This is not complicated, just green. Welcome to another podcast episode of Common Sense for Construction, bridging the information gap to help you reach a brighter future in the built world. Today's episode is sponsored by Creative Interface, redefining the impact of great design one client at a time. Check us out at www.creativeinterface.design. Welcome friends.

In this episode I'm joined by Terry Miller, a licensed architect who also serves his community as a city councilman, chairman of the Downtown Development Authority, board of director for Cultural Arts Council, Community Character Coalition Board, and the Atlanta Regional Commission's Livable City Committee. The real reason that this episode is such a pleasure to share with you is because long ago when I was starting my career, Terry was one of the first people to give me a chance. We still remain close friends and enjoy hanging out together. Please enjoy.

You know, I grew up in a small town and density is a bad word. Means you're going to overcrowd things and take away my peace and quiet. And that's not what I want in my small town. But then I was, I had a conversation in Atlanta this morning. You know, I don't know if we want to talk about density. You're going to start pushing some buttons you don't really need to push. Red flags go off when certain people hear certain words. You know, density is one of them. And it depends on where you are and when you are. In this community, as an example, I mean, just the word planning was a dirty word 20 years ago.

But planning, that's communism. We don't do things like that around here. And now realizing, now the very people who complained about the notion of planning are the ones who are complaining, well, why didn't we plan for all this growth that's happening? Well, that's number one, it's the free markets. You generally tend to support that, which we all generally tend to support. But the free market comes with risks. And part of that risk is that we have a lot of laissez-faire capitalism that goes on so that people will tend to develop and build whatever is to the maximum benefit of them,

but not necessarily to the maximum benefit of the community. Sometimes those interests align, but oftentimes they don't. And so that's part of planning, is to find ways of making somebody's private interests align with the public interest. And sometimes that involves concepts that are a little scary to some people. Density is a good example. When you design in a dense way, you're creating a community where buildings and infrastructure is tighter and closer together,

which makes it more walkable, which means you don't have to rely on your car, you don't have to rely on fossil fuels. There's tremendous convenience that comes with that. But at the same time, if you don't like the concept, okay, maybe that's not the thing for you. However, if you're a private developer, density actually is good on multiple levels because it allows you to maximize the potential of your property. So if you have a one acre site, let's say, and you've got 50 foot setback on that,

well then that limits the amount of land that you can actually build on to generate rent. But if you have zero setbacks on the property, you can build right up to the edge of the property. Now you've got more square footage you can rent out or make a profit on. So there is that double edged sword that you may not like that density as a concept, but as a building owner or property owner