can bring into the development world and all of them come with different strengths. Uh, being the planner background gives me a lot of facility with permitting. And so zoning is an area where we're really effective zoning historic.Seth Zeren (10:50.74)neighborhood relationships, all that kind of stuff. And then finding value in buildings that other people don't see because we look around at what other people are doing in other parts of the country and we're able to import those ideas and try things out. Other people have different advantages that they bring. The reason I write is probably like you, I've got like some thoughts in my head that I have to get out. And, you know, development is a great practical.you know, craft practice, you know, and it's, I mentioned, I think earlier apprenticeship, like there are a few schools that teach development, real estate development, kinda, but mostly they teach what we think of institutional development. So if you want to go build a skyscraper, go to MIT or Columbia. Fine.Kevin (11:37.333)Yeah, MIT's got those great courses and everything else that, yeah.Seth Zeren (11:39.51)Yeah, and like, totally fair. Like, that's a reason that's a thing that makes sense in the world, but it's not going to help you, you know, renovate a triple decker or, you know, put up an ad or or renovate a Main Street building. It's just not the skill set. They're not teaching that. So it's an apprenticeship. I mean, it's still really an apprenticeship job. You have to go and you have to go through a lot of stuff and struggle and you see all the pain and suffering and you go through the stress andKevin (11:53.877)Yeah. Yeah.Seth Zeren (12:08.726)You start to learn stuff and it's one of those jobs. There's so much to learn that you, you know, here I am 40 a partner doing a bunch of development work and I'm learning stuff every day, right? And we're all learning stuff every day. So it's it's really satisfying in that way, but. It's not necessarily intellectual job, right? I mean, thinking about stuff is important. Math is important. Those are all relevant things, but it's not the only thing that matters. And so I write because trying to figure out some stuff, right? Trying to figure out.for myself, but then also how to explain things to other people. Um, cause one of things I say to people is that, and I learned this when I became a developer is that like as a developer, I had more in common with the blue collar tradespeople without a college degree in terms of my understanding of the built environment than I did with someone who had my equivalent class background, education, income level, like an attorney or something, right?They live in a house that they bought from someone else, right? They are a consumer of the built environment, but they know very little about how it gets built. They don't get under the hood. But conversely, like I, you know, the plumber and I under, you know, we're in it together. Now we have very different jobs. We might, you know, we're having a different experience of it, but we both are seeing this world. We're both participating in the making of stuff. And so we end up with this very different environment. And then.because of the way we've regulated the built environment, now there's this huge chasm between the people who build the cities and the people who consume the cities that are built for them. Because people don't build much for themselves or for their cousin or for their neighbor.Kevin (13:44.533)Yeah, yeah, that's a, I mean, that's a really interesting point. I like that Seth. And it sort of resonates with me too. And, you know, in my experiences in design and development and you get some of that in architecture too. If you're the kind of an architect who you spend a lot of time doing construction administration or on job sites, you really, I think get a very different feel for that than if you're just kind of working in schematic design all the time. But yeah, that art of.creating things. And this is what I kind of often tell people about development. One of the things that just completely, like routinely frustrates me is this sort of parody of developers that's put out in the world. It's like, you know, as the black hat evil people trying to, you know, ruin cities and, and not this understanding that actually, and not that there aren't those people, there are some, you know, there are crappy people in every field. But most developers are just simply in the act of creating things that other people are going to use.Seth Zeren (14:36.278)Yeah.Seth Zeren (14:44.022)That's true. And I say that all the time as well. And I would add to that, that one of things that's interesting about development, right, coming from planning. So like real estate or city planning, right? Graduate degrees, conferences, magazines, there's even a licensure, right? You get your AICP, go to the conference, get the magazine. It's a profession. Real estate development isn't really a profession.Kevin (14:44.181)Like that's the whole point.Seth Zeren (15:11.254)You get $2 million and buy a CVS, you're a real estate developer. There you go. You put it on your business card, it's your real estate developer. So there's no professional boundaries for good and for ill. I mean, sometimes I think the boundaries around some of these professions are actually really harmful, but you kind of know what you're going to get. You know what the professional culture is and you kind of know how it changes and you know the institutions. Development really doesn't have any of that. Even the Urban Land Institute, ULI, which is a major player still like,compared to like the APA and planning is minuscule. And so like part of the challenges is that, so that's one piece of it. It's not really a profession. The other piece of it is that one of the things that's happened in the 20th century is we blew up our development culture, right? We had an ecosystem of building places, you know, that was the design, the construction, the operations, the leasing, the materials.the trades, there was a sort of ecosystem of it, and we kind of blew it up. We radically transformed it over a short period of decades. And so there's no continuity. So when people do development, there's not a sense of there's any kind of private constraint or private rules. So it feels even less like there's a profession. There's not like a coherent culture, we're going to build more of that, or we're going to evolve incrementally from a coherent culture of building.We're just going to build whatever you end up. That's where you end up with the like two story building with a mansard. That's like with the weird landscaping. It's just this weird Chimera because the developer and to a large extent, the architects have no grounded. There's, there's no like lineage they're working from. There's no continuity. They're just throwing stuff at the wall, you know,Kevin (17:00.341)Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think one of the other aspects is that in development, so many of the players in the non -institutional world are entrepreneurs. At their heart of hearts, they're entrepreneurs. And it's hard to gather together a whole group of entrepreneurs who are, in some sense, in competition with each other all the time, to feel like a common sense of purpose.Seth Zeren (17:25.174)Yeah, and they're often grinding for their own private gain, which in many parts of the United States is sort of seen as not good, right? Profit is bad to a lot of people. And I think that's unfortunate because while certainly people can do bad things and that's not good, making a profit from doing good things is good. It's a good sign. It means you get to do more of it, right? We say we have to make a profit because that's what we, that's the...Kevin (17:30.101)Yeah.Seth Zeren (17:53.062)seed corn for the next project, right? If we ate all of our seed corn, we would have no next project, right? And if we run out of seed corn, we all starve, right? So you don't get to lose money very many times in real estate before you're out of the game. So it's...Kevin (18:05.685)Yeah, well, and nobody bemoans the local cafe or the barbershop or whomever from making a profit. We all want them to make a profit and succeed, but for some reason, the local developer in a business that's far riskier and more expensive, it's like we completely beat them up about the idea that they actually need to make money to keep going.Seth Zeren (18:22.326)Yeah.Seth Zeren (18:27.606)Yeah. And I think part of it is that there is part of this change in building culture, right? Is that there is where there is more of, or a greater percentage of the built of the new development is sort of seen as done by outsiders for short -term gain. And then they're gone. You know, you'll you've talked to other folks in the incremental development world between the farmer and the hunter, right? And it's we're, we're 90%, 95 % hunters now, you know, instead of 25 % hunters. And that just really changes.Kevin (18:41.397)Yeah. Right.Kevin (18:48.661)Yeah, sure.Seth Zeren (18:56.918)the relationship. So we're a local firm. I work in the neighborhoods in which we live. We work down the block from our projects. If we do a bad job, I have to look at it every day. People know who I am. They're going to yell at me. Like there's a level of responsibility. The profits are most, many of the profits are being reinvested again locally into the next project or into donations to local organizations. So it gets it, you know, not, it's not just as a matter of credibility, but as a matter of like the actual development culture and ecosystem, it's just a better way of life. Um,I think one of the things that's key though about the developer image, right? Is that there was this real period and formative period for, for you and for me, like in the 60s, 70s, 80s of the real estate developer is always the villain, right? And every hallmark movie and every, you know, real estate developers are always the bad guys. And it's a really easy trope, right? It's, it's, it's change for, you know, we're going to change something that's here now that's good for profit, you know, and then they're going to be gone. Um, we don't have any valorous.Kevin (19:37.811)Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Sure.Seth Zeren (19:56.442)examples of the real estate developer in popular culture. And I think if I had a magic wand, I would like I would have some great popular sitcom about, you know, a real estate developer, young Latino builder in LA doing interesting stuff and growing over the course of seasons and be hilarious because there's so much tragic comedy and development. So if anyone out there wants to pitch a show to Hollywood, that's that's what I would pitch. Oh, my God, no, that's not me.Kevin (20:19.893)Well, I think you've got your next screenwriting gig. So, give us an example of a project that you're involved with now, something you're working on to get people sent to what you're doing.Seth Zeren (20:31.798)Yeah, so yeah, I'll give two quick examples. So we just finished a rehabilitation of an historic structure, four story masonry building that was converted back to residential, right? It had been turned into actually a nursing home. It was first as a hospital than a nursing home in the 20th century. It was originally built as four brick row houses. And so we brought that back to residential. That just finished last summer, 12 units. And that project was really great. It's really beautiful building.We are a little bit counter -cultural in some times what we do. So we built, in part following the logic of the building, because we were doing a federal historic tax credit project, we didn't want to torture the building. So the units are large. We have, you know, 1500 square foot, two bedroom, two bath apartments, which is on current construction, like weird. It's just, they're really big and they're expensive as a consequence of being big. But what we're finding is there are people who will like nice stuff, and they're willing to pay.more for an apartment. And it's still cheap compared to New York or Boston. It's expensive in Providence, but there are people who will pay that. And right now we're working on the second phase of that project. So that's probably 26 unit building. We're going to try to get some three bedroom apartments in that, which is again, sort of philosophically, we think it's important that there are places where families could live in multifamily housing. It's on a park. It's a beautiful location. And then the project we just started,As we acquired a 50 ,000 square foot mill building in a kind of old industrial area of the city that has, it's one of those things where the previous owner kind of ran out of money and attention. So some things got done, but not other things. So we're finishing that up and that project, we are actually going to complete sort of the previous owner's plan, which was to create modestly priced commercial spaces. So we, in our portfolio, about 50, 50 residential and commercial, which isn't.necessarily by strategy. It's just sort of where we've ended up. Uh, but I think on the margin, we're a little bit more comfortable with commercials than the typical developer or landlord in our area. So because we run so much of it and it's full, I mean, we're 95, 97 % full and commercial across 300 and something thousand square feet. Um, and that's because we price to rent it, you know, and we take a good job caring for it. Uh, we follow the advice of making things smaller if they don't rent.Seth Zeren (22:57.878)Right? So if you make them smaller, then you make the rent smaller, which means more people can rent it. Um, and there's turnover, but you have a reusable unit, just like an apartment, people move right into it, uh, run their business out of that. So it's been good. I mean, you know, who knows things could always change, but we see a lot of value in, you know, one of the things that happened in American cities is disinvestment and white flight took place was not only did the people leave, but I'll sort of all the businesses.So it's like, what is your dentist? Where's your doctor's office? Where's your accountant? Where's your graphic designer? Or, you know, where's your retail shops, you know, your salons, your banks, your restaurants, your bars and restaurants and bars usually come first, but that's only a piece of the ecosystem. You know, it's a whole, you know, you need gyms and retail stores and yoga studios. And I know that sounds kind of trite, but it's sort of a, a, a curating kind of orientation. So this building, part of the strategy is to create a building that is safe.and modestly priced and not pristine so that it's a building in which people can do work. So it's artists, fabricators who have real businesses but need a space to operate their real business. It's not just a crazy building, spray painting the walls, but a reasonable building, not too expensive, not too fancy, but safe. Sprinklers and a roof that doesn't leak. So that's kind of our current project.Kevin (24:16.149)Yeah. Yeah. That's a great model. It reminds me a little bit of one of Monty Anderson's projects in South Dallas, sort of a similar deal, large former industrial building and essentially a minimal, very minimal tenant finish, but incredibly flexible. And if it's priced right, it, you know, in his case, at least up, you know, very quickly. That's a cool model. So I didn't really have any, a whole lot of personal experience withProvidence probably until the CNU was hosted there in what was that? Mid 2000s or so. Which was the best Congress up to that point and the best one until we hosted one in Savannah, of course. And anyway, I was really impressed by Providence. I thought it was...just an incredibly interesting city, very walkable, really cool architecture everywhere, nice downtown. Just seemed like it had a ton of assets, especially in that region. And like you said, priced very differently than Boston or New York. And so I'm curious about the last decade or so, what's going on in Providence. How's the market there? How are things changing? And as a...more of like a third tier city, what do you see that's different compared to some of the larger markets?Seth Zeren (25:47.094)Well, I think that the big story of the last 10 years is that we're no longer kind of isolated on our own. And I don't know if that's mostly a combination of remote work or if it also has something to do with just how expensive Boston and New York have become and other cities. And Providence has seen some of the highest year over year property appreciation in the country. So you're right. It's a nice place to live, you know, and then if you're paying, you know,$3 ,500 a month for, you know, kind of crappy two bedroom apartment in Somerville, you move to Providence and you can get a really nice apartment for $3 ,500 or you can save a bunch of money. And so that it's not so similar for me, right? We moved down here because it was cheaper. And so that adds demand. It adds demand in the upper end of the market. So a big part of what's happening in Providence, Rhode Island is, is that there's a relatively small number.but of people with a fair amount of resources, income and capital moving here. And the state chronically, because it's sort of been tucked away for a long time, it has very little home construction, right? We are the last, second to last, third to last in per capita home construction every year for the last few decades. And so the intersection of those two things is causing a really crazy housing spike and a lot of angst.And for myself, this is one of the places where like my own experience growing up in the Bay Area and then having my own kids has really hit home because, you know, I know in 20 years, I'm still going to need a house to live in. And my two kids are probably each going to want their own house to live in or apartment. Right. So I either got to build them one. They're going to buy yours or they got to leave. It's math. Right. And so it's put the question of housing shortage kind of on the sharp end of the stick for me personally.Right? Is, you know, am I going to be able to see my grandchildren more than once or twice a year kind of thing? You know, and that's a big deal. Right. And I know people don't quite appreciate it yet. I feel a little bit like a harbinger of doom sometimes because in Rhode Island, the feeling is like this could never happen here. Right. Because we're kind of this backwater sort of economically hasn't done well since deindustrialization. You know, there's some bright spots, but it's a little tough and nice quality of life, but not too expensive. And that whole script.Seth Zeren (28:13.142)of worked for a generation or two, but it's not relevant anymore unfortunately. And then that psychic cultural transformation is going to be really hard.Kevin (28:23.541)So coming from the background that you came from, how do you compare the development or the regulatory apparatus in Rhode Island and in Providence compared to places you've worked or pros and cons and what's going on there?Seth Zeren (28:36.086)Oh boy.Seth Zeren (28:41.494)Yeah, when I go to CNU and I'd say I'm from New England, they're like, how do you work there? Because it's hard. Yeah, we're more heavily regulated region. I think that in some ways that's beneficial to someone like me, right? If you're good at navigating the rules, then it's actually to your advantage to work in a regulated market because there's, you I'm not competing on how cheaply I can put up drywall. I'm competing on who can come up with the most creative use of land and get through the regs.Kevin (28:45.685)Ha ha ha ha.Seth Zeren (29:13.686)It's, you know, Providence itself has a mod, what I would call like a modern zoning ordinance. It's got a lot of, you know, there's things I would quibble with, there's things I would change, but it's basically a functioning ordinance that like does the right things more or less, right? And which is great. We mostly work in Providence. I'd say the rest of the state, like most of the rest of New England, it's still like 1955 and there's no...resources, no political impetus to like really fix that yet. I've, I've helped one of my responses is I helped found last year a group called Neighbors Welcome Rhode Island, which is a sort of strong towns meets UMB type or organization that we're still kind of launching a website now. We're working on legislation, state level legislation, and also trying to support local organizing in these towns.Seth Zeren (30:14.998)So it's a, it's, it's, you know, very similar to the markets I'm used to. It's a new England place. Everyone's in everyone else's business. The place has been inhabited buildings on it for, for, you know, hundreds of years. I think one thing that's always interesting about, about new England though, you know, compared to the national conversation is the missing middle is not missing here. Like our cities are made out of triple deckers, twos, threes, fours, sixes all over the place.Kevin (30:37.653)Mm -hmm.Seth Zeren (30:43.062)Our problem is we don't know what comes next. So a city like Providence right now, the only plan is, and this is true, Boston and these places, you can, sure, you can build on the vacant lots and there's a bunch of vacant lots and you can build those for a while. There's gonna be some bad commercial buildings. You can build on those for a while. There's some old industrial land. You're gonna build on that for a while. But in a different way, but similar to the regions where everything's zoned single family and it's built out single family, you can't add anything.to the bulk of the neighborhoods, which are zoned for two and three family homes, because there's already two and three family homes there. And what we don't have, and I don't think anyone has an answer to this, is how do you create a building typology and a business model and a regulatory framework, building code, zoning code, et cetera, to add density to those neighborhoods, to take a three -family neighborhood and bring it to the next increment.whatever that is, because I don't, I don't think we have a model for that other than to go to a full like five over one big apartment building, but the land assemblage there is really prohibitive. So what's the next thing that's denser than three families on 5 ,000 square foot lots, but isn't a big commercial building. And I don't think we have an answer for that yet. I mean, as a urbanist architecture development community, and we certainly don't have a regulatory framework that will allow us to build it either. So that's like an R and D project. That's sort of a back burner curiosity of mine.Kevin (32:08.981)Does the regulatory framework allow you to build the triple -deckers in place?Seth Zeren (32:14.198)Uh, under zoning. Yeah, kind of under building code. No, right. Cause triple deckers are commercial code. So you need sprinklers. So you can't build them. The cost difference. You'd just build a big two family instead of building a three family. It's a much better strategy. So one of the things that neighbors welcome is proposing this legislative cycle to follow on North Carolina's example and Memphis's examples to move three, four, five, six family dwellings into the residential code. And, you know, with no sprinklers, a single stair. Um,And, you know, we'll keep the two hour rating, just add more drywall. Okay, fine. But, you know, that's one of the things we're proposing along with a single stair reform for the small apartment buildings. But yeah, I mean, it's a chicken and the egg, right? There's no point coming up with the prototype and you can't build it. But then no one wants to reform the building code because there's no prototype that makes sense that people are excited about. So it's really kind of trapped. And so, you know, that's an interesting challenge that we struggle with.Kevin (33:14.069)Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting thing to think about what that next increment to would be beyond the freestanding, you know, triple deckers and stuff like that. Because, you know, I guess the first thing that comes to mind as you start to think about neighborhoods more like you would see in New York or Boston, certain parts of those cities that went to like five and six story walk up buildings that, yeah, yeah. And they're not.Seth Zeren (33:39.476)Buildings that touch. That's the big thing.Kevin (33:43.931)really townhouses wouldn't call them townhouses, but they might be like a five story walk up. Like you'd see, you know, on the upper East or upper East side or upper West side or something like that.Seth Zeren (33:49.598)Yeah.Seth Zeren (33:52.982)Yeah, there's two tiers, I think. There is a version that's more about lot subdivision, right? So we have decently sized lots and three families are big, but you might be able to get some more houses on them or bigger versions. And then I certainly moving to the part where you have party wall construction and the buildings that touch, you recover a bunch of lost area to thin side yards that no one can use. That tier is really interesting because you could probably keep them as owner occupant.Right? They'd be small, you know, two, three, four families, but on smaller piece of land, you know, buildings that touch whatever the next year above that, you know, which is like a single stair elevator, five, six stories, you know, 20 apartments. That's a commercial loan. It's a commercial operator. And, you one of the virtues of the triple decker, right, is that you have a distributed ownership, right? So that it's not just.You know, we have tons of landlords in the state, you know, because everyone I own, the triple decker I live in, right? Everybody owns, you know, a two family, a three family mom, grandma's two family, right? It's just it, there's so many opportunities for people to be small landlords for good and for ill, mostly I think for good, but there are, there are some limitations to it. Um, you know, so when I look around at international examples, right. You know, so for example, I teach real estate development on the side, cause I really care about bringing more people into this profession and not profession trade.craft, whatever. And I had some European students last fall, and I brought them to Providence on a field trip, took them around my neighborhood, which is, you know, to native Rhode Islanders like the hood. It's like the inner city. Ooh, scary. And they're like, this is a very nice suburb, right? Because to them, a bunch of detached two and three family dwellings with a few vacant lots in between them or parking lots, this is suburban density. And they're wrong. And they're not wrong. They're right.Kevin (35:19.893)Yeah.Seth Zeren (35:47.786)you know, historically like that, that was a transition. You'd go from town, right? Which is mostly detached, small multifamily buildings to herb to the city. The building starts to touch because the frontage is really valuable and you wouldn't just leave it for like, you know, five foot grass strips and whatever. Um, and so, you know, it still ends up being quite car focused because, you know, everything is sort of far apart and you know, you got to fill in the empty gaps.Kevin (36:13.781)Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of that reminds me a little bit of what Jane Jacobs used to talk about in Death and Life of Great American Cities as sort of like the gray zones. Yeah, the in -between density.Seth Zeren (36:23.094)Yeah, the gray density. Yeah. And what I would say is what happened to my neighborhood to a certain extent, and I think this is true of a lot of American, you know, urban neighborhoods, you know, sort of pre -auto suburbanization is that what happened, there was so much, there was a lot of removal, even where there wasn't wholesale urban renewal, you know, mercantile buildings were taken down and replaced with a gas station, right, or a parking lot. And the church is, you know, brought down, you know, there's little holes in the fabric.And when I look at the neighborhood as like someone who thinks about cities and can see, can, you know, learns to look in that way, it's kind of looks like someone who's slightly sick, right? Their skin's a little pale, a little drawn, you know, there's a little yellow in their eyes. That's what it kind of feels like. And so it's about kind of filling it back up again. I think we've kind of, in a lot of cases, we kind of dipped down into the gray zone and we're trying to get back into it because once we get kind of out of that gray zone, adding density is good.Right, it brings more services, more people, which can support more businesses. And there's this positive feedback that strengthens the neighborhood and makes it better. But in the gray zone, it's like, well, is more people gonna make it worse? Like, what are we? It's a nice callback, because most people don't make it past parks in death and life. It's just too bad. I tell them all the good bits are at the end.Kevin (37:37.781)There's many good bits. But yeah, I think there's an interesting aspect of American cities in particular there where you have, and I think about this a lot, we wrestle with this so much in my part of town in Kansas City where there is a sort of urban density that actually works pretty well where everybody pretty much drives still, right? If you know what I mean, like it.Seth Zeren (38:05.526)Yep. Yep. Bye, Norris.Kevin (38:06.869)The parking is easy and it's just not that, it's not really urban, but it's not really suburban. And I think there was a generation of people who re -occupied a lot of urban places like that in the 70s and 80s in particular, who love it for that. They love the fact that they're like in the city, but it's like parking was easy. Now the problem is, yeah.Seth Zeren (38:17.91)Yeah.Seth Zeren (38:32.182)Yep, we have that here too, absolutely.Kevin (38:34.997)The problem is like historically that was a complete non -starter. Those neighborhoods had far more people, were far more urban. And by today's standards, it would have been incredibly difficult to have a car and drive it around everywhere and park it.Seth Zeren (38:49.258)Well, people forget that like you could have the same number of housing units and have fewer people because house hold size is so much smaller today. So the street is relatively empty, right? Compared to when grandma was living here, you know, 80 years ago, um, as far fewer people around.Kevin (38:53.365)Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Kevin (39:03.381)Yeah. And now with the prevalence of like one car per adult everywhere, the challenge of trying to upgrade those neighborhoods to become more like their historical predecessors, it does create a lot of conflict because then all of a sudden we are wrestling with the, it's really the car issue in many respects. Yeah.Seth Zeren (39:15.798)Yeah.Seth Zeren (39:22.774)Yeah, you're moving from one equilibrium to another equilibrium. And that's always really painful because it's going to reduce quality along the trip, even if you end up in a better place on the other side. You know, one of the things I find really helpful or really valuable, and I admired your work about this, is the business improvement district. And I don't know, whatever we call that microform of government. And we're involved in helping create one on a main street near us that has suffered from a tremendous amount of urban renewal and...Kevin (39:32.501)Yeah. Yeah.Kevin (39:46.003)Mm -hmm.Seth Zeren (39:53.3)institutional concentration and we're trying to figure out how to improve that. And one of things that I've learned from doing that is that the city, even with a pretty strong planning department, Providence has a good planning department, lots of good people, plenty of staff. It's not low capacity, but they got a big city to run, right? And they can't know it super deeply everywhere all the time, right? And here, and I'm involved because we own a bunch of property nearby and I've been working in the area for years. And so I get to know all the other owners and I get to know thethe nonprofits and the businesses and residents and you know, but I'm working on like eight square blocks, if that right. And I know that really well. I can talk about this block versus this block and this crosswalk and that curb and this parking lot and that, that tenant and you know, at that micro level. And it just seems to me that that's gotta be the future of a lot of this governance stuff. Cause to get out of that bad equilibrium is going to require a bunch of really careful.tactical hands -on changes to infrastructure, to private development, public, you know, all those pieces. And when I look at the whole city, I'm like, there's not enough coordination, right? There's not enough attention. There's too many things going on, too many fires to fight. It's at that micro level that I could kind of organize enough people, run the small planning exercise, coordinate the private development, coordinate the public investment and keep on top of everybody. But it's only, you know, eight square blocks, right? In a big city.So how does that work?Kevin (41:21.525)Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's something we've wrestled with a lot and we obviously do a bunch of it here, but I'm a big believer in, you know, place management at that scale. And I think one of the issues that we've seen over and over again is, you know, my city is even much bigger. It's like 320 square miles geographically. It's insanely large. Half a million people in the city limits. So like relatively low density for that large of a city, but...the ability of staff to actually manage all that and know what's going on. It's impossible. It's literally impossible. Yeah.Seth Zeren (41:57.142)Well, I've been city staff and I remember how insane it was. I mean, you don't get out of the building because you're too busy answering emails. You know, this is like you fight with the engineers or whoever about an intersection is like, have you ever stood in the intersection for an hour? Because I have, right? Because I'm there all the time. But you can't run the city, you know, not getting out into the field and seeing the mucky bits, right? And that's like.Kevin (42:17.045)Yeah, there's just a there's a huge mismatch in how we manage cities and their ability to change and solve just solve problems, solve basic problems.Seth Zeren (42:25.43)Well, so one of my questions is, is that in part because like the way we teach kind of all the pieces of city building and management is kind of like, and it feels like they're individually busted and then the system is busted. So like public administration, civil engineering, architecture, planning, you know, development, all, you know, whatever that there's a whole package of different professional schools that you could go to that would teach you these different skills, but none of them talk to each other.And so when they're graduates, I remember being a planner and then talking to the civil engineer Newton being like, we're from different planets, man. Like the words I'm saying, you don't understand the words you're saying, I don't understand, like, and no one's in charge. So we're just kind of like, because every department, one of the things that happens in cities, right, is every department is co equal under the under a mayor or city manager or something. So like planning department can't tell DPW what to do. They're the same level, you know, and so we're just kind of butt heads.Kevin (43:01.493)HeheheheheSeth Zeren (43:23.67)But planning is in a particularly bad situation because they don't have any shovels or trucks or much free cash or anything else. They don't get to do much. Their only power is persuasion.Kevin (43:33.525)And it's the first jobs that are cut whenever there's a recession too. But yeah, I mean, the whole industry is very siloed. And this has kind of been the classic battle of the new urbanism from the beginning was really the push from our side was to create generalists, that people who could pull everything together. And our charrette process was designed to bring all those people together and problem solve at the same time.Seth Zeren (43:36.83)Yeah.Kevin (44:03.317)And that actually worked really well, and it does work really well when you're able to facilitate that. The challenge you have in a lot of city governments that I've seen is that they're just like you said, they're all vertically, you know, all differentiated vertically and it's all siloed. And there's not a ton of incentive for the different departments to understand each other and work together unless you have a particularly strong executive who forces that to happen.Seth Zeren (44:28.662)Yeah, that's really the game. It's like, does your executive get it and care and willing to spend the time on it? You've said something really interesting in the past on other versions of this podcast, which is that, I don't know if I'll get it exactly right, but we spend like 50 % of the time on design, 40 % on policy and 10 % on implementation. And we should be like a third, a third, a third. Here's the thing. I feel like the charrette process is really great, but then the charrette leaves. New urbanists don't have, as far as I can tell, much of an answer of how you actually run the city.There's no proposal on how to reorganize the departments of the city government. There's no proposal on charter reform for cities or, you know, there's a whole universe of, you what should the education for a city manager be? Right. We have, we have an idea about what planning should do differently, you know, and so there's bits and pieces, strong towns, urban three, talk a little bit about the finance side. We're just starting to think about it. When you open that door, you realize, oh my gosh, where are the new urbanist police chiefs? Where are the new urbanist fire chiefs? Right.the controllers, the tax assessors, there's this huge apparatus of public entities that are out there. And I guess part of the reason why the place management is so cool is that you get to actually just be a little micro government. And instead of having to silo off every little bit of things, you're a taxing entity, you can also go hire people to put out flowers, you can also write regulations, you're a whole thing. And so likewise, I feel like the CNU universe has not yet...Kevin (45:47.541)Yeah. Yeah.Seth Zeren (45:55.19)really contended with like the mucky bits of administering, managing the city.Kevin (46:00.245)Yeah, I think that's totally, I think it's totally fair. And, you know, I got a lot of that thinking from Liz Plater -Zyberg who, and so the way she broke it down was design, policy and management. That's the three legs of the stool. Most of the people who came to the new urbanism originally and were most passionate were designers. So they had a very heavy emphasis on design. There were also a lot of policy wonks. So you got that policy piece, but yeah, very few people from.the world of understanding how to actually manage cities. And we've had a lot of interaction and bring people to the table and conferences and all, but I still think very little understanding in that world of how things work.Seth Zeren (46:42.166)Well, and you go, I think, to the International Downtown Association, right? The IDA. How is it that the IDA and CNU are still, like, not connected at all? As far as I could tell, right? From the outside, it just, like, the stuff we're doing is so, so connected, right? And so this, I guess, is a plea to the CNU folks and a plea to the IDA folks, like, let's get together, guys. Because, like, CNU can bring a whole bunch of the design and policy ideas. But you're right, we need managers. And manager, Strong Town sometimes talks about howKevin (46:45.173)Mm -hmm. Yeah.Kevin (46:55.925)This is a good question.Seth Zeren (47:11.132)maintenance is not sexy, right? It's easier to get people to design a new road than just fix the damn road you got. But that's the problem, right? If nobody's interested and we have no way of making management or administration better, like you'll just keep doing new projects and then as soon as you leave, they'll just fall apart, right? Because no one's going to run them when you go.Kevin (47:32.981)Yeah, no doubt. And so hopefully we can make that happen. I would have talked with a few people about this that we need to find a way to link up. I mean, there's always been a linkage there, but it's just not nearly as tight and as strong as I think it could be. I'm amazed when I go to the IDA conference just how few new urbanist consultants even bother to attend, which is shocking to me. It's enormous. But yes, I think there's an in...Seth Zeren (47:53.558)Yeah, it seems like a huge missed opportunity on both sides.Kevin (48:02.965)One of the, I think, ill effects of the last 30 or 40 years of there's been a lot of education that's pushed really smart, ambitious young people into the policy world instead of emphasizing that how important really good management is. First of all, I would say design also. I mean, and problem solving with projects generally is incredibly important.My bias is doing projects is more important than policy, but I know there's a role for both. But management, God, if you don't have good ongoing management of a place, just like any business, if a business doesn't have good ongoing management, forget it, you're toast. And a city, if it doesn't have it, is gonna suffer tremendously. So, you one, go ahead, go ahead.Seth Zeren (48:54.038)Well, I was gonna say, I feel like in my head, I've been thinking about this for a long time. And when I went to school, I went into an environmental management program, quote unquote management, right? It was supposed to train professional people to manage environmental organizations, work in government, work at the forest service, work for nonprofits, working for profits, doing environmental stuff. Were there any classes on management stuff, right? Managing people, managing budgets.Communications, no, it was all science, which is great, fine, like I need to know some stuff about ecology or water management or whatever, but like, how are we a professional school? You know, we have to go out in the world and run organizations which have budgets and staff and HR and communications and negotiation. You know, you can go to the business school and learn some of that and a lot of people did, but you gotta ask yourself like, well, what are we doing here?Kevin (49:44.405)Yeah. Well, man, I had six years of architecture school and there wasn't one business course that was required the whole time.Seth Zeren (49:49.718)Yeah, I mean, I see that. And the planning people, you know, maybe it's gotten better. But when I was going through it, I took a negotiations class at the business school, which was the most useful class for being a planner. It was negotiations. Most planners, we don't need people with physical planning backgrounds. I mean, you need someone who can do some physical planning. Mostly you need some social workers because local government is like a family therapy. They have fights going back 20 years with their neighbor about whatever and who's yelling at who. And it's like, we need just some people to get people to talk to each other.It's not about technical analysis. No one ever voted for my zoning amendment because I had a great analysis. No, it's relationships. So, you know, I look at this as like, and I know there's been efforts around this at CNU, but I think we need to really get serious about building new educational institutions. I don't know that we can do it inside. I mean, we've tried it, you know, at Miami, we've tried it at Notre Dame, and there's been some successes, but it's just not enough, right? 30 years later, you know, there's just...it hasn't really changed anything in terms of what we're training. So we have another whole generation raised up in the old way of doing business and we're surprised when we get the same results.Kevin (50:55.829)Well, one of the things that even mystifies me, somebody who's gone to a lot of architecture schools to do student crits and everything else is like there's this, there's a whole group that have come through in the last, I would say 15 years that don't even know anything now about the early new urbanism because that was like so long ago and it's just not taught. So it's wild to me. It's like that has gone down the memory hole.Seth Zeren (51:14.038)Yeah.Seth Zeren (51:19.35)Yeah.Kevin (51:21.077)So I talk about that a lot with people that I know just to try to keep some of those things going and make sure people have a memory of what actually happened in a lot of those years.Seth Zeren (51:29.91)What I think is so striking is I don't think it's actually that much money that would be needed to build some of these institutions. So if anyone out there is listening and wants to write checks, fantastic. But you could get a lot done for not a lot of money building these new institutions. I really do think that. And the scale of impact on society could be really huge. Yeah.Kevin (51:51.893)Yeah. Seth, I want to switch gears and do one more topic before we run out of time. I want to hit on this piece that you wrote about Yenbys and New Urbanists in Strong Towns and sort of the differences or perceived differences, you know, amongst the groups. I wonder if you could sort of set the table and talk a little bit about what, where you were going with that one. It's a long piece for anybody who wants to read it, but it's, it's really good.Seth Zeren (51:55.862)Oh, sure.Seth Zeren (52:02.538)Yeah.Seth Zeren (52:14.326)Yeah, it's on my my sub stack build the next right thing which is I have small children So we watch a lot of Disney movies. That's do the next right thing, which is a song from frozen 2 But related to incrementalism, right? You don't have to know the final answer You just when you and you're confused you just do the next right thing, you know, you're gonna work your way through it solve the problem incrementally Pragmatically, it's very American way to work. It's good. That's build the next right thing andKevin (52:27.533)Know it well.Seth Zeren (52:45.27)It's a part because like getting to utopia is not like you're not going to take one jump to utopia. We got to like work in the world we're in. So this piece came out actually, ironically, I started writing this in the emergency room with my child in the middle of the night. Because when you have little children, sometimes they eat like stuff and you end up in the emergency room in the middle of the night. So I'm like, I'm like starting to jot down some notes and the notes were really stimulated by another guy, Steve Mouzon, who's been on your show, I think, who, you know, is active on Twitter and occasionally.regularly gets in fights with sort of the very online Yimby crowd. And then there was an exchange, you know, about a piece that Steve wrote and some other people responded. And, you know, a lot of people that I'm considered I like or I appreciate their work. I mean, I appreciate Steve's work. I assign his book on on on the original green. I appreciate Nolan Gray's work. I assign his his stuff. So but I was really struck by this continuing like fight.In this case, between the CNU and the Yenbis. And in my analysis, I mean, you can go read the piece, but I'll give you the really short version. It's basically that, and since I'm from California, I'm very sympathetic to the Yenbi argument, right? I feel it in my bones, right? I can never return to the soil I was raised on because of the failure that has gone before us. So in the Yenbi world, it's all about supply. We got to build a bunch of homes, right? And that's the overriding value and virtue and goal.right? You see it celebrate. We're going to build so many more homes. And the new urbanist orientation, which is really importantly different for a few reasons. First of all, it was started in the eighties and nineties when there wasn't a housing crisis. So the DNA is not built around a housing crisis was built around building crappy places, right? Go read, you know, uh, suburban nation, right? It's about building bad stuff. Read consular, you know, that's, that's the DNA. It's also mostly working in the South, you know, in the Midwest to a certain extent whereThere hasn't been a supply crunch, you know, because they're building stuff, right? It's building sprawl. We can build better sprawl, worse sprawl, but it's still just getting built. And so, you know, a lot of that is about quality. How do we build good places? And so what's so frustrating about, I think, to both sides about the EMBC and U debate is that often we agree. Often building density and building quality are the same. So we're on the same team, but sometimes they're not. And the worst...Seth Zeren (55:12.502)fight is with your ally who betrays you, right? Your enemies, yeah, f**k that guy, he's terrible, right? You know, that's easy, but my friend, I thought you were with me, but now we're not, ah. And so that's what keeps happening, right? The CNU folks are like, you know, that might be a little bit too much density, aren't you worried about the blank walls? Aren't you worried about X, Y, and Z? And then, and the, and the, the Yenbis are like, are you kidding, man? Like we're all homeless, like, unless we build this building, we don't have time for your cute little nonsense. You know, your ADU is just too slow, whatever.Kevin (55:15.477)YouSeth Zeren (55:41.878)And so that's, that's on sort of goals and the people are different, right? The CNU architects first developers planners, the Yimby movement really comes out of activists, uh, political advocates, regular people, software engineers who are not professional built environment people, uh, lawyers, right? It's a policy oriented movement, economists, right? That's the core. That's their intellectual DNA is.know, economists at George Mason, whereas the CNU, it's, it's an, a few architects at Miami. That's really different DNA, right? And I think the CNU has, for whatever reason, not really, it's done some behind the scenes politics, you know, policy change, right? There's been really important behind the scenes policy change, very not visible to normal people. It's never been interested in mass mobilization, you know, votes.persuading elected officials, it's not their jam. The Yenby movement is a political advocacy movement, right? So they're trying to like win votes and get lost. So the Yenby folks have gotten more bills passed that does a bunch of CNU ideas, right? The missing middle, ADUs, all the stuff that CNU came up with like 20, 30 years ago is being mandated by bills passed by Yenby. So they're like, CNU guys, we're doing the thing. Why are you yelling at us? Right? But the Yenbys don't always appreciate that the CNU has,rebuilt so much of the DNA of 20th century planning. So like, complete streets was like a CNU invention. People don't realize that anymore because it's now so mainstream. And so there's this sort of tension where people don't see the benefits the others have provided because they're kind of operating in different styles. So that's, I think, the sort of core tension. And then I added the strong towns because strong towns sometimes finds itself fighting with both of them.And often aligned, right? Often we're all the same team, right? I consider myself a Yimby. I run a Yimby organization. I also am a Strong Towns founding member and I've been at CNU a lot. But they're subtly different, right? The Strong Towns thing that puts them at odds with some of these groups is that Strong Towns core idea is that we need to reengage bottom -up feedback, right? That the system is too top -down, too...Seth Zeren (58:06.454)tightly wound, too fixed, too set. So we build these places that are built to a finished state. We can't ever change them. We have tables that are not responsive to content. So we're just locked up. We can't get anything done. And the Strong Town's idea is, well, we need the systems to be responsive, right? If housing prices go up, we should build. If they don't go up, we shouldn't build. We need to make the streets context sensitive. And so on the one hand, we're all for getting rid of parking requirements and upzoning stuff. So the inbys are like, great.But then sometimes we're like, well, that might be too much of zoning. Here's some reasons why. And the Yenbis are like, wait, I thought you were pro density. I thought you were pro development. We're like, yes, but right. Uh, the strong towns, people would worry that the Yenbis in 1950 would have been the suburban sprawl advocates, right? They would have said, we need the houses now. Damn the consequences. We're not going to worry about fiscal insolvency in 50 years. We're just going to build the houses now. You know, that's, so that's the strong towns. Sort tension with the Yenby movement is the top down, the sort of.And this is a result of your movement being led by political advocates and attorneys and economists, right? There's the concern about that kind of top -down policy orientation, these sort of single metrics, let's get it done. And then I think sometimes there's also debate with the CNU around things trying to be too precious. Ther

Dominic Parker is in his first year as the Assistant Head Coach at Christopher Newport University. He previously coached two seasons at CNU from 2017-2019, and for the last three seasons was an assistant coach at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina.Parker spent one year as an assistant coach at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore after leaving Christopher Newport in 2019. He originally came to CNU following two seasons assisting the Shenandoah University men's basketball program. He began his coaching career at Virginia State as a graduate assistant in the 2012-2013 season and later assisted the program at Richard Bland College from 2013-2015. If you're looking to improve your coaching please consider joining the Hoop Heads Mentorship Program. We believe that having a mentor is the best way to maximize your potential and become a transformational coach. By matching you up with one of our experienced mentors you'll develop a one on one relationship that will help your coaching, your team, your program, and your mindset. The Hoop Heads Mentorship Program delivers mentoring services to basketball coaches at all levels through our team of experienced Head Coaches. Find out more at hoopheadspod.com or shoot me an email directly mike@hoopheadspod.comMake sure you're subscribed to the Hoop Heads Pod on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there please leave us a 5 star rating and review. Your ratings help your friends and coaching colleagues find the show. If you really love what you're hearing recommend the Hoop Heads Pod to someone and get them to join you as a part of Hoop Heads Nation.Grab pen and paper before you listen to this episode with Dominic Parker, Assistant Head Coach at Christopher Newport University.Website - https://www.cnusports.com/sports/mens-basketballEmail - dominic.parker@cnu.eduTwitter - @CoachDomPVisit our Sponsors!Dr. Dish BasketballFind the perfect shooting machine for your team during Dr. Dish Basketball's Fall in Love with More Reps Sale. Now until 2/29, choose between two major offers- $2,000 Off a Dr. Dish CT+ and free shipping OR $6,000 Off two Rebel+!Fast Model SportsFastModel Sports has the most compelling and intuitive basketball software out there! In addition to a great product, they also provide basketball coaching content and resources through their blog and playbank, which features over 8,000 free plays and drills from their online coaching community. For access to these plays and more information, visit fastmodelsports.com or follow them on Twitter @FastModel. Use Promo code HHP15 to save 15%The Coaching PortfolioYour first impression is everything when applying for a new coaching...

Eric Brown spends most of his time designing beautiful buildings and doing urban plans for his firm, Brown Design Studio. But, when you get him away from the desk, you find someone with a good sense of history, and an understanding of how to get things done. We partnered up together in Savannah to help create the Savannah Urbanism Series (a guest lecture series), host CNU 26, and create the Savannah 2033 Plan for greater downtown.With all of Eric's many accomplishments, he's a good person to talk with when we try to understand the bigger landscape of change and cities. So, we cover a lot of ground including the role of the business community in planning historically, what all is going on in Savnanah, and what he's seeing with new, greenfield development. He talks a bit about his project Selah, in Norman OK, as one example.Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin's Substack page.Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you'd like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.Intro: “Why Be Friends”Outro: “Fairweather Friend”Transcript:Kevin K (00:01.346)Welcome back to the messy city podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg Got my good buddy Eric Brown with me today. Eric is architect urban designer man about town Savanian What what else should I have on your resume here?Eric (00:22.818)Probably my best accomplishment, which is being a father.Kevin K (00:25.718)There you go, there you go. All right, well, I'm in that with you now as well, although I was a little later at the party than you, but it's a pretty awesome responsibility and I know Nick's a great kid, so congratulations on that.Eric (00:41.494)You haven't seen him in a while. He's six foot one now.Kevin K (00:45.142)Jesus, it's taller than me? That's not possible.Eric (00:47.982)He's a, he's still grown too. He's a big boy. He's going to be a big boy. And, uh, you also haven't seen ace the wonder dog.Kevin K (00:57.418)Yeah, yeah, I know. It's been a couple of years since I've been back. Although watch out rumor is we're gonna make a trip back this year, so I'll let you know. So I wanted to, there's a lot of things Eric and I talk about and there's any number of directions we can go with this hour today, but I do wanna hit a couple of things specific to like what stuff that you work on and some things that we did years ago.Um, Eric and I were kind of partners in crime in Savannah, um, really trying to, um, bring more discussion about new urbanism and, and better long-term planning, uh, to the city. And that may seem like a strange thing because Savannah is famous for its planning, uh, and its built environment. But like a lot of cities in the last several decades, um, it's really just been kind of the default.same stuff that you see everywhere, other than the historic district. So one of the things that Eric and I kind of put our heads together on was to get a group together and do an updated master plan of sorts for the greater downtown area of Savannah. We did this in 2018. We called it the Savannah 2033 plan. And...We called it 2033 because not just because it was like 15 years was a nice round number away, but really because 2033 is the 300th anniversary of the founding of Savannah. Savannah is actually older than the United States as a country. So it felt like a great benchmark for us to give. And I flew the coupe a few years ago, so I haven't been in touch in Savannah with every...as much of what's going on, but I wondered, Eric, if you could talk a little bit about that plan and effort and any legacies from that and what might be going on today, sort of good, bad, or indifferent, regards to thinking about planning in downtown Savannah.Eric (03:11.402)Um...That's a good question. And you know...I'm gonna kind of circle back to that answer in a second. But, you know, we also, you know, you and I also kind of had our little CNU group here, brought the Congress here in whatever year that was. But, you know, as part of that CNU group, we did a series of...Urban Speaker Series. You know, we had Mayor Riley, we had Deiru Tadani, we had Rick Hall. Um, we had, yeah, we had a, um, you know, the top talent and, you know, I'm sure I'm forgetting a few on there. And.Kevin K (04:01.738)Chuck Morrone, yeah, Joe Menard goes there, yeah.Eric (04:14.634)you know, when I'm really kind of proud of our efforts, you know, even after all these years.Eric (04:23.242)because people still talk about that. You know, they still talk about those. And, you know, if you were listening to you and I back in 2018 or 17 or whenever that was, we were doing those, 19. You know, our mission, what we told everybody our mission was is to raise the bar of discourse and education here on urban planning matters and.You know, I got to say buddy, congratulations, because it took a while to sink in, but we did it. You know.Kevin K (04:56.175)Well, things move a little more slowly in Savannah, right?Eric (04:58.938)Absolutely they move slow.Kevin K (05:01.586)Although, honestly, they move slowly everywhere. So, what are you gonna do?Eric (05:07.531)But I've seen the effects of some of those. And I think.You know, we've given people the vocabulary and in some cases, passion to go deal with some of these issues. Some of our elected officials, some of our staff members. And so I just wanted to kind of tell you that, you know, all those efforts that were pretty much thankless at the time are still somewhat thankless. But, you know, we did do it. We had an effect on that. So.I'm real proud of you and our efforts on there. So I wanted to throw that out there. There's some significant changes coming that I really can't mention. I don't think it's appropriate to mention right now. But when they do occur, you'll be shocked and you'll know exactly how much of an effect we had.Kevin K (05:54.046)That's great to hear.Eric (06:17.038)exciting to see if that does come to fruition. And everyone out there in podcast land, cause I've talked to other senior groups about doing this or those grassroots education efforts, they are thankless, just they're important though. It's really the most important thing I think you can do as a local group. So hammer away at that stuff, cause it does bear fruit.But back to your planning question, you know that master plan...Eric (06:57.246)was really good work. That our team.you know, just did some really amazing work in a very short time for what we were doing.Kevin K (07:08.89)on a shoestring too. I mean, we did that on a ridiculous budget.Eric (07:10.51)Oof.Yeah, yeah, we did. Um, but.Kevin K (07:17.078)I mean you and almost – you and basically everybody else donated huge amounts of time or else it never would have gotten done.Eric (07:24.47)Well, you know, again, I think it's kind of the same thing. You know, we did get, you know, city council to adopt that guide.You know, I don't know that they have ever gone back and looked at it since then. Um, but it has. Spurned off and affected a lot of things. You know, the tide to town has been a success here, which is, you know, kind of linking up, um, some bike trails with some of our canals Savannah's got a lot of canals, um, and waterways.and kind of tying all those together so that you can really get somewhere substantial on a bike that's in a nice interesting setting, you're not sharing the road with automobiles. So that's just, they just got more funding for their next phase. It's very, it's a huge success story and that's probably the biggest one that came out of that effort. You know, there'sThere's continuing work with the Civic Center, which is one of the focal points of that plan. And the work we put in there is a good kind of milestone, I think, to judge the future work by.Eric (09:00.246)And the Waters corridor has finished up and it looks really nice. I just went, I was over there the other day. And so, you know, those efforts kind of helped that area a little bit, which was part of the East side charrette as well from the Congress.Kevin K (09:21.13)Yeah. You know, one of the things we used to talk about, Eric, it kind of may help people to have some context to know that this was basically a planning effort that we put together that was outside City Hall. We worked kind of through the remnants of Savannah Development and Renewal Authority, but we also went out and raised money privately andand pieced it together. And that was something like, you and I used to talk about that all the time, how, I wonder if you could just expand on this, you know, that one of the frustrations we have is that in so many cities, the business community and people who ought to know better about development and, you know, things that would work well, at least financially in a city.the business community largely has kind of stepped away from being involved in planning and we used to just, that's something we kind of wrung our hands about all the time. Even in a great historic city like Savannah that was often the case, but clearly cities all over the country, you know, it's just been a sea change in how people think about that. And I wonder if you could kind of share some of your thoughts on that.Eric (10:43.033)Yeah, so...You know, I'm a big history buff, history fan, as it relates to planning, but just in general. And, you know, when you look at some of the great plans that have been done.Eric (11:05.366)plan for San Francisco, the plan for Chicago, heck, even the 1815 plan for Manhattan. You know, it wasn't the city of Chicago didn't do that plan. It was the business community that wrote Dan Burnham and Unlimited Check to go get it done, make us a world-class city.And San Francisco did the same thing.It's because the business community needed a competitive city to be competitive in an emerging national market, you know, and never in our history until probably, I would guess, posted.post-war or maybe probably during the depression that started where you had you started to rely on government agencies to do that.you know, because there was no planning profession prior to 19 something, 1912, maybe. Um, and so that's interesting. Um, again, how we used to do it. And, you know, not, I sound like an old man, get off my lawn kind of thing, but, um, you know, it worked and it, those were beautiful plans and they've stood the test of time. They've built magnificent world-class cities.Eric (12:31.282)Chicago is a top three, top five US city, however you want to rank it. San Francisco same. So, you know, you know, so where's our business community? What's the question you and I kind of asked ourselves over some beverages, I think one or two nights and you know, it's.It's different. It's different now. And I don't think we realized this at the time, but you know, let's say in 1893, you know, the business community in Chicago and you had some national, you know, obviously Sears was based, I think Sears was based out there at the time. And you know, you had some national companies, but you know, businesses were for the most part locally owned.Eric (13:30.042)So you had the department store that was locally owned. It wasn't a Macy's yet. It wasn't a Woolworths yet. There were locally owned businesses that did things, steel mills, building cars or mufflers or whatever it was. And all that's gone. Literally that whole class of independent businessmen.that are locally based and care about where they actually are and where they live and how their kids are going to view all this. Those guys are gone and they're replaced with global.corporate MBA dipshits that just care about stock price. And so they're running a global company out of somewhere. And it's real hard to get them to do anything other than for the PR work. And raising funds for CNU, I think we've got a taste of that. But what was interesting is Delta's based out ofAtlanta Chick-fil-A is based out of Atlanta. And so they were willing to fund some efforts in their home market they perceived it as. So we got lucky with a few of those. But Gulfstream here is one of our few major businesses in Savannah. And they do a ton in the community. They do. But they don't gives**t's about the planning work here. It's just not on their radar.Eric (15:18.166)You know, so I think that.that whole shift is something to be cognizant of. And you have to find kind of that civic leadership somewhere else. And by all means, if you have a local-based business, then lean on them. They're just not that prevalent like they used to be. Before we relied on the city.You know, here we have obviously tourism groups that are interested in the planning. So, you know, they provide some of that leadership, right or wrong. And...Eric (16:07.678)I think you have to, you know, as a...You know, as like what we were doing is basically, you know, guerrilla warfare, you know, I always viewed it as, you know, working outside the system as the system isn't getting it done. You know, we were trying to model our efforts on, you know, what some of the great planners before us, Daniel Burnham, and them were doing and engage that business community. And, you know, we found some success here.And so for people that might be trying that same thing, I would do some research into where some of the capital or trusts are in your city. Those are usually good sources for funding efforts to do stuff like this.Kevin K (17:04.594)Yeah, I was thinking about like, even here in Kansas City, we had a great City Beautiful Plan like a lot of American cities did, starting sort of 1880s and all the way through the 1910s. It's interesting that there's a couple of great books that talk about how the creation of the Parks and Boulevards plan here. There was a core group of local business people, including the newspaper publisher that basicallytown and lobbied for that thing to happen. They hired a famous landscape architect at the time, George Kessler, who was an Olmsted disciple. And they basically went around and lobbied to make sure it would happen. And over 100 years later, that's as big a part of what the city is known for as anything for people who come here and see it. And you can see the Parks and BoulevardKevin K (18:02.814)I mean, that's pretty common all over the place. I think you make a great point too about just like the local civic leadership in like, do you ever think about that like in your, compared to your native Ohio? So Eric grew up in Ohio and you know, Ohio is interesting because let's say, you know, 70, 80 years ago, there was unbelievable wealth and industry and local leadership and great cities that were built.As a result, great architecture, but it's probably suffered as much as any place with a lot of those companies becoming part of what you describe. They all eventually got absorbed and combined and merged or dissolved. And there's not as much of that local civic leadership as there probably was.Eric (18:56.934)No, it's not. You know, all those rust belt cities. Pittsburgh's actually probably the best example of a city that was able to pivot quickly, in part because they have a variety of higher learning institutions there that really help them become a research center in many ways and survive the shift away from making steel.Eric (19:25.955)and you know.Cleveland in 1920 was a top five city. It was number four or five city in America in terms of population. And it fell off a cliff there. I mean, it's still a big city, but it's a skeleton of itself. Everybody lives in the burbs, mostly.You know, they don't make, Cleveland never made cars or they made some steel, but they made a lot of the stuff that went into cars, mufflers, transmissions, engines, um, all sorts of that stuff and some steel. But I'll, you know, a lot of that's gone. Not all of it, but most of it.Eric (20:14.026)But you know, I think.Eric (20:18.334)I think those grassroot efforts to find better planning and better design work and expecting better.I think it needs to start with somebody in the community. If that business community is not there, then maybe it's a neighborhood association or downtown association or somebody needs to start it. And I think just follow that path of educating and doing some demonstrative projects, which I know you've done both in Kansas City and-time here in Savannah, you know, just showing how you can, nobody knew what a parklet was. You know, after that, I did one and, um, you know, COVID kind of opened that box and in many places.Kevin K (21:06.385)So we just went out and did one.Eric (21:17.778)I think it's just, but you're fighting uphill guerrilla warfare, but it's actually easier that way because you don't have to answer anybody. You just kind of do what you do. And so I really enjoyed that time we were doing that stuff here.And you know, we just met, a couple of us met again here in the fall. You know, we're going to pick up on some of that again, which is somewhat falling off the radar here. I just haven't had the same time that I had when you and I were doing it.Kevin K (21:54.73)Yeah. And Savannah also is, I guess it's kind of unique when you think about it because it's got, they're probably more like multi-generation families and people who are really invested in the place than there are in other cities in the country. We had a lot of luck with like realtors and other people who also cared about real estate value. But there definitely were, there are.some of those still legacy families that give a damn about the place and what it's changing into for better or worse. I think probably a lot of cities have that, but it felt like maybe some of those older southern cities, Savannah, Charleston, Beaufort, where it used to be, might have a little more of that than other places.Eric (22:46.226)Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree. You know, this, this whole topic is really almost worth.Eric (22:55.147)a CNU sub-chapter or, you know, boot camp for guerrilla warfare or something.Kevin K (23:01.508)Ha haEric (23:03.574)You know, how, how to affect change in your local city. That would be actually an interesting session to do. Cause I get asked a lot on stuff.Kevin K (23:16.914)Yeah. Well, and you've also done it not just in Savannah but in Beaufort. You were there with like what, 14 years? Yeah. Something like that. All right.Eric (23:24.082)I don't remember yet, a long time. No, more than that actually, but because I'm getting old now. But yeah, and you know.Kevin K (23:31.736)HeheheEric (23:36.866)There's, you know, once you start waving the flag, people come out of the woodwork and say, yeah, you know, that's a good point, or I agree with that, or, but, you know, you got to, somebody's got to light the fire.Kevin K (23:51.651)Yeah.So what else is happening in Savannah these days? What are you seeing from a development or a design standpoint? I know when I left town and since then, there's been a lot more, I guess what we call, large-scale development east of downtown and a little bit on the west of downtown. And then we had a lot of discussions about, how do you make incremental?change and make some of that missing middle stuff easier in the older neighborhoods? What are you seeing these days? Is it kind of gradual change? Does it feel like things are moving faster or what?Eric (24:35.596)Um...Eric (24:39.702)No, it's there's, you know, if you drive over the bridge into Savannah from South Carolina, you know, I did it the other day and I don't know, there were 13 cranes, you know, the amount of cranes in the air is always a good judge of what's going on. And, you know, we are in that stage where.We kind of are coming out of a stage where we couldn't build hotels fast enough anywhere.And they've kind of run out of downtown space, although not entirely.actually they two of the biggest buildings you knowjust sold to hotel companies that are going to convert them back. The one building used to be a hotel that sits on Johnson Square. That's going to be converted back to a hotel, so we're losing all that office space. And the one East Bryant building, which is the tallest building in Savannah, was just bought. It's going to be at Ritz Carlton.Kevin K (25:42.58)Okay.Kevin K (25:54.63)Oh wow, that's quite an upgrade. It was a great building.Eric (25:57.59)Well, yeah, it's a great building. It's just, you know, it's displacing. We're losing two of the major office buildings downtown. Um, and you know, there's a ton of hotel buildings still going on. Um, there's a couple on their construction. I can see out my window here. Um,And the other thing is the large apartment building that takes up as much, you know, it's as much of a Texas donut as you can fit on whatever site you're on. So there's probably.Eric (26:37.558)six, seven of those going on in various parts of town right now. And some just finished, some just finished up. There are several kind of over by the bridge. There's a lot on upper Montgomery Street that are either built or coming online. That whole area is kind of marching southward. There's a couple of infill ones over by where I live. There's two right, right by my.Eric (27:09.858)And you know they're just they're huge big buildings and the ones inside the historic district you know have enough of a review process. I was walking by the one the other day and you know it's got a really nice brick to it. It's got nice windows you know but the all the you know all the details are kind of crappy. You know theThey made them put brick lintel up there, but it's fake. You know, it doesn't overhang the masonry at all. So, you know, all that little stuff that we kind of gripe about, you know, that stuff's not a hundred percent, but you know, the building forms okay and the materials are okay. But then you look at the ones that are outside that district and holy s**t, it looks just like the fourth war in Atlanta or, you know.any big city is that nameless, shitty architecture.the crazy colors and the rain screen b******t and the ins and outs and the balconies and all sorts of just, you can just see that those fall apart within 10 years. So we're getting some of that, you know, wherever they can do it, they try that. Thankfully, historic district kind of protects us from that to some degree. These are the same issues, you know, Charleston faced as well.We're usually about seven years behind whatever Charleston's going through.Eric (28:50.647)And but you know, it's especially during COVID.You know, all the downtown real estate in a span of 18 months doubled in value, doubled and had already, you know, I'll be here 10 years.Eric (29:10.527)in October.Eric (29:15.514)And you know everything's over four times of what it cost when I first moved here. Coming up on five times. So, you know, there's...Kevin K (29:27.182)It was already kind of at a high basis by then, at that point, honestly.Eric (29:34.376)It's, you know, coming up on, you know, residential stuff in my neighborhoods.Eric (29:46.622)eight, nine hundred bucks a foot. Something like that, you know?which is pretty expensive.Kevin K (29:56.786)Yeah, that's the understatement.Eric (30:00.987)You know and so that's kind of what's going on here. You know it's really filling in and you know theMidtown District, which is south of the Historic District, south of Forsyth Park, that continues to thrive.Eric (30:26.07)you know, some businesses, mostly food and beverage stuff opening up. And, you know, that neighborhoods, which is your old neighborhood, that's, that's also seen a similar, you know, bump in value, you know, which was a lot more affordable back in the day. It's even be hard pressed to find something, you know, under a million bucks up there now or something close to that.$800, $900, $800, $900. And tons of people, especially during COVID, they flocked here, man. There's so many people that cashed out of, my old neighbors were from Brooklyn. Sold whatever they had in Brooklyn, paid cash for whatever and put money in their pocket. So it's so cheap compared to those kinds of places.Still, still is.But yeah, it's a big jump in population here. And it's been interesting, because it's a big jump in.Eric (31:39.586)people living, so that's good. And then, we're still overrun with our, and most people I'm sure won't know that, but Savannah's got a hellacious take rate for Airbnbs, short term rentals. I've never come across anywhere that has any sort of ordinance like the one we have. It's 25% non-owner occupied.Kevin K (32:00.33)HeheheEric (32:09.226)by ward, which is our neighborhood system, if you will. So that doesn't include the owner-occupied ones or the illegal ones. So just the economics on that math drives a lot of... A lot of the Victorians were picked up as Airbnb investments by holding companies. I mean, they would sell without even looking at them just because they can do the math, right?Kevin K (32:39.286)I keep wondering when that bubble's gonna burst. Feels like it's bursting nationwide in different places, the Airbnb bubble, but Savannah, Charleston, those cities are so popular. I don't know.Eric (32:52.49)Yeah, the tourism numbers here are ridiculous for a city of this size, honestly. And with the last round of hotels online now and more coming, it's really overrun with tourists. It just wasn't designed to have as many people as we have here. So it's like, you need reservations now to go get dinner. It's like Manhattan.It's hard to roll in unless you find a neighborhood joint. There's a few left. You can just roll in and you happen to know somebody and you get dinner. Otherwise, there's her standing in line for some of these dumb restaurants. It's like.Kevin K (33:35.498)Hmm. Yeah, that's a new thing.Eric (33:37.975)this.Kevin K (33:38.998)So I also want to talk a little bit about how your practice has changed over the years and like what all you're doing today. Eric's firm is Brown Design Studio. He's an architect. He's done architecture and urban design and urban planning but probably heavier on architecture. And I'm curious like – so you've been doing this a couple of years now? And –You know, obviously a lot has changed from when you initially started doing like new working in new urbanist communities and doing the architecture you're doing. What do you see in today that what if anything is kind of different about your approach and what you're working on, who your clients are, that sort of thing?Eric (34:30.783)Um, that's like, you know, that's a good question.I think, and this is our 26th year in business. So we've survived a couple minor meltdowns and one major one, but our whole focus, we don't do anything that's not, that wouldn't be classified as new urbanism, whether it's infill work or.Greenfield work or something in between. So, you know, we're not like local architects doing whatever comes in the door locally. You know, we work solely in New Urbanist projects, you know, across North America and a few other spots. But that's what we continue to do. And so, you know, not much has changed.In that regard, that's always what our mission was. And we're still on our, it's like the Starship Enterprise, we're on our 26th year mission to help build healthy, walkable places. And it's worth it. It's been a fun challenge. So we continue to do that. We have long-term relations with a lot of, most of our clients are developers. And we have...You know, we have some long-term relationships that, you know, we're here when they need us. They know what we do and, you know, what we're good at, what we're not good at. Um, so that's, that's our, that's our core. That's our core right there.Kevin K (36:19.658)Do you find yourself doing more infill these days as opposed to greenfield stuff or is that not the case?Eric (36:31.054)Um, no, it's, you know, we always, we've always done, you know, because something that plugs in a new urbanist community also plugs in an older urbanist community. You know? Um, and so those always went hand in hand for us, but you know, to, to the heart of your point, yeah, after, you know, definitely after, you know, when the market came back in 2012, 13, whatever 14, you know, um,Definitely we're doing a lot of smaller infill projects. Some of them are pretty random. We'll get a call from a guy in Michigan somewhere that wants to do six townhouses on an urban property his parents owned or something. All sorts of stuff like that all over the place. And some bigger projects, there's still some bigger projects kind of plodding along.we were able to do.Eric (37:34.562)project in Oklahoma, outside Norman, in between Norman and Oklahoma City. That's pretty interesting, a greenfield project. It's big, 720 acres. We did that planning work about three years ago and last year we just got some finished vertical architecture done. So we're continuing to work on that project that we're real proud of.which is called Salem. And it's been fun, you know, doing the land plan, you know, internally. A lot of times we work with some other land planners. So this one we did in-house and then you know with some other team members, but it's been real fun, real rewarding and then you know delivering the architecture to build it out. That's keeping us busy as well, you know that project.But yeah, we've always somehow been known for our missing middle work. We were doing that before anybody knew what to call it, before Dan had invented that term. And so that's still one of our bread and butters. We're still known for that somehow.Eric (38:55.714)done a lot of multi-family projects, continue to do those a lot, a lot of townhouses. And what's interesting is I finally got...Eric (39:08.054)You know, over the years, and I'm sure you've done this as well, you know, where you, you want to take a garden apartment guy and get him to do what we want him to do, right? And I've failed. I failed probably. I'm probably, I'm now like one in 17. So I've got one that I got to actually do it. Um, that's not totally true, but, um, this was a big, you know, 350 unit.project and we got him to build it out of, you know, four, six, eight and 12 pack units. And it's under construction right now. So that was interesting. I think that's going to be a good case study going forward because his rent, you know, I'm anxious to see how his rents compete. It's in a, it's in a, you know, a decent walkable community.So I'm interested to see how the financial case study works out.Kevin K (40:13.557)Where's that one?Eric (40:14.942)That one's in Bluffton, actually, which is across the river in South Carolina. Near for people who don't know it's near Hilton.Kevin K (40:16.842)Okay, cool.Eric (40:25.425)Um.Kevin K (40:27.476)How have the conversations changed with builders and developers since the early days of doing this stuff? Did you have to do a lot more arm-twisting early on with some of your early clients? Is it an easier sell now to do the kind of work that you want to do?Eric (40:50.27)Well, no, it's not. It's the same cell. However, you know, I'm not the smartest guy, but I eventually learned to stop chasing those clients. So, you know, I don't waste my time with them. If you want to do something else, you know, have fun. Here, I'll give you some names of people to call. You know, we can't help you. Um, because I don't give a s**t. You know, if you want to go do some five-car garage, houses somewhere, go have fun.Um, but, you know, so we only take on projects that, you know, are in line with our vision, our mission. And, you know, that that's just what I learned to do, you know, be selective about, you know, who we're going to work for, because we don't want to do everything. We only want to do, you know, something that helps our, our mission, which is, you know, building great communities. And, um, if we're, you know, in alignment,When people do call us, we're gonna run through a wall for them. And we believe in what we do every day. And so I guess I got smarter is what happened.Kevin K (42:02.292)I remember a lot of those conversations too. I got, my God, we went through trying to convince so many crappy builders and developers to do something better.Eric (42:12.31)And what was your, you know, and I did the same thing, man. Um, we were both young, you know, I have similar backgrounds and, you know, had young companies and were young men. Dumb young ideals that you probably put, you know, what was your, what was success rate on?Kevin K (42:14.378)there.Kevin K (42:24.259)Yeah.Oh, almost zero. Yeah.Eric (42:28.726)Yeah, it's like me with these apartment guys. I finally got one, a big one to do it. You know, we've done lots of little ones, but to get a 350 unit thing, that was a big win, but it took me 20 some years to do it. So that's not a good use of my time. But I think what's interesting.Kevin K (42:45.311)Yeah.Eric (42:56.014)is in my, you know, my, my victory that I'm kind of patting myself on the back about there with the apartment, they wouldn't have come to me.if they didn't get rejected prior, because it was, they had to conform with a form, form-based code that we have in the right. And so that's how, you know, otherwise they would have just happily built their normal shitty garden apartment. You know, so that code reform is still critically important.you know, part of our world. Cause you really, you know, convincing someone, you know, to do what we would term the right thing versus, you know, what they're planning on doing. It's a low percentage win rate for anybody. I don't care how good you are, you know, as a closer or whatever, but, and it's just, you know, it's a waste of all of our time and efforts cause it burns you out cause you lose so much.Kevin K (44:00.979)Yeah.Eric (44:01.954)And, you know, I think our efforts would be better spent into, you know, guerrilla warfare to get the codes changed so that these developers now have to start doing the right thing. And then.Kevin K (44:12.698)Yeah, and nurturing like other younger developers who want to do something different, helping bring them along.Eric (44:23.254)Yeah, for sure. Um, you know, but a lot of these projects, you know, are still the big boy, you need $40 million in capital to tackle and you know, those, those guys, you know, I love the small income stuff. We do a lot of that. Um, but you know, it's like, you're talking about the market share of like a Bugatti versus, you know, Volkswagen or something.Kevin K (44:30.098)Yeah. Yep.Kevin K (44:51.902)Yeah.Eric (44:52.374)You know, you got to change Volkswagen. You got to change the mass market.And so I think that guerrilla warfare into code reform at a local level is something that we don't advocate enough for, which goes way back to our start of our conversation. So I think that's, if I could do something besides outlawing traffic engineers.Kevin K (45:07.358)Yeah.Eric (45:22.814)That would be one of the things is push us on this code reform where everybody's working off some type of form-based code.Kevin K (45:32.166)Yeah. Well, it's interesting because even after working in that world for almost 30 years or whatever, we've seen some good efforts with code reform and some good efforts with regulatory reform but there are a lot of days where it feels like we've made zero progress depending on where you're working.Eric (45:56.)It is, you know, it's and I've.You know.Eric (46:03.734)Like the analogy is...Eric (46:08.27)You're.You know, somebody's spending all sorts of time and effort to build stuff downtown here. Great. And we're trying to, you know, expand downtown even, which is a, which is an awesome thing that we're able to do here a little bit, you know, expand your urban core. Meanwhile, you know, out in our suburbs are happily building, you know, Costco's and targets and all sorts of b******t subdivisions. And it's like.Eric (46:40.502)You know, we don't learn. And we don't learn. And some of the strong town stuff makes so much sense when you look at how the life cycle of those suburbs. And it's funny because poolers now, after spending all sorts of money on all sorts of great police stations and city halls and all this stuff, now all of a sudden, they've got funding that's different.Eric (47:10.847)It's just so funny because you know they're hitting that seven year curve on a lot of stuff.Eric (47:18.358)But, you know, I guess that's just, you know, it's just frustrating that the, the conventional model is still building, you know, what, 90% of our built environment here easily. And, um, you know, I guessKevin K (47:31.986)Yeah. Easily. Yeah.Eric (47:40.526)You know, I've just kind of almost accepted it. It's like almost you have to let that happen before you can come back and fix it in maybe 30 years or urbanize it in 30 years. It's almost like, you know, the old patterns of.development where you would build, you know, one story buildings down on Main Street. And then all of a sudden it made sense to somebody build a two story building and made more money than everybody tore down the one story buildings. And you just have to maybe go through that process, I guess. I don't know.Kevin K (48:14.198)Yeah, I mean, it's such a machine. All that stuff is such a – I mean, so you have to envy it. It's an incredible machine. The efficiency of it is amazing. It makes a ton of money for people if you get your timing right in the market. Of course, you could lose a ton of money if you get your timing wrong. But yeah, I like –I always think about like, I make the military analogy. So if you're somebody who cares about traditional urban planning, it's like we fight hand to hand combat in our older neighborhoods and we're really excited when we're in a battle or two. In the meantime, it's like the enemy is carpet bombing, you know, everything outside the older neighborhoods just at will and we kind of willfully ignore it. But yeah.It will continue on I think as long as it can continue on, it seems to.Eric (49:16.246)Well, you know, we're...were how many, you know, it's the expected lifestyle. You know, there's no more generations. There's very, you know, very few percentage of people that have not been raised in the suburbs. Yeah, so it's the normal and, you know, driving, you know, 25 minutes to.Kevin K (49:34.43)Yeah, exactly. It's been like four generations now, yeah.Eric (49:44.75)go to your super Kroger or whatever, or a grocery store, is normal for us.Kevin K (49:51.706)Yeah. That's like, so like the last thing I wanted to ask you is, I mean, so you just mentioned you've, you're working on this Greenfield project in Oklahoma. And I know, I know you well enough to know that you've worked, you still work on some other Greenfield projects here and there. But, but by and large, it seems like I might have the wrong impression about this. I fully admit that I could be wrong about it. You're more plugged into the, this world than I am, but it seems like there's a whole lot less.of those Greenfield New Urbanist projects going on than there were say 20 years ago across the country. I don't know. I guess I wonder, do you think that's wrong or right? If that's the case, what's going on? I think we all thought that once Seaside and all those projects and then Kentlands and once they were all 10, 15 years old.and people saw how cool they were that we would see like an explosion of these around the country and that clearly hasn't happened.Eric (50:55.65)Not exactly. And I think you're, you know, I think you're right. Our, I think our expectations 20 years ago that we were going to change the machine or if not the machine, at least the, my thought was always you would show the market there alternatives.Kevin K (51:18.678)Admittedly, we were like naive and idealistic. I mean that was also part of it.Eric (51:23.67)Well, you know, I'm still kind of that same naive, idealistic person in many ways, which is both pro and cons. But, you know, I think...Eric (51:40.466)I think these projects.Eric (51:46.102)have shown people.that there are alternatives to living in the cul-de-sac, conventional neighborhood world.Eric (52:00.358)And I think that if you look at the market research, it shows you the prices in Ketlin's, the prices in ION, the prices in Norton Commons is significantly higher than its competitor that's a conventional thing right next door or right down the road.Eric (52:30.076)But it also takes 10, 15 years to do something like that. And meanwhile,You know, most of the development work is.Eric (52:45.398)you know, it's easier to go to a D.R. Horton and be done in three, four years, five years. You're done. Right. And the landowner got their money in the first year.They didn't get as much money as they could have, but they got it the first year and they're out. They're on to the next thing.You know, and I think there's just a perfect storm of all these variables there. Those are some of them, you know, the time investment that it takes. I think, you know, we've all, UI has stolen most of the good ideas of the new urbanism that they can make sense of on a spreadsheet, right? And they've thrown all the other stuff away. So they, you know, they have,co-opted some things from us, but you know, UIs, those folks are developing most of the stuff here, you know, not the Urban New Urbanist group, NTBA is a fantastic group that I really enjoy spending time with.Eric (53:56.066)You know, those are developers that are in one, two, three, four places, you know, for 10 years, 15 years, or, you know, you can only do so much. Even the bigger, more sophisticated ones. You know, meanwhile, these other guys are just, you know, knocking down 10,000 houses a year.Kevin K (54:22.686)Yeah, and while I think we kind of recognized how hard it was to do those first TNDs 30 years ago, and I think it's gotten a little easier, it's still incredibly hard. Everything about it is incredibly hard, and you really have, it's kind of a unique personality of a developer who wants to take that on and push for it, because you're gonna be fighting, even today, you're still gonna be fighting so many battles.to just execute even a mediocre T&D.Eric (54:56.626)And, you know, I think there's, you know, there's still a lot of Greenfield work. I think you're seeing a little bit of, you know, obviously no one, not many projects survived 2008. And so, you know, you didn't see many come back on.It took a long time for them to come back online. And in some places, our sailor project, which has virtually very little regulatory oversight, it took three years to get vertical, which is unheard of anywhere else. Most places are still in their entitlements in year three. It takes you five years to come out of the ground. Most places.Eric (55:45.89)You know, it's just a long investment. And, you know, again, the ULI guys are typically...A lot of those guys have to answer to the capital.And the capital is not that patient generally. You know what I mean? They gotta have a plan to move so much dirt or lots or whatever it is. And they just can't wait into something for 10, 15 years, it's hard. I think for that group to understand that. And I guess, you know, that's.Kevin K (56:04.233)Mm-hmm.Eric (56:25.858)you know, maybe something that we have never solved is how do you engage that industry in a different way. And, you know, you remember back to the New Urban Fund that was supposed to show them how to do it. Um, that didn't quite work.So I don't know, you know, it's that.Eric (56:47.362)I, you know, I'm a market guy. So the market guys believe the market's going to kind of tell you what to do. And, you know, they're going to go the easy route, but they're going to put in the big pool and all the stuff that helps them increase their sales rate and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, it is what it is.But the people who do, you know, trail with outside Atlanta, they're doing great. They're killing it. You know, so whenever we do these, you know, Norton Commons continues to kill it.They just dominate the market. Once, once you do it, you can do it right. We haven't been able to set up the machine in most cases, you know, the industry to, to continue that it's always been kind of a family or one-off or. You know, very few of these have been done by corporate folks, I guess, just like watercolor that there's been a few, but, you know, they quickly went back to selling pine forest or whatever they were doing before that.Kevin K (57:54.102)Yeah, exactly. Like St. Joe Company did watercolor and water sound and stuff and they own so much land and I think they – it seems like they've kind of gone away from that back to a hybridized version of what they were doing before.Eric (58:08.574)Yeah, and it's, so I don't know, man. I, you know, I do think, you know, if you, if you look around, there's also a lot of smaller projects that we don't really hear about. You know, if you call up Mike Watkins or somebody like that, Mike, Mike's extremely busy and that's what he's working on. You know, he's working on these a hundred acre little projects that he's, you know, nailing and, you know, we do a lot of work with Mike andTom Lowe and those guys. There's a lot of smaller projects that just you aren't gonna hear about. And they're never gonna be, you know, we've done some DPZ. We've got a DPZ project that's stuck entitlement in the entitlement process that we're set up to do some of the architecture on. But you know, it's year four.Kevin K (58:42.536)Interesting.Eric (59:00.394)So they'll call us when they need us, but there's not as many getting the limelight that we used to get. And I, you know, I just had this conversation with Rob Studeville, who used to do one of my favorite things, which was write the New Urban News. I love getting that magazine every month. Remember? Um, so it was good to catch up with him about that, but he, you know, he had those same thoughts and, um, you know, I just don't think maybe as a movement, we're communicating what we're doing very well with.Kevin K (59:15.936)Mm-hmm.Kevin K (59:29.534)Yeah.Eric (59:30.13)other. You know, nobody knows about my Salem project. It's probably one of the bigger ones. You know, Mike doesn't, you know, Michael shares stuff, you know, when he needs one of us to come in and help him on stuff. I don't know what they're doing.I don't know what DPZ or Dover Cole is doing, unless we're working on a specific project with them. So we really don't share as much as we used to.Kevin K (59:57.67)Yeah, I think that's a great point. You know, it's like another, we could do a whole other hour sometime on how CNU itself has changed and gotten away from a lot of the practical side of just building great communities. And I think a big part of that is we've lost, we're not talking to each other about who's doing what. And we used to actually have a running list of all these places all over the country. I don't think that even exists anymore.Eric (01:00:25.798)I don't think that's a priority anymore.Kevin K (01:00:27.558)No, it doesn't seem to be.Eric (01:00:30.434)But you know, I think.Eric (01:00:34.282)you know, that, that CNU group.has gotten away from communicating and with each other our successes. Cause that's a large, cause it kept you going. You know, we'd all go back to our little hometowns after seeing you and you feel, I would feel renewed and re-energized. And, um, you know, I would, I would love getting New Urban News in the mail. And I would, whatever I was doing, I would stop and sit down and read the thing. Cause it was great to hear about, you know, some new exciting stuff or some new projects.And ironically, in an age where it's very easy to communicate these days, you know, we don't. We don't pat ourselves on the back. We don't share our success stories.Kevin K (01:01:21.242)It's kind of like seeing you never evolve and communication wise we never evolved past the email to serve.Eric (01:01:28.53)No, you're right. You're exactly, you're 100% about that. The most painful way to communicate that's ever been invented, I think.Kevin K (01:01:29.618)Kind of hilarious. Yeah.Kevin K (01:01:36.864)No doubt.Eric (01:01:38.114)except maybe the group text, I don't know.Kevin K (01:01:42.697)Yeah. Eric, I think we'll wrap it there. It's been about an hour. What are your, what's your favorite spots in Savannah? Your favorite hangout spots these days.Eric (01:01:53.902)Hmm, that's a good question. Depends what my mood is. But, you know, I've got a...I've got a couple of establishments, you know, two blocks from my house that you're most likely to find me in one of those three places. You got, you know, the most famous dive bar in the world, Pinky's.Kevin K (01:02:16.159)Mm-hmm.Kevin K (01:02:19.914)Mm-hmm.Eric (01:02:23.642)There's a place called Savoy, which is run by the people who own Pinkies. And I think that wasn't there when you were here, was it? So that while you were here, it was this kind of shitty wine bar that nobody ever wants. So it's in that space in the Drake Tower. And it's, you know, you go in there and it's 95% locals, 90% something like that. So, you know, I hang out there and then, you know, over by the...Kevin K (01:02:32.05)I don't think I don't remember it now.Kevin K (01:02:37.57)Oh, yeah, yeah. OK.Eric (01:02:53.198)Perry Lane Hotel. There's some stuff there. Those are my hangouts these days.Kevin K (01:02:59.454)All right, so anybody listening, if you're in Savannah, you know where to find Eric, buy him a drink and talk about all this stuff and much more and find out what he's up to. So it's been great to catch up with you. I'll get my butt down there to Savannah one of these days soon so we can dive a little deeper and do the off-color stuff.Eric (01:03:25.17)Okay, good. I don't think you have to censor anything. So I was on my best behavior. But, you know, I, again, just want to reiterate, I think it's great that you're doing this. This is a great way to communicate with folks. Again, we need to do kind of more of this stuff. And, you know, I think just to reiterate earlier, you know, we accomplished a lot here, man. So I'm proud to.Kevin K (01:03:30.11)Not this time, yeah.Eric (01:03:54.606)have had you here as a Superman to my Batman or whatever, whatever you want to term it. So I miss you.Kevin K (01:04:00.29)Thank you.As long as it's not Batman or Robin.Eric (01:04:07.158)I don't want to see you in tights. That would not be a pretty sight, but miss you here, buddy. I appreciate you.Kevin K (01:04:10.305)Nobody.Thanks very much. I definitely miss you, Miss Savannah. I need to find myself there more often. So good to talk to you. See you.Eric (01:04:22.466)All right, buddy. Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

Coach Jarren "JD" Dyson shares his journey from being a DIII student athlete at Emory & Henry (now NCAA DII) to becoming a D1 Assistant Coach Dyson served under Coach John Krikorian at Christopher Newport University and helped lead the CNU to back-to-back conference championships and a run to the program's first-ever Final Four appearance in 2016. Following a 99-19 record and three conference championships during his time at CNU, Coach Dyson landed an Assistant Coach position at Lafayette College - he went on to spend five seasons at Lafayette under the legendary Coach Fran O'Hanlon. After Lafayette he returned to Christopher Newport for one season - and helped them win the NCAA DIII National Championship. Following that feat he returned to the Patriot League to be an Assistant Coach at Army on first year Head Coach Kevin Kuwik's inaugural coaching staff. **Sponsored by FastModel** Be sure to check out FastModelSports.com and use the promo code "BOXSCORE" for 15% off your purchase. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/beyondtheboxscore/support

Christopher Newport lacrosse coach Mikey Thompson has taken his team to new levels of success. After spending four seasons as an assistant coach with the Captains beginning in 2011, Thompson was elevated to head coach in 2016. He has helped CNU earn five NCAA Tournament berths and climb to the top of the USILA National Coaches Poll.

Guest: John Krikorian, Christopher Newport Head CoachChristopher Newport head coach John Krikorian shares insights on game philosophy, core principles, and his foundation series.Krikorian led Christopher Newport to remarkable success, including its first three Final Four appearances and first National Championship in the 2022-2023 season. Krikorian has led the Captains to nine NCAA Tournaments in 12 seasons, including the last seven tournaments. CNU is the only school in the nation to win at least one game in each of the last seven NCAA tourneys, and Krikorian now has a career mark in tournament games of 23-7. His overall record at CNU is 290-65 (.817) through his first dozen years at the helm. He was named the National Coach of the Year by the NABC (National Association of Basketball Coaches) following his national title in 2023.Krikorian's teams at CNU have won at least 18 games per season since he took over, and have advanced to the conference championship game every year for the last nine seasons in the Capital and Coast-To-Coast Athletic Conference.The National Championship team of 2022-2023 tied the school mark for victories with 30, finishing 30-3, and ending the year on a 15-game winning streak. Krikorian's coaching resume now includes six seasons as an NCAA Division I assistant and 16 as a Division III head coach. His overall head coaching record is 355-107.Breakdown1:00 - National Championship3:30 - Game Competitive Spirit6:00 - Cliques and Outliers10:00 - Empowering Everyone13:00 - Stereotype of Leadership18:00 - Risk Tolerance22:00 - Empowering Players as Leaders25:56 - 27:08 - Hoopsalytics ADS27:08 - Breathing Practices30:00 - Balance32:00 - Foundation Series36:00 - Defensive Philosophy38:00 - Adjustments on Defense41:00 - Drop Coverage43:00 - Offensive Philosophy45:00 - Spacing Template47:00 - ConclusionJohn Krikorian's Bio:Bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_KrikorianLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-krikorian-96345a183/ Basketball ImmersionWebsite: http://basketballimmersion.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/bballimmersion?lang=enYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/basketballimmersionFacebook: https://facebook.com/basketballimmersionImmersion Videos:Check out all our all-access practice and specialty clinics: https://www.immersionvideos.com

In today's episode of the Small College Basketball Podcast, listeners join host Chris Cottrell for an interview with Coach Chuck Benson and Junior Guard Nick Brenegan from Carson Newman University.  Carson Newman competes in the NCAA DIvision II South Atlantic Conference.   Last weekend Brenegan set a school record with 17 made 3-pointers and scored 64 points in CNU's victory over Newberry College.  Coach Benson, Brenegan and Host, Chris Cottrell, discuss the career night for Brenegan, the state of Carson Newman Men's Basketball and the strength of the South Atlantic Conference.   Website featuring Nick Brenegan's Career Night Website featuring Coach Chuck Benson  Website featuring Carson Newman University Men's Basketball Small College Basketball Podcast YouTube Channel For more information on today's episode and Small College Basketball you can tweet at us @coach_cottrell_ or @smcollegehoops… or email smallcollegebasketball@gmail.com For all of the latest news and highlights of NCAA D2, NCAA D3, NAIA, NCCAA and USCAA Men's Basketball follow Small College Basketball on Twitter @smcollegehoops or visit www.smallcollegebasketball.com For more information visit https://anchor.fm/scb_podcast You can follow Host Chris Cottrell on Twitter @Coach_Cottrell_ LinkedIn @Chris Cottrell

Before the debut, they took off their veil and announced their faces one by one through main characters of the webtoon "Five Chats(다섯 개의 수다)."Later, they made their debut as a five-member group in 2011.Based on their excellent singing skills as well as the high-quality composition and writing skills,they were known as a self-produced idol who produces the entire album.With neat appearance and friendliness, they received a lot of love.They are imprinted with a boyish image,but they tried so many concepts than any other team.With their 4th full-length album comeback in 2020,CNU(신우), Sandeul(산들), Gongchan(공찬) are working as a trio.They made a comeback after 2 years and 2 months after finishing their military service!!14 years since their debut! And The music of the group B1A4,Let's check it out now~*Today's playlist1. REWIND2. 이게 무슨 일이야 (What's Happening?)3. Lonely (없구나) 4. 거짓말이야(A lie) 5. 네가 내 이름을 부를 때(WHEN YOU CALL MY NAME) - (Nive's Pick)6. Bling Girl - (Sam's Pick)

https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USWelcome to The Codex Chronicles… A professor's Tale of Manuscripts.https://davidsalomonblog.wordpress.comhttps://cnu.edu/people/davidsalomon/Dr. David A. Salomon holds a PhD in English literature from the University of Connecticut and an MA from the City University of New York. A specialist in the literature, religion and culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance England, he most recently spent thirteen years as a professor of English at the Sage Colleges in Troy and Albany, NY. During his time there, he also served as chair of the Department of English and Modern Languages, director of general education, director of study abroad, chair of the Faculty Development Committee, faculty advisor for the student newspaper, and was the founding director of the Kathleen Donnelly Center for Undergraduate Research. He joined CNU as the inaugural Director of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity in September 2017.His book on the medieval glossed Bible was published by the University of Wales Press in 2013. In 2015, he co-edited and co-authored a monograph, Redefining the Paradigm, which discussed new models for faculty evaluation to improve student learning. His new book, The Seven Deadly Sins: How Sin Influenced the West from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era, was published by Praeger in April 2019. He has published essays on everything from medieval mysticism to anger in the Bible, and has given presentations on teaching and faculty evaluation models at conferences, such as the Teaching Professor and the annual AACU Conference. Medieval manuscripts are perceived differently by the human senses compared to common text today, offering a unique and multisensory experience: 1. Visual Aesthetics: Medieval manuscripts, often handwritten and lavishly decorated, showcase intricate calligraphy, elaborate illustrations, and vibrant colors. The visual aesthetics of these manuscripts evoke a sense of artistry and craftsmanship that is distinct from modern printed text. 2. Tactile Sensation: The parchment or vellum used for medieval manuscripts provides a tactile experience as one feels the texture of the material beneath their fingers. This physical interaction with the medium adds a sensory dimension to reading and handling these historical texts. 3. Aged Scent: Over time, medieval manuscripts develop a distinct aroma, carrying the scent of antiquity. This aged smell can evoke a feeling of connection to the past and contribute to the overall sensory experience. 4. Historical Connection: Reading medieval manuscripts allows individuals to connect with the past in a way that digital or modern printed texts cannot replicate. The physicality of holding an ancient document establishes a direct link to the historical era in which it was created. 5. Auditory Silence: Unlike the electronic devices that accompany much of modern reading, medieval manuscripts invite a quieter environment for exploration. The absence of electronic buzz allows readers to immerse themselves in the silence of the written word. 6. Cultural Imagination: The experience of reading medieval manuscripts transports readers into a different cultural mindset, understanding the context in which these texts were written, interpreted, and appreciated. 7. Spiritual and Mystical Essence: For manuscripts related to religion and mysticism, the act of reading becomes a spiritual journey, as the physicality of the text and the esoteric content converge to create a unique spiritual experience.In summary, medieval manuscripts offer a multisensory encounter that goes beyond the mere act of reading. The visual aesthetics, tactile sensation, historical connection, and spiritual essence create a captivating journey that connects readers to both the words on the page and the distant world from which they emerged. https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US

Good morning, RVA! It's 54 °F, and, today, summerish temperatures return! Expect highs in the 80s this afternoon and for them to stretch on through next week. Are these record highs? Probably! Am I recovering from a fall cold? Yes! Will I still try to get out into the forest on my bicycle despite probably needing to rest? We'll see! Water cooler Remember last year when the Governor wanted to create permanent tax cuts for the wealthy but didn't have the votes and settled instead for one-time rebates, $200 for individuals and $400 for families? Well, the Department of Taxation has set up a website to check if you're eligible for those rebates (you gotta create an account first), and says the checks should hit your mailbox before December. The Cynical Part of Me raises an eyebrow at the near-election timing of this launch. The Regular Part of Me knows that the General Assembly just passed its budget a hot second ago and casual-sounding things like “setting up a website to check if you're eligible” are actually huge projects for already overworked teams. Looking ahead, and given all the press releases I get from Youngkin's team about the Commonwealth's surging revenue, I'd guess those permanent tax cuts for the wealthy will make a return in this coming year's budget, too. Just another reason why the November 7th election—in just 12 days!—is so very important. Make sure you've got a plan to vote, OK? In other state government news, Ben Paviour at VPM reports on the ongoing mess at the Department of Elections and their decision to remove thousands of folks from the voter rolls. It's hard to tell what's actually going on here, and I'd argue that's probably part of the point. Skip the confusion, and tap straight on through to the Department of Elections website to check your voter registration status right now. Also at VPM, Jahd Khalil writes about Republicans' plans to ban abortion should they win control of the General Assembly next month (see above about voting!). Khalil links to this recent survey by CNU's Wason Center, which asked potential voters a bunch of questions about their Top Issues heading into this election. Tap through and dig into the data, because it's fascinating. While folks support a handful of liberal issues—like keeping abortion legal, teaching kids about racism in public schools, retail marijuana sales, and not banning books—they're basically split on whether they'll vote for a Democrat or a Republican. Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams has more on the survey results, including this bit: “When likely voters were asked who they trusted most to make the right decisions for children in K-12 public schools, 81% of respondents trusted teachers “somewhat” or “a lot” — more so than school administrators (67%), local school boards (59%) and state government (55%). That's right: teachers were deemed more trustworthy than the school boards micromanaging education.” Standard caveats apply about how do surveys even work in a world where no one answers their phone, but still, fascinating! It's not all just state-level elections popping up on ballots, some of us get to vote for local candidates, too. If you're a Henrico resident cast your web browsers back over to the RTD where Sean Jones has put together a nice overview of the 10 candidates running for the Board of Supervisors. Eileen Mellon at Richmond Magazine sat down with Nathan Hughes, a real estate agent who's worked with local restauranteurs for decades, to talk about cursed restaurant spots. Hughes tries to explain that actual things—like location, foot traffic, and layout—probably contribute more to a restaurant's success than fake things like curses. Likely story, Hughes! Reminder: Breakaway RVA will host their final chill, informative, and fun group bike ride tonight. Meet at Scuffletown Park at 5:45 PM, wheels up at 6:00 PM! Tonight, at 6:00 PM, the YWCA host the 27th annual Remember My Name memorial at Cedar Street Baptist Church (2301 Cedar Street). This memorial gives friends, family, and community members a chance to commemorate those who have lost their lives due to domestic violence and intimate partner violence. According to the YWCA, “nearly one-third of all homicides in Virginia are attributed to domestic or intimate partner violence.” You can learn more and register (to help with the headcount) over on the website. This morning's longread Naked beneath Our Clothes I loved this essay on nakedness and bodies and how we're so weird about both. Everyone's got a body, and we've done a lot of really gross societal work to make sure we've all got thoughts on those bodies—the ones that belong to other people, sure, but mostly the one that belongs to us. Seeing other naked bodies, though, did not make me feel disrespectful. It was wondrous. The shared ease made being human more palatable. And I soon realized there is nothing exhibitionist about being naked. People look you in the eye; nobody stares at the rest of you. Nothing is new, shocking, revelatory. All the lumps and bumps, moles and birthmarks, scars and stretch marks are on display, and the need to conceal your own drops away. Nakedness, done right, has no ego. There are problems with exposing the body, of course, but there are also problems in cultures that conceal. The more artfully we cover our bodies, the more mystique there is. But the more mystique there is, the greater the desire to own, steal, guard, or violate that alluring, luring, concealed body. The paradox is built in. If you'd like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol' Patreon. Picture of the Day These mushrooms understand dense housing.

Graham Schweig sits down with Avi Gordon in a conversation that covers the importance of yoga, gratitude, and selflessness in reconnecting with one's heart and embracing life's conditioning forces. They discuss the transformative power of yoga in turning inward to confront inner conflicts and suffering, ultimately leading to self-awareness and growth. The role of the guru in guiding and reinforcing inner wisdom is highlighted. The conversation also touches on the significance of choices, trust in the process, and the power of supportive relationships. Self-care and selflessness are explored as interconnected aspects of spiritual practice, promoting both personal well-being and the capacity to serve others.Bio:Dr. Schweig is Distinguished Teaching and Research Faculty at the Center for Dharma Studies of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Schweig earned the master's degree in religious studies at University of Chicago Divinity School, a master's of theological studies in history of religions and a master's of theology in comparative religion from Harvard University Divinity School, and earned his doctorate in comparative religion from Harvard. Schweig joined the faculty of Christopher Newport University (CNU) in the fall of 2000. Prior to coming to CNU, he was a teaching fellow at Harvard University, lecturer at University of North Carolina and Duke University, and while teaching at CNU, he was for two years, Visiting Associate Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Virginia. He has been recognized several times for excellence in teaching, including CNU's annual Alumni Faculty Award for Teaching and Mentoring (2013), and has delivered over three dozen invited lectures at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC for over fourteen years. He has also given lectures widely in the US and in Europe, and has been invited to be a consultant on doctoral dissertation committees or a doctoral dissertation examiner in the US, Europe, India, and Australia. He has conducted yoga workshops, offered seminars and given lectures around the US and Europe for well over 20 years. In addition to his academic endeavors, Dr. Schweig has been a student of many traditional teachers of yoga, and is recognized by Yoga Alliance at the highest level of E-RYT 500 and YACEP. He has travelled to India thirteen times, once for a year on a Smithsonian Institution funded grant, and has been a practitioner of traditional and heart-centered yoga for over 50 years.Would you like to be notified when we release new content? Subscribe to our channel and turn on notifications. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

John Krikorian has been the Men's Basketball Head Coach at Christopher Newport University since June 14, 2010. He is just the fourth head coach in the program's 53-year history, and has led the Captains to remarkable success, including its first three Final Four appearances and first Division 3 National Championship in the 2022-2023 season.The Captains defeated Mount Union in the 2023 title game in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to capture the school's first title in 55 seasons of CNU men's basketball. Krikorian's squads also advanced to the 2015-2016 Final Four in Salem, Va., as well as the 2018-2019 Final Four in Fort Wayne. In his tenure, Krikorian has led the Captains to nine NCAA Tournaments in 12 seasons, including the last seven tournaments. CNU is the only school in the nation to win at least one game in each of the last seven NCAA tourneys, and Krikorian now has a career mark in tournament games of 23-7.If you're looking to improve your coaching please consider joining the Hoop Heads Mentorship Program. We believe that having a mentor is the best way to maximize your potential and become a transformational coach. By matching you up with one of our experienced mentors you'll develop a one on one relationship that will help your coaching, your team, your program, and your mindset. The Hoop Heads Mentorship Program delivers mentoring services to basketball coaches at all levels through our team of experienced Head Coaches. Find out more at hoopheadspod.com or shoot me an email directly mike@hoopheadspod.comFollow us on social media @hoopheadspod on Twitter and Instagram.You'll want to have your notebook ready as you listen to this episode with John Krikorian from 2023 Division 3 National Champions Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia.Website - https://www.cnusports.com/sports/mens-basketballEmail - john.krikorian@cnu.eduTwitter - @CNUBasketballVisit our Sponsors!Dr. Dish BasketballMention the Hoop Heads Podcast when you place your order and get $300 off a brand new state of the art Dr. Dish Shooting Machine! Fast Model SportsFastModel Sports has the most compelling and intuitive basketball software out there! In addition to a great product, they also provide basketball coaching content and resources through their blog and playbank, which features over 8,000 free plays and drills from their online coaching community. For access to these plays and more information, visit fastmodelsports.com or follow them on Twitter @FastModel. Use Promo code HHP15 to save 15%The Coaching PortfolioYour first impression is everything when applying for a new coaching job. A professional coaching portfolio is the tool that highlights your coaching achievements and philosophies and, most of all, helps separate you and your abilities from the other applicants. Special Price of just $25 for all Hoop Heads Listeners.Training Camp - Elite Skill Development & Performance CombineThe...

In April of 2013, using his experience on both the Hostage Rescue Team and the Crisis Negotiation Unit, retired FBI Special Agent Kyle Vowinkel worked with the CNU in order to secure the peaceful surrender of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the two Boston Marathon bombers.    On this bonus edition of The FOX True Crime Podcast, Emily takes a look at Kyle's illustrious career in law enforcement. Kyle Vowinkel served for 24 years as an FBI Special Agent is a former U.S. Army officer, and is a West Point graduate. Kyle served on both the FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) and the Crisis Negotiation Unit (CNU). After his assignments on HRT and the CNU, he used his leadership experiences as a supervisor at multiple FBI offices and retired as Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) in the Miami Division. During his Bureau career, Kyle was deployed to over twenty countries, including China, Qatar, Kenya, South Korea, and Peru, and as a tactical operator on HRT on hundreds of high-risk missions domestically as well as overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. While a member of CNU, he negotiated with kidnappers, pirates, and more. Kyle is a keynote inspirational speaker at events around the world for companies and institutions such as West Point, Cornell University, Google, hostage negotiation seminars, and FBI National Academy events. Later, in 2023, he plans to publish a book sharing stories from his career. Learn more about Kyle: https://www.apexriskconsulting.us/ Follow Emily on Instagram: @realemilycompagno Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Warning: This podcast episode contains graphic audio. Midland City, Alabama is the kind of small town where everyone knows their neighbor, for better or for worse. Neighbors of Jimmy Lee Dykes knew him as a hostile recluse to be avoided at all costs. The extent of the danger that Dykes posed wouldn't be realized until January 29th, 2013, when he boarded a school bus, murdered the driver, and took 5-year-old Ethan Gilman hostage. Retired FBI Special Agent Kyle Vowinkel discusses his experience working on the case, and the great lengths his team went to fight for Ethan's safe return. Kyle Vowinkel served for 24 years as an FBI Special Agent is a former U.S. Army officer, and is a West Point graduate. Kyle served on both the FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) and the Crisis Negotiation Unit (CNU). After his assignments on HRT and the CNU, he used his leadership experiences as a supervisor at multiple FBI offices and retired as Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) in the Miami Division. During his Bureau career, Kyle was deployed to over twenty countries, including China, Qatar, Kenya, South Korea, and Peru, and as a tactical operator on HRT on hundreds of high-risk missions domestically as well as overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. While a member of CNU, he negotiated with kidnappers, pirates, and more. Kyle is a keynote inspirational speaker at events around the world for companies and institutions such as West Point, Cornell University, Google, hostage negotiation seminars, and FBI National Academy events. Later, in 2023, he plans to publish a book sharing stories from his career. Learn more about Kyle: https://www.apexriskconsulting.us/ Follow Emily on Instagram: @realemilycompagno Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices