Podcasts about yimbys

Thousands of local grocery workers could be back on the picket lines by the end of the month, and a new investigation from Consumer Reports into alleged “price tag errors” at King Soopers is changing the narrative around another possible strike. So host Bree Davies and producer Paul Karolyi are talking about the shifting politics of your grocery bill and other big stories of the week — from Mayor Johnston changing his mind on raises for his top deputies to some really shady deals going down inside the McDonald's at Colfax and Pennsylvania. And of course, we hear from you! This time, a listener has a new theory for why YIMBYs tend to be nerdy white guys.  We talked about our coverage of the King Soopers strike back in February, featuring interviews with UFCW Local 7's Kim Cordova and King Soopers president Joe Kelley. Paul talked about the New York Times' coverage of digital price tags.  What's your favorite grocery store and why? We want to hear about Denver's best grocery stories, from the specialty markets to the places with the best deals. Text or leave us a voicemail with your name and neighborhood, and you might hear it on the show: 720-500-5418 For even more news from around the city, subscribe to our morning newsletter Hey Denver at denver.citycast.fm. Follow us on Instagram: @citycastdenver Chat with other listeners on reddit: r/CityCastDenver Support City Cast Denver by becoming a member: membership.citycast.fm Learn more about the sponsors of this May 20th episode: Denver Health “Meet Sunny!” - City & County Denver Tech Looking to advertise on City Cast Denver? Check out our options for podcast and newsletter ads at citycast.fm/advertise Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

News: It's Bike Month! Also- an Ontario, Canada court may save Toronto bike lanes, Waymo says its AVs are 25x safer than human drivers for cyclists and pedestrians on the road, Trump's tariffs will devastate the bike industry, and Americans are losing interest in buying cars (1:47). The QUIMBY movement = Quality In My Back Yard, and it means high quality codes/laws/permitting/planning high quality buildings, streets, bike lanes and buses, say Norm Van Eeden Petersman, Strong Towns' Director of Membership and Development and Lindsay Sturman, Bike Talk co-host and co-founder of Livable Communities Initiative (4:53). Artist Eleanor Davis on her comic, You and a Bike and a Road, a two-wheeled journey across the landscape of the American South (23:14). Moving From Cars to People is a comic about how the built environment in the United States came to be designed for cars, and what we can do about it. With authors and Transportation and Communities researchers Kelly Clifton and Kristina Currans (40:45).

Ben Domenech, Fox News Contributor and host of the Fox podcast The Big Ben Show, produced by none other than The Guy Benson Show's own Christine, joined show today to recount his latest behind-the-scenes adventures with his new producer. Domenech also weighed in on the DC stadium debate, calling out liberal critics as part of the ongoing clash between "YIMBYs and the NIMBYs." He reacted to Trump's proposed "Hollywood tariffs" aimed at bringing film production back to America and laughed at the irony of Pete Buttigieg bemoaning overregulation (regulations he himself imposed at the DOT). Listen to the full interview at the link below! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Labour promises to take the brakes off building with its new Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Will the downgrading of rights to object on environmental, local and procedural grounds anger voters more than new homes will mollify them? Has the government created the right incentives to get its mythical 1.5m new homes built? And have the YIMBYs really defeated the NIMBYs? A special roundtable with Hugh Ellis, Director of Policy at the Town and Country Planning Association; Housing & Residential Property Journalist of the Year Hannah Fearn; and NIMBY-Hunter General Jonn Elledge. • Support us on Patreon for early episodes and more. • We are sponsored by Indeed. Go to indeed.com/bunker to get your £100 sponsored credit.   Written and presented by Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Tom Taylor. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Managing Editor Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor Andrew Harrison. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this must-listen episode of Concilio's Better Places Podcast, Siddo Dwyer is joined by Chris Worrall and Eve McQuillan from Labour YIMBY, leading voices pushing for transformative housing policy within the Labour Party. With Britain's housing system in crisis, Chris—a prominent housing policy expert—and Eve, who formerly led planning in Tower Hamlets, share their insights into how Labour can become the party of homebuilding, breaking down barriers to deliver genuinely affordable homes. They discussed: The urgent need for planning reform to unlock stalled developments and overcome political gridlock. Practical solutions inspired by successful international models—including density bonuses, municipal land managers, and innovative financing methods. Eve's experience navigating housing challenges at local authority level, including complex estate regeneration and the cladding crisis. Strategies to manage rapid development sustainably, ensuring that cultural and nightlife spaces are protected and vibrant communities thrive. If you're involved in planning, housing policy, local government, or simply passionate about solving Britain's housing shortage, this conversation provides fresh, practical ideas you won't want to miss.

In this episode I'm joined by Annemarie Gray and Felicity Maxwell to discuss how the YIMBY movement is finally cracking the code on housing reform in major American cities. We examine the recent groundbreaking victories in New York City and Austin, exploring how pro-housing groups are learning from each other through networks like Welcoming Neighbors Network, and wrestle with the challenge of increasing housing supply while protecting existing communities. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

We read the papers so you don't have to. Today: The Telegraph wants us to panic about the “stagflation” crisis, but Jonn says we should just embrace the economic vibes. The Times tells us that self-care takes over 162,000 minutes a year to maintain, and Jacob simply hasn't got the headspace for it. Plus – Miranda is fully on board with The Guardian's theory that Elvis was an intergalactic demigod. Miranda Sawyer is joined by the face of British plasma, comedian Jacob Hawley, and the king of the Yimbys, journalist Jonn Elledge. Use code PAPERCUTS to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: https://incogni.com/papercuts Support Paper Cuts and get mugs, t-shirts, extended ad-free editions and access to our exclusive live streams here: back.papercutsshow.com Follow Paper Cuts: • Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/papercutsshow.bsky.social • Threads: https://www.threads.net/@papercutsshow • Twitter: https://twitter.com/papercutsshow • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/papercutsshow • TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@papercutsshow Illustrations by Modern Toss https://moderntoss.com  Written and presented by Miranda Sawyer. Audio production: Tom Taylor. Production. Liam Tait. Design: James Parrett. Music: Simon Williams. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Exec Producer: Martin Bojtos. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. PAPER CUTS is a Podmasters Production Podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's the big City Cast Denver Year-in-Review Spectacular! Who had the biggest year in Denver? Who made the news for all the wrong reasons? And really, where does Mayor Mike Johnston's jacket sit in the competition for “Most Denver-est” person, place, or thing of 2024? From a massive W for YIMBYs and land-use nerds to thirsty politicians trying anything to go viral, we're looking back at this year in the Mile High City. Host Bree Davies and producers Paul Karolyi and Olivia Jewell Love share their thoughts on Denver's biggest wins, most epic flops, and greatest moments in the year that was. What do you think was the biggest win of the year in Denver? We want to hear from you! Text or leave us a voicemail with your name and neighborhood, and you might hear it on the show: 720-500-5418‬ For even more news from around the city, subscribe to our morning newsletter Hey Denver at denver.citycast.fm. Follow us on Instagram: @citycastdenver Chat with other listeners on reddit: r/CityCastDenver Support City Cast Denver by becoming a member: membership.citycast.fm Learn more about the sponsors of this December 12th episode: Office of Climate Action PineMelon - Use promo code CITYCASTDENVER for $35 off your first delivery CAP Management Looking to advertise on City Cast Denver? Check out our options for podcast and newsletter ads at citycast.fm/advertise Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Housing in the United States has come to be known as a panacea problem. Gone are the days when tossing the graduation cap meant picking up the keys to a front door, and the ripple effects of unaffordable housing stretch across society: poor social mobility, smaller families, worse retirement-readiness, just to name a few.Today on Faster, Please — The Podcast, I talk to Bryan Caplan about the seemingly obvious culprit, government regulation, and the growing movement to combat it.Caplan is a professor of economics atGeorge Mason University. His essays have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and TIME Magazine. He is editor and chief writer of theBet On It Substack, and is the author of several books, including Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation.In This Episode* America's evolving relationship with housing (1:31)* The impact of regulation (3:53)* Different regulations for different folks (8:47)* The YIMBY movement (11:01)* Homeowners and public opinion (13:56)* Generating momentum (17:15)* Building new cities (23:10)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. (Note: This was recorded just before the presidential election.)America's evolving relationship with housing (1:31)The main thing that changed is that we've seen a long-run runup of housing prices. Pethokoukis: What was going on with housing prices and housing affordability from the war to the 1970s? Was it kind of flattish? People were recovering from the Great Depression; what was going on then?Caplan: Yeah, it was quite flat, so there were decades where we had rapidly expanding population, the Baby Boom, and markets were working the way that markets normally do: You get demand going up, raises prices in the short run, but then that means the prices are above the cost of production, and so you get entry, and you build more until prices come back down to the cost of production. That's the way markets are supposed to work!I don't know how people thought about their homes in the late '40s, '50s, and '60s, but did they view them as, “This is our primary investment,” or did they view them more as a place to live? Were there any expectations that this was their retirement plan?I honestly don't know. I don't remember reading anything about that. I grew up in Los Angeles where in the '70s and '80s people already had some sense of, “Your home is an important retirement vessel,” but it is plausible that when you are going back to earlier decades, people did have a different view.I've often heard Americans say that Japanese don't think about their homes as retirement vessels, but I've never talked to anyone in Japan to assure me this is so, so I don't know.But that scenario changed.It did.How did it change and are we confident we know why it changed?The main thing that changed is that we've seen a long-run runup of housing prices. Depending upon what series you're looking at, the runup might be starting in the early '70s or the early '80s, but in any case, there was what economists would call a structural break where a series that was generally flat over the long term started rising over the long term. There have been a few times when prices fell back down, like after the Great Recession, but now, inflation adjusted, we are higher than the peak right before the Great Recession.Now, is that the same as affordability? Because I assume incomes could be going up, so has it outpaced median income over that period?Probably not, although it's in the right ballpark, and maybe.One thing you can say is, well, there's regulation before, there's regulation after, so how can you go and blame the rise on the regulation?The impact of regulation (3:53)I would like to blame regulation. Intuitively, that makes sense to me, but I suppose we need more than intuition here.. . . there's a lot of regulation almost everywhere a lot of people live.I would say that we do have very good evidence that regulation is indeed to blame. If you look at it very quickly, you might say, “Well, there was regulation before; it didn't seem to matter that much.” The answer to this really was death by a thousand cuts, where we just piled regulation on regulation, but also where regulations that have been interpreted mildly before started being interpreted strictly afterwards.How do we know that it really is regulation? The easiest thing to do is just to look at the strictness of regulation in different parts of the country, and you can see that there are some places that are crazy strict and the prices are crazy high. There's other places where the regulation is a lot lighter and even though they're getting plenty of population increase, they nevertheless do not have these long-run rises.So the contrast between the Bay Area and the Texas Triangle is very strong. So these are both areas that, in some sense, they are growth areas, a lot of tech there, but the Bay Area has seen very little rise in the amount of housing and massive increase in prices, whereas Texas has, in contrast, seen a large rise in the number of houses and very low rises in the price of housing.The main method that economists have used in order to disentangle all this is it really starts with trying to figure out: What is land that you are not allowed to build anything on worth? So just think about whatever your excess land is in a single-family area, you're not allowed to put another structure there, you can put a volleyball court or something like that. So you just find out, well, what is land where you can't build anything worth? And usually, even in a good area, that land is not worth much. If you can't build on it, it's like, I guess we can put some grass, but that's not that good. Then the next step is to just go to a construction manual and to see what the cost of construction is in a given area and then compare it to the price. This is a quite reasonable approach and it has gotten better over time because data has gotten better.The main thing is that Joe Gyourko, who's been working on this for about 20 years, in his last big paper, he got data on actual vacant lots, and so you can see, this is a vacant lot, usually because you just can't build anything on it, can't get the permission, and as a result of this, he's also able to find out, how bad does the regulation get as you move away from the city center. We've got details like Los Angeles looks like it's regulated out to the horizon. You've got 50 miles away from downtown LA and it's still pretty bad regulation. On the other end, a city like Chicago is very regulated in the downtown, but 30 miles out, then there's not that much effect anymore.The punchline of all this work is that there's a lot of regulation almost everywhere a lot of people live. If you want to go and build a skyscraper in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, you could probably do it, but you wouldn't want to build a skyscraper in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, that defeats the whole purpose of building a skyscraper.That leads to two questions: The first question is, just to be clear, when we're talking about regulation, is it single-family homes versus multifamily? Is it also the coding, what the home has to be made out of? Do the walls have to be so thick, or the windows? What are we talking about?The honest answer is that most economists' estimates are just giving you an estimate of all regulation combined with a considerable agnosticism about what actually are the specific regulations that matter. There are other papers that look at specific kinds of regulation and come up with at least very credible claims that this is a big part of the puzzle.The main things that matter a lot in the US: We've got height restrictions — those matter in your biggest, most expensive cities; you can just look at a place like Central Park or get a helicopter shot of San Francisco and say, don't tell me you can't build more stuff here. There's endless room to build more stuff here as long as you can go vertically.It's also very standard to say that you are only allowed to have single-family homes in most residential land in the US, it's just zoned single family only, so you just are not legally allowed to squeeze in a larger number of dwellings.Then you've got, even with single-family regulation, it's very standard to have minimum lot sizes, which just says that you've got to have at least like an acre of land per house, which, whenever I'm speaking in metric countries, I'm always telling, what is that . . .? It's a lot. It's a lot of land, and the amount of land that's normally required has gone up a lot. One-acre zoning in the past would've seemed crazy. Now plenty of places have five-acre zoning. You could obviously just squeeze way more houses in that space. And what is clear is that builders normally build the absolute maximum number they're allowed to build. Anytime someone is going up to the very border of a rule, that is a strong sign the rule is changing behavior.Different regulations for different folks (8:47)Very rarely did someone sit around saying, “You know what's great about Texas? Our lack of housing regulation.”Why are these rules different in different places? That may be a dumb question. Obviously San Francisco is very different from Texas. Is the answer just: different places, different people, different preferences? Do we have any idea why that is?Matt Kahn, who is based in Los Angeles, he's been I think at UCLA and USC, he's got a very good paper showing, at least in California, it's the most progressive left-wing places that have the worst regulation, and it just seemed to be very philosophical. On the other hand, I spent a lot of time during Covid in Texas. Very rarely did someone sit around saying, “You know what's great about Texas? Our lack of housing regulation.” It's not so much that they are opposed to what's going on in California, it just doesn't occur to them they could be California.In a way, you might actually get them to be proud about what they're doing if you could remind them, “Oh, it's really different in California,” and just take them on a tour, then they might come back and say, “God bless Texas.” But it's more of, there's the places where people have an ideological commitment to regulation, and then the rest of the country is more pragmatic and so builders are able to get a lot more done because there just aren't fanatics that are trying to stop them from providing the second most basic necessity for human beings.Now, this is all striking because the YIMBY [Yes In My Backyard] movement, and my book Build, Baby, Build — I definitely think of that as a YIMBY book. My goal is to make it the Bible of YIMBY, and it's in comic book form, so it's a Bible that can be read by people starting at age five.In any case, the YIMBY movement is definitely left-coded. People that are in that movement, they think of themselves as progressives, usually, and yet they are just a small piece of a much broader progressive coalition that is generally totally hostile to what they're doing. They are punching above weight and I want to give them a lot of credit for what they've been able to accomplish, and yet, the idea that YIMBYs tend to be left-wing and therefore they are the main people that are responsible for allowing housing is just not true. Most places in the country basically don't have a lot of pro- or anti-housing activism. They just have apathy combined with a construction industry that tries to go and build stuff, and if no one stops them, they do their job.The YIMBY movement (11:01)Who the hell decided that was a good idea that everybody should have an acre of land?I want to talk a bit more about the economic harms and benefits of deregulation, but if I was a center-left YIMBY, I would think, “Oh, I have all kinds of potential allies on the right. Conservatives, they hate regulation.” I wonder how true that is, at least recently, it seems to me that when I hear a lot of conservatives talking about this issue of density, they don't like density either. It sounds like they're very worried that someone's going to put up an apartment building next to their suburban home, YIMBY people want every place to look [the same] — What's the home planet in Star Wars?Coruscant.Yeah Coruscant, that that's what the YIMBYs want, they want an entire planet to look like a city where there's hundreds of levels, and I'm not sure there's the level of potential allyship on the right that center-left YIMBYs would want. Is that a phenomenon that you've noticed?I actually I have a whole chapter in Build, Baby, Build where I try to go and say we can sell these policies to very different people in their own language, and if they actually believe their official philosophy, then they should all be coming down to very similar conclusions.I think the main issue of center-left YIMBYs talking to people who are right wing or conservative, it's much more about polarization and mutual antipathy than it is about the people on the right would actually object to what they're hearing. What I say there is there are certain kinds of housing regulation that I think the conservatives are going to be sympathetic to. In particular, not liking multifamily housing in suburbs, but I don't really think there is any conservative objection to just allowing a lot more skyscrapers in cities where they don't even go. There's not going to be much objection there and it's like, “Yeah, why don't we go and allow lots of multifamily in the left-wing parts of the country?”But I think the other thing is I don't think it's really that hard to convince conservatives that you shouldn't need to have an acre of land to go and have a house. That one, I think, is just so crazy, and just unfair, and anti-family, you just go and list all the negative adjectives about it. Did you grow up in a house on a one-acre lot? I didn't! Who the hell decided that was a good idea that everybody should have an acre of land? Wouldn't you like your kids to be able to walk to their friends' houses?A lot of it seems to be that government is just preventing the development of something that people would actually want to live in. I remember when my daughter finally made a friend within walking distance, I wanted to light a candle, hallelujah! A child can walk to be friends with a child! This has not happened in all my years! But that was the normal way things were when you'd be on a quarter-acre or a third of acre when I was growing up.Homeowners and public opinion (13:56)People generally favor government policies because they believe . . . the policies are good for society.If someone owns a house, they like when that price goes up, and they might see what you're saying as lowering the price of homes. If we were to have sort of nationwide deregulation, maybe deregulation where the whole country kind of looks like wherever the lightest-regulated place is. People are going to say, “That's bad for me! I own a home. Why would I want that?”Lots of people think this, and especially economists like this idea of, of course we have all this regulation because it's great for homeowners; homeowners are the main wants to participate in local government. Sounds likely, but when we actually look at public opinion, we see that tenants are strong advocates regulation too, and it's like, gee, that really doesn't make any sense at all. They're the ones that are paying for all this stuff.But it does make sense if you switch to a much simpler theory of what's going on, which fits the facts, and that is: People generally favor government policies because they believe —underscore believe — the policies are good for society. So many people from the earlier decades say, “Oh, all those Republicans, they just want tax cuts.” Now we're finally at the level where Republicans are poorer than Democrats. It's like, “Yeah, I guess it's getting a little bit hard to say that people become Republicans to get tax cuts when they're the ones paying lower taxes.” How about there's an actual disagreement about what policies are good for society, which explains why people belong to different parties, support different policies.So most of what I'm doing in Build, Baby, Build is trying to convince people, look, I'm not impugning your motives, I don't think that you're just favoring whatever policies are selfishly best for you. I think that whatever policies you're into are ones that you think are genuinely good for your community, or your area, or your country, but we are not thinking very well about everything that's going on.So part of it is that a lot of the complaints are just overblown or wrong, but another thing is that generally we base a regulation purely on complaints without any thought of any good thing that we might be losing. I make a big deal in the book about how, if you don't want to have noise, and traffic, and pollution, it's really easy — just move to some remote part of the country and you solve all those problems; yet hardly anybody wants to do that.Why are people staying in congested areas with all these problems and paying a lot of extra money for them? Many of these people now have telework jobs, they don't even have a job reason to stay there. And the answer's got to be, there's just a bunch of really good things about living near other people that we hardly ever talk about and which have no political voice. There's almost no one's going to show up in a meeting and [say], “I favor this because I want there to be more commercial opportunities. I favor this because I want there to be more social opportunities, more cultural opportunities, more economic opportunities,” and yet these are all the reasons why people want to live near other people. So we have a set of regulation just based upon complaints: complaints which are generally out of context, not quantified. So we just see that people are willing to pay a lot of money for the package of living in an area with a bunch of other people, so that's got to mean that the good of other people exceeds the bad of the other people; otherwise, why aren't you living out in the middle of nowhere?Generating momentum (17:15)The sad truth is that symbolic issues are much more likely to get people excited, but this is something that determines the quality of life for most people in this country.When I read the book, and I read a really good New York Times essay —Would that be my essay, Jim?I think it is your essay! In fact, it was, I should have been clearer on the author of that essay. The brilliant Bryan Caplan was the author of that essay.If you look at the potential benefits on inequality, there's environmental impact, maybe people are really worried about birth rates, it really seems like housing really is sort of the “everything problem.”Panacea problem, or the “housing theory of everything.”It really does. I think the current election season, it's probably the most I've heard it talked about, and not really talked about very much.And thoughtlessly. Spoken of thoughtlessly.To me there seems to be a lot more — I'll use a nice think tank word — there's been a lot more ideation about the issue in recent years, and maybe it's only now kind of breaking through that filter where politicians start talking about it, but boy, when you look through what you've written about it, it seems like it should be a top three issue that politicians talk about.The sad truth is that symbolic issues are much more likely to get people excited, but this is something that determines the quality of life for most people in this country. It's the difference between: Are you going to keep living with your parents until you're 30, or are you going to be able to afford to get your own place, start your own family? And again, it's one where older people remember how things used to be, and the idea of, well, why can't things just be like that? Why can't it be that a person who gets out of college can go and immediately afford to get a pretty good house?At AEI, Mark Perry, for example, who is one of your colleagues, I think probably a remote colleague, he has done stuff on how new houses are better and so on, and that's also true, so I don't want to go and act like there's been no progress at all. But still, of course a lot of people are not moving into those new houses, they're moving into old houses, which are the same as they were in the past, but just way more expensive if you want to go and live in that areaThe other thing that is worth pointing out is that it's really temping to say, well, of course housing naturally gets more expensive as population rises. The period after World War II that we were mentioning, that's the Baby Boom era, population was rising at a much faster rate then than it did now, even counting immigration, and yet prices were much flatter because we were able to just go and legally build way more stuff.I feel like you feel like you need to drive home the point about demand not being met by supply for this artificial reason: regulation. Even though, to me, it seems utterly natural and a classic case, people struggle to come up with alternative reasons that it's really not that. That it's because of . . . there's private equity firms buying up all the homes, or the reason apartment rents go up is because there's a cabal of apartment owners . . . They look for these other reasons, and I don't quite get that when there seems to be a pretty obvious reason that we theoretically know how to fix.Some of these other stories, they are half-truths, but they're not helpful. So the thing of, “Gee, if we just shut down tourism and letting foreign buyers buy stuff here, then demand will be lower, and prices will be lower, and we won't need to build anything new.” And it's like, do you realize what you're saying? You're basically saying that you want to destroy one of your best export industries.If people around the world want to go and buy houses in your area, why do you want to turn them away instead of saying, cha-ching, let's capitalize on this by building a ton of housing for them? If there's a lot of tourists that want to go and rent a place in your area, why is it you want to go and strangle the market, which obviously it's a great industry — Build stuff and rent it to people, and it's not like there's some fixed amount unless the law says it must be fixed.One benefit I didn't mention was social mobility where we need people, if they want to be able to move towards high-wage, high-productivity cities, to find good jobs, and then not have the wages of those good jobs mostly gobbled up by housing costs. That kind of circulation system, if that's the right phrase.Certainly in some parts of the country, that has just been stopped and that has been a traditional way people move up the ladder.We've got very good data on this. In earlier periods of US history, there was basically a foolproof way for someone in a low-income part of the country to get a big raise, and that was just to move. Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath not withstanding, this almost always works. It wasn't normally the case that you starve to death on your way to California from Oklahoma. Instead, normally, it's just a simple thing: You move from a low-wage area to a high-wage area and you get a lot more money, and you get a much higher take-home salary. But then in those days, there was not much difference in housing prices between different areas of the country, and therefore you would actually have a rise in not just your paycheck, but your standard living.Now it's still true that you can get a rise in your paycheck by moving to the Bay Area. The problem is your standard of living, if you're coming from Mississippi, will generally crash because the housing cost eats up much more than 100 percent of the raise.I remember I had a colleague who had a son who was an investment banker in the Bay Area. He and his wife were sharing a small apartment with two roommates, and it's like investment bankers can't afford apartments! Things have gotten out of hand, I think we can say with great confidence now.Building new cities (23:10). . . politics is an area where there's a lot of ideas where it's like no one's trying it, it must be because it wouldn't work if tried, and then someone tries it with a little panache, or a little twist, and it catches on, and you're like, alright, maybe that's the real story.Should we be building new cities somewhere? I think former President Trump has talked about this idea that we, is that something you've thought about at all?Yes. I didn't put it into the book, but when I was writing up some follow-up posts on things that I wished I would've talked about, or just more speculative things, I do have some friends who are involved in that project to go and build a new city in the Bay Area. I hope it works.There is always the problem of there's almost always going to be some existing people where you want to build your new city, and then what do you do about them? You can try buying them out. There is this holdout problem, a few people are going to stay there and say, “I'm not going to sell.” Or you could just go and do what happened in the movie Up: We'll buy everybody around you, and if you don't like it, too bad.But on the other hand, it may be that activists will put a stop to your plan before you can get it off the ground. So in that case, it was going and selling off empty federal or state land, which we have in abundance. If I remember, I think that 23 percent of the land of the United States is owned by the federal government. Another 10 percent is owned by state governments. And even if you subtract out Alaska, there's still a ton. If you look at the map, it's really cool because you might think, “Oh, it's just that the government owns land no one in the right mind would want.” Not true.Desert land in Nevada next to Area 51 or something.Virtually all of Texas, even those western deserts, are privately owned. I've driven through them. Have you ever driven through West Texas?I have.Alright, so you're there and you're like, “Who wants to own this stuff?” And it's like, well, somebody at whatever the market price is considers this worth owning, and as to whether it's for mineral extraction, or for speculation on one day it'll be worth something when the population of Texas is greater, or they're going to do ranching there, I don't know. But it is at a price someone is willing to go and own almost every piece of land.What the map really shows is it was ideology that led all this land to be held by the government. It's basically the ideology of conservation that we hear about. You get John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt, and as a result, they didn't just wind up protecting a few really beautiful national parks, they wind up putting millions of square miles of land off-limits for most human use.Again, when the population of the country is lower, maybe it didn't even matter that much, but now it's like, “Hey, how about you go and sell me a hundred square miles so I can put a new city here?” The idea that an Elon or Zuckerberg couldn't go and just say, “I'm putting a pile of money into this. I'm going to build a new city and have a decent chance of it working.” Maybe it would be just a disaster and they waste their money. Then more likely I think it's going to be like Seward's Folly where it's like, “What's the point of buying Alaska?” Oh, actually it was fantastic. We got a great bargain on Alaska and now it is an incredible, in hindsight, investment.As we were talking, I started thinking about Andrew Yang who ran for president, I think that was in 2020, and he had one issue, really: Universal Basic Income. He thought that he had found an issue that was going to take him to the White House. It did not.I kind of think if you were going to have a candidate focus a lot on one issue, this would not be a bad issue, given how it touches all these concerns of modern American society.As an economist, I always hesitate to say that anyone who is a specialist in an area and is putting all their resources into it is just royally screwing up. At the same time, politics is an area where there's a lot of ideas where it's like no one's trying it, it must be because it wouldn't work if tried, and then someone tries it with a little panache, or a little twist, and it catches on, and you're like, alright, maybe that's the real story.Just to give Trump credit where credit is due, there's just a lot of things that he said that you would think would've just destroyed his candidacy, and instead it seemed like he came out and he was more popular than ever. Maybe he just saw that there were some ideas that are popular that other people didn't realize would be popular.Now I'm not optimistic about what he's going to do about housing, although anytime he says one good thing, it's like, I don't know, maybe he'll just get fixated on that, but more likely ADHD will kick in, unfortunately.But just to go and allow one new laissez-faire city to be built on federal land in some non-crummy area of the country — just as a demonstration project, the value of that would be enormous, just to see, hey, there's no reason why you can't have spacious, cheap homes in a really nice area that is not that remote from the rest of the country. Just imagine the airport you could build there, too — before all the noise complaints. You probably know about the noise complaints against Reagan Airport and how one single guy filed over half the complaints. It's like, how are we going to build anything? 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The zoning debate between NIMBYs and YIMBYs is fueling a housing crisis felt nationwide. Jerusalem Demsas, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins host Krys Boyd to discuss why she feels decisions about land need to be accountable to the public, why zoning boards and preservationists are hurting home affordability, and why the buck should stop at elected officials. Her book is “On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy.”

 "‘The moment has come': pro-building Labour YIMBYs are set to raise the roof" was the title of a piece in the Observer ahead of the Labour Party Conference (link below). For many of the most ambitious of the new cohort of Labour MPs, this is the fashionable campaign of the moment, not for economic growth but as a social justice movement – and one that many of the new millennials entering parliament hope to stake their careers on. Inside Labour it is not a left-right divide, but some of its champions are prepared for it to mean internal party conflict between those who are radicalised on the housing crisis, and more nervous colleagues in rural or suburban seats won for the first time by Labour who might be tempted to retreat into nimbyism on local issues as a way of trying to keep their seats. The point about first time Labour MPs retreating into NIMBYism is interesting in the context of the proposed changes to the standard method that is currently being consulted upon, but it was the point about YIMBYism not being a left-right divide inside Labour that Sam Stafford found most interesting because of a piece in the New Statesman back in April called ‘Not all YIMBYs are your friends - the pro-housing coalition is less united than it seems' (link also below). As it so happens, Sam approached the people quoted in the New Statesmen piece about recording a chat about the politics of housing and met four of them recently to do just that. The four are John Myers, co-founder of the YIMBY Alliance; Robert Colville, columnist and Director of the Centre for Policy Studies; Jonn Elledge, journalist, author and fan of local government reorganisation; and Aydin Dikerdem, Cabinet Member for housing on the London Borough of Wandsworth. They were going to talk about whether Kier Starmer's self-declaration as a YIMBY marks the movements arrival into the political mainstream; whether the ends, more housing, is more important than the means; and who should get a say over what goes where and why. Some of that they did, but the remainder of the conversation, as Listeners will hear, goes off in all kinds of directions. Some accompanying reading. ‘The moment has come': pro-building Labour YIMBYs are set to raise the roof https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/sep/15/the-moment-has-come-pro-building-labour-yimbys-are-set-to-raise-the-roof Not all YIMBYs are your friends https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024/04/no-not-every-yimby-your-mate-housing All hail the ‘MIMBYs': the open-minded voters who might just save Labour's housing plans https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/05/labour-housing-plans-keir-starmer-houses By Sam: YIMBYs and NIMBYs. Is planning becoming a new front in the culture war? https://samuelstafford.blogspot.com/2021/06/yimbys-versus-nimbys-is-planning-new.html By Aydin: The sky pool is a symbol of a greater housing scandal https://www.huckmag.com/article/the-sky-pool-is-a-symbol-of-a-greater-housing-scandal By Robert: The (not so) green belt — and why we should build on it (£) https://www.thetimes.com/article/c7049594-3836-4563-ae4e-caa27eb5409e?shareToken=631cd93bdff30c14ac98a86bd21b483b Some accompanying listening. The In Crowd – Dobie Gray https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOWO--z1S8A 50 Shades T-Shirts! If you have listened to Episode 45 of the 50 Shades of Planning you will have heard Clive Betts say that... 'In the Netherlands planning is seen as part of the solution. In the UK, too often, planning is seen as part of the problem'. Sam said in reply that that would look good on a t-shirt and it does. Further details can be found here: http://samuelstafford.blogspot.com/2021/07/50-shades-of-planning-t-shirts.html Any other business. Sam is on Bluesky (@samuelstafford.bsky.social) and Instagram (@samuel__stafford). He shares bits and pieces of planning-related interest on Instagram (@50shadesofplanning) and LinkedIn so please follow those accounts as well.

Welcome back to the APS News Bulletin, your source for the latest updates and insights from the Australian property market. Join Sammy Gordon and Liam Correy, as they break down this week's most pressing updates and announcements along with his expert analysis to keep you informed and on top of news.    In this week's episode, Sammy and Liam discuss: Review to hammer out apprenticeship problem Building industry faces labour shortages and drops in apprenticeships Nimbys v Yimbys: the affluent inner Melbourne suburbs that aren't pulling their weight on housing   If you enjoyed this episode, please write in and let us know! If you have any news you'd like Sam to share his point of view send us an email at apsteam@australianpropertyscout.com.au. If you loved this episode please send it on to someone who would take some value, and please give us a 5 star review if you haven't yet and are loving the poddy! If you're taking tremendous value from these episodes why not share them with your mate? If you want your question answered on our podcast DM us on our socials or email us at apsteam@australianpropertyscout.com.au Send us your questions to: Instagram: @australianpropertyscout Want to book a call with us: Website: https://australianpropertyscout.com.au Any information, comments, opinions or content that we provide in this podcast is our general observations and information only and it is not to be taken as, or in any way, considered to be financial advice, accounting advice, superannuation advice or legal advice. We strongly recommend all and any listener and participant to obtain their own independent financial advice, accounting advice, superannuation advice and legal advice before acting in any way in relation to any investment at all including any investment in property such as what we might be discussing in this podcast. No warranty, guarantee or representation is to be taken and you cannot reproduce it in any way. Every persons financial or investment situation is different and you must consider your own circumstances before undertaking any investment and be sure to obtain independent advice. Australian Property Scout Pty Ltd | License Number: 10094798 | ABN: 64 638 266 369

The Bright Side shines a light on stories of hope and problem-solving people around Australia.

The Bright Side shines a light on stories of hope and problem-solving people around Australia.

The Bright Side shines a light on stories of hope and problem-solving people around Australia.

The Bright Side shines a light on stories of hope and problem-solving people around Australia.

The 2024 Paris Olympics have brought massive investment to the City of Light, including the construction of new housing, sports facilities, and public transportation.  Yet we shouldn't let that obscure a more sinister phenomenon: gentrification, which has rapidly transformed many of the city's former immigrant and working-class strongholds into expensive quarters for the newly affluent.  On this episode, Commonweal senior editor Matt Boudway speaks with journalist Cole Stangler, author of Paris Is Not Dead: Surviving Hypergentrification in the City of Light. Stangler, who lives in France, explains Paris's historical transformation, as well as more recent developments in French politics.  For further reading: Cole Stangler's writing for Commonweal Fran Quigley on social housing Max Holleran on gentrification and the YIMBYs

You've heard of YIMBYs and NIMBYs, but have you heard of YIGBYs? YIGBY stands for “Yes In God's Backyard,” and it's a movement focused on leveraging land owned by religious institutions to alleviate the housing crisis. This has the potential to benefit both people in need of housing and religious institutions. In this episode of Upzoned, hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn discuss the potential benefits of the YIGBY movement, the practicalities of implementing it, and broader mindsets surrounding religious institutions and what their land should be used for. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Yes in God's backyard?” by Rachel M. Cohen, Vox (June 2024). Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.

SPONSOR:Burn the PageLINKS:Pod Virginia | PatreonLearn more about Jackleg MediaThis week, Alex Goyette of the Alexandria YIMBYs ("yes in my backyard"-s) and Jason Schwartz of the Arlington YIMBYs join Michael to talk about recent primary victories in both cities for candidates that their groups sponsored--in general,  a strong showing for candidates who supported "Zoning for Housing/Housing for All" reform and the end of exclusionary single-family zoning. They break down those races, the argument for greater housing density, and the future of housing policy Arlington and Alexandria going forward.

Join architect Antony DiMase and writer and editor Justine Costigan as they discuss the rise of NIMBYs and YIMBYs and how these groups reflect the growing dissatisfaction with the way our cities are planned.  We welcome your feedback, questions and topic suggestions. To get in touch email lightcitiesarchitecture@gmail.com Referenced in this episode: Tom Cowie's story about the Thornbury church https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/empty-church-ignites-tension-between-heritage-and-housing-20240424-p5fm7b.html Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/aaron-paul-low/always-for-you License code: FKADBZMC5CF0HIR8

In 2020, U.S. census data analysis revealed that, for the first time, Native Hawai'ians living in the continental U.S. outnumbered those living in Hawaii. Redfin reports that the median home list price is currently $825,000.  High cost of living and a lack of affordable homes have continued to be huge challenges for natives and transplants living in Hawai'i. Listen to this episode of Infill to hear what advocates are doing to make homes more affordable.This year in honor of AAPI Heritage  Month, we wanted to highlight all of the amazing work that our Hawai'i YIMBY chapter is doing and how it is impacting native Hawai'ians on the islands.Listen in to hear our conversation with Hawai'i YIMBY volunteer leaders Damien Waikaloa and Matt Popovich. We spoke about how they got started in the YIMBY movement, the missing middle housing policies they're organizing around now, and why they think YIMBYism is so important to uplift Hawai'ians. Learn more about YIMBY Action: https://yimbyaction.org/Follow YIMBY Action on Twitter: https://twitter.com/yimbyaction/Follow YIMBY Action on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yimbyaction/Follow YIMBY Action on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yimbyaction/Learn more about Hawai'i YIMBY: https://hawaiiyimby.com/Follow Hawai'i YIMBY on Twitter: https://x.com/hiyimby/Follow Hawai'i YIMBY on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hawaiiyimby/

Luca Gattoni-Celli is a Young Voices contributor and the founder of YIMBYs of Northern Virginia. Read more at lucagattonicelli.substack.com and follow him on X @TheGattoniCelli. Subsidies Aren't Enough To Make Housing Affordable | Opinion https://www.newsweek.com/subsidies-arent-enough-make-housing-affordable-opinion-1886627 Luca Gattoni-Celli https://www.joinyv.org/talent/luca-gattoni-celli Links: https://bit.ly/gmllinks WATCH on Youtube: https://bit.ly/3UwsRiv Join the private discord & chat during the show! joingml.com Like our intro song? https://www.3pillmorning.com Enroll in Constitution 101: the meaning and history of the US Constitution or one of the many other great FREE courses at hillsdale.edu/GML Get your complimentary bottle of Nugenix by texting GML to 231-231 Monetary Metals offers A Yield on Gold, Paid in Gold® https://www.monetary-metals.com/GML Protect your privacy and unlock the full potential of your streaming services with ExpressVPN. Get 3 more months absolutely FREE by using our link EXPRESSVPN.com/GML Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bill Weir discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Bill Weir is a veteran anchor, writer, producer, and host who came to CNN in 2013 after a decade of award-winning journalism at ABC News. In 2019, he was named the network's first Chief Climate Correspondent, drawing on his experience creating and hosting the primetime CNN Original Series “The Wonder List with Bill Weir,” now streaming on Discovery+. His first book, Life As We Know It (Can Be) was published by Chronicle Prism in April 2024. The Goldilocks Earth https://www.thedailybeast.com/cnn-host-bill-weir-plans-to-hold-bidens-feet-to-the-fire-on-climate-change Humanity's role models will be beavers, camels and gentoo penguins https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/16/climate/life-as-we-know-it-book-bill-weir/index.html We need thoughtful YIMBYs https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/23/us/climate-crisis-earth-day-weir-letter/index.html The home of the future will come with much thicker walls https://www.builderonline.com/products/building-construction-materials/cnn-report-examines-alternative-way-to-build-homes The new industrial revolution https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2024/02/05/clean-revolution-weir-pkg.cnn Veggie burgers can do more environmental harm than a steak https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/03/us/climate-crisis-cattle-amp-grazing/index.html This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm

Virginia is short 105,000 homes while rents have gone up 13% in the last 5 years. Despite housing costs rising astronomically, local governments are largely not stepping up to help facilitate or build more homes. That's why our local YIMBY chapters are taking matters into their own hands, and demanding action from State Officials. Tune in to this episode of Infill to hear from volunteer leaders from our chapters YIMBYs of NoVA, YIMBY Hampton Roads, and RVA YIMBY. They break down the four state-wide YIMBY bills they are advocating for, share insights on how they are learning to successfully work with state legislators and local coalition partners, and explain why grassroots organizing is critical to get elected officials to take action on housing. YIMBY volunteers in Virginia are not only bringing their state one step closer to a future of abundant, affordable, inclusive housing. They are also paving the way for YIMBYs in other states to learn strategies to build power in their communities and connect with new folks who share our vision for a better future. Learn more about YIMBY Action: https://yimbyaction.org/Follow YIMBY Action on Twitter: https://twitter.com/yimbyaction/Follow YIMBY Action on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yimbyaction/Follow YIMBY Action on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yimbyaction/Learn more about YIMBYs of NoVA: https://www.yimbysofnova.org/Learn more about RVA YIMBYs: https://rvayimby.org/Learn more about YIMBY Hampton Roads: https://yimbyhamptonroads.org/

Who killed the 15-minute city? And what will it take to get it back? Seattle leaders have a plan to turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs. They're betting they can get residents to say "yes in my back yard" to growth if Seattle becomes a 15-minute city. That means changing laws so that everything you need is a 15-minute walk, bike, or bus ride from your home. This week on Booming, we travel to Georgetown, which could become a 15-minute neighborhood under Seattle's new Comprehensive Plan. Plus, local content creators are sounding off on federal lawmakers' plan to ban TikTok if it doesn't cut ties with its Chinese parent company. And producer Lucy Soucek makes her Booming debut to share what listeners say is missing from their ideal 15-minute neighborhoods. A special thanks to all you listeners out there who financially support KUOW. You make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/booming. Thank you. "Booming" is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network. Our editor is Carol Smith. Our producer is Lucy Soucek. Our hosts are Joshua McNichols and Monica Nickelsburg.Support the show: https://kuow.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In a special edition of When The Facts Change, Bernard Hickey talks with The Spinoff's Wellington editor Joel MacManus about the historic victory for YIMBYs in last week's District Plan votes by the Wellington City Council. Who knew that town planning could be so important? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

You've heard of NIMBYs and NIMBYism, and you probably are living with the consequences of neighbourhood planning or city policies influenced by landowners who say “Not in My Backyard” to new developments planned in their area. But what about YIMBYs? The name might be strange, but the homeowners who make up these groups say “Yes In My Backyard” to normalize the goals of affordable housing advocates, transit planning, tenants' rights organizations and others who are working towards making the city a more liveable place to be for everyone. Today on the podcast, Ariel talks to Melissa Bowman, cofounder of the group Waterloo Region Yes In My Backyard (WRYIMBY) about what a YIMBY group is, what some actions are that it might take, the issues that it might address, and how to start up a YIMBY group in your area, if there's not one already!Support Solarpunk Presents on Patreon or make a one-time donation via PayPal. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) movement proposes increasing urban density while maintaining the quality of life. This raises questions about the potential impact on developer profits, the power struggle between YIMBYs and NIMBYs, and the broader implications for city planning and community dynamics. Join us as we talk with Melissa Neighbour, an urban planner, community builder, and the co-founder of Sydney YIMBY. With her extensive experience and expertise in sustainability, Melissa is uniquely positioned to shed light on the intricacies of the YIMBY movement and its potential to reshape urban landscapes. Listen to this episode to learn about the YIMBY movement and its implications for urban living. Get insights into the future of city planning and the ongoing argument between YIMBYs and NIMBYs. Episode Highlights: 00:00 - Introduction 01:23 - Who is Melissa Neighbour? 02:31 - What is the origin of the Sydney YIMBY movement and how has it been growing? 05:10 - How do YIMBYs reconcile urban development's impact on infrastructure? 08:34 - Do YIMBYs shift their views and become NIMBYs after buying property? 12:24 - How does the YIMBY movement aim to influence urban planning reforms? 18:32 - Addressing the challenges that arise from negative perceptions of development 23:53 - What is “design done well” 25:56 - How does housing diversity impact the realisation of the Great Australian Dream? 31:01 - Is zoning alone enough to solve housing supply issues? 32:56 - What is the balance between development and preservation in urban infill? 35:25 - Strategies for addressing housing supply constraints within the planning system 42:12 - What additional changes are necessary to create a fair market environment? 43:11 - How can urban development balance heritage preservation and housing density? 46:48 - The role of investment returns, affordability, and preferences in property trade-offs 53:01 - What role does planning play in high-density development success? 59:36 - Melissa Neighbour's property dumbo About Our Guest: Melissa Neighbour is an urban planner, community builder and sustainability specialist. She is the owner and Director of Sky Planning, a purpose-driven town planning consultancy based in Sydney, and co-founder of Sydney YIMBY. She has developed and implemented award-winning sustainable development projects across Australia, and is a strong advocate for building progressive, inclusive cities that unleash and amplify your peak potential as a human being, while regenerating the natural environment. Melissa regularly consults to government and industry and presents at major fora including TEDx, on the innovations, trends and forces that are shaping urbanism and defining our communities. Connect with Melissa Neighbour: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissaneighbour-future-city/ Website https://www.sydney.yimby.au/ Twitter https://twitter.com/missneighbour Resources: Visit our website https://www.theelephantintheroom.com.au If you have any questions or would like to be featured on our show, contact us at: The Elephant in the Room Property Podcast - questions@theelephantintheroom.com.au Looking for a Sydney Buyers Agent? https://www.gooddeeds.com.au Work with Veronica: https://www.veronicamorgan.com.au Looking for a Mortgage Broker? https://www.blusk.au Work with Chris: hello@blusk.au Enjoyed the podcast? Don't miss out on what's yet to come! Hit that subscription button, spread the word and join us for more insightful discussions in real estate. Your journey starts now! Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theelephantintheroom-podcast Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ph/podcast/the-elephant-in-the-room-property-podcast/id1384822719 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Ge1626dgnmK0RyKPcXjP0?si=26cde394fa854765 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

CA profile.pdf (freedominthe50states.org) Solving California's Homeless Crisis | Cato Institute Don't Confuse 'Local Control' With Small Government (reason.com) California's Builders, YIMBYs at Odds Over 'Unchecked Sprawl' Crack Down (reason.com) California Lawmakers' New Building Plans Held Up by CEQA, the Law They Refuse To Fix (reason.com)

New York City is one of the most expensive places in the country. Will they ever build more housing? This week's episode is another in our state-by-state housing series, and we're talking about housing in New York. Joining me are Rachel Fee, executive director of the New York Housing Conference, and Alex Armlovich, Senior Housing Policy Analyst at the Niskanen Center.  We discuss why housing reform efforts have failed in New York so far, what specific regulations and factors make it hard to build in New York, and the coalitions necessary to finally build more housing in America's biggest city. Got questions for the New Liberal Podcast?  Send them to mailbag@cnliberalism.org Follow us at: https://twitter.com/ne0liberal https://cnliberalism.org/   Join a local chapter at https://cnliberalism.org/become-a-member/

The pro-housing group (YIMBY stands for 'Yes In My Backyard') is just two years old, but it's already seen success — and there are big plans for the future.

One of our fastest-growing Chapters, YIMBYs of Northern Virginia, recently celebrated the legalization of "missing middle" housing in Arlington, Virginia. This means that multifamily buildings with up to six homes were legalized in neighborhoods that had previously only allowed single-family detached homes.In this episode, Jane Natoli, our SF Organizing Director, sits down with two Leaders from the YIMBYs of Northern Virginia, Jane Green and Alex Goyette. They discuss what it took to win in Arlington and how they plan to apply what they learned to a new opportunity to advocate for more homes in Alexandria. Links: Learn more about YIMBYs of NoVA: https://www.yimbysofnova.org/homeRead about the win in Arlington: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/22/arlington-missing-middle-vote-zoning/Read about the projects that are already being proposed under the missing middle program: https://www.arlnow.com/2023/07/06/new-more-than-a-dozen-missing-middle-permit-applications-are-in-the-works-so-far/ Learn more about YIMBY Action: https://yimbyaction.org/Follow YIMBY Action on Twitter: https://twitter.com/yimbyaction/Follow YIMBY Action on Instagram: https://instagram.com/yimbyaction/Follow YIMBY Action on Facebook: https://facebook.com/yimbyaction/

Planning officials fear them. Housing developers and builders loathe them. Ever present and hard to appease, they are the NIMBY—the “not in my backyard” anti-housing advocate. The stereotype of an angry, finger-wagging busybody always saying "no" to new housing may be an unfair stereotype, but their impact is real. Increasingly, though, there is an alternative seeking to move the needle in the opposite direction. Counter to the NIMBY crowd is the “yes in my backyard” crowd, better known as the YIMBYs. On this episode of the New Home Insights podcast, we meet one. Laura Foote is the Executive Director of YIMBY Action. With her help, we explore this movement and its strategies, failures, and successes.

The second episode in our state by state YIMBYism series! We're looking at places where YIMBYs have succeeded and places where they haven't - and trying to figure out which approaches to YIMBYism work. Mallory Phillips, Nathan Dugan and Ellie McMann are the founders of ShelterWF, Montana's largest YIMBY organization. They join the show to discuss YIMBYism in Montana. We talk about the history of Montana's housing crisis, how big states like California influence small states like Montana, and how to get things done in a heavily Republican state. Got questions for the Neoliberal Podcast?  Send them to mailbag@cnliberalism.org Follow us at: https://twitter.com/ne0liberal https://www.twitch.tv/neoliberalproject https://cnliberalism.org/   Join a local chapter at https://cnliberalism.org/become-a-member/

The first episode in a new series! We're going state by state - looking at places where YIMBYs have succeeded and places where they haven't - and trying to figure out which approaches to YIMBYism work. Ned Resnikoff, policy director of California YIMBY, joins the show to discuss YIMBYism in California. We talk about the history of California's housing crisis, how California YIMBYs battled their way to successfully passing bills, and how California's one-party status changes the politics of housing. Got questions for the Neoliberal Podcast?  Send them to mailbag@cnliberalism.org Follow us at: https://twitter.com/ne0liberal https://www.twitch.tv/neoliberalproject https://cnliberalism.org/   Join a local chapter at https://cnliberalism.org/become-a-member/

There are an estimated 2.4 million farmworkers in the United States. Farmworkers across the country are doing some of the most essential work in our society, but they are not given access to acceptable housing options. Challenges in supply, affordability, and safety are posing a huge threat to farmworkers. On Cesar Chavez Day YIMBY Action's Alex Melendrez had a conversation with Rudy Espinoza, YIMBY Action Board Member and longtime housing and farmworker activist, and Veronica Z. Garcia who is the Chief Real Estate Development Officer with Peoples Self Help Housing in San Luis Obispo, CA. They spoke about the landscape of farmworker housing in California and nationally, how systemic barriers are impacting farmers as they seek to find safe and affordable housing, and what YIMBYs can do to mobilize for more farmworker housing.Learn more about YIMBY Action: https://yimbyaction.org/ Follow YIMBY Action on Twitter: https://twitter.com/yimbyaction/ Follow YIMBY Action on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yimbyaction/ Follow YIMBY Action on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yimbyaction/

In this episode of Cities After…, Prof. Robles-Durán examines the histories and ideological underpinnings of the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) and YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) urban development movements. On the surface, these movements may seem to have opposing politics. However, by looking closely at their evolution and participation, it becomes clear that both have been co-opted and obscured by politicians and the media in order to serve the corporate elites and capitalist developers. As the story goes, the NIMBYs are staunch elitists that block progress by resisting change and innovation. The YIMBYs are promoters of growth and prosperity— they are inclusive, environmentally friendly and champions of affordability. But, as Prof. Robles-Durán explains, they do not really embody these virtues. He reveals the elitist and conservative principles that exist within both NIMBY and YIMBY ideologies, and shows why these terms should not be used in the progressive lexicon of urban action and housing activism.  References: https://fortune.com/2023/02/28/housing-crisis-nimbys-build-nothing-country-elon-musk-noah-smith-american-decline/ Cities After... is a Democracy at Work production, made possible by audience donations. Consider supporting us on Patreon. 

For 40 years, California has analyzed upcoming housing needs based on populations across its cities and required all local governments to submit plans to illustrate how they will contribute more housing in their areas to help the State meet its housing goals. This is called the California housing elements process. Despite the fact that submitting a compliant housing element is part of state law, NIMBY cities have continued to lie about where they plan to build housing in their plans—  or have decided to not attempt to submit a plan at all. Now, YIMBYs have stepped in.With the growing set of eyes on each city to help alleviate the housing shortage, YIMBY Action and YIMBY Law are inviting all property owners to take matters into their own hands using a tool called the Builder's Remedy. The Builder's Remedy is a California state law that forces cities with non-compliant housing elements to automatically approve any housing project as long as at least 20% of the homes are low-income or 100% of them are moderate-income.Get a deep dive from our Executive Directors, Laura Foote and Sonja Trauss, and Emeryville Vice Mayor Courtney Welch about how California cities have been handling their housing elements processes, the consequences for noncompliant cities, and how property owners can take advantage of this open season on state zoning policies. Learn more about the Builder's Remedy: https://www.yimbylaw.org/buildersremedyFollow Vice Mayor Courtney Welch: https://twitter.com/cw4emeryvilleFollow YIMBY Law on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Yimby_LawFollow YIMBY Law on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YIMBYLawLearn more about YIMBY Action: https://yimbyaction.org/Follow YIMBY Action on Twitter: https://twitter.com/yimbyaction/Follow YIMBY Action on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yimbyaction/Follow YIMBY Action on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yimbyaction/

Continuing on the theme of solutions to the housing crisis I interviewed economist Shreya Nanda about the Georgists and the YIMBYs.Georgists follow the ideas of the 19th century thinker and reformer Henry George and support a land value tax. YIMBYs (which stands for Yes In My Backyard) think the way to get out of the housing crisis is to build, build, build! Shreya classes herself as both a Georgist & a YIMBY, which made this a very fruitful conversation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Norfolk Southern, the train company involved in the recent derailment in Ohio, spent $1.8 million on lobbying last year. One listener called in to ask about what lobbying dollars actually pay for. We'll explain and answer more of your questions about how menstrual symptoms can affect productivity and what it might take for climate NIMBYs to become climate YIMBYs. Plus, Kimberly and guest host Reema Khrais share financial advice they’d give their younger selves. Here’s everything we talked about today: “Lobbying Data Summary” from OpenSecrets “How Corporate Lobbyists Conquered American Democracy” from The Atlantic “‘Crafting an illusion': US rail firms' multimillion-dollar PR push” from The Guardian “Before Ohio derailment, Norfolk Southern lobbied against safety rules” from The Washington Post “Productivity loss due to menstruation-related symptoms: a nationwide cross-sectional survey among 32 748 women” from BMJ “Menstrual cycle-associated symptoms and workplace productivity in US employees: A cross-sectional survey of users of the Flo mobile phone app” from National Library of Medicine “Even in the U.S., poor women often can’t afford tampons, pads” from Reuters “Solar Tax Credit By State In 2023: What You Need To Know” from Forbes “Wind energy gives American farmers a new crop to sell in tough times” from USA Today “The Power of Compound Interest: Calculations and Examples” from Investopedia Got a question for the hosts? Leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART or email us at makemesmart@marketplace.org.

Norfolk Southern, the train company involved in the recent derailment in Ohio, spent $1.8 million on lobbying last year. One listener called in to ask about what lobbying dollars actually pay for. We'll explain and answer more of your questions about how menstrual symptoms can affect productivity and what it might take for climate NIMBYs to become climate YIMBYs. Plus, Kimberly and guest host Reema Khrais share financial advice they’d give their younger selves. Here’s everything we talked about today: “Lobbying Data Summary” from OpenSecrets “How Corporate Lobbyists Conquered American Democracy” from The Atlantic “‘Crafting an illusion': US rail firms' multimillion-dollar PR push” from The Guardian “Before Ohio derailment, Norfolk Southern lobbied against safety rules” from The Washington Post “Productivity loss due to menstruation-related symptoms: a nationwide cross-sectional survey among 32 748 women” from BMJ “Menstrual cycle-associated symptoms and workplace productivity in US employees: A cross-sectional survey of users of the Flo mobile phone app” from National Library of Medicine “Even in the U.S., poor women often can’t afford tampons, pads” from Reuters “Solar Tax Credit By State In 2023: What You Need To Know” from Forbes “Wind energy gives American farmers a new crop to sell in tough times” from USA Today “The Power of Compound Interest: Calculations and Examples” from Investopedia Got a question for the hosts? Leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART or email us at makemesmart@marketplace.org.

SOTU recap, Tech collusion hearing, YIMBYs lawsuits, don't file taxes yet!

Meet the YIMBYs: Fake-grassroots, "pro-housing activists" who swear that building more luxury condos will trickle down to the rest of us, and solve the housing unaffordability crisis.   Backed by tech titans, corporate landlords, and Barack Obama, YIMBYs are trying so hard to make over the real estate industry's predatory image. And a lot of people are buying what they're selling. Culturally critical visitor Christen Cioffi (Instagram | Twitter) states facts from a backyard somewhere behind the liberal front. - Support the show and get bonus episodes at patreon.com/sadfrancisco - Show notes The Techies Hawking Free Market “Solutions” to the Nation's Housing Crisis, Toshio Meronek in In These Times YIMBYs: the Alt-Right Darlings of the Real Estate Industry, Toshio and Andrew Szeto in Truthout - Facebook | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter

For some time, Nathan has been critical of the "YIMBY" (Yes In My Backyard) movement, which takes stances on housing policy that are sometimes classified as "market fundamentalist" or "trickle-down." Nathan's article "The Only Thing Worse Than a NIMBY is a YIMBY" is scathing, and Current Affairs has published a public service announcement discouraging people from letting their friends become YIMBYs. For their part, online YIMBYs generally do not care for Nathan, and he has been branded a leader of the "Left NIMBYs." But does this fight make sense? Darrell Owens of the group CA YIMBY argued recently in Jacobin that those who think YIMBYs advocate "Reaganomics" in housing policy are mistaken, and that the movement has been misunderstood by its critics. Owens said:"The overall YIMBY movement understands that we need more market-rate and public housing, more subsidies for housing, zoning reform, and stronger tenant protections, especially around eviction. And while there are some moderates and neoliberals that don't support rent control, they're in the minority. For example, the majority of local YIMBY groups across California endorsed the repeal of the ban on statewide rent control in 2020."Darrell and Nathan have clashed on social media before, and Nathan was listed as a major "Left NIMBY" on Darrell's Discourse Lounge Substack, so today Darrell and Nathan meet for the first time to hash out their differences and figure out whether Nathan is a NIMBY and whether YIMBYism has been treated unfairly by its critics. The title of this episode is intentionally misleading clickbait, because the conversation is polite and respectful and Nathan and Darrell both have positive things to say about each other's work and significant points of common ground. But they discuss such questions as:What is a YIMBY? What is a NIMBY? Are the NIMBY-YIMBY labels even useful? Isn't everyone a little bit of both?Is historic preservation just a NIMBY thing?How much of the YIMBY movement is "market fundamentalist"? Is it funded by dark money?Can we at least all agree that cars are terrible and trees are great?Do leftists tend to oppose building new housing? Are they "vacancy truthers"?Is AOC a YIMBY? Is Reason magazine YIMBY?If architects made new buildings less ugly would this whole debate become a lot less contentious?What does a comprehensive left housing agenda look like?Does Darrell regret making fun of Nathan's clothes?

It's no secret that access to affordable housing in America is increasingly out of reach. Activists in the growing YIMBY (“Yes In My Back Yard”) movement believe they have a solution: build more of everything.  On this episode, associate editor Griffin Oleynick speaks with Max Holleran, a sociologist at the University of Melbourne in Australia and author of Yes to the City: Millennials and the Fight for Affordable Housing, a detailed study of the YIMBYs.  The YIMBYs' push for new construction, Holleran argues, won't entirely solve the problem of housing affordability. To do that, we must not only re-invest in alternatives like community land trusts, but also continue fighting for higher wages and greater income equality. For further reading:  “Making the Rent,” The Editors “The Bay Area's Infinite Loop,” Kaya Oakes “Poverty and Profit in the American City,” Frank Pasquale

Come meet our Orlando chapter!  In this episode, our Volunteer Podcast Producer Ed sits down with Austin Valle who co-founded our chapter Orlando YIMBY. Austin talks about why he cares about housing and how Orlando YIMBY is fighting for abundant, affordable housing in Orlando. He shares what it was like to start a chapter, how his personal story drives his activism, and how his group is working with their neighbors to welcome even more people to the community they love.  Links: Learn more about Orlando YIMBY: https://www.moreneighborsdallas.org/ Follow Austin Valle on Twitter: https://twitter.com/austinvalleFollow Orlando YIMBY on Twitter: https://twitter.com/OrlandoYIMBYFollow Orlando YIMBY on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OrlandoYIMBY/Follow Orlando YIMBY on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/orlandoyimby/ Learn more about YIMBY Action: https://yimbyaction.org/ Follow YIMBY Action on Twitter: https://twitter.com/yimbyaction/ Follow YIMBY Action on Instagram: https://instagram.com/yimbyaction/ Follow YIMBY Action on Facebook: https://facebook.com/yimbyaction/

Come meet the founders of our Dallas chapter! In this episode, our National Chapter Manager Jes sits down with DeDe and Adam who founded our chapter More Neighbors Dallas. The two of them share why they care about housing and how they're fighting for abundant, affordable housing in Dallas. They share what it was like to start a chapter, how their previous experiences help drive their activism, and how they're working with their neighbors to welcome even more people to the community they love. Links: Learn more about More Neighbors Dallas: https://www.moreneighborsdallas.org/Follow More Neighbors Dallas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NeighborsDTXFollow More Neighbors Dallas on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NeighborsDTXFollow More Neighbors Dallas on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moreneighborsdallas/Follow More Neighbors Dallas on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@moreneighborsdallas Learn more about YIMBY Action: https://yimbyaction.org/Follow YIMBY Action on Twitter: https://twitter.com/yimbyaction/Follow YIMBY Action on Instagram: https://instagram.com/yimbyaction/Follow YIMBY Action on Facebook: https://facebook.com/yimbyaction/

Charles Marohn — “Chuck” to his friends — grew up in a small town in Minnesota and later became an urban planner and traffic engineer in the state. After a few years, he began noticing that the projects he was building were hurting the towns he was putting them in — subtracting more tax value than they added, forcing everyone into cars, breaking apart communities and saddling them with unsustainable long-term liabilities.He began recording his observations on a blog called Strong Towns. It quickly caught on, and over the years, Strong Towns has grown into a full-fledged nonprofit with an educational curriculum, an awards program, and a rich network of local chapters working to improve the towns where they are located.Marohn has since written several books, most recently 2021’s Confessions of a Recovering Engineer and 2019’s Strong Towns. Intellectually, he sits somewhat orthogonally to most of the contemporary urbanist community. He’s an avowed conservative and opposes many of the state and federal solutions to the housing crisis favored by today’s YIMBYs. But there is arguably no one alive in America who has done more to get people thinking about what makes for a healthy community and how the US can begin to repair its abysmal late-20th-century land-use choices. I was excited to talk to Marohn about why suburbs are money-losers, the right way to think about NIMBYs and local control, and why the city planning profession is so resistant to reform. Get full access to Volts at www.volts.wtf/subscribe

With rising housing prices and concerns about affordability, a new approach to solving the problem has emerged. Its answer is to build more housing of all types. Meet the Yimbys. WSJ's Christine Mai-Duc explains the origins of the movement and how it's gaining traction around the country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices