Podcasts about New Urbanism

In this episode, we reconnect with Victor Dover, co-author of Street Design: The Secret to Great Cities and Towns, Second Edition, for a deep dive into precisely why streets matter so much in shaping our daily lives, for better and for worse, and how, by learning from the world's best streets, we can transform our dysfunctional and dangerous cityscapes into more livable environmentsHelpful Links (note that some may include affiliate links to help me support the channel):

Alquist 3D Chariman and Founder Zach Mannheimer talks to ENR Senior Editor Jeff Yoders about housing, the journey of 3D printing concrete homes and commercial products and how his company made additive manufacturerd Wal-Mart Supercenters.

On this episode of the Natasha Helfer Podcast, Mike Christensen joines to share his experience at BYU and as a single adult in "Mormon-dom." Mike holds a Bachelor of Science in Geography from Brigham Young University, a Graduate Certificate in Geographic Information Science from Northwest Missouri State University, an Interdisciplinary Graduate Certificate in Sustainability from the University of Utah, and a Master of City and Metropolitan Planning from the University of Utah. He is a member of the American Planning Association, the Congress for the New Urbanism, Strong Towns, the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals, and the national Rail Passengers Association, and is certified by the American Institute of Certified Planners and accredited by the Congress for the New Urbanism. He currently serves on the board of the Utah chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanismand on the board of the national Rail Passengers Association. Mike wrapped up a four-year term on Salt Lake City's Planning Commission in September and spent one of those years as vice-chair and another as chair of the commission. Upon finishing grad school in 2018, Mike founded the nonprofit Utah Rail Passengers Association in order to advocate for expanding intercity passenger rail across Utah and into neighboring states and has served as its executive director ever since. He has become an expert on the failed policies propping up the "American Dream" of the 20th century and is trying to devote his life to fixing the damage that has been done to our communities by decades of investing in the wrong infrastructure. Mike ditched his car in 2017 and walks, bikes, and rides transit to get everywhere. But Mike is here for a different reason. He has inside knowledge of how the Church Education System enforces the Honor Code and is here to share.     To help keep this podcast going, please consider donating at natashahelfer.com and share this episode. To watch the video of this podcast, you can subscribe to Natasha's channel on Youtube and follow her professional Facebook page at natashahelfer LCMFT, CST-S. You can find all her cool resources at natashahelfer.com.  The information shared on this program is informational and should not be considered therapy. This podcast addresses many topics around mental health and sexuality and may not be suitable for minors. Some topics may elicit a trigger or emotional response so please care for yourself accordingly. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views or feelings of Natasha Helfer or the Natasha Helfer Podcast. We provide a platform for open and diverse discussions, and it is important to recognize that different perspectives may be shared. We encourage our listeners to engage in critical thinking and form their own opinions. The intro and outro music for these episodes is by Otter Creek. Thank you for listening. And remember: Symmetry is now offering Ketamine services. To find out more, go to symcounseling.com/ketamine-services. There are also several upcoming workshops. Visit natashahelfer.com or symcounseling.com to find out more.

On today's show,  we learn that a drone manufacturing company looking to set up shop in Fayetteville held a contentious town hall last night. Plus, Arkansas ranks among the worst in the country for the rate of strokes per capita, and we hear from an advocate for awareness of risk factors and for stroke survivors. We also head to the 34th Congress of New Urbanism.

Episode Title: “Thoughts from City Government: Infrastructure, Urbanism, and Civic Dialogue"Episode Theme: The role of conversation, transparency, and thoughtful questioning in shaping better cities and strengthening public service.Episode Summary: In this episode of The Public Works Podcast, host Shane Silsby sits down with Andy Boenau to explore his unconventional journey from punk rock drumming teenager to transportation leader, his philosophy on human-centered infrastructure design, and how Richmond is pursuing Vision Zero and Complete Streets initiatives. Andy shares candid insights about challenging the status quo in engineering, the importance of plain-language communication in government, and why asking "challenging questions" led to better outcomes for communities.

The world's cities are big and getting bigger.  By 2050, 80% of the world's people will live in cities. Can cities be made sustainable?  Who is thinking about this? Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Peter Calthorpe, architect and urban designer with HDR, a global company specializing in architecture, engineering, environmental and construction services. Over the past 45 years, Calthorpe has been a primary advocate for sustainable communities, the New Urbanism and transit-oriented development. His most recent publications are "Ending Global Sprawl: Urban Standards for Sustainable and Resilient Development" for the World Bank and “Grand Boulevards and the AB2011 Revolution: Reinventing the Strip to Solve California's Housing Crisis.”

Will McCollum is a designer who worked alongside celebrated urbanist Lew Oliver for 10 years to create meaningful and beautiful communities across the United States. He currently resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he has opened his own firm. He also serves as the president of Citymakers Collective and as a board member of the Congress for the New Urbanism in New England. I've had the pleasure to visit the summer studio organized by Citymakers Collective in Charleston last summer, which was a huge success. Applications for 2026 summer school are open until early march, visit the website of Citymakers Collective for more information and to apply: https://citymakerscollective.org Connect with Will: https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-mccollum-6965a066/ Follow Citymakers Collective on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/citymakerscollective/?hl=en ====JOIN OUR COURSE: https://www.aestheticcity.academy/products/courses/aesthetic-city-academyJoin the #1 email list about making better places:https://the-aesthetic-city.kit.com/signup======For more information on The Aesthetic City, find our website on https://theaestheticcity.com/ Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@the_aesthetic_city Follow us on X: https://x.com/_Aesthetic_City Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.aesthetic.city/ Substack: https://theaestheticcity.substack.com/

 You might have seen Jordan March on the hit Netflix series Owning Manhattan .Jordan March is a managing partner of the Empire Collective Team at SERHANT. and is a distinguished 16-year veteran of the real estate industry. He is regarded as a pioneer and industry disrupter for his use of digital media, and he has closed over $1 Billion in sales. Jordan is at the forefront of major strategic shifts in the real estate industry and new development marketing. He implements progressive operational processes, technology, and marketing campaigns, and he leverages his experience in social and digital media by executing targeted sales campaigns to give developers, landlords, and sellers maximum exposure and an unmatched edge in any market. He has a consistent track record of trading listed homes at record prices, and he utilizes the latest technology and media channels to guide, empower, and advocate for his clients during the selling and buying process. Prior to joining SERHANT., Jordan was a Director of Sales at two of Manhattan's top firms as well as one of NYC's leading technology-driven sales brokerages, LG Fairmont. Under his management there, it was recognized by INC 5000 as one of the fastest growing organizations in the U.S. for two consecutive years. To date, he has managed and trained over 500 agents, many of which have gone on to great success and closed on some of the city's top listings. Jordan was also the Digital Sales Manager of an advertising network that partnered with Viacom, Meredith, Conde Nast, and Scripps Networks. While there, he oversaw multiple departments and successfully executed multi-channel marketing campaigns for Fortune 1500 companies such as UPS, Starburst, Overstock.com, Toyota, Canon, and Bank of America. Jordan has completed degrees at the Institute of Audio Research and St. John's University and has been featured in high-profile publications like the Wall Street Journal, Channel 1 News, MSNBC, The New York Times, and StreetEasy. One of Jordan's long-term goals is to further the movement of New Urbanism, helping to minimize the negative environmental impact of buildings by using a conscious approach to energy conservation, green technology, and sustainable architectural design and development. In his free time, Jordan loves to play with his kids, enjoy unique dining experiences, and meditate and dance. His interests include art, theatre, film, technology, and fashion, and he plays the violin and piano.   https://www.instagram.com/itsjordanmarch/ https://jordan-m.com/?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMjU2MjgxMDQwNTU4AAGnYyGtTLE1Cw05RD3ys8L77NqCxfbSBGr-EQi_fK6sERhv8LqRje0dpkbocRY_aem_0uggSsJR05_K8OZ7XwRDXA

For a guy that never intended to be a developer, Steve Nygren is having a remarkable impact on development and so much more. Steve led the development of Serenbe, which is a “biophilic” community southwest of Atlanta. This story is nothing short of remarkable. Even if nothing more had happened than getting 500+ property owners that control about 60 square miles of land to agree on a framework for future development, that alone would be incredible.But when you start to learn more and experience the town of Serenbe itself, it becomes quickly apparent this is a model worth emulating. Serenbe employs a more historic model of a rural village that is walkable and fairly dense, mixed with land set aside for agriculture and experiencing nature. Along the way, the community has touched the world of regenerative agriculture and New Urbanism both, along with a deep dive into thinking about healthy living.Steve talks about using your influence when you have the opportunity, and how to help the next generation. His book, “Start In Your Own Backyard: Transferring Where We Live with Radical Common Sense” dives deep into this philosophy and work. I would add, he's also got a lot to share about how to bootstrap a large, master planned development.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” Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

Demolition and displacement are a part of environmental injustice and the climate crisis. With that in mind, how do we remember and center the needs of the land and the wishes of the residents when it comes to decision making for public housing? Two neighbors from New York and Miami weigh in. We hope these stories empower us towards a world that centers living beings and lived experience.Episode transcript here. Narrators: Anna Williams and Renee Keitt. Additional featured audio excerpts from Razing Liberty Square (Katja Esson, 2023) and A Home Worth Fighting For (Natasha Florentino, 2025).Ms. Williams's interview is also curated in episode 25. Sources and additional reading/watching:We strongly encourage those interested in these resident campaigns to support the two documentaries at the top of the list. You can purchase a viewing pass to Razing Liberty Square or sign up for Natasha Florentino's future screenings mailing list at the links below. This support goes a long way!Katja Esson, Razing Liberty Square (2023), published by Women Make Movies, organizations can buy or book a screening at: https://www.wmm.com/catalog/film/razing-liberty-square/. Individuals can watch on PBS here: https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/razing-liberty-square/ Natasha Florentino, A Home Worth Fighting For (2025), accessed via filmmaker. More information about future screenings at: https://www.natashaflorentino.com/ahwff. T.C. Documentaries, “Overtown, Miami (Short History of South Florida's Overtown Neighborhood),” accessed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b6_INnChIM Digital Scholarship Lab at University of Richmond, “Renewing Inequality: Urban Renewal, Family Displacements, and Race 1950-1966,” published by American Panorama (20, ed. Robert K. Nelson and Edward L. Ayers), accessed at: https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/renewal/#view=0/0/1&viz=cartogram&text=definingTerry Gross, “A ‘Forgotten History' of How the U.S. Government Segregated America” (2017), published by NPR, accessed at: https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america United States of America 81st Congress, “Housing Act of 1949” (1949, last amended 2024), accessed at: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-10349/pdf/COMPS-10349.pdf T.R. Witcher, “How the interstate highway system connected—and in some cases segregated—America,” published by American Society of Civil Engineers (2021), accessed at: https://www.asce.org/publications-and-news/civil-engineering-source/civil-engineering-magazine/article/2021/07/how-the-interstate-highway-system-connected--and-in-some-cases-segregated--america Congress for the New Urbanism, “Overtown Expressway,” accessed at: https://www.cnu.org/what-we-do/build-great-places/overtown-expresswayAdam Paul Susaneck, “Segregation by Design—Miami: Overtown,” published by TU Delft Centre for the Just City (2024), accessed at: https://www.segregationbydesign.com/miami/overtown-overview New York City Housing Authority, Essence Development, Related Companies, and Housing Opportunities Unlimited, “Fulton Elliott-Chelsea Relocation Plan” (2025), accessed at: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nycha/downloads/pdf/fec-relocation-english.pdf Damon WIlliams, Daniel Kisslinger, and People for Community Recovery, Help this Garden Grow, published by Respair Media, accessed at: https://www.respairmedia.com/help-this-garden-grow #publichousing #housingjustice #environmentaljustice #intersectionality #livedexperience #climatechange

SUBSCRIBE TO ACCESS "MUZAK CHAIRS II" IN ITS MIND-BOGGLING ENTIRETY!SPOILER WARNINGS FOR SEASON I OF THE CHAIR COMPANY:File this one under:Fisher Roby head honcho Jeff Levjman and music A&R scammer Stacy Crystals being clear substitutes for Jeff Epstein & Leslie Wexner, down to nominative symmetries. Jeff Levjman having an Ashkenazic Yiddish name; Stacy Crystals (immensely valuable jewels) = Leslie Wexner (Wexner derived from "weksler", which means "moneychanger" or "banker"). Under the Silver Lake similarities in Stacy Crystals' schemes. "Just to see Mickey. We had a special pass to cut the kids" -> evoking Aquino's Tinkerbell pics, Maxwell w/ Donald Duck doing kids charity work in the UK, Epstein and Piglet, etc... An unexplained "Mighty Mouse" codeword or nickname in a sus email Epstein sent between two of his Gmail accounts. The Chair Co. sequence where Ron ends up at Asher's house in back-to-back scenes (one dream, one corporeal) after falling unconscious while chasing after Baby, who he learns is actually named Minnie Mouse and belongs to this discomfiting dude Asher, only to later discover that Ron has inadvertently returned the dog to its abusive owner... A scene with a jumpscare inside Asher's shed with a "brand new shape" glowing in some light array on the ground that evokes Wexner and his Dybbuk, "the churning", shpilkes, etc. Jeff Levjman's stag night in Sedona with Danny Donovan et al clearly seeming like a riff on Epstein's ties to Santa Fe and Zorro Dude Ranch. Stacy Crystals' bilking of the bourgeoisie built upon the unfulfilling alienation of capitalism which also smacks of the fantasies that Epstein curated for his associates...Dalton School impropriety allegations, pimp coats, Donald Barr. Noam Chomsky rec letters. Epstein talking up how his rep has increased since #MeToo, self-styling as a cancellation consultant over email with Joi Ito. Lawrence Krauss. Ron's theory that Tecca is smuggling poppy stalks and thebaine into the country in voids where the chair appendices are supposed to go evoking a whole host of Iran-Contra connections involving Wexner, Epstein, Delaware, and Ohio. Summit Aviation, Ohioan Cessna dealers, DuPonts, a crash in Nicaragua. Steve Hoffenberg. Epstein's ties to Adnan Khashoggi, Douglas Leese, and Stan Pottinger. The Arthur Shapiro Contract Hit in Columbus. Southern Air Transport - a CIA proprietary airline that was once co-owned by the same shell company that owned Airs America & Asia and which was heavily involved in Iran-Contra drugs-for-guns smuggling. Epstein and Wexner's role in its relocation to Rickenbacker in Columbus. All of this evoking the possible Hungarian connection and Tecca's thebaine. Oliver North. Felix Rodriguez. Donald Gregg. Bush. Another Cessna shot down by Sandinistas, this time Southern Air's (which would relocate to Ohio and handle The Limited's cargo in a few years). The Arthur Shapiro Murder File and Wexner, DeBartolo, Shapiro's law firm partners, city council president Jerry Hammond, the Major Chord Jazz Club, Jack Kessler, Frank Walsh, DeBartolo, and the Genovese-LaRocca Pittsburgh Crime Fam appearing all over it. MAST Industries, Marty Trust, and Sri Lankan textile slave labor. Gov. Voinovich. Local journo Bob Fitrakis's various exposes. Actual sexual blackmail appearing in Chair Co. Episode 5, the insane True Detective esque oner at Oliver Probblo's apartment, where Ron is forced to kiss a woman on camera after walking in on an affair. The bugs. PROMIS. Palantir. Carbyne/Reporty. Actual Ohioan pharma companies that may be inspirations for Brucell. The Delaware City officer that chases Ron down during the '50s Cop Hop at City Hall possibly alluding to Wexner's influence and off-duty employment of a racist-af policeman from Gahanna, Franklin Co. Sheriff Deputies, and an ex SpecOps guy. Major comparisons between the ecological greenwashing of Fisher Robay and Wexner/Kessler's New Albany Company. New Urbanism. And much much more.FULL NOTES ON PATREON

Communities that endure rarely happen by accident. They are shaped by intentional design and a deep understanding of place. Lew Oliver, founder and principal of Lew Oliver, Inc., joins Host Carol Morgan on the Atlanta Real Estate Forum Radio podcast to share his perspective on traditional neighborhood development and the long-term value of thoughtful planning. What does “timeless” really mean in today's housing market? For Oliver, timeless design is not rooted in architectural trends or short-term market appeal. Instead, it is a disciplined approach that places the town — not the individual building — at the center of every decision. A truly timeless place accommodates a wide range of people, lifestyles and life stages while maintaining coherence and character over generations. Oliver often looks to older, storied cities around the world for inspiration. Oliver said, “The things that made these iconic towns were that the buildings were absolutely stunning and well designed and executed, and they shaped the entire community in ways that just single houses could never do.” That philosophy extends beyond massing and layout to the finer points of design. Oliver emphasizes the importance of architectural detailing that feels generous and intentional, with buildings that contribute to the public realm rather than retreat from it. In well-designed towns, staircases, porches and facades extend into streets and plazas, reinforcing a sense of shared space and civic life. Materials also play a critical role in achieving longevity. Local materials are often preferred because they weather gracefully over time, gaining character rather than appearing dated as styles change. Timeless places resist easy categorization because they are grounded in enduring principles rather than fleeting tastes. What is traditional neighborhood development? At the heart of Oliver's work is traditional neighborhood development (TND), a planning approach that prioritizes people, relationships and daily experience over traffic counts and lot yield. “Traditional neighborhood development means that the placement and the detailing of the buildings support creating great places and great streets that prioritize the pedestrian over the car.” That shift in priority has cascading effects on how communities are planned and built. Elements such as rear-loaded alleys, narrower streets, front-facing porches and carefully proportioned setbacks serve as essential tools for creating social streetscapes, allowing homes and buildings to engage the sidewalk directly. In contrast, auto-centric environments often place buildings behind parking lots and wide roadways, making meaningful interaction nearly impossible. In those settings, scale is dictated by speed and vehicle movement rather than human perception, frequently resulting in isolation despite physical proximity. Walkable streets and well-defined public spaces naturally encourage casual encounters — neighbors meeting on a porch, residents stopping to talk on a sidewalk or people lingering in shared green spaces. Oliver describes these everyday interactions as foundational to building trust, belonging and community resilience. Tune into the full episode for deeper insight into timeless placemaking, traditional neighborhood development and why human-scale design continues to resonate. Learn more about Lew Oliver and his work at www.lewoliverinc.com. About Lew Oliver, Inc. Lew Oliver, Inc. is an Atlanta-area design and master planning firm that creates thoughtful, human-centered communities and building plans rooted in principles of New Urbanism. The company specializes in whole town solutions, architectural products and developer services that integrate walkability, contextual design and environmental responsiveness. Its work emphasizes authentic design and harmonious proportions that enhance quality of life. Podcast Thanks Thank you to Denim Marketing for sponsoring Atlanta Real Estate Forum Radio. Known as a trendsetter, Denim Marketing has been blogging since 2006 and podcasting since 2011. Contact them when you need quality, original content for social media, public relations, blogging, email marketing and promotions. A comfortable fit for companies of all shapes and sizes, Denim Marketing understands marketing strategies are not one-size-fits-all. The agency works with your company to create a perfectly tailored marketing strategy that will suit your needs and niche. Try Denim Marketing on for size by calling 770-383-3360 or by visiting www.DenimMarketing.com. About Atlanta Real Estate Forum Radio Atlanta Real Estate Forum Radio, presented by Denim Marketing, highlights the movers and shakers in the Atlanta real estate industry – the home builders, developers, Realtors and suppliers working to provide the American dream for Atlantans. For more information on how you can be featured as a guest, contact Denim Marketing at 770-383-3360 or fill out the Atlanta Real Estate Forum contact form. Subscribe to the Atlanta Real Estate Forum Radio podcast on iTunes, and if you like this week's show, be sure to rate it. Atlanta Real Estate Forum Radio was recently honored on FeedSpot's Top 100 Atlanta Podcasts, ranking 16th overall and number one out of all ranked real estate podcasts. The post Lew Oliver: How Traditional Neighborhood Development & Walkability Intersect appeared first on Atlanta Real Estate Forum.

Sipping on a pour (or two) of Macallan, Chuck Bohl sits down with us to share the winding, unexpected journey that led him to become the founding director of the University of Miami's Master of Real Estate Development program. We go all the way back to his early years growing up on a farm, where hard work and curiosity first took hold, before jumping into his teenage days shredding guitars and dreaming of being a rock star.Chuck walks us through his time roaming the streets of 1980s New York City, the grit, the music, the culture, and the urban chaos that shaped his fascination with how cities work. It was there that the spark of placemaking and New Urbanism first ignited, eventually guiding him toward a career dedicated to building better neighborhoods, walkable communities, and transformative public spaces.From music to academia, from farm life to urban design, Chuck's story is a masterclass in following your interests wherever they lead. This episode is a thoughtful, entertaining look at how one of Miami's most influential urban thinkers found his calling, and how he's helped shape the minds of hundreds of developers who now build the cities we live in.Connect with usWant to dive deeper into Miami's commercial real estate scene? It's our favorite topic and we're always up for a good conversation. Whether you're just exploring or already making big moves, feel free to reach out at info@builtworldadvisors.com or give us a call at 305.498.9410. Prefer to connect online? Find us on LinkedIn or Instagram - we're always open to expanding the conversation. Ben Hoffman: LinkedIn Felipe Azenha: LinkedIn We extend our sincere gratitude to Büro coworking space for generously granting us the opportunity to record all our podcasts at any of their 8 convenient locations across South Florida.

Charles Marohn is the founder and president of Strong Towns. With decades of experience as a land use planner and civil engineer, Marohn is on a mission to help cities and towns become stronger and more prosperous through classic, traditional town planning. He's the bestselling author of Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis. Like your host, JHK, Chuck is a member in good standing of the Congress for the New Urbanism, a national movement to repair and reform the fiasco of Suburban sprawl lanes development. The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

About forty years ago, the New Urbanism came on the scene with bold and creative ideas for building entirely new towns. The founders of the movement intended to prove that we could really build beautiful, walkable new places in America, much like some of our historic norms. Those early communities captured incredible attention, far beyond their actual size. And they've influenced a couple generations of people in the planning and development world.But it's also true that most of the new places built were fairly modest in scale. Seaside, Florida, the famous community on the Florida panhandle, is just sixty acres in size. Many other new communities were the size of a suburban subdivision, or a smaller master-planned community. This isn't a knock on the projects, it's just the reality of what could be achieved and who the clients were.In recent years, an even bigger and more audacious proposal has come forward called California Forever. The founders have acquired over 50,000 acres in the Bay Area in Solano County. I speak with Gabriel Metcalf, the Head of Planning, to discuss the plans for this new community - the whys, whats and hows. This is a massive effort, and one that's intentionally trying to renew notions of what can be done in a state that's become famously difficult in which to build.Gabriel and I talk about not just the specifics of the proposed community, but how this effort fits into the historic context of new towns, and what he sees as precedents. Can we still build new places in America that are inspiring and solve 21st century problems? And what do new towns say about our existing cities and their struggles? We discuss all this and more.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” Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

Can New Urbanists learn from suburbia's success? In this special episode, Chuck sits down with CNU founder Andres Duany, who shares big ideas he says the movement isn't ready to hear. They discuss how New Urbanism captured territory in the battle for cities, why its failing to hold that territory, and where Strong Towns fits into the fight. Additional Show Notes It's Member Week at Strong Towns! Join the movement today!

A few months ago, we lost Leon Krier, one of the all-time greats in the world of architecture and urban design. I'm joined by Dan Parolek of Opticos Design to reflect on Krier's work and influence, and his personal experiences working with him on multiple projects. Krier's work and his many drawings have been foundational for so many of us that came through the world of New Urbanism. His simple, elegant way of dissecting what's wrong with modern cities angered a lot of people in the architecture and planning establishment, but appealed to so many of us that knew something was wrong. In the end, there's almost nothing about Krier's work that should be controversial. He approached everything from the perspective of what is actually good for human beings. He felt we could and should learn from the acquired wisdom of the past and generations of people before us. That any of that should be controversial says so much about the era in which we live and how the design professions have mutated over the years.If you don't know Krier, I hope this is an introduction. Please go check out his books. They're incredibly easy to understand and read, and many are good for a laugh, too.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” Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

Mike Hathorne has been around the New Urbanism movement for over twenty years. That means he has that rare combination of idealism, practicality, and persistence. Nowadays, you can find Mike with Visionary Homes in Utah.While the principles of New Urbanism have guided his work for years, Mike has also been on the front lines trying to figure out how to get it all built. Like all of us, he's had successes and failures. But that desire to connect to truly human values and needs continues to drive him forward. Mike and I talk about how the actual types of households in our communities are far more diverse than most realize. And, what that all means for people trying to build new housing. We pause for a minute to discuss the notion of why having diverse households in a neighborhood is actually a good thing, and how it helps communities.The changes in household makeup over the last 70 years or so is very stark, and surprises many people. I've found that most people still assume the 2 parents with kids at home is still the dominant household arrangement. It's not at all, and we take a look at the numbers. For anyone trying to build or develop, or anyone trying to improve their community, this is really important baseline information. We can all imagine that world we might want to have, but we must start and work with the world as it is.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” Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

On today's show, we hear how The Congress for the New Urbanism is accepting proposals for free design and planning help in northwest Arkansas, regardless of population count. Also, the life of Arkansas blues musician Cedell Davis. Plus, a new edition of Sound Perimeter.

Think about the place where you live. Every inch of every city and suburb has been designed by other humans. For better or worse, their choices determine how the world around you works, and how you live and navigate through it.  Jeff Speck is the world's leading exponent of the concept of the “walkable city”, human-centered urban centers.  In this episode of the Futurists, Jeff shares his inspiring vision of the city of the future. Topics include; the New Urbanism, how cities foster society, the impact of the automobile on the organization of society, the goals of city planning and urban design, organic neighborhood evolution versus top-down zoning, the consequences of the 1969 World's Fair, how lifespans increased when factories were separated from living quarters, how mass transit systems shape the growth of cities, and how automation and robotics will shape the city of the future.

Send us a textSummary: Monte and I talk about incremental development and starting a 12 Steps to Town Making small-scale developer ecosystem.________________________________________________________Sponsor: This show is supported by the Top Five Newsletter. If you want a simple and to-the-point update on Raleigh commercial development, you can subscribe to the Top Five. It's free if you want it to be!________________________________________________________Big Takeaways:- There are four corners to any small-scale ecosystem: the Public, Private, Non-Profit, and Financial Sectors.- How Monte's room mate house works.- The 12 Steps to Town Making.________________________________________________________About Monte: Monte Anderson is a passionate advocate for revitalizing underserved communities across the United States.  As president of Options Real Estate, a sales, management, and development company in Southern Dallas County, he applies his deep commitment to improving neighborhoods, particularly those that are impoverished or overlooked. His approach focuses on empowering local residents and fostering sustainable economic growth through small-scale, incremental development.With other like minded colleagues he met through Strong Towns and The Congress for the New Urbanism, Monte co-founded the Incremental Development Alliance and then Neighborhood Evolution (NEVO), two teaching organizations focused on small scale development, local ownership, and building eco systems for cities and towns that encourage this work.  He also co-authored and now teaches "The Twelve Steps of Town Making" which has resulted in success stories all over the country.Connect with Monte: Website | LinkedIn | Instagram Mentioned in the show:- Congress for New Urbanism- Neighborhood Evolution- NYT Article on Monte's Roommate House- Strong Towns- [Book] Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect- Grow Desoto Market Place- [Book] 12 Steps to Town Making_______________________________________________________Sponsor: This show is supported by the Top Five Newsletter. If you want a simple and to-the-point update on Raleigh commercial development, you can subscribe to the Top Five. It's free if you want it to be!Show Notes: Welcome to Dirt NC, where we talk all about the places and spaces of North Carolina and the people who make them awesome. I am your host, Jed Byrne.Throughout my career in engineering, construction, finance, and development, I have worked on nearly every aspect of the land use ecosystem. This show provides an opportunity for me to share what I've learned with you, as well as introduce you to some of my friends, both new and old, who are doing transformative work.With each episode of Dirt NC, my goal

Sophie McAdara — Programs and Operations Manager for Bring It Home, and former City of Bentonville urban planner — is in good traffic this week to discuss just what the heck is going on down in Northwest Arkansas. Bentonville, and neighboring towns, have been part of a regional boom in recent years. National attention has followed, and much praise has been given.From mountain bike lanes alongside local roads, to robust greenway projects, and urban integration with natural surroundings, the area has begun to foster a unique identity. Walmart, the University of Arkansas, and others have invested significantly in the livability of the region.Apologies for any subpar audio — we had to use a backup track for a portion of the episode.Timeline:00:00 Sophie McAdara is in good traffic.04:10 Non-profit developers and community land trusts, explained.13:14 Sophie's journey into urban planning.24:15 The growth of Northwest Arkansas.29:32 Local organizations and partnerships.32:59 Community feedback in urban development.35:05 Current NWA transit situation.37:22 Bentonville bike infrastructure.43:07 Congress for the New Urbanism and Emerging New Urbanists.48:14 How to get involved with Emerging New Urbanists.49:47 Wrapping up.Further context:Bring it Home (Sophie's organization).Emerging New Urbanists.Ex. of Bentonville bike infrastructure.Follow Sophie.Support Sophie's art.

I had the distinct pleasure to sit down with two leading voices from the Congress for New Urbanism this past spring for a frank conversation on our current housing crisis. Their different ages and life experiences offer us a wealth of perspective to learn from and leverage.  Let's dive right in to learn together in order to better each of our efforts to solve the issues of housing in America.  Todd Zimmerman and his partner Laurie Volk founded Zimmerman/Volk Associates four decades ago, to address the walkability and economic viability of cities and towns throughout the United States. They developed over that time their own methodology for completing the work they performed. Both got their start as journalists and like so many of us who came to development from a non-traditional background, leveraged their skills to bring fresh ideas to the realm of the built environment. Carlos Sainz Caccia is a Mexican born Urban planner living and working in Boston Massachusetts for the leading firm Utile.  His perspective particularly caught my attention in the fall of 2024 as I participated in a debate on the merits of CNU's voice in solving the current housing crisis during CNU's regional conference in Providence, RI.  We start our discussion with Carlos's take on what's driving housing's unaffordability.  These conversations often quickly stream into the social, financial, cultural and other worlds that contribute to the problem but inform possible solutions.  We then move to a broader look at the issues contributing with Todd.  We're going to present these conversations over several episodes.  Thanks for our friends at the Congress for New Urbanism for suggesting these interviews and introducing us to Carlos and Todd.  We hope you enjoy.

On today's show, we hear from urban planners from near and far, who gathered earlier this month at the Congress for the New Urbanism. Also, we continue visiting the complex life of Robert Say Mcintosh. Plus, a brand new edition of Sound Perimeter.

On today's show, we learn that city planners are looking to cities in northwest Arkansas for ideas on how to improve their communities. Also, a life change led to an unexpected second career for author Dennis Mathew. Plus, Fayetteville and Springdale are seeking input on the railway safety study.

On today's show, city and regional planners from Northwest Arkansas are attending the Congress for the New Urbanism in Providence, Rhode Island. Plus, working to make fashion more sustainable and our weekly roundup of news from the River Valley with Michael Tilley of Talk Business and Politics.

Demand for walkable urbanism is stronger than ever, according to Mallory Baches, president of the Congress for the New Urbanism, an organization that has been promoting compact, mixed-use, transit-oriented development for more than three decades.

Kevin Klinkenberg is an urban designer, planner, and architect from Kansas City with over two decades of experience in creating walkable, human-centered communities. He's the mind behind The Messy City, a blog and podcast where he explores the complexities of urban development, advocating for adaptability, local initiative, and practical solutions over rigid, top-down planning. He previously served as Executive Director of the Savannah Development and Renewal Authority, where he contributed to a downtown master plan for Savannah, Georgia.  A long-time advocate for New Urbanism, and writer of the book ‘Why I Walk', he has worked across the U.S. blending idealism with pragmatism.Subscribe to Kevin's substack: https://kevinklinkenberg.substack.com Follow Kevin on X: https://x.com/kevinklink======== For more information on The Aesthetic City, find our website on https://theaestheticcity.com/Love what we do? Become a patron! With your help we can grow this platform even further, make more content and hopefully achieve real, lasting impact for more beautiful cities worldwide. Visit our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/the_aesthetic_city?fan_landing=trueWe are making an online course about urban planning! Join the waitlist here: https://www.aesthetic.city/the-academy Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@the_aesthetic_city Follow us on X: https://x.com/_Aesthetic_City Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.aesthetic.city/ Substack: https://theaestheticcity.substack.com/

In this interview we talk to Whitney about more than her new book, Organize First Decorate Second and how to transform their living space into a personal sanctuary. We cover her motivations and God's work in her life and work life.In Organize First, Decorate Second, Whitney English provides more than practicalorganizational advice; she also teaches readers how to design and structure a homein a way that is as functional as it is meaningful and beautiful. Inspired by principlesof New Urbanism, she argues that function and aesthetics go hand in hand—and thatas we curate spaces that work and are visually appealing, we will find ourselvesmore comfortable, inspired, creative, and fulfilled in the homes we inhabit. Whitney English Whitney English believes that anyone can live a beautiful life. She believes that gratitude is the birthplace of joy, that people matter, that love is the answer, that if you're real you can't be ugly, that everyone is creative and some of us have just forgotten, and that it's worth trying to be a better version of yourself today than you were yesterday. She has boot-strapped two businesses to seven figures, has a degree in interior design, studied management at Parsons in New York City, and has had her work featured in O magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and on the Today Show (twice). She was featured as one of Country Living magazine's Women Entrepreneurs in 2008. One of her favorite dreams-come-true, though, is her husband David, and their three children.WebsiteInstagram

On this week's program, we bring you highlights from a public meeting and open house that took place at the Main Public Library on March 18th about the Downtown & NuLu Street Network Plan. Louisville Metro Government is leading a plan to advance quick-term action projects for streets in Downtown and NuLu, intended to promote walkability and safety for pedestrians and to serve as a blueprint for capital improvement projects over the next several years. The public was invited to come be a part of this planning effort by joining this open house and kickoff of the plan activities - featuring a presentation from Jeff Speck from Metro's planning consultant team! So listen in as renowned urban planner and author Jeff Speck shared his insights on reimagining downtown Louisville through the lens of walkability and why fostering a pedestrian-friendly environment is imperative for a flourishing city. The evening kicked off with Joel from Stantech. Jeff Speck is a city planner and author who advocates internationally for more walkable cities. As Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 through 2007, he presided over the Mayors' Institute on City Design and created the Governors' Institute on Community Design. Prior to his federal appointment, Mr. Speck spent ten years as Director of Town Planning at DPZ & Co., the principal firm behind the New Urbanism movement. Since 2007, he has led Speck & Associates — now Speck Dempsey —an award-winning urban planning firm serving public and private clients around the world. With Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Mr. Speck is the co-author of Suburban Nation, which the Wall Street Journal calls "the urbanist's bible.” His 2012 book Walkable City was the best selling city planning title of the past decade and has been translated into eight languages. He is also the principal author of The Smart Growth Manual and Walkable City Rules. Jeff Speck has been named a fellow of both the American Institute of Certified Planners and the Congress for New Urbanism. In a recent Planetizen poll, he was voted one of the ten “most influential urbanists of all time.” Mr. Speck was the 2022 recipient of the Seaside Prize, whose former awardees include Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander. His TED talks and YouTube videos have been viewed more than six million times. Truth to Power airs every Friday at 9pm, Saturday at 11am, and Sunday at 7pm on Louisville's grassroots, community radio station, Forward Radio 106.5fm WFMP and live streams at https://forwardradio.org

I had the pleasure of meeting Charles Brewer right when he was starting to get interested in becoming a real estate developer. This was after a very successful short career in the dot-com world, as he was a founder of Mindspring. When he exited, he became interested in New Urbanism, and decided to shift his career toward the building of new, walkable communities.Twenty-plus years later, we get a chance to talk about his journey. And, we get to spend a lot of time discussing Las Catalinas, his remarkable new town on the beach in Costa Rica. I wrote some about Las Catalinas, here, after a recent visit.Charles is especially interesting in that he's a firm believer in many of the principles of New Urbanism, but he's also willing to challenge them and all of us who have worked on these communities. His first project, Glenwood Park in Atlanta, is a fantastic infill development by any realistic measure. Fascinatingly, he calls it “mainstream New Urbanism.” For him, the real challenge and next frontier is figuring out how to create car-free (or mostly car-free) communities. Charles in particular has been very motivated by the experience of kids and families, and how to encourage and allow for more freedom of movement and life for them. I'll also just editorialize and say, his projects are a great testimony to the power of an individual's passion to just get things done, and get them done well. Despite what outsiders and critics might think, these projects are very challenging. Part of the reason we have so few examples like them, is that it takes a rare kind of determination to go against virtually every professional silo in the built environment. Someone used to call this “stick-to-it-ive-ness.” It's a quality I greatly admire in people, and I hope you do as well.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” Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

It's truly a rare thing in life to run across people that are uber-talented, thoughtful, and just fantastic human beings. Dhiru Thadani is one of those rare people. An architect, urban designer, author, teacher, and prolific sketch artist, Dhiru has been involved in the New Urbanism movement since the earliest days. He's written multiple books about the famous new town of Seaside, Florida, and we spend a bit of time rehashing some history on this episode for those that are unaware.One of my most enjoyable lines from this talk, was Dhiru relating that “The most original architects have the largest libraries – that's their secret.” In essence, we all steal from each other, and from history. Nothing is original; everything derives from something else. Some may find that statement stifling, but if you truly care about making beautiful places above all else, it's actually liberating.Dhiru and I talk about the possible future evolution of Seaside. Can it, in fact, evolve? Many of us that know and love Seaside as it is have a lot of heartburn with this notion. We hate seeing beloved buildings come down.My editorial, though, is that this line of concern is really just a symptom of an era of horrible architecture. Our ancestors never felt this way, because older buildings (which often were attractive), were replaced by new buildings that were more attractive.That all stopped with the advent of the modern movement in architecture – most notably the “international style.” Now, we just don't have confidence that beauty can be replaced by beauty. We rightly fear that beauty will be replaced by ugliness. But in fact, we can build beautifully, and we have. People like Dhiru have been teaching us how to do so for more than forty years. It's now incumbent on us to keep that fire burning. For inspiration, check out Dhiru's Instagram account, and pick up a pencil and draw.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” Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

Mike Christensen is the executive director of the Utah Rail Passenger Association, where he works to educate the public and policy makers about the value of investing in passenger rail. He also serves on Salt Lake City's planning commission, as well as the boards of the Utah chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism, the Utah Transit Riders Union and the national Rail Passengers Association. Christensen joins Tiffany Owens Reed on this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution to discuss the benefits of passenger rail, including how it can lead to more productive land use, as well as his work advocating for better public transit outside of metropolitan areas. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES Local Recommendations: Temple Square Red Iguana Park Cafe Mike Christensen (Twitter/X) Utah Rail Passenger Association (website) Amtrak Long Distance Study Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram) Do you know someone who would make for a great The Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Moses Kagan has a unique take on real estate development and investing – and he's influenced my thinking substantially over the past couple of years.He is a highly successful syndicator, investor and developer with over $200 million in assets under management. He runs Adaptive Realty, having renovated over 100 multi-family buildings in Los Angeles, managing them in-house while specializing in the "indefinite hold” strategy for long-term wealth building.He is the Co-Founder of ReSeed, a platform offering long-term GP and LP capital, along with mentorship for emerging real estate operators nationwide.  He also hosts Reconvene, a highly regarded annual “unconference” for real estate operators and passive investors to connect and share knowledge. I attended last year, and it was awesome!And lastly, he is a Twitter personality and avid blogger, sharing valuable insights on real estate and business. I highly recommend you follow him.This is an excellent conversation about practical investment and real estate development philosophy, and I hope this conversation has as big of an impact on you as meeting Moses has on me!TAKEAWAYSHolding real estate indefinitely often leads to better investment outcomes than IRR-driven flipping.Traditional real estate models incentivize risky short-term decisions, while sustainable strategies benefit both investors and communities.Investors should focus on post-tax returns rather than pre-tax IRR, as tax considerations play a crucial role in long-term profitability.Wealthy families and patient capital partners are more aligned with indefinite hold strategies than institutional investors.Unlevered yield on cost and all-in price per square foot are key financial indicators for long-term real estate success.Building direct relationships and trust at scale is essential for securing capital, especially for indefinite hold investments.CHAPTERS00:00 Introduction to Real Estate Development Philosophy06:06 Understanding IRR and Its Implications11:55 The Importance of Long-Term Thinking in Real Estate17:59 Finding the Right Investors for Long-Term Strategies25:50 Investing with Wealthy Families and Professional Money Managers40:20 Understanding Capitalization and Investor Liquidity46:11 Building Trust and Relationships in Real Estate Investment55:41 Building Trust at Scale in Real Estate58:01 The Democratization of Capital Raising01:04:29 New Urbanism and Walkable Neighborhoods01:06:00 Challenges of Ground-Up Development01:09:03 Zoning and Building Code Challenges01:11:57 The Impact of Bureaucracy on Development01:14:07 Introducing ReSeed: Supporting Emerging Operators01:17:08 The Importance of Community in Real EstateCONNECT WITH MOSESX:https://x.com/moseskagan?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5EauthorLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moses-kagan-2638ab2/Adaptive Realty: https://www.adaptiverealty.com/ ReSeed: https://reseedpartners.com/Moses Newsletter: https://kagansblog.com/blog/MENTIONED RESOURCESThe Fort Podcast Interview on ReSeed: https://www.thefortpod.com/videos/moses-kagan-rhett-bennett-co-founders-of-reseed-partners-the-y-combinator-for-re-operators/CONNECT WITH AUSTIN TUNNELLNewsletter:https://playbook.buildingculture.com/https://www.instagram.com/austintunnell/https://www.linkedin.com/in/austin-tunnell-2a41894a/https://twitter.com/AustinTunnellCONNECT WITH BUILDING CULTUREhttps://www.buildingculture.com/https://www.instagram.com/buildingculture/https://twitter.com/build_culturehttps://www.facebook.com/BuildCulture/SPONSORSThank you so much to the sponsors of The Building Culture Podcast!Sierra Pacific Windows: https://www.sierrapacificwindows.com/One Source Windows: https://onesourcewindows.com/

I'm excited to share this conversation with Will McCollum and Matthew Marshall, the passionate minds behind Citymakers Collective. This summer, they're hosting a transformative two-week program in Charleston, featuring some of the top practitioners in the New Urbanism and human-centered design movements.  Their approach is holistic, hands-on, and experiential, with a mission to equip the next generation of city makers to design and build places that are resilient, beautiful, and centered on people. In this episode, we delve into the challenges of traditional education, what's missing, and why they felt compelled to create this innovative summer program. If you're a young professional or student working in the built environment—whether you're an architect, planner, builder, developer, engineer or something else—I highly encourage you to check it out and consider applying. Learn more at: citymakerscollective.org TAKEAWAYS The City Makers Collective program teaches principles that make cities more livable, sustainable, and people-focused. Participants engage with Charleston's urban fabric through walking tours, real-world case studies, and collaborative studio projects. The program blends timeless design principles with modern needs to create places that work for today's challenges. Architects, planners, developers, and more come together to foster holistic learning and solutions. Students learn how to navigate market realities, collaborate effectively, and implement sustainable practices in urban design. Instructors include top practitioners like Lou Oliver and Maria Sanchez (Estudio Urbano), offering a wealth of knowledge and diverse perspectives. The program addresses the lack of foundational training in urbanism and traditional design in most architecture schools. Participants gain access to a powerful network of professionals, creating lasting connections for their careers. The program offers scholarships and affordable housing options to ensure a wide range of students can participate. The City Makers Collective aims to grow beyond this summer, offering ongoing programs to shape the future of urbanism and architecture. CHAPTERS: 00:00 Designing Cities for People 08:10 Bridging the Education Gap in Urbanism 14:00 The Importance of Tradition in Architecture 20:42 Integrating Disciplines for Holistic City Building 27:59 Understanding Market Realities in Education 29:50 Creating a Shared Vision for Communities 30:47 Building the Human Habitat 32:11 The Dual Nature of Humanity: Creation and Destruction 33:38 The Responsibility of Architects 34:41 Learning from Past Mistakes in Architecture 36:35 Integrating Tradition with Modernity 37:34 Hands-On Learning in Architecture Education 40:26 The Importance of Networking in Architecture 41:5 Introducing the Fellowship Program 43:24 Funding and Support for Citymakers Collective 45:06 Future Programs and Workshops 46:30 Cognitive Architecture and Human Experience 49:22 Backgrounds and Inspirations of the Founders 52:20 The Journey of Citymakers Collective 53:16 Application Process and Accessibility CONTACT MATT, WILL & CITYMAKERS COLLECTIVE Summer Studio Website: https://citymakerscollective.org/summer-2025 Will's email: will@citymakerscollective.org Matthew's email: matthew@citymakerscollective.org Citymakers Collective Website: https://citymakerscollective.org/  Newstory Website: https://www.newstoryhomes.org/  Matthew's Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matth3wMarshall/  Matthew's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmatthewmarshall/  Will's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-mccollum-6965a066  CONNECT WITH AUSTIN TUNNELL Newsletter: https://playbook.buildingculture.com/ https://www.instagram.com/austintunnell/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/austin-tunnell-2a41894a/ https://twitter.com/AustinTunnell CONNECT WITH BUILDING CULTURE https://www.buildingculture.com/ https://www.instagram.com/buildingculture/ https://twitter.com/build_culture https://www.facebook.com/BuildCulture/ SPONSORS Thank you so much to the sponsors of The Building Culture Podcast! Sierra Pacific Windows: https://www.sierrapacificwindows.com/ One Source Windows: https://onesourcewindows.com/

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.⁠⁠⁠⁠

In which conservative Sun Belt retirees and progressive urbanists agree on a nostalgic but radical revolution in city design, and Ken does a Normal Rockwell impression. Certificate #34959.

With the rise of suburban sprawl and city planning that has prioritized car travel above all else, modern American cities seriously lack comfortable walking and biking infrastructure. It's a massive issue - but solutions do exist and importantly, those solutions are decidedly doable. Today we are so thrilled to be speaking with Jeff Speck, a city planner, who is widely known for his work advocating for and creating more walkable cities. His book, Walkable City, first published in 2012, has been translated into seven languages and is the best selling city planning book of the 21st century. Walkable City is also a winner of the Green Prize for Sustainable Literature.Jeff believes that a thriving city is a walkable city, where cars are instruments for freedom but aren't necessary for the day-to-day basics of living. We would also add that walkable cities are fundamentally biophilic because livability and wellness are at the core of biophilia. In this episode, we chat with Jeff about making cities more walkable, the economic benefits of walkable cities, and demanding more of our environments. Shownotes Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time 10th Anniversary Edition by Jeff SpeckThe Smart Growth Manual by Jeff SpeckWalkable City Rules by Jeff SpeckSuburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Jeff Speck The walkable city (TED Talk)4 ways to make a city more walkable (TED Talk)Street Fight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution by Janette Sadik-Khan and Seth SolomonowConfessions of a Recovering Engineer by Charles L. MarohnKilled by a Traffic Engineer by Wes Marshall Andres Duany: Principles of New Urbanism (YouTube)Biophilic Solutions is available wherever you get podcasts. Please listen, follow, and give us a five-star review. Follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn and learn more on our website. #NatureHasTheAnswers

In episode 77 of the TBD Podcast, Garrett sits down with Jeff Speck, a renowned city planner, writer, and lecturer who serves as the principal at the urban design and consultancy firm Speck Dempsey. Together, they delve into a range of intriguing topics, including how Seaside, FL revolutionized urban design, the reasons behind U.S. cities' rejection of European-style planning, and the creation of the master plan for Water Street. Tune in for an engaging episode that explores the nuances of city planning. Jeff Speck is an internationally recognized city planner known for advocating walkable cities. As Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts (2003-2007), he launched the Mayors' Institute on City Design and the Governors' Institute on Community Design. Previously, he spent a decade as Director of Town Planning at DPZ & Co., a key player in the New Urbanism movement. Speck co-authored *Suburban Nation* with Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, hailed by the Wall Street Journal as the "urbanist's bible," and authored the best-selling *Walkable City*. His works include *The Smart Growth Manual* and *Walkable City Rules*. His TED talks and YouTube videos have surpassed five million views. 0:00:00 - Intro 0:01:13 - How Jeff Speck got his start in urban design 0:07:09 - How Seaside, FL revolutionized urban design 0:12:08 - The Mayors Institute on City Design 0:15:52 - The history of street cars 0:19:08 - Why did U.S. cities reject European styled urban planning? 0:27:52 - The importance of a contributing society 0:36:14 - FDOT and Street Safety 0:50:02 - Creating the Master Plan for the Water Street District 0:56:20 - Why the grid system is superior to other city systems 1:01:06 - Outro

We had the privilege of sitting down with Victor Dover, one of the world's most acclaimed urban planners, for an insightful conversation about his remarkable career and the art of designing vibrant and walkable communities. Victor, a leading advocate of New Urbanism, has played a pivotal role in planning hundreds of mixed-use projects globally. His firm, Dover, Kohl & Partners, is renowned for iconic developments like I'On—a 250-acre traditional neighborhood outside Charleston, SC, created in collaboration with Duany & Plater-Zyberk and Company.In this episode, Victor reveals the secrets behind great neighborhood design and what drives real estate property values. Spoiler: It all starts with street design. Tune in to hear his expert insights and learn what truly makes a community thrive.Connect with usLooking to dive deeper into the Miami commercial real estate scene? Well, you've stumbled upon our favorite topic of conversation. So, whether you're a curious beachcomber or a seasoned investor, drop us a line at info@gridlineproperties.com or dial us up at 305.507.7098. Or if you're feeling social, you can stalk us on LinkedIn and connect with us there. Let's make some waves in the 305 real estate world together! Ben Hoffman's bio & LinkedIn ( linkedin.com/in/ben-hoffman-818a0949/ ) Felipe Azenha's bio & LinkedIn ( linkedin.com/in/felipeazenha/ ) We extend our sincere gratitude to Büro coworking space for generously granting us the opportunity to record all our podcasts at any of their 8 convenient locations across South Florida.

A storied career spanning nearly three decades has fostered a reputation for exquisite interior design, with projects across Dallas, Aspen, New Orleans, and the gorgeous Gulf Coast of Florida. Headquartered in what can only be described as an architectural hamlet unlike any other, Susan Lovelace and her eponymous business, Lovelace Interiors, are based in Inlet Beach, Florida, near the notable New Urbanism communities of Rosemary Beach, Alys Beach, Seaside, and more. Her legacy as a trailblazer, businesswoman, mentor, leader, and consummate professional is to her credit as she continues to build her brand in the area and beyond. Join us for a joyful conversation between longtime friends Susan Lovelace and host of VIE Speaks: Conversations with Heart & Soul, Lisa Marie Burwell. Listen in to find out how Lovelace Interiors started and stay updated on Susan's latest projects, travels, and activities! Susan's episode is available wherever you get your podcasts. For more be sure to follow along with Lovelace Interiors at @lovelaceinteriors. LET'S CONNECT: Instagram: @viespeaks // @viemagazine YouTube: (@VIEtelevision | WATCH VIE Speaks) Website: viemagazine.com CONNECT WITH SUSAN: Website: lovelaceinteriors.com Instagram: @lovelaceinteriors For sponsorship inquiries, please contact kelly@viemagazine.com and hailey@viemagazine.com.

There's a lot of takeaways from any conversation with Joe Minicozzi, or one of his many public presentations. Here's mine today: omnipotent forces didn't create our current systems, whether we are talking about zoning, traffic engineering or tax assessment. Or, in fact, just about anything in life.These were all created by fallible humans. We can, and should, change them. It's our duty, our responsibility. Your local tax system, and your local zoning code were not handed down to you by Moses from the mountain.Joe Minicozzi of Urban 3 is one of those rare people that just has a knack for communicating complex ideas. If you haven't seen one of his presentations, run out and do so. Here's a sample from Not Just Bikes, and one from Strong Towns. Today, we talk in audio form instead of video, but I suspect you'll enjoy it just the same. Since this is a blog, too, here's a few visual references for fun: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”Text Transcript:Kevin K (00:01.231) Welcome back to the Messy City podcast. You know, one of the joys that I've had in being involved with the New Urbanism Movement and the Congress for New Urbanism for many, many years is you get to meet and know people who take a lot of issues that we talk about and care about and completely reframe them and make them much more interesting and accessible and understandable, I think, to a larger audience. And there's been a number of people who who've done that or I've seen that happen in the course of my career. And one of those is joining me here today, live from Asheville, North Carolina, Joe Minicozzi. Joe, how's it going, Joe Minicozzi (00:42.018) Great, thanks for having Kevin K (00:43.771) Well, it's fun. I've been wanting to do this one for a little while and it's you're a busy guy and I'm really glad you made some time. Joe, you may know he's often had his work featured in Strong Towns. He's a regular on the speaking circuit with his firm, Urban 3, and he's really developed a unique approach to kind of explaining our built environment in graphic and financial terms I think has changed a lot of people's thinking about things. And we're going to get to some of that. Joe has, one of the cool things, Joe, is you're working all over the country. So there's always something new to talk about. But before we get there, I do think it's interesting for people to understand your background because like somebody coming upon you today and one of your presentations, they might think, he's like this kind of urban guru guy. What does that mean? Or he's like a financial guru guy, but you're actually, you're an architect. Correct? Not licensed, but educated. Yes. Where did... I don't think... One thing I never knew, Joe, like, where did you grow Joe Minicozzi (01:44.476) Well, not licensed. Can say that. Educated, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so... Go Joe Minicozzi (01:56.116) upstate New York, Rust Belt, little town called Rome, New York. Kevin K (01:57.445) Ruffio. cool, that's a cool town. Joe Minicozzi (02:05.282) Why do you say that? That it's not cool. When I was Kevin K (02:07.983) Well, I mean, there's some cool built fabric there. No? Joe Minicozzi (02:11.256) No. When I was a kid, they tore down most of downtown. It was literally one of the largest urban renewal projects per capita in the entire United States. And they blew up, I don't know, like eight to 10 blocks of downtown and built a wooden fort. There's a revolutionary wooden fort in what used to be our downtown. Google Rome, New York and go into the downtown, you'll see it. Kevin K (02:39.715) OK, I must be thinking of pictures I've seen of a different upstate New York downtown then or something. Joe Minicozzi (02:43.288) Oh no, no, it's, didn't, but I didn't realize that was abnormal because you you grew up in a town of 30 ,000 people, this is it, right? That's all you know. You just, so when you go to college, you're just like, yeah, surely like you've got a fort in your downtown, right? You know, everybody's got one. Actually Savannah has one. So, but it's not in the downtown. They didn't eliminate Savannah to rebuild a wooden fort. Yeah, but this is a magnet that I have that I in my bookcase over here. This is my grandfather. Kevin K (03:03.193) Right. That would have been rather odd. Joe Minicozzi (03:13.34) used to tie a rope to this thing. And he's an Italian carpenter, first generation American. And he's tied a rope to this and that rope was tied to my waist. And I used to just walk around job sites all day with him as a kid. I was like, you know, six years old walking around a job site with this huge magnet tied to my waist. And I was picking up nails and I would just sit there with this little anvil, like making the nails go straight so he could reuse them because you know, he's depression era. And I thought I was building buildings since I'd go home and talk to my dad and I was like, I'm building buildings with Papa. And he goes, sounds like you want to be an architect. And I was like, Bing, I want to be an architect. so that's, I wanted to be an architect since I was nine years old and I went to architecture school. Kevin K (03:53.903) You know, that's funny. That's like a weird thing we share in common. It's like, I don't know how that happened with me, because I actually didn't know anybody, you know, in architecture. And I knew a few people who built things, but for whatever reason, I just like always knew I wanted to go into architecture and city planning. it's it's just where I was. So, but anyway, so go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. I had no idea. Like why showed up to like freshman year? Joe Minicozzi (04:12.386) Yeah, like, they really cool pencils, right? I mean, it's like little clicker pencils, awesome, great tools. Kevin K (04:22.199) And here's the list of all the s**t you have to buy. And I was like, what is, what does even all this stuff do? Joe Minicozzi (04:25.162) Yeah, here's, out and buy a thousand dollars worth of stuff. Yeah, little, remember that, God, I hate saying this, it sounds old. I was explaining to somebody on staff, remember those little letter writing tools, that little plastic thing that you'd have to put on your parallel bar to make those three lines to do your lettering properly? That was insane. Anyway, sorry, sorry kids. That doesn't exist anymore because we actually type in computers now. Kevin K (04:39.745) my god, yeah. Kevin K (04:44.805) Totally, Yeah. Kevin K (04:53.349) Yeah, I know. Everyone wants to share. mean, actually learning how to do architectural lettering was a pretty cool thing. I mean, I always liked the benefit of Joe Minicozzi (04:59.628) Well, the frustrating thing for me is you go all the way through architecture school and the University of Miami is a five -year program and you never built a building. So how can you be a designer of a building and not understand how it's constructed? So in my fifth year, we petitioned the school to build a homeless shelter and we just went ahead and built it, designed it, built it, worked with homeless folks to figure out what are their needs? How do we help solve the problem architecturally? And think that's one of the beauties of Miami is that, you know, the whole time I was, know, Miami is known for its new urbanism, but I was always talking with Liz Plater -Zyberg about what was going on in my hometown, because here you have a town that was designed for walkability, designed for the things that new urbanists would proclaim, yet it was dead as a doornail and we were eliminating our downtown. And Liz would always say to me, she's like, well, that's economics. That's something different. and we're trying to deal with this flood of what's happening in South Florida. That's a different reality. So this whole being seen as an economist is mostly about chasing a question of what are the policies that shape our environment and how do I visualize those for folks, which is very in line with new urbanism. We just look at the money Kevin K (06:15.397) So talk a little bit about how you got to this point then professionally of working on your own and doing a lot of the economic analysis work that you do Joe Minicozzi (06:24.984) Well, mean, if first is working in architecture, and I think this is probably true for most people that are urban designers, is that you want to look at the context of things that's more exciting for you, or why would somebody say, I'm hiring you, the architect, to do an office building here? If you have an urban design mind, you're like, an office building? Why not a mixed use building or why not a residential building? Why is that developer choosing? That's really the design is when the developer makes a choice, right? And so why is the developer choosing office over residential or over retail? In having an urban design mindset, you're going to be more empowered to be looking for those things, those other forces. What are the financial streams? So after architecture, I went to grad school and then started doing like internships in real estate development, real estate finance. I worked at John Hancock Real Estate Investment Group in Boston. kind top of the food chain, where they had $4 billion worth of real estate across the country. And you're seeing how they're making decisions financially about what's going on in your town, right? Because they're going to be doing an asset in your town, a strip mall or a mall or whatever, right? Totally different design series. It was fascinating to watch, but it felt, if you saw the movie, The Big Short, it felt a lot like that. It was like, wow, these people are like on a different way of thinking. Like there's questions they're just not even asking. We were spending $100 million a year fixing the buildings that we owned. Now when you're making 15 bucks an hour, like that's a lot of money, right? And so you'd sit there, trained as an architect, you'd sit there with these asset managers and I would literally show them pictures of buildings that we owned, a building that we owned in Topeka and a building that we owned in Tacoma. And there are two office buildings that we owned. And I would ask the finance officers, I'm like, what's the difference between these two buildings? And they would start going through all of this gibberish of numbers and cash flows, cap rates, NOI, all of that stuff. And I'm like, no, no, no, look at the pictures. And like, what are you talking about? I'm like, it's the same damn building. We own the same building, the same office park building in Topeka and Tacoma. And you know, they fall apart differently based on the ecosystem. And this was like mind blowing to Joe Minicozzi (08:43.104) And it's just like, wow, they don't even understand what this... It's just a cashflow model for them. It's not a building, right? As an architect, you're going to... Like the windows fall apart differently. It's going to be based on the heat load of the air conditioner, all that stuff. But it's kind of mind blowing that this is the cashflow, the invisible sine curve that's moving by low cell high, that's moving through the system. And we're not even talking about it. So it's always... Yeah, go ahead. Well, it's always made me curious and got into real estate development. And then during the recession is when I started Urban 3, trying to help cities understand that they're prey to these sign curves. Kevin K (09:20.539) Yeah. I remember you used to tell a story about working at John Hancock and I think this is just instructive for people to understand the world of like big development, big finance was I think you had a story about we had they had X million dollars that they had to place within like 48 hours or something like that. What was Joe Minicozzi (09:37.56) Yeah. It was called a capital call where the CEO of the real estate arm came in and said, need to get, I think it was like $120 million into the ground in the next quarter. So that was an issuance that he was given from Topress. think of anybody that's on this podcast, if you have a 401k plan, if you're like CalPERS is the biggest one, the California teachers. pension. They have to make money on their money, right? So they take your retirement investment and they go out and make money so that you can have growth in your dollars as an investor. So if you want to see your 401k plan grow, well, somebody's got to make that money grow. So they're going around, in case of John Hancock, that's an insurance company. So somebody buys John Hancock life insurance. They want to return when they die on their money. what they do at the top level of John Hancock, they're putting some money into bonds, money into stocks, some money into real estate. So ours was the real estate arm. And whatever decision was made at the top, money came into the real estate world and was like, okay, that needs to get into the ground as fast as possible. So they were issued this $120 million in the next quarter. So the people that are finance managers call up all of their developer friends and were like, can I buy a building somewhere? That was basically how it happened. And the more expensive the building, the better because the more we can get that $120 million down to zero, the faster with less transactions. So imagine if you were the guy on the office that found a hundred million dollar building, like that's actually good, right? Now in architecture world, when we go to school, we're learning the direct opposite, like smaller, like little investments. We're not thinking about the big fish that are out there. anyway. Kevin K (11:25.583) Yeah. Sometimes it feels like you're like a language translator, Joe. It's like you have these two different worlds that you have grown to understand really well. One is like architecture and development, and the other is finance. And do you feel like you're kind of like straddling those worlds and trying to explain one to the Joe Minicozzi (11:44.652) Yeah, it's a simple sense, the tagline of our company is a data -driven storytelling, you know, that we have to communicate this stuff. And so lot of what we do is just unnerve things. I just came back from a meeting with our county assessor and their consultant, and, you know, he's going through this report that's got how many pages? I don't know, but it's all this. And it's like, how can you show me all of this text? and start talking to me about it. And I'm just like, I'm like, dude, you got to show me a picture somewhere. It's like, this is crazy. And so what we do is if you watch any of our work, we spent a ton of time breaking a city down to reveal its essence. So I don't need to get into like whether or not your spark plugs are firing at 20 beats per second or whatever. I need to just show you your car works, right? What does the audience want? They don't need to know the details. And far too many of us technically, trained folks, even architects, get down into the details and the audience doesn't necessarily understand does the car work, yes or no. So that's basically the method of our work is try to make it simple for folks. I use lot of analogies when I talk to people because that's how we relate. that's kind of, think of it having a curious mind, you want to go in and break something down, but to be able to speak it to a regular audience. It's not that the audience is stupid, it's just people just don't care about those kinds of details, they just want to know the bigger picture. Kevin K (13:19.545) Yeah, yeah. And so before we get into a couple of those stories, I am also curious, when you started your business in the recession, how did you, like who were your first clients and how did you get going in that world? Because it's definitely a different thing for an architect or urban designer to get into. Joe Minicozzi (13:39.448) You know, the funny thing was, I remember in the recession, I think I did a local lecture here in Asheville to the AIA, to the Architects Association. You know, it's a recession. Yeah, you're not building buildings. So as an architect, you're out of work, you know? But what's crazy about the architectural education, it's really an amazing education in creative thinking, but also critical thinking, right? So we're all given, you remember studio, there's like 15 of us in a studio, we're all given one problem to solve, but you're get 15 different answers, right? So that's the creative side. But the analytic side happens in all of that, that we're trying to break it down and figure it out before we can get to a design process. So that's the critical thinking side. Those skills can be applied anywhere. And then also in architecture, what do you do at the end of the semester? You have to pin up your work and you have to defend but it has to communicate to an audience visually, right? They need to understand what's going on in the design intent by what they see on the wall and how you present it. If you just look at that as a basic educational format, that can be applied anywhere. So we just applied architectural thinking to quantitative economic data for cities, right? So we get all of your data. We figure out what's its floor plan. Like why is this road here? Why is your city grown a certain way? That's all a floor plan, right? But there are decisions that are made along the way that fuel that growth. So if I add three bedrooms to my house, was it because I had four kids? know, it's like, that's the decision point for growing the house. Well, the same is true for cities. So we see when you get white flight, you're going to see that like in Kansas City. We saw that in Kansas City, Missouri, like this massive growth, southward, northward and westward or eastward, That's the whole, and that all happened really fast from 1950 forward. I think you, it's something like you doubled your population from 250 to 500, but you've 10 times your land area, which is crazy. Kevin K (15:52.475) Yeah, yeah, it's somewhere. We had a massive geographic expansion from the like 1947 city until today. I think the original 1947 city or so was probably in the ballpark of about 40 square miles. And now it's like 315 or so. Joe Minicozzi (16:15.242) I'm just drawing off the top of my head. There's an actual presentation out there somewhere, but I think it was like three times the road per person growth. So you're taking down three times the cost. So yeah, during the recession, was basically, I was showing up at conferences trying to help folks that were trying to have conversations about walkability, urban design, equity, and trying Kevin K (16:19.865) Yeah. yeah, absolutely. Joe Minicozzi (16:44.472) trying to share that the things that actually are all things that we advocate for also produce more wealth for communities. Does that make sense? So it was just like, look, we should just talk about that. Rather than say that it's good to have walkability, that can seem like a threat to an individual that you're trying to get me out of my car. That's very judgy. So rather than get involved in that emotionally, let's just talk about the fact that a Walmart actually destroys your wealth. Don't hate the player, hate the game, but you better understand the game. So when we did the models early on, it was just comparing Walmarts to Main Street, and Main Street was winning every single time. But why don't we build more Main Streets? Because the reverse is true, that we make it easier to do the Walmart, we tax it less, we charge it less, so that of course, Walmart's going to... You're going to see more Walmart -type buildings. I don't mean to be picking on Walmart so much. It's That's like a prototype, like the boxes. Those are throwaway architecture. So if you have property tax system that's based on your value of property, then there's an incentive for me to build junk in your community, right? The crappier the building I build, the lower the taxes I pay. Has nothing to do with the costs of the property. So the typical Walmart consumes two police officers per Walmart. So it actually costs you more in police services than a Walmart pays in property taxes. So if you were the owner of a Walmart, that's a good deal for you, right? So don't hate them. I hate us for not doing the math on that. It's that's shame on us. It's not hard. You just go call the police chief and say how many police officers are at Walmart every day and they'll tell you. That's data, Kevin K (18:28.015) Yeah. So let's talk about some of the recent data then. Not far from Walmart country, you've been working in Springfield, Missouri, which obviously is southwest Missouri, not far from Bentonville, Arkansas, which is the home base for Walmart. So we were talking, yeah, and Bentonville's actually an amazing, really cool town. And so you've been down in Springfield doing a bunch of work, and we were chatting about it. Joe Minicozzi (18:44.69) We've done Bentonville too, yeah. Kevin K (18:57.6) So this kind of took you in a little different direction. You started looking at trees and stormwater and everything else. I wonder if you could kind of talk through that scenario. Joe Minicozzi (19:05.888) Yeah. Springfield is really cool. it's one, it's nice about it. It's just straight smack dab in the middle of the country. It's Midwestern. There's not a lot of dynamic change to it because you don't have the coastal pressures of being next to an ocean or something like that. You don't have the rapid change of Silicon Valley where there's crazy changes in employment. It's very stable that And so in that stability, it's sort of a nice control subject of what's going on here. It's also not, it's not at the edge of some blast zone of some other city, you know? So think of like Rancho Cucamonga, California, which is outside the blast zone of Los Angeles. So whatever happens on Los Angeles is going to spread into the suburbs, suburb cities that are around it. So anyway, putting that aside. There's also this business person there, his name is Jack Stack, who wrote this game called The Great Game of Business, awesome book about business transparency. So the quote that I like of his is, I'm reading it right here, it says, a business should be run like an aquarium where everybody can see what's going on, what's going in, what's moving around, and what's coming out. So his theory of business is that everybody inside the company should know the balance sheet, they should know the P &L. that it's not him as the business owner, that he has a gold mine of money in the basement. You know, that everybody on staff should understand they've got to pay rent, they've got to pay insurance, all this stuff has costs. Well, our attitude is the same with cities. We should make the city economics so transparent that everybody understands the land use, the economic consequences of land use decisions. Don't tell me that people just want to live out in suburbia. Of course, if you're subsidizing them, why wouldn't you want to live in suburbia? So they hired us to do that modeling. Their city has run mostly off sales tax. think it's 86 % of their revenue comes from sales tax, 14 % comes from property tax, as far as geospatial, things we can put on a map. So that's kind of like the majority of their cashflow. When I did the presentation there, Joe Minicozzi (21:27.2) One of the things that we're doing the first side, showing the revenue and we're getting feedback from the staff and you're an urban designer, I'm an urban designer. One of the things that we tend to pay attention to how a city is shaped and what it looks like when we drive around. There weren't a lot of street trees in the city. And Graham Smith from Multi Studio based in Kansas City. He's the urban designer on the project. Graham said to me, goes, Kevin K (21:49.935) Yep. Joe Minicozzi (21:54.988) Do notice there's not a lot of street trees? And I was like, yeah, that's kind of crazy. It's like, it's like somehow like trees don't happen in the city. So I made a comment about it during the staff meeting and somebody in the engineering department said to me, well, I said, why don't you have trees? And he just said to me, goes, well, it's because trees attack the streets and sidewalks and use that word attack. I like my, my designer kicked in and I immediately responded. Do you not know how to design a tree pit? And then I stopped and I was like, well, that's not fair because I'm going to put them in the defensive. so, you know, this is somebody that's coming in with a mindset of maybe he came from, life safety or something, or the risk department inside city government. So he's only looking at it as a balance sheet item of one line item. Yes. A tree could screw up a sidewalk if you don't plant the proper tree species and don't build a tree pit. I got it. But it doesn't mean you should just lay waste to all trees. So just for fun. I came back to the office, I talked with Lea Hanringer, who was on the project. was like, and Lea's interested in understanding climate effects. So let's just look at the trees and what they could do financially for the city. So the whole stormwater system is, well, currently they're at a $9 million a year deficit in their stormwater system. They should be spending 15 million a year. They're only spending 6 million a year. So let that wash over you. They're not investing enough in their system that they've built. So that's only going to cause an economic collapse at some point in the future. If I don't brush my teeth every day, that's going to be a problem. One of them is going to fall out, right? So brushing my teeth every day is a maintenance issue. Same is true with any kind of infrastructure system. But to just go out and just totally replace the whole infrastructure system, if we just went out and built their stormwater system today, it'd be $600 million, $661 million worth of investment. So we considered the tree as a pipe and just said, what do trees do? And we actually made a cartoon of two sponges on a stick because there's a sponge in the air called leaves that suck water when the water hits it, keeps it from hitting the ground. And there's a root system that absorbs water from the ground. All of that keeps it out of the stormwater system. So a tree is essentially a pipe replacement, just to be crude about it, right? The average tree in Springfield, Missouri. And again, you don't have to be exact. Joe Minicozzi (24:23.192) Let's just get in the ballpark. It's like 770 gallons of water per tree gets sucked out of the air and 1500 gallons a year gets sucked out of the ground by the root system. So we can do the math on that and we kind of did an estimate based on the trees that they currently have in their city. Scaling that up, you're talking $600 ,000 of savings in the air and $1 .6 million savings in the ground. So that's $2 .2 million a year that you're not paying. in your stormwater system because of these trees. Here's an idea. Buy more trees. That sounds like a real rocket science idea. But I know, hey Joe, trees cost money, then we're gonna have to maintain them, we're have to make sure that we've got to get out and fix a sidewalk every once in while because we did something wrong. Okay, well we can do numbers on that. So we ran the math on it. The average benefit from the tree is a pipe, if you will. is about $115 a tree. The cost is 75 bucks. 'all take out your calculators at home, subtract $75 from 115. That means it's net positive 40 bucks a tree. we just, you know, just as a rough estimate, if you just go out and plant 10 ,000 trees, you're going to be net positive $400 ,000 a year. You can essentially use the tree to manufacture money to buy for police officers. That's cool. So don't just take it and look at that one side and just like, yeah, it's complicated to fix a sidewalk. What are the downstream effects of this? Now to kind of scale this up, remember I said $600 million system. Eugene, Oregon, we just happen to have the data. So Springfield's 170 ,000 people, Eugene, Oregon's 175, so it's got 5 ,000 more people in it. The stormwater system in Eugene, which actually has more rain in Eugene than in Missouri. Their stormwater system cost 400 million dollars versus Springfield is six hundred and and and 20 million dollars so so basically another way putting this Eugene, Oregon saved a hundred and eighty million dollars in their stormwater system and It comes down to the fact that they're a lot smaller. They the city shape is more compact So by doing compact design, you can actually save a hundred and eighty million Joe Minicozzi (26:46.903) Does that make sense? It's 35 square miles for Eugene. It's 83 square miles for Springfield. Kevin K (26:52.327) And to put it in context, I would imagine Eugene is still largely a city of like single -family homes. It's just maybe exactly, it's just a different layout for the city itself and how everything is configured on the ground. Joe Minicozzi (26:59.862) Yeah, yeah, it's not European. Joe Minicozzi (27:09.592) Well, our attitude is like, look, these are your choices. I live here in Asheville. So if you want to stretch out, fine. If you're a Midwestern city and you're like, hey Joe, this is the Midwest, you don't understand, we got lots of land here, we're gonna stretch out. It's like, oh cool, yeah, do it. But just make sure that you understand the cost of that stretching out and make sure that you let your decision makers know that people want to have a one acre yard, awesome, but it's gonna cost us $180 million more in a stormwater Is that the best choice for that public investment, that $180 million? Or could you have, I don't know, sent every child on a walkabout sabbatical around the world with that investment? There's lots of choices you could do with $180 million. Let's just be honest about Kevin K (27:58.117) Yeah, no doubt. Not to mention like one of the least of which could just be like lower taxes if that's your thing, you know. Joe Minicozzi (28:06.232) Well, or you could have invested that $180 million in more trees and you would have had $50 million of new revenue in your system on an annual basis, which is more than the ARPA funding that you got. ARPA was just a one year deal. Like you could actually manufacture more money than the federal government gave you. I mean, come on now, let's just talk about Kevin K (28:18.307) Right. Kevin K (28:24.123) Yeah. And I think the interesting thing is you're not even really getting into what some people might think of as like the frou frou design benefits of trees versus not trees in this. And so makes it a more pleasant place to walk or Joe Minicozzi (28:37.174) yeah. Aesthetic quality that reduces the heat island effect, reduces your air conditioning bills because you're not dealing with the outward effect of radiation. mean, there's lots of things. CO2, I mean, we didn't get an A that. We're just like a tree as a pipe replacement. Just start there. But yeah, if you did do those numbers, if you read, I don't know if you see on the bookcase up here, Happy City. and they get in the quantitative sociological effects that are actually financial as well because Canadians measure that stuff. We don't in America because we don't pay for health systems at the government level. So when the government actually does pay for the health system, they kind of want to know what the costs are. know, Charles Montgomery used all of that math in there to explain the financial consequences. I think the book is sort of a mislabeled. I think it's more of an economic than with the name Canotes. Kevin K (29:35.739) So at the stage you are now with Springfield, have you presented all this information to them and had that out in the world? Joe Minicozzi (29:45.356) Yeah. Well, one of the biases was that they wanted to continue to annex more land. And the first question I asked, which was why? And they said, well, people live out there and there's some higher wealth houses that are out there. Therefore, we're going to get higher taxes. And the reality of it is, and this is back to the original analysis that we did, which is the value per acre analysis. One of the biases people have with math is when they see like the Walmart's worth $20 million, they get really excited about it, especially compared to a building that we rehabbed on Main Street here in Asheville that's $11 million. So Walmart's twice the value, right? But that Walmart took 34 acres of our city versus our building on 0 .5 acres. And it's just a habit that humans have where they just immediately go to the big number without understanding the efficiency. Well, the same is true with suburbia. It's like, okay, yeah, they're experiencing wealth flight out of Springfield where people are just outside the city limits out in the county in their high -end neighborhoods. But when we do our tax model, you can see that they're actually not that productive. That's the first thing. Back to how I said, Springfield gets its money. They get their money off sales taxes. So why would you want to chase residential? Makes no sense. So we're gonna go and bring them into the city limits and then we're have to provide more services for them and not get any taxes out of them because we get all of our taxes out of sales. I actually told the audience when that question came up, I said, look, right now they're living outside, driving into your city and shopping, you're collecting their sales tax dollars and they're going home. You don't have to pay for their schools, you don't have to police them, you don't have to put the fire services for them, that's their problem. Why would you wanna take them in? and have more costs in your community when you're already getting the money that you need, which is the sales taxes. And as a planner, I hate saying that because it's like, everybody should be part of the community if you're involved at an economic level, but from a brass tax of how their financial system operates, there's no incentive for them to annex that land. But again, when you have the politics of everybody just there, and this is something just true to the new, as long as you've been in new urbanism and I've been involved, it's like this kind of habit. Joe Minicozzi (32:10.06) that we are America, so we must suburbanize. It's just this, it's ingrained in us. And it's really, it's a myth more than anything else. Kevin K (32:17.014) Right. So it also kind of strikes me, one of the interesting things about your work or that you get to see is the very different ways that local governments are funded all over the country. So you've talked about this example in Missouri, and it's probably really similar to how my city is. If I broke down our property tax bill, I think about 70 % of it goes to the school district. And then it's kind of apportioned up between the county and the city and some other, like the library board and a mental health. Board etc, but the lion's share is a school district and most of our city revenue is sales tax and then income tax because we Yeah, which is rare, but we have an income tax But I'm curious like what you've seen like around the country. Are there approaches that seem better worse more sustainable less sustainable or they just like they're Joe Minicozzi (32:54.4) Yeah, which is very rare. Yeah, that's Joe Minicozzi (33:08.916) They're all different. One of the jokes that I used to make is when we did this, I want to reference my former boss, Pat Whalen, in public interest projects. Pat's amazing. He's a genius. Pat had this incredible PowerPoint called the Economic and Environmental Case for Urbanism. And so he's the director of a real estate company trying to explain the value of downtown revitalization to people. That's where the value per acre analysis comes from. It was part of his show. what was interesting is it made sense in Asheville, and I just started poking around other cities in North Carolina because I was on the Downtown Association Board, and we're trying to figure out the value of our downtown versus other downtowns. you have a day job working for a district, the real Kevin Klinkenberg, you have this day job for this boundary. Well, don't you want to know how you operate versus the downtown improvement district or the Westport improvement district? Yeah, of course you do. So I was doing that for 10 cities bigger than Asheville and 10 cities smaller than Asheville. What's our taxable, non -taxable ratio? Who's got too much non -taxable? I don't know. Like until you get the data. So I made this shared website that's a Google document. And I shared it with the downtown directors for all the 10 cities and we populated it so we could all get metrics to understand how we stack up. What was your original question? Kevin K (34:43.963) It's just about the different mechanisms for a big local Joe Minicozzi (34:46.75) yeah. So, in that, we started to see that the downtowns were crushing it versus every other part of the city. Right? So, as an urban designer, we advocate for walkability, downtowns, everybody likes them, why don't we do more? And we start to find all the zoning rules that don't allow it, all the policies that don't allow it, and all the biases. And a whole Congress for urbanism is essentially discussing these things, going, who the hell put these things in place? You know, it's just, that's what we do. And we try to undo. these kind of rules that kind of get in the way. So I was doing, I think I was talking to Peter Katz and he's like, does it work this way in Florida? And I was like, I don't know. And so he hired us to do the analysis in Sarasota and sure enough, it was the same damn thing. So here's the way I see it. Florida has totally different rules than North Carolina. North Carolina has different policies than South Carolina, which is way different from Missouri. Everybody's got different state tax policy rules. But you know, and I know, when you drive around suburban Phoenix or suburban Los Angeles or suburban Boston, you see the same crap. To the radio audience, that's an architectural terminology, but it's like you see the same junk everywhere, right? And I told Peter, said, you know, it's hilarious to me. We all have different math, but it yields the same results. So in North Carolina, it's two plus two equals In South Carolina, it's three plus one equals four. In Florida, it's one plus three equals four. In California, it's 22 times 16 divided by the square root of 47 equals four. You know, it's like, we can make it complex, but at end of the day, that's all we have to do is use our eyes and go around suburbia and say, why is this happening? And you're going to see the same exact economic results in the landscape that's baked into the policy to reward it happening. So sort of shame on us for, you know, I don't have a math degree. I'm trained as an artist like you. I draw pictures, but I'm gonna go look at those policies and read them. Sometimes it gives you an aneurysm when you read some of these policies. But I think that's the beauty of the world that you and I operate in, is we're not afraid of that stuff. We'll get involved in transportation policies. Let's go read the ITE manual. It's like, of nerd does that, but we do it. Kevin K (37:07.611) I mean, if you talk to me when I was 19 years old in architecture school and said, well, hey, you're going to learn all about the intricacies of zoning codes and traffic engineering and also like, what? What are you talking about? But if you really want to understand your world and make a difference in it, you've got to dive into those things. So yeah, exactly. And actually, it is kind of fun and interesting to learn that it was fascinating to me when I first learned. Joe Minicozzi (37:25.826) and not fear Kevin K (37:35.003) much more about traffic engineering, like how engineers actually thought and what they were looking at and how they were evaluating streets and intersections and everything else to come up with their solutions. Joe Minicozzi (37:47.544) Well, you can be a better practicing professional too if you're respecting their profession and saying, I want to learn how you operate. Now I'm going to call BS on things when I see it, but at the same time, I'm going to respect that you have knowledge that I don't and I want to learn. But the thing that makes, I think that makes you and I different is that we also know that Moses didn't deliver their rules. That these are not infallible people that have designed this stuff. Kevin K (38:12.184) Right. Joe Minicozzi (38:16.056) that these are humans that are operating with their best intention, but often they make mistakes. Kevin K (38:22.331) No doubt, no doubt. I think we don't emphasize that enough that really so much of what we struggle against is just people trying to create systems and rules and then working with it and all of that can be changed. Joe Minicozzi (38:37.112) Yeah. Well, I just, this morning I sat with my county assessor and this is trouble that we started back in 2021. And here we are three years later and we're going through a reassessment in January of this year. And he's telling me that like a lot of the things that we recommended back in 2022, they're going to do, but they're not going to do it until 2029. I just about lost my mind. I was like, you know how many human beings my wife and I could produce in four years and you can't change policy? Come on now. That's bias in the system where it's like, there's nothing to stop them. It's just they've never done things this fast before. it was kind of frustrating and I told them, said, look, you just need to see me as a taxpayer now and not a consultant. I live here. My staff suffers. Kevin K (39:12.377) Yeah. Joe Minicozzi (39:32.438) with housing, everybody I know suffers with housing in this community because we're a hot market right now. And it's not fair that because you're going to be uncomfortable changing the way that you behave, there's no law that says you can't do this. This is just about your practice. And we see this, you've seen this with your career with city planners. It's like, well, we just haven't done it that way before. It's like, well, change. Kevin K (39:55.749) Yeah, yeah, it's not hard. It's not the end of the world, you know. Joe Minicozzi (39:57.622) The world's not going to stop. And guess what? Guess what? You're going to make a mistake again. Yeah, it's going to happen. It's like we're humans. Kevin K (40:05.423) I know. There's a real struggle a lot of times to just get people to take a risk to try something and try and fail and if you fail, it's not the end of the world. So what has Joe Minicozzi (40:16.376) They won't assess Airbnb's as commercial product. I'm like, dude, we've got 4 ,000 of them in my city. I've got people from Florida, cash flowing houses up here, and they're paying them off in four years. And my staff can't do that. I can't do that. Like, what the hell? And so why are you choosing to value them as houses and not commercial product? And the state, the state charges an occupancy tax on top of them, right? So the state knows that they're hotel rooms. Kevin K (40:19.532) yeah. Joe Minicozzi (40:45.368) because they're paying an occupancy tax, much like a hotel room would. So why are you choosing to value it differently and not value it on its cap rate? And I'm serious. Like I know that I'm kind of like beating this drum about here in Asheville. Nationwide, this is a problem. And the assessors are like, well, you know, it takes a while to kind of work this out. I'm like, no, Airbnb has been around since 2015. For f**k's sake. Sorry. It's like, this is, it shouldn't take 10 years. Kevin K (40:59.547) Yeah, no Joe Minicozzi (41:14.626) to realize how it affected the marketplace. You just sound stupid at that point. we don't understand. Kevin K (41:19.289) Yeah, it was crazy. It was such a big issue, as you might imagine, in Savannah, which I think for a time, Savannah was like the number one city in the world for Airbnb. Joe Minicozzi (41:29.516) Well, at least in Georgia, you have a separation between an occupant and a non -occupant. We don't have that in North Carolina. We're all treated the same, which is insane. So in Georgia, if you own a house in Savannah, but you live in Kansas City, you're taxed at a higher rate than somebody that lives in a Savannah house. Owner -occupied is totally different than non -owner -occupied. In North Carolina, we don't even have that protection. So it's even worse for us. So it's maddening. So anyway, anybody that's on this podcast that lives in a tourist town, like this is one of the things that should be the top of your agenda to talk about. It's like, I'm not saying don't do it. You we're a tourist town. Our baseball team is called the Asheville Tourists. Got it. Been the Asheville Tourists since the 1920s. This is our economy. But don't tax them less. That's crazy. Yeah. Kevin K (42:00.068) Interesting. Kevin K (42:24.443) Understand what they are, tax them, or have some policy that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. So one of the other things that you've been able to do with your work then is kind of related to all this. You get the chance to like dive deep into the history of especially like property taxation and other things. And I know you've read a lot of stuff in this world. How has Joe Minicozzi (42:28.746) It's a commodity, right? What does that do to housing prices? Kevin K (42:51.269) kind of impacted the work that you're doing or you're thinking, or what are some notable things that you've seen and just looking back a long time ago when a lot of these rules were being formulated. Joe Minicozzi (43:01.75) Yeah, there's some. One of the things about new urbanists, it's kind of weird. I hate that term because we're sort of just urban thinkers. We're complex thinkers. Joe Minicozzi (43:19.68) It's not new. This is just, we're operating in an urban environment, we're going to be interrogating things, but we tend to lean toward, if it's broke, fix it. That's our attitude. And it shouldn't take forever. But we also swim upstream to try to figure out who put this fence in. So who put the fence out in that field? And why is that fence there? And if the fence serves a purpose, keep the fence. If the fence was there for just because some random situation, get rid of it. It's like unnecessary policy. So you'll hear within our cluster of crazy friends, a lot of us are just like, rid of parking standards. Why do you need them? Why do we have trip counts for highways? Because when you look at the base data of trip counts, it doesn't make sense. Plus, since pandemic, we've changed the way that our commute patterns operate. So we should be changing our math. And like we operate faster with a level of, with trying to stop the bleeding, if you will. We're triage people, you know, we're like the emergency room medics. But we're also going to go upstream to figure out how did this start? So just for, you know, I started to see a lot of patterns in the assessment maps of how neighborhoods were construed or different market areas that lined up with redlining. And so redlining started in 1934 and went to 1968 and was deemed unconstitutional. But if you go to Mapping Inequality website, you actually find that there's maps that predate redlining that the bankers were using that was essentially racist. That if you were an immigrant or in a black neighborhood, they deemed you high risk and they changed your ability to get cashflow. Redlining was adopted at a federal level. So it's federal policy that said this is the rule of the land now, which makes it pernicious. It was already pernicious before, but for the federal government to come in and say, we're going to be unconstitutional here is pretty bad. But to everybody's credit, everybody's hands got slapped in 1968, that changed. Well, here we are today and we're still seeing the same effects in the valuation that models very similarly to redlining. So I was just like, well, maybe there's got to be a book somewhere that this is all talked about in the Joe Minicozzi (45:41.816) I found this book from 1922. It's the ninth edition. So was actually the first edition was 1895. So think about this, a book was reprinted nine times because it was so popular. It's called The Essays and Taxation by Edwin Seligman. And I love this quote. So just for the radio audience, just turn on your mind to 1895. This is what he wrote. Practically, the general property tax is actually administered as beyond all doubt, one of the worst tax systems known to the civilized world. Because of its attempt to tax intangible as well as tangible things, it sins against the cardinal rules of uniformity, of equality, and of universality and taxation. It puts a premium on dishonesty and debauches the public's conscience. It reduces deception to a system and makes a science of navery. It presses hardest on those least able to pay and imposes double taxation on one man and grants entire immunity on the next. In short, the general property tax system is so flagrantly inequitable that its retention can only be explained through ignorance and inertia. It is the cause of such crying injustice that its alteration or its abolishment must become the battle cry of every statesman and reformer." So this is somebody who works in taxation and goes, this is a crock of junk. Let's get rid of this. And that was over a hundred years ago, right? And so now I sat in a two hour meeting. with my assessors and their consultant going through is excruciating detail, all of this crazy mathematics. I'm like, why are we doing it this way? I understand what you're doing, but let's take a big step up. Why do we finance cities this way? Why is it based on value? know, Kevin, you and I are trained as architects, right? We want to do beautiful buildings. We want to do, if I could afford it, I would build a stone house, you know, because I like stone and it lasts forever. So I create an asset that will be in the community for hundreds and hundreds of years paying taxes. Why would you penalize me for that? You should be charging me on how often I drive on that road and how many times I use a fire call. Charge me for the services you provide rather than some arbitrary, hey, you built a stone house, therefore you pay more taxes. You could be right next door to me in a tin shack and have actually more income than me. Joe Minicozzi (48:09.944) and be taxed less because you have a tin shack and I've got a stone house. I could be making $50 ,000 a year and you're making $200 How is that fair? This is where I said that the income tax is a little bit more fair, but the thing is if you're really rich, you're not making income. You've got assets, right? Those are all hidden somewhere, not being taxed. So there's no perfect systems. That's why we advocate, and you see in our models, those red -black models where you have Black is producing wealth, net positive, red is net subsidy. And we did that for Springfield. 80 % of the city is subsidized. So just show that to the citizens and just be like, this is how we're subsidizing it. Is this the best choice? But you should charge me for it. If there's, yeah, go ahead. No, Kevin K (48:52.091) So when you do this, go ahead. I was going say when you do that kind of historic research, it, I mean have to ask the Georgist question, does that, how do you think about that relative to the Henry George critique, the land value tax approach versus the standard property tax that we do in most places? Joe Minicozzi (49:11.16) I mean, I think that aligns with Henry George, the statement. It aligns with how I feel as a taxpayer and also as somebody that practices in this world. The more we get into this with the Cessars, I have all the respect in the world for what they do because we do all of our work on their data. So I'm very thankful for them as a profession. But I also see that they're trapped. in a construction of their own making, the same way that traffic engineers are. And for anybody that's on this podcast that's read Confessions of a Recovering Engineer by Chuck Marrone, I mean, he nails it. That same ethos in that book is the same ethos I see with the zoning people that are all just about zoning. This is the way the zoning is, as if some omnipotent force gave them the zoning, you know? And then there's the same as I see this with the assessors, where I always ask them, I'm like, why is that the standard? Where did this come Like today when this one assessor was telling me that legally they can't assess Airbnbs as commercial. So I immediately asked her, I'm like, can you show me the law that says that? And she just went blank. And I was like, you just told me that there was a law that this, so tell me the law. And they don't, this is their bias. This is their practice. This is their fear. They're afraid to stir up the people that are out there with Airbnbs. I'm like, that's not what the law says. So you're making a choice not to do that. There's so much... Joe Minicozzi (50:43.129) discretion that people don't talk about. You see this when you talk to old school planners that are just like, the trip counts and the parking requirement, their bias kind of comes in. They won't call it a bias. Kevin K (50:56.197) Yeah, yeah. And I think we've often talked about that. And I think Jeff Speck famously wrote about that. You can manipulate a traffic study to say whatever you want it to say. And it's really just about the choices that you're making of what you want to do or what you want the outcome to be. Joe Minicozzi (51:14.12) We did a land analysis. Back to Henry George, we did a land value analysis where we just turn off all the buildings and just look at the land value per acre. This was in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The larger parcels in the commercial strip area were half the value of the out parcels across the street. I asked, I'm like, does land magically lose half its value when you cross the street? Same zoning category. And the tax assessor told me with all confidence, she goes, well, the cheaper one is bigger. The more land you have, the lower the value. And it's like, what economic rule is that true? And she goes, there's less people that can afford large tracts of land. So therefore we have to give a discount because there's less people in the marketplace. And I was like, well, that's kind of true. But does that work this way with other limited commodities like diamonds? If I get a bigger diamond, is it cheaper? Surely there's less people that can afford a bigger And everybody in the room was laughing, but she was just totally confused by that. And the weird thing is that I don't have an economics degree. I've actually never taken an economics course. So I just asked a question because I'm curious about this stuff. Kevin K (52:23.323) Yeah. So Joe, you've also been working a little bit in Annapolis, Maryland, which is obviously a really, really different context than Springfield, Missouri, one of the oldest cities in the country. wonder if you want to talk a little bit about what you've been doing there and what you're seeing. Joe Minicozzi (52:40.376) Yeah, Annapolis is cool. We did one of those red -black models for them. And one of the things that we noticed was their annexation pattern was an interesting tell. It's kind of funny. like, I've got a picture for that, but it's kind of hard to talk about a picture in this space. I'll Kevin K (53:03.387) Well, eventually, eventually this will be a YouTube thing too at some point. So we could do Joe Minicozzi (53:08.696) Yeah. from one of the things you could see in the, again, we talked about at the start of this about Kansas City, there's tells in the annexation pattern that tell you the problems that you're having today. So it's kind of like, you and I are the same age. I'm 56. There's things that I'm dealing with today in my body that didn't happen because of what I did last week. It happened because of stuff I did when I was in high school, right? The older you get, like all of a sudden it's like, my ACL gave out. Why is that? It was because I played football in high school. So it's like, just took a while for that ligament to just finally give. I can remember the concussion that I had when that happened. You know, it's like things like that. So we look at cities the same way as what did you do in your past that you're now seeing the problems today? So. One of the rules that we all know is roads only last about 50 years. so every 50 years is when you have your heart attack based on what you did when you first built those roads. Annapolis did 71 % of its land acquisition. So if you look at it today and just say, if we make a pie chart of this, when did these areas break down? Their first hundred years is 4 % of their land. for their first 100 years. From 1920 to 1800, that's 80 years, they did 5 % growth, okay? So that was 120 years. In just the year of 1951, they annexed 71 % of their land. So let that wash over you. Just imagine the pie in your mind of 4%, 5%, and then 71 % in one year. So those developments didn't all happen in 1971. would take a while from the late 50s, early 60s when you start to fill in all of those subdivisions, you're filling in a lot of lane miles in 71 % of your city. So those roads are now being replaced now in the 2020s, 2030s. And they're looking at, let's see, kind of try to do the quick math here. They're looking Joe Minicozzi (55:34.264) close to. two thirds of their roads are coming due because of that original sin of that annexation. But the habit in the 1950s, I think about that. People come back from the war, we're like, we're going to be modern. There's all these policies in place to reward this, the federal highway system, the FHA loans. And it's not that people had ill intent, they just were naive. They're just like, well, let's try something different. Let's kind of remake cities. And this is what we're dealing with. It's like we have to kind of think back to when that happened. So we show them the And you can see their jaws drop when I was showing this to them. And it's kind of like walking in and I'm the doctor, we just got a bunch of CAT scans and I show you your broken shoulder. I'm like, is the reason why you can't pick things up. You've got your shoulders broken. And everybody can see it because you can see it on the map. 71 % is a lot of area in one year. Kevin K (56:27.023) Yeah. What is some of the examples of how some of your clients have reacted to information when you're finally at the end? I would imagine it runs the gamut from complete denial to people excited to make some change. mean, what do you see on the back end of doing these analysis? Joe Minicozzi (56:49.196) You know, the mayor actually called me yesterday. I was bicycling into work and I get this telephone call from Annapolis and it's him and he's so excited. And he goes, it's it's hard. It's indescribable. We're all singing from the same sheet of music now. And so, you know, in respect for politicians, and I don't, I don't mean this in a, in a, as, negative as this is going to sound, but think about, let's, let's just kind of make it blunt. You win a popularity contest and you become mayor. That's it. That's the American system of government right there. They don't have the master's degree in urban design. They don't have the research of 30 years of public policy analysis and parking requirements. They don't have that junk shoved in their heads the way that you and I do. So they just win this popularity contest and they're trying to figure things out. their commerce is what they hear from people, the emotions, the conversations, how people react to their day -to -day living. It's sort of on us as professionals to help demystify that. So that's basically, that's the MO of our company is we're going to try to find a way to give you a lot of quantitative data, but we're going to do it in a way that's easy to understand and give you a pie chart. You know, it's like, we're not going to make that hard. You know, it's just, it is. This is what's going on. Here's that pie chart showing you 71%. is in that one year, they've had that data since 1951. It's like, it shouldn't be magic to pull this stuff out. So it really is on the professional to do that. So usually what we get is we see a game. He's right. We do see a game change from people because we've created a graphic that people can see and they can see what's going on. You can't argue against the pie chart. There it is. 71%. It's like there's data. There's a pie chart so everybody can see how big that is. Just make it simple. We don't hand you an 85 page document explaining it all in text. Why? 65 % of the audience are visual learners. Show them a picture. So once we did that and kind of walk them through and help them understand, they could see their city with new eyes. That's actually another quote that a mayor gave me in Davis, California. He goes, it's as if I've never been to this city called Davis and I could see it with new eyes Joe Minicozzi (59:16.886) So it's respecting them and honoring that their life is hard. Their role is near impossible. They've got to learn how a multi -billion dollar corporation operates the night after the election. And there's all of these habits baked into it. how do we short circuit that and make it easy for people to move? So we've seen changes. We've seen Rancho Cucamonga, California. They adopted a one to six rule for their downtown as an area to value ratio. So now they have like a two drink minimum, if you will. And there was a steel manufacturing company that came in for a tax break. And the assistant city manager told me, goes, you know, it's fun is after we did this math with you all, he goes, they came in and asked for a tax break and they're a big employer. But then I compared them on a per acre basis to other manufacturing plants in our city, these smaller ones, and they were actually way more beneficial than this big one. So I told the big one to take a hike. And it was like, that made my month. It's like, I couldn't believe he did that. But it was like, we gave them a new language to understand themselves. And as a consultant, it's like, yeah, I wasn't there for the win, but I feel proud of that. It's not sexy to talk about, but it's like, that's cool. So there's not as much satisfaction as being an architect when somebody lives in a house that you produce, but it's a different kind of satisfaction. Kevin K (01:00:52.003) Yeah, I really like the analogy of, it's almost like you're providing an MRI or a CAT scan. You're the doctor giving them critical information about the health of their community. And then really it's up to them to decide, do they want to correct that health or not? Joe Minicozzi (01:01:11.606) Well, it's value statement of our company too, that the doctor doesn't blame the patient. And so if you're going in and you're a smoker, chronic smoker your entire life, the doctor knows you're an addict. But what can the doctor provide you to help you get past your addiction? So the doctor is going to show you an MRI of your lungs and you're going to see the black spots all over the lungs. The doctor is going to be like, guess where that's coming from? Kevin K (01:01:14.083) Okay. Joe Minicozzi (01:01:40.128) and you'll say, it's my smoking. It'll be like, yeah, you want to keep doing it? It's up on you. I'm not going to be able to pull a cigarette out of your hand, but I have to do what I can to give you information to be an educated consumer. So that's kind of our MO. Kevin K (01:01:54.821) Joe, I think that's a great place to wrap. And if people are looking to find you and your company, what's the best place to go? Joe Minicozzi (01:02:06.552) Urban3 .com, three is all spelled out. You can also, there's plenty of videos online that you can Google through YouTube. My favorite one is the one that Not Just Bikes did on our work. Not Just Bikes is just a great resource for lots of information on city planning. And also Strong Towns covers a lot of our work. And also the Congress for New Urbanism. If anybody wants to come to a conference, the Congress for New Urbanism or the Strong Towns Gatherings are great. Or if you want to go deep nerd, we're like at the Government Finance Officers Association conferences every year. That's a whole lot of fun. So yeah, we'll see you around in public and thank you for doing all of Kevin K (01:02:54.405) Yeah, so really appreciate it, Joe. I'm sure we'll do some more in the future, but this is a great introduction for anybody who doesn't know your work. And also for those who do, I really appreciate the deeper dive. So hang in there. Keep doing what you're doing. And we'll talk again. All right. Joe Minicozzi (01:03:13.25) Thanks. Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode we speak with Joe about the current state of development in the City of Providence, where the city has been and where Mayor Smiley is bringing them. We touch on New Urbanism, their planning and building departments willingness to get quick answers to developers and small business owners as well as Upzoning and some major Planned Developments in Providence. Today's Show is brought to you by Central, commercial carpenters and supporters of our conversations. Enjoy the show! Follow the Mass Construction Show here: Linkedin Instagram Twitter Facebook TikTok Intro & Outro music by Sound Revolution Purchase at -> TeeSpring and Donation Button Down Below --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/joekelly/support

Last month, Strong Towns hosted the National Gathering in Cincinnati. It was a two-day event packed with different speakers and sessions, with many advocates meeting each other in person for the first time. In this episode of Upzoned, Abby talks with Strong Towns founder Chuck Marohn about his unique experience at the Gathering, the process of choosing a keynote speaker, how the National Gathering differs from the Congress for the New Urbanism and ways Gatherings might change in the future. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES Become a member today! Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.

About the Show:"It's going to take effort on everybody's part, not one person or one group is going to bring the solution to the table." Daniel ParolekAbout the Guest:Daniel Parolek is an innovative architect, urban designer, and author recognized for his work in sustainable urbanism and housing solutions. He is the co-founder of Opticos Design, a groundbreaking firm that focuses on crafting walkable urban environments and promoting 'Missing Middle Housing.' As a leading voice in the New Urbanism movement, Daniel advocates for creating diverse, affordable, and livable communities. His expertise and dedication to creating housing choices for all have made him a sought-after speaker and consultant across the United States.Episode Summary:In this episode of I am Northwest Arkansas, host Randy Wilburn delves into the housing crisis and the quest for smarter development practices with guest Daniel Parolek. Daniel, an authority on Missing Middle Housing, shares his insights on housing diversity, affordability, and how well-planned urban development can shape the future of communities like Northwest Arkansas. The discussion covers how to build smartly and the importance of localism in developing housing solutions that cater to the region's unique needs.Daniel offers a masterclass in understanding how different housing types can cater to various demographic needs, emphasizing the necessity for communities to be established on a framework of inclusivity and accessibility. With an innate ability to couple technical know-how with practical implementation, he makes a formidable case for the importance of thoughtful urbanism.The conversation with Daniel expands upon the interplay between community building and housing. He underlines the significance of constituents being proactive in their approach to housing development, urging the audience to contribute to the localized efforts necessary for crafting a vibrant and sustainable Northwest Arkansas.Key Takeaways:'Missing Middle Housing' refers to house-scale buildings with multiple units in walkable contexts, serving as a bridge between single-family homes and larger apartment buildings.Daniel Parolek emphasizes the importance of community involvement in local housing solutions, advocating for a shared vocabulary that all stakeholders can understand.A diverse range of housing choices is necessary to accommodate the different needs of a growing community and can lead to enhanced economic development and sustainability.The concept of Missing Middle Housing is crucial for creating flexible, affordable, and equitable living conditions that support multigenerational families and various lifestyles.Zoning reform plays a key role in enabling the development of Missing Middle Housing, Daniel Parolek's book, "Missing Middle Housing," explores housing solutions for today's growth and offers a strategy.All this and more on this episode of the I Am Northwest Arkansas podcast.Important Links and Mentions on the Show*Email Daniel ParolekEmail Candace Holder

On this week's program, we bring you highlights from a great event that took place at the Main Public Library on May 21st called "Walkable Louisville: a conversation with urban planner and author Jeff Speck." The University of Louisville's Urban Design Studio Sustainable City Series presented renowned urban planner and author Jeff Speck as he shared his insights on reimagining downtown Louisville through the lens of walkability and why fostering a pedestrian-friendly environment is imperative for a flourishing city. Jeff Speck is a city planner and author who advocates internationally for more walkable cities. As Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 through 2007, he presided over the Mayors' Institute on City Design and created the Governors' Institute on Community Design. Prior to his federal appointment, Mr. Speck spent ten years as Director of Town Planning at DPZ & Co., the principal firm behind the New Urbanism movement. Since 2007, he has led Speck & Associates — now Speck Dempsey —an award-winning urban planning firm serving public and private clients around the world. With Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Mr. Speck is the co-author of Suburban Nation, which the Wall Street Journal calls "the urbanist's bible.” His 2012 book Walkable City was the best selling city planning title of the past decade and has been translated into eight languages. He is also the principal author of The Smart Growth Manual and Walkable City Rules. Jeff Speck has been named a fellow of both the American Institute of Certified Planners and the Congress for New Urbanism. In a recent Planetizen poll, he was voted one of the ten “most influential urbanists of all time.” Mr. Speck was the 2022 recipient of the Seaside Prize, whose former awardees include Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander. His TED talks and YouTube videos have been viewed more than six million times.

Brian Boland is a native of Cincinnati and the founder of Bridge Forward Cincinnati, an advocacy group working to reclaim 19 acres of city land from urban highways. He has a master's degree in Urban Sustainability and Resilience and 30 years of experience in neighborhood revitalization. In addition to his work with Bridge Forward Cincinnati, Boland is the founder of CNU Midwest and a member of Strong Towns. He helped organize this year's Congress for the New Urbanism, which will be held May 15-18 in Cincinnati, directly after the Strong Towns National Gathering.   ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES Bridge Forward Cincinnati (site). Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram). Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Every so often, I get into the personal advice game. Perhaps it's a side effect of being a father, as well as hitting a point in life where you've seen and done a lot. I like to share whatever wisdom I've learned, in the vain hopes that someone else can benefit from my experience. That's especially true for younger people who have a passion for cities, for development, and for making beautiful places. Along those lines, in this episode, I discuss my pet peeve with the word “they,” how to think about issues in your community, and what I've learned about external locus of control vs internal locus of control. Get building, get positive and work towards a better future.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 (00:01.26)Welcome back to the Messy City podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg. Thanks for joining me. It's been a while since I've had the opportunity to do a solo podcast and just talk about a few things that are going on and some thoughts in my mind. And today seemed to work out really well for that in this week. So I'm going to share a few things that are going on and hopefully give you a little bit of inspiration in your day.If it doesn't inspire you, you can send me a note as well and say, hey, you were completely off base there or lost and that's fine too. Of course, I can't help but record these now and think about my friend Chuck Morrone's comments about my own voice and how things sound. I think if you do anything like this, you're the kind of person you probably never liked the sound of your own voice, but it's good to know that others respond to it and like it.And I'm happy to keep doing these. There's a lot going on right now. There is coming up here in May is the Strong Towns National Gathering followed by the Congress for the New Urbanism. It's a big deal in the urbanism world. Those annual confabs, which I have gone to for a number of years. Don't know that I'll keep going to those indefinitely, but I still think there's value in that or similar groups like them.depending on what your own interest is. I'm also keenly aware that the National Town Builders Association does a couple great get togethers every year. Those are, that tend to be people more on the development side, as well as the Urban Guild, which is a group that I'm a little bit affiliated with as well, which is mostly designers and architects, but it's a lot of people doing really, really cool stuff to try to make the world a more beautiful and better place.They have a get -together coming up this later later this year in November, which will be in Huntsville, Alabama And I'm gonna try to make it to that as well. Don't know if I can do all these things. It's a challenge when you've got a family and work and everything else, but I do always enjoy getting together with colleagues and learning about what other people are doing Figuring out what I can take back to my own community and just getting inspired from other people. SoKevin K (02:28.844)I have always enjoyed that. I suppose it appeals to the extroverted nature that I have. But I certainly enjoy getting that inspiration from others. So I want to talk a little bit today on a different tack. This is not necessarily a new subject locally, but it's something that's been on my mind. And bear with me as I go through this, but there's a new...There's a new attraction in Kansas City that opened late last year. We are among many cities now in that we have a Ferris wheel near the downtown area because you know how these things are, all the trends come and go and activities come and go. And right now it seems like every city has to have a Ferris wheel, a big Ferris wheel for people to get up and view the whole city and everything else. And, and, uh,I've been on it, it's kind of fun. I understand why people like them and they're visually very distinct and interesting. The first notable one I can remember that was new, I guess, was in London, which was pretty striking. I remember at the time thinking, well, that was kind of strange, but now it's gone into the realm of common and you see these attractions popping up just about everywhere.But what really interested me was the response to the Ferris wheel in the local community and the discussion boards and everything else. Actually, when I say discussion boards, it almost sounds like an old man's term at this point, but probably more, I guess I would say on social media, which is where a lot of conversation happens. And it's fascinating just how negative.the reaction was to me. And I think one of the things that I most commonly heard, where there were two things really, which is why did they put that there? And why did the city fund that instead of fixing the streets? So all interesting for me because it's all very telling about how people react to projects, building structures that are built.Kevin K (04:52.044)in a community. And I want to talk about that for a minute and what it means for each of us and what I think we, what mindset I think we need to have that is more productive if we want to really improve our own communities. So, you know, I don't, I'm not one to ever really assail people or blame people for the thoughts that come out of their mouths because, or because this is,the world we live in, the world we live in is driven by the experience that people have had over many years. Development, in the development world, we've gone to from a place where development was almost entirely private sector 100 years ago to now where there's an enormous amount of public sector development or public -private partnerships that happen. There's an awful lot of things that happen now.through government and from the top down that never would have happened 100 years ago. And I say all that because it really came to mind when hearing people talk about the Ferris wheel project. The first one being, why do we have that Ferris wheel when we could have been fixing the potholes? Well, the Ferris wheel in this case, in our city, was a private development. This was an enterprise that a local developerbought the land for, came up with the plan, financed it and built it. This is not a city project. So it's kind of easy for us to, who know that sort of thing, to then just mock people for being stupid, right? You're stupid. How do you not know that that's like a private project? But I get it because we do have so many things nowadays that are in fact either driven directly,by city government, have a partnership with city government, or require city government approval to happen. And it's very easy, I think, for a lay person who is not in the design, development, construction world to not understand that and to think everything is a city project. But in this case, and probably like many others around the country, this was just a local entrepreneur.Kevin K (07:18.764)doing a project with land he owned that that he expects to make a profit on with this attraction and a whole series of attractions next to it that actually seemed kind of cool and I'm excited to see how this all builds out over the next year or so as he continues to build it and and that really kind of tied into the to the other comment which is you know, why did they build it there? and I admitI want to admit right up front, I have a real pet peeve. And that pet peeve is the word they. And this is something I've had for a long time. And I wrestle with this because I hear it all the time. And it's just this notion that there is some group of people out there that just make all these decisions for what happens in your community.whether that's city council people or people in private rooms or whatever. But we have arrived at this place where we just all tend to think that there is a they that can be either blamed or praised for whatever goes on. And I find that really troubling because it's not a they. This was a person. This was a person and his development team.That made the decisions and and built this thing and that's very common In our city there. I hear this so often, you know, why did why did they build that apartment complex? and You know our city does this and this why do they do that? And I think there's this this thing there's this thing this phrase that my wife has taught me from psychology which is called external locus of control andThe notion being that if you kind of give up control of a lot of things in your own life and decisions, you have essentially given that control over to others. That's an external locus of control as to an internal locus of control, which is saying I am responsible for my actions and what happens and what I see and do in my life. An external locus of control means like, eh, you know,Kevin K (09:41.996)I'm just gonna let whatever happens happens. And I think we all balance this in our own lives or we can't possibly control everything. But I also think it's kind of led to this symptom where we see where we often think there is a they out there that is imposing their will on me or on us. And that's just not.Even in our very complicated world, that's not how it works. But again, I don't necessarily blame people for thinking that because we have gotten to this place where there is so much often confusion about who is doing what and who is responsible for what. There are politicians who even if they didn't do something, they try to take credit for it. That's long been a standard in politics is to deflect the blame and accept.you know, accept the compliments for whatever happens. You know, if something is good, name it and claim it, whether you had anything to do with it or not. And I think that gives the impressions that the impression that politicians and public sector people often have way more control over what happens in a community than they really do. And so I really wish we could get away from that thinking and that use of the word they.And to really just talk more specifically about who exactly has done something. Why, you know, who is that individual that took it upon themselves to create that project and why. And it's funny because in this case, the Ferris wheel in Kansas city is in a bit of an odd location. If you, if you go there, it's right next to a freeway. It does provide a great view of downtown when you're up on the Ferris wheel. And it's neat before this in front of the skyline, but it's right next to a freeway, which is a little odd.And I can imagine a series of other locations in the city where the same thing would have been really cool and better. And in fact, there is a major park nearby that is up on a hill would have been an incredible site for it. But the parks department didn't pursue that route. They didn't try to do a project or this project. And instead you have a developer who did and who took it upon themselves to do it.Kevin K (12:08.076)And that was the place where he had the opportunity to make it work. And I hope, I really hope it works. I think it will work. I think it's going to be a cool attraction and sort of entertainment area for the city, but that's how those things go. And I want to, I just want to encourage all of us to kind of get beyond this notion that there is a they out there. And, and one thing that I, I would just add to this is that, um,You know, it kind of feeds into a mindset. I think when you approach something like, they are doing something to me, or they are doing this, they are doing that, it can kind of feed into a real negative feedback loop that can be a real trap for people in a community. Because there's always something going on. There are things to not like and things to like.And I think that every community, every society has problems and we want to try to solve problems. And we're a time and a place where I think a lot of our cities do have problems. And I would never be the first to say otherwise. We have a lot of issues and things to resolve. I mean, in my opinion, the worst of our problems tend to come from kind of a utopian thinking.coupled with the desire to force utopian ideas from the top down on people who maybe aren't ready for it and are often very bad ideas. But that said, I really hope that we can kind of find a way to avoid the forces and the voices of negativity. And I think that use of the word they,almost always leads to like a negative mindset and a negative commentary. And again, as the idea that your locus of control is outside you for your community and for your neighborhood, as opposed to thinking about ways that you and others can take control yourselves and just do things and do positive things for your place. So one of the things that I would just say is, you know,Kevin K (14:33.516)try not to give in to the voices of negativity, doom and gloom, and grievance. Sometimes it seems to me as if we have a grievance industrial complex in our country that there are people who have so many grievances about life or society, but they move from issue to issue and they carry with them the same anger, the same...sort of negative vibes, no matter what the concern or topic is. And that's problematic. It's problematic for the person, I would say. I once heard a quote, I can't remember who said it, but it's something to the effect of, bitterness is a poison that you think you can use it against your enemies, but ultimately it ends up destroying you.And I think there's a lot of truth to that. There have been things in my life that I have been bitter about and I have wrestled with internally. And I have had to learn that that bitterness that I might've been holding onto was actually causing me physical harm. And that physical harm might've been something minor like just like loss of sleep and loss of sleep turning into...negative moods or whatever, but it also might be something more that you get so consumed by negative thoughts that it's very hard for you to do anything constructive in your life or to be somebody that others want to be around and to do good things with. And so I would just humbly suggest that as much as you could, especially if you're a younger person,embrace a positive vision for the future. And there's a very popular sort of meme going around lately that's just about we need to be building things. We need to build more things. And I think that's true. I think we're in, I think we're kind of coming, I hope we're coming out of an era where there's a lot of vitriol and negativity.Kevin K (16:58.156)which presents an incredible opportunity for people who have a positive vision of what the future could be and what to do about it. And to actually build yourself up, to build others up around you, to build things physically. So obviously, a lot of what I talk about on this podcast is about designing, building, developing things. And I think there's unbelievable opportunity.for anybody in any walk of life to get into a place where you're actually participating in building something physical, which is an, there are just immense emotional rewards for seeing that happen. So as somebody who was trained as an architect, I obviously love that very much. But I think for anybody that I see, whatever it is, the more you can create things and build things physically,is incredibly just valuable to yourself as well as people beyond you. Right now, or even I would say the last decade, there have been so many very, very loud voices that seem to push the other way and think we shouldn't be building things in that. I would just say specific to the world that I know the best.that developers are evil and they're awful and they're money grabbing people and we need to take our pound of flesh as much as we can and punish them. And there's just an awful lot of vitriol and hatred of developers and of development that is, in the end, it kind of reflects that problem with bitterness because...People are going to build things. And if you and your community embrace an attitude that developers and development is bad, you are creating a recipe for your own decline, ultimately. Just in the same way that carrying bitterness from something that happened years ago can really lead to just personal harm, carrying bitterness towards change for the future is only going to make your place.Kevin K (19:17.516)less and less relevant and less attractive to others who want to have a positive future. So that doesn't mean of course, and I feel like I always have to qualify this and say it that like, that doesn't mean all development is great and all, you know, and I love all of it. There's a lot of terrible development. There's a lot of, there's a lot of bad architects. There's a lot of bad developers. There's bad buildings that are built. We should always try to and strive.to do as good a job as we possibly can to try to build beauty in our world. I'm a firm believer in that building beauty is so deeply important. It's for the human spirit and for life in communities. And we don't talk nearly enough about building beautiful things, building beautiful places. Even if you're not in the building world, something as simple as planting a flower garden that adds beauty to the world.is incredible. It's so important. And I wish we all could do a little bit more of that. So of course do good things, but you have to have this attitude of improvement and positivity and that activity in the world is a good thing. And that a utopian aim, while maybe it comes from a good place, is something to be deeply concerned about, especially when somebody is pushing their utopian aim.on somebody else. So build yourself up, build others up around you, challenge yourself to get better all the time. This is kind of a funny sidebar, but I've definitely read my share probably of self -help stuff in my life, because I think I'm probably the kind of person that's always looking for ways to just improve what I'm...whatever I'm doing, maybe optimize a little bit. But I do, I have at different points in my life challenged myself to do things that were uncomfortable, that I was not good at, that I didn't really have in my background. And often did that just as a way to force myself to do something that maybe was uncomfortable. I am by no means, you know, like,Kevin K (21:43.244)some of the more intense really optimizers and everything else in the world. But, you know, for example, when I was a kid, I was a very unhealthy, a very sickly kid. I had asthma that was really, it was actually life -threatening for me as a child. And I eventually with time, with some medication and with growth,basically outgrew it. But I didn't really start to fully outgrow it until I was like almost out of like high school, I would say. And so there was a lot of like athletic stuff that I just wasn't really able to fully participate in when I was a young person, because I just didn't have the stamina, the long stamina to get through things. So when I got older, when I turned 40,I resolved that I wanted to, I had started to do a little bit of long distance running and resolved that I wanted to run a half marathon, which of course I had never run any distance anywhere close to it before. And I actually completed my first half marathon when I was 41 and I did it three years in a row. And actually each year improved my time from the year before.And all of that was a tremendous physical challenge for me to do because I had never been a long distance runner. Um, but I will tell you the feeling that I got from that when I would complete those races and the memory that was still with me about, uh, how challenging it was just for me to breathe. When I was a kid, the fact that I could overcome and do those things, it meant a lot to me. And it gave me.a lot of confidence and the feeling that if I could do that, I could do other things as well. Lately, I've been doing something similar and I don't like to talk too much here about just personal things that are going on. But now that I'm into my fifties, I have been trying some things that have also been challenging for me. And so I've been doing some martial arts stuff the last couple of years. And this year I've actually started.Kevin K (24:07.5)doing jujitsu classes in earnest for the first time. And that has not been my world at all. I mean, when I go to these classes and I take a beating and it's hard and you know, you learn all the things that are going on. You know, this is not the world that I came from where of, you know, wrestling and combatives and that sort of thing.but I have really learned to enjoy it. And especially with the jujitsu training, the more I go, the more I just really get into it and enjoy what I'm learning. And the feeling that I get of it making me stronger and more capable, and the fact that, you know, that it's hard, and it is really hard, that it's hard, but I can...get through a class and even if it's a rough day or whatever, afterwards I have this feeling that I really did something. And so I share that again just to say that it's important to challenge ourselves to do better, to try to, sometimes maybe to push on things in your own personality and your own world that you know that you struggle with or that are not your thing.And I'm a firm believer in trying to push through some of your weaknesses whenever you can and challenge yourselves and have that vision that, yes, I can overcome things. I can do things. And embrace a vision that you are capable of doing a lot of things. So, you know, being, I understand why a lot of people are very risk averse and you kind of get in a lane and you just stay in that lane.in your life. But being too risk averse can really prevent incredible self -improvement. And you can miss out on a lot of successes in life that you probably never knew that you were even capable of. That's not to say like be reckless and just take any risk you want. Of course not. But don't be fearful either. And really lean towardsKevin K (26:31.372)this notion of building yourself up and then building others up along the way. Because the more you build yourself up, you will find that people are drawn to that. People want positive things to cling onto and to take themselves along for a ride for something that's good and interesting and positive. People like to build things. And I...And I often think that we don't talk enough about how people like to overcome difficulty. And so difficulty in and of itself is not a bad thing. I think it can often be a really good thing. And so push through that difficulty as Bono might say, don't let the b******s grind you down. Right? So.That's were a few thoughts for today. I think one last thing. I have no idea where this is going to go, but in the spirit of, again, pushing through and trying to do things, I had a personal interest in real estate development since I was a college kid, and maybe even younger. I don't know. It's hard to remember at this point. But.But there were so many steps along the way where I could have taken a risk to do something. And I took a few, but I just never really fully dived into that to see what I was capable of. And I think what for me is that that lesson is you tend to regret the things you didn't do more than the things that you did do. And I certainly regret that when I was younger, I didn't take more risks and more proactive steps to push through.my lack of knowledge, my own questions about risk when it came to maybe developing some of my own building projects. So this week I actually put in an offer on a commercial property for the first time that I have ever done. I've never done this before. Sent a letter of intent over to purchase something. I don't know if anything will come of it. I hope something will come of it. I have a great idea for a project.Kevin K (28:52.62)on the site. It's not a terribly large project. I think it's kind of in a wheelhouse that I can execute really well, a fairly small project. But I'm challenging myself to push through my own aversion to just taking that next step. And we'll see what happens. So hopefully something comes of it, and I'll be able to share some details as it goes.And if not, there will probably be another opportunity right around the corner. And that's the message that I would hope to share is there's always opportunity around the corner. Don't think so much about who they are and what they are doing and think so much about you and what you are doing, what you can do, what you and your friends or others or your family can do. And have that internal locus of control and...Don't imagine that the world does everything to you. Create your own world in the process. Thanks so much for listening. If you wouldn't mind sharing the podcast, hitting the like or follow button on your favorite app and encouraging others to do the same, I'd really appreciate it. This is Kevin Klinkenberg. This is the Messy City Podcast. Be talking to you soon. Bye. Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

Cincinnati is currently undergoing a significant planning reformation effort, which involves unveiling what's being called the Connected Communities plan. It includes a number of proposed land-use-related policy changes that are intended to help Cincinnati grow, with the goal of advancing zoning code changes, as well as supporting diversification and affordability of housing and bolstering business districts. Here on Upzoned this week to talk with host Abby Newsham about the proposal is John Yung, an urban planner, Program Manager at the Haile Foundation, and co-leader of the Cincy host committee for the upcoming Congress for the New Urbanism, which (along with the Strong Towns National Gathering) will be taking place in Cincinnati in May. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Mayor Pureval wants to redesign Cincinnati. Here's what that could look like,” by Becca Costello, WVXU (January 2024). Get your tickets for the National Gathering today! Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.

Today I sit down with the infamous and inspiring R. John Anderson, also known as 'R John the Bad'. We dive into John's unique story, from his early days quitting high school to pursue his passion in the trades, to his transformative experiences as a developer and influential figure in urban planning. I met John in 2016 at an Incremental Development Alliance workshop he was putting on in San Antonio--teaching normal folks how to be small-scale developers. I love his message about "form follows finance", and that, while it is good to romanticize and dream, we also have to live in reality if we want to get anything done.