Upzoned: Recent Episodes
Strong Towns
Join Abby Kinney, Chuck Marohn, and occasional surprise guests to talk in depth about just one big story from the week in the Strong Towns conversation, right when you want it: now.
What if the easiest way to overcome opposition to new housing was simply to pay people to accept it? A recent article in The Atlantic argues that after state laws, packed public meetings, and economic appeals have failed to overcome local resistance, cash payments might succeed where persuasion has not. Chuck Marohn is joined by John Reuter, executive director of Strong Towns, and Dr. Chloe Groome, treasurer of Strong Towns Chicago, to test that idea against what they’ve seen in real neighborhoods. Their discussion turns to what happens when new neighbors are framed as a burden, and whether cash can do the work that persuasion, trust, and local relationships have failed to do.
- "A Perfectly Crude Solution to America’s Housing Shortage" by Rogé Karma, Theatlantic.com (July 2026)
- Chuck Marohn (LinkedIn)
- John Reuter (LinkedIn)
- Dr. Chloe Groome (LinkedIn), Strong Towns Chicago (Site)
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Articles Mentioned and Downzone:
- The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt (Site)
- Farm To Taber (YouTube Channel)
- Stolen Revolution: Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran by Yeganeh Torbati and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin (Site)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.
What happens when one generation holds much of the country’s housing wealth and has little reason to give it up? Chuck Marohn talks with Strong Towns board chair Andrew Burleson and historic property renovator Richard Rumrill about boomers buying bigger homes, even as younger families wait for those houses to come back onto the market. The generational frustration is easy to understand, but the expected handoff assumes older homeowners will be ready to leave. What happens when the people expected to move have nowhere they want to go, and everyone behind them is still waiting?
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "Boomers Were Supposed to Downsize. They Are Buying Bigger Homes Instead." by Rachel Louise Ensign, Wsj.com (July 2026) * Chuck Marohn (LinkedIn) * Andrew Burleson (LinkedIn), Free Range City (Substack) * Richard Rumrill (LinkedIn), Strong Towns RVA (Site) * Articles Mentioned and Downzone:
+ *Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump* by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan (Site)
+ Kids Over Cars (Substack)
+ #42 Charles Duff: North Atlantic Cities - The Forgotten Blueprint for the Future Building Culture (Podcast)
+ *The North Atlantic Cities* by Charles Duff (Site)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.
Americans have been told that buying a home is one of the safest ways to secure their future. But when retirement depends on home values continuing to climb, affordability begins to look like a threat. Carlee Alm-LaBar is joined by Daniel Herriges, co-author of Escaping the Housing Trap, and Alli Thurmond-Quinlan, executive director of the Incremental Development Alliance. Together, they push beyond the idea that housing is simply an investment problem. Limited supply, narrow housing choices, transportation, retirement, and municipal finance are all tied into the same system, leaving people with fewer ways to find security at every stage of life.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES "The Housing Crisis Is Also a Retirement Crisis" by Kyla Scanlon, Nytimes.com (July 2026) * Downzone: + From Strength to Strength*, by Arthur C. Brooks (Site) + Construction Physics (Substack) + World Cup 2026 (Site) * Carlee Alm-LaBar (LinkedIn) * Daniel Herriges (LinkedIn) * Alli Thurmond-Quinlan (LinkedIn) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.
In 2009, Chicago traded 75 years of parking meter revenue for a $1.2 billion payment that helped fill an immediate budget hole. Norm Van Eeden Petersman is joined by Tony Jordan, executive director of the Parking Reform Network, and Edward Erfurt, chief technical advisor at Strong Towns, to look at what the city actually gave up and why its recent $3.3 billion bid never made it to the finish line. The lease still shapes decisions about removing parking for bus lanes, bike lanes and wider sidewalks, while the revenue keeps flowing to a private operator instead of back into the places generating it. That leaves Chicago with a much harder question than whether the original deal was bad: what would it take to manage the curb again, regain flexibility and use that money to improve the streets themselves?
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "Mayor’s $3 Billion Parking Meter Offer Was $800 Million More Than The Next Highest Bid, Investor Says" by Mick Dumke, Blockclubchicago.org (June 2026) * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) * Tony Jordan (Site) * Edward Erfurt (LinkedIn) * Articles mentioned and Downzone:
+ 'Why ‘SimCity’ has no parking lots, and other insights from the lead designer' (Article)
+ Simulating the Future: a webinar with Stone Librande (Video)
+ *A Wailing Of A Town: An Oral History of Early San Pedro Punk And More 1977-1985* by Craig Ibarra (Book)
+ *Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better* by Jennifer Pahlka (Book)
+ Sam Walton: Made In America, by Sam Walton and John Huey (Book)
+ Microlandia (Site)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.
Five years after wildfire destroyed most of Lytton, British Columbia, rebuilding remains slow despite more than $140 million in committed public funding. Norm Van Eeden Petersman talks with Michel Durand-Wood, author of You’ll Pay for This, and Graham Watt, who manages strategic initiatives and flood recovery for Grand Forks, British Columbia. They look at what happens when a small town is pushed to rebuild everything at once, while also dealing with hazardous conditions, limited local capacity, consulting costs, modern codes, and the long-term obligation to maintain whatever comes next. The money creates a promise of recovery, but Lytton shows how hard it is to turn that promise back into a town.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "Inside Lytton’s contentious recovery, where concerns smoulder 5 years after wildfire" by Brenna Owen, Halifax.citynews.ca (June 2026) * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) * Michel Durand-Wood (Site) * Graham Watt (LinkedIn) * Downzone:
+ *The Baby-Sitters Club*
+ *Human Nature* by Kate Marvel (Site)
+ *The Blackthorn Key*, by Kevin Sands (Site)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.
Chuck Marohn has long been critical of housing research that treats affordability as a simple supply problem. This week, he brings Andrew Burleson, chair of the Strong Towns board, and Jeff Fong, a board member at YIMBY Action, a new paper on Australia’s housing crisis that starts somewhere else: with the way price increases move between detached houses and apartments, and from one city to another. The paper argues that detached homes help lead the market, while the discussion keeps returning to a harder question: how much of the crisis is about housing supply, and how much is about the financial incentives built into the market?
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "The role of price spillovers in the Australian housing crisis: A two-market analysis" by Shu-Hen Chiang, Chyi Lin Lee, and Chi Man Eddie Hiu, Sciencedirect.com (June 2026) * Chuck Marohn (LinkedIn) * Andrew Burleson (LinkedIn), Free Range City (Substack) * Jeff Fong (LinkedIn), Urban Proxima (Substack) * Articles Mentioned and Downzone:
+ Fifa (Site)
+ 'We Can Never Go Back' (Substack)
+ *Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company*, by Patrick McGee (Goodreads)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.
When Charlotte and its regional planning body withdrew support for a $4.3 billion widening of Interstate 77, North Carolina lawmakers responded by threatening a $60 million penalty and a funding cutoff. Host Carlee Alm-LaBar is joined by Patrick Kennedy, whose Atlas of Inner-City Highway Impacts documents highway damage across 142 cities, and John Reuter, the newly named Executive Director of Strong Towns, to break down the sunk cost trap, the real math behind highway "assets," and why the local officials who pushed back may have saved far more than they spent.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES "N.C. Lawmakers May Claw Back $60M for Cancelled I-77 Project" by Ray Gronberg, Businessnc.com (June 2026) * Downzone: + Atlas of Inner-City Highway Impacts (PDF) + Mission Accomplished (Site) + Dealing with Dragons* (Site) + Fifa (Site) * Carlee Alm-LaBar (LinkedIn) * Patrick Kennedy (LinkedIn) * John Reuter (LinkedIn) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.
A decade ago, a row of North Park storefronts was cleared for a university housing project that never came. The businesses are gone, the buildings are mostly empty, and neighbors are still pushing Northeastern Illinois University to act. Norm Van Eeden Petersman is joined by Bernice Radle, an incremental developer in Buffalo, and Alex Montero of Strong Towns Chicago to ask why places like this get stuck. What begins as the story of one vacant block turns into a deeper question: once a place has been cleared for a future vision, what happens when that future never arrives? The conversation explores why smaller, incremental approaches can succeed where larger plans stall, and what gets lost when neighborhoods are left waiting.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "Northeastern University Fought To Take Over A North Park Block. 10 Years Later, It’s Still Vacant" by Millie DeVore, Blockclubchicago.com (May 2026) * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) * Bernice Radle (LinkedIn) * Alex Montero (LinkedIn) * Articles Mentioned and Downzone:
+ The Corner Side Yard (Substack)
+ *Cerrone* (Spotify)
+ Brittania Mine Museum (Site)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.
With the World Cup coming to North America, millions of visitors will encounter more than stadiums and soccer. They’ll also encounter the transportation systems, infrastructure gaps, and car-dependent development patterns that shape daily life in U.S. cities. Norm Van Eeden Petersman talks with Chuck Marohn and Rick Cole about “catastrophic money,” the danger of building for spectacle instead of long-term value, and what major events reveal about the places that host them. These visitors will move on when the games are over, but the systems they struggled with will still be ours to live with.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "The U.S. campaigned to host the World Cup. Now soccer fans will trade their countries’ train system for the U.S.’s ‘D’ rated infrastructure" by Catherine Gioino, Fortune.com (May 2026) * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) * Chuck Marohn (LinkedIn) * Rick Cole (LinkedIn) * Articles Mentioned and Downzone:
+ Just a thought: a Texas based World Cup (Article)
+ *The Mission: CIA in the 21st Century* by Tim Weiner
+ *The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966-1996 and the Search for Peace* by Tim Pat Coogan
+ Only Murders in the Building (Site)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.
Sam Quinones keynoted the Strong Towns National Gathering last week and closed with a story about a tuba. If that left you wanting more, this conversation with Chuck Marohn is the place to start. This rerun from the Strong Towns Podcast follows Sam’s obsession with the “perfect tubas,” the almost-mythic York horns that tuba players have chased for decades. From there, he opens up a wider world of band rooms on the Texas border, long days playing at Disney World, and crowded Tuba Christmas events. Together, he and Chuck connect tubas, band culture, and strict musical standards to addiction, purpose, and how shared work and craft help hold communities together.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* Sam Quinones (LinkedIn, Site) * Chuck Marohn (LinkedIn) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.
A viral town meeting clip from Marblehead, Massachusetts, raised a question that goes far beyond one zoning debate: What happens when a state says yes to more housing, but the local process still makes it hard to build? Or, as resident David Modica put it, “Are we trying to do nothing?” Carlee Alm-LaBar talks with Strong Towns Technical Advisor Edward Erfurt and Lafayette City Councilman Thomas Hooks about the messy handoff between policy and place. They look at why communities can comply on paper while resisting in practice, and why the next real step may be as small as one block, one lot, or one drawing that helps people see what is possible.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES "The Latest Hero of the ‘Yimby’ Movement Is a Massachusetts Man in a Hoodie" by Will Parker, WSJ.com (May 2026) * Downzone: + The Victory of Greenwood,* by Carlos Moreno (Site) + Scrubs Reboot (Site) + Junior League of Lafayette (Site) + Strong Towns National Gathering (Site) * Carlee Alm-LaBar (LinkedIn) * Thomas Hooks (LinkedIn) * Edward Erfurt (LinkedIn) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.
Des Moines just approved an $8.4 million first phase for a $54 million park overhaul. The bid came in over estimate, and there's no maintenance plan in sight — meanwhile the city was cutting services 9% across the board just last year. Norm Van Eeden Petersman talks with parks consultant Jamie Sabbach, author of the new book The Bison Principle, and writer Michel Durand-Wood about what cities consistently leave out of these decisions. Construction is only about 20% of what a public asset costs over its lifetime, and most cities aren't planning for the rest. The conversation gets into maintenance backlogs, why capital and operating budgets are really the same money, and what a city would actually decide if the 50-year cost were part of the conversation from the start.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES "Birdland Park's $54M Overhaul Moves into Construction Phase" by Jason Clayworth, Axios.com (April 2026) * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) * Jamie Sabbach (LinkedIn), The Bison Principle (Book) * Dear Winnipeg (Site), You'll Pay For This!* (Book) * Articles Mentioned and Downzone:
+ *In Praise of Background Buildings* by Gracen Johnson
+ *Places and Non-Places* by Andrew Price
+ Field of Schemes
+ Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy - Album by The Refreshments
+ *Team of Rivals* by Doris Kearns Goodwin
+ *The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York* by Robert Caro
+ The 99% Invisible Breakdown of The Power Broker
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.
What if the street itself did most of the work of slowing cars, instead of another sign or speed trap? Drawing on a new Bloomberg CityLab piece, Carlee Alm‑LaBar is joined by Edward Erfurt and Ann Arbor’s transportation manager, Malisa McCreedy, to talk about what these deaths say about speed, design, and the values baked into our networks. They explore why Vision Zero efforts struggle, how Ann Arbor is embedding safety into every project, and why planners and engineers often hesitate to talk openly about crashes, using Ann Arbor’s crash analysis studio, university partnerships, and quick‑build projects to show how a city can respond more directly to serious crashes.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "Searching for the ‘Smoking Gun’ in US Pedestrian Deaths" by David Zipper, Bloomberg.com (April 2026) * Downzone: + City of Ann Arbor Hosting Crash Analysis Studio (Site) + 2026 APA National Planning Conference (Site) + "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens (Site) + Strong Towns National Gathering (Site) * Carlee Alm-LaBar (LinkedIn) * Edward Erfurt (LinkedIn) * Malisa McCreedy (LinkedIn) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.
What happens when the American Dream stops meaning “doing better than your parents” and starts meaning “just not falling behind”? Norm Van Eeden Petersman sits down with Andrew Burleson and Ryan Puzycki to untangle why stability feels so fragile, even in “booming” cities. They trace how zoning turns housing into a rigged game of musical chairs, how some places face strangling exclusion while others slide into rolling blight, and how missing bottom rungs on the housing ladder and remote work push rising costs — and workers — farther out. They connect these pressures to a new American Dream: finding a stable home that won’t vanish with the next lease.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "The American Dream Meant Upward Mobility. Now, it Means Stability." by Rachel Barber and Veronica Bravo, USAToday.com (March 2026) * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) * Andrew Burleson (LinkedIn) * Ryan Puzycki (LinkedIn) * Articles Mentioned and Downzone:
+ Adaptive Code (Article)
+ Remote Isn't Working (Article)
+ The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien (Audiobook)
+ The Social House Will Not Reopen (Article)
+ Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast (Site)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.
In New York City, a playful bracket about broken hoops and dumping sites turns routine maintenance into a citywide tournament. Carlee Alm-LaBar, Edward Erfurt, and Alexander Lazard explore what that reveals about complaint driven 311 systems, how priorities really get set, and which neighborhoods get left off the board entirely. Their conversation presses on whether mayors can turn one clever contest into lasting trust instead of a one week story.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "Mayor Mamdani Launches March Madness-style Competition for City Fixes" by Spectrum News Staff, NY1.com (March 2026) * "Municipal Madness: Mayor Mamdani Performs Winning City Fix, Cleans Up Illegal Dumping in Soundview on Day 100" (Article) * "Mamdani, Leaning Into ‘Sewer Socialism,’ Gets His Hands Dirty" (Article) * Downzone: + "Mary Colter: Builder Upon the Red Earth" by Virginia L. Grattan (Book) + "The Image of the City" by Kevin Lynch (Book) + "How Big Things Get Done" by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner (Book) + Strong Towns National Gathering (Site) * Carlee Alm-LaBar (LinkedIn) * Edward Erfurt (LinkedIn) * Alexander Lazard (LinkedIn) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
Development cost charges are supposed to make growth pay for itself, but this conversation shows just how far that promise falls short. Norm Van Eeden Petersman, Michel Durand-Wood, and Dan Winer unpack Ontario’s deal to halve development charges, British Columbia’s per‑unit fee structure that punishes small infill, and Winnipeg’s court battle over impact fees. They reveal how these choices ripple into housing prices, municipal deficits, and whether existing neighborhoods ever see the gentle density and local services they’ve been promised.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "City Councillors Fear 'Devil in the Details' in Federal-Provincial Housing Fund" by Arthur White-Crummery, CBC.ca (March 2026) * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) * Dan Winer (LinkedIn) * Dear Winnipeg (Site) * You'll Pay For This! (Book) * Articles mentioned and Downzone:
+ Readying B.C. to deliver more homes for people in communities (Article)
+ The Party Analogy (Article)
+ The Master and His Emissary, Ian McGilchrist (Book)
+ Murderland, Caroline Fraser (Book)
+ Shrill Season 1 (Prime Video)
+ An Inside Job, Daniel Silva (Book)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
A Massachusetts town budgeted $600,000 for snow and ended up spending $6 million clearing its streets. Norm Van Eeden Petersman, Daniel Herriges, and Gracen Johnson trace the links between winter operations, stormwater, supply chains, labor, and land use in cities facing serious snow. Starting with Boston’s overrun numbers, they widen the lens to Ottawa’s snow storage sites and Minneapolis’ potholes, asking what happens when seasonal extremes collide with tight city budgets.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "‘That comes with a price tag’: How snow removal is busting town budgets" by Kate Selig, Bostonglobe.com (March 2026) * "The Cost of an Extra Foot" by Chuck Marohn * "Transactions of Decline" by Chuck Marohn * Downzone: + "Cost-Based Social Rental Housing in Europe" (Web PDF) + The Ink (Substack) + You'll Pay For This! (Site) + Criminal Broads (Site) * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) * Daniel Herriges (LinkedIn) * Gracen Johnson (LinkedIn) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
While Los Angeles gets ready for the Olympics and World Cup, residents watch trash pile up in the places tourists never see. Chuck, Norm, and Carlee trace the links between auto‑oriented growth, a strained city budget, and basic services that can’t keep up. Through one neighborhood organizer’s Saturday cleanups, they show how garbage exposes which streets are truly cared for.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "Talking Trash" by Alissa Walker, Torched.la (February 2026) * Chuck Marohn (LinkedIn) * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) * Carlee Alm-LaBar (LinkedIn) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
A multigenerational home addition sparked national attention and local outrage in Fairfax County, Virginia. Chief Technical Advisor Edward Erfurt sits down with guest host Norm Van Eeden Petersman to explore why legally allowed housing can still feel deeply disruptive — and what this reveals about zoning, design, and incremental change.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "Massive Multigenerational Home Addition Sparks Furious Debate in Virginia Community" by Julie Taylor, Realtor.com (November 2025) * "The Monster House: Why a Change in Neighborhood Scale Isn’t a Bad Thing" by Emma Durand-Wood * "Multigenerational Living Isn't Immigrant Culture, It's Human Culture" by Shina Shayesteh * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) * Edward Erfurt (LinkedIn) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
Utah wants to override local zoning to boost housing supply, but allowed by right doesn't mean possible in practice. Abby and Edward dig into the hidden barriers — complicated permits, scarce financing, and broken systems — that stop housing from actually getting built.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "Utah’s Governor Suggests Overriding Local Zoning. Could His Plan Solve—or Shatter—the State’s Housing Future?" by Allaire Conte, Realtor.com (November 2025) * "Why State Housing Reform is Failing (and What We Can Do About It)" by Edward Erfurt * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter) * Edward Erfurt (LinkedIn) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
Who decides when community traditions change? Lafayette, Louisiana, recently rerouted its Mardi Gras parade. The goal was to improve public safety, but the change left neighborhoods, businesses, and long-standing customs in the lurch.
Guest host Norm Van Eeden Petersman sits down with Lafayette resident and former city staffer Carlee Alm-LaBar to explore how communities can navigate change while respecting culture and shared ownership.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "Residents, krewes, downtown businesses weigh in on Jefferson Street Mardi Gras parade route" by Stephen Marcantel, The Acadiana Advocate (November 2025) * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
Last week, we heard how DC's outdoor dining regulations threaten local businesses. Today, urban designers Abby Newsham and Edward Erfurt explore how DC could course-correct. They share creative ways that cities can maintain safety while supporting local businesses and even improving the design of their streets.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "After five years, D.C. streateries hit with higher costs and more rules" by By Tim Carman and Rachel Weiner, The Washington Post (November 2025) * Painting of a food hall street (Passeig de l'Escultor Miquel Blay, Olot, Espana by Abby Newsham) * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter) * Edward Erfurt (LinkedIn) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
Washington DC is charging restaurants thousands of dollars to keep their streateries — outdoor dining areas built during Covid-19. Are these fees fair compensation for public space, or will they kill the local businesses they were meant to save?
Guest host Norm Van Eeden Petersman dives into this question with Carlee Alm-LaBar, a former city official who helped bring streateries to her own city.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "After five years, D.C. streateries hit with higher costs and more rules" by By Tim Carman and Rachel Weiner, The Washington Post (November 2025) * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
Abby is joined by Carlee Alm-LaBar, the chief of staff for Strong Towns, and John Reuter, advisory board member for Strong Towns. They discuss several stories of people across the country taking action to make their communities better, from building houses to painting curbs.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* It's Member Week at Strong Towns! Join the movement today! * Read more: + Strong Towns San Diego - Curb Chalking + Monte Anderson - Roommate House + Strong Towns Langley - Baffle Gates + Strong Towns Blono - Design Charette + Strong Towns Nanaimo - Eliminating Parking Mandates * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Elon Musk's company xAI is building massive data centers in Memphis, promising economic transformation. But at what cost? Abby is joined by Strong Towns Blog Editor and podcast host Asia Mieleszko to dissect the billion-dollar AI infrastructure boom and explore why cities keep falling for "shiny object urbanism."
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* Hear more from Asia on the brand-new podcast Stacked Against Us! * "Elon Musk Gambles Billions in Memphis to Catch Up on AI" by Alexander Saeedy, The Wall Street Journal (October 2025) * "Shiny Object Urbanism" by Billy Cooney * "Where's the Wealth?" by Charles Marohn * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
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This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
Two towns, two states, and two historic bridges that nobody wants to pay for. Brattleboro, Vermont, wants to reactivate two historic bridges with a pedestrian greenway. Hinsdale, New Hampshire, worries about increased crime and being saddled with the majority of maintenance costs while getting fewer returns. Abby and Norm discuss this dilemma, comparing it to similar bridge projects and identifying possible next steps for activating this underutilized infrastructure.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* "Can Two Towns Preserve the Bridges That Connected Them?" by Alan Wirzbicki, The Boston Globe (September 2025) * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter) * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
What do you do with 720,000 square feet of dead mall? Towns across America are struggling to find the answer as their malls shut down, leaving budget craters and infrastructure nightmares in their wake. Abby is joined by Carlee Alm-LaBar, Strong Towns' chief of staff and a former city staffer, to explore whether the answer is a grand redevelopment plan — or thinking radically smaller.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “A Town's Single Largest Taxpayer Is Also Its Biggest Headache” by Jim Zarroli, The New York Times (June 2025). * Click here to listen to The Bottom-Up Revolution episode about the 24 Hour Citizen Project. * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter)
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
Littleton, Colorado, wants to ban everything other than single-family homes. The neighboring town of Lakewood wants to allow more housing variety. Norm and Abby dive into what's driving these radically different responses to the housing crisis and what happens when cities try to exempt themselves from change.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Two Denver Suburbs Take Different Paths as Residents Face Housing Crunch: We Can Manage It, but Just Barely.” by John Aguilar, The Denver Post (October 2025). * Abby Newsham
+ Painting Instagram
+ X/Twitter
- Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
By the end of 2026, many U.S. cities could see large parts of their public transit systems crumble under a lack of federal funding and a development pattern that was never designed to support it. In this episode, Chuck Marohn and Abby Newsham explore why transit can’t survive as a charity and how localized funding and smarter land use could create systems that actually work.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* On October 24, Chuck will join the author of today's article, Jarrett Walker, for a member-exclusive deep dive into transit. Become a Strong Towns member to join in! * “Should We Let Public Transit Die?” by Jarrett Walker, Bloomberg City Lab (September 2025) * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Substack) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
The city of Los Angeles recently announced that it saved 1,600 jobs that were at risk of being cut to balance its $1 billion budget deficit. But did it actually fix anything, or is it just shuffling money around to hide the problem? What role do unions play? And what should cities actually do when facing a major budget deficit?
Strong Towns Chief Technical Advisor Edward Erfurt dives into these questions with guest host Norm Van Eeden Petersman in this episode of Upzoned.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Mayor Bass says layoffs averted after labor negotiations, "creative solutions" for next year city budget” by Chelsea Hylton, CBS News (September 2025). * Finance Decoder * Become a Strong Towns member to access weekly Ask Strong Towns Anything sessions. * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) * Do you know someone who would make for a great The Bottom-Up Revolution* guest? Let us know here!
The Tulsa Remote program pays remote workers $10,000 to relocate to Tulsa for a year. A study found that, for every dollar spent, Tulsa sees $4.31 in economic benefits, including increased local spending, tax revenue, and job creation. Abby is joined by John Pattinson, Strong Towns’ community builder, discuss whether this kind of program is a smart way to boost the local economy.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “The Economic Benefits of Paying Workers to Move” by Rthvika Suvarna and Fola Akinnibi, Bloomberg CityLab (May 2025). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
As baby boomers downsize, relocate, or pass away, millions of homes are projected to rejoin the housing market by 2030, potentially exceeding housing demand by 1 million homes. In today's episode, Chuck and Abby discuss how generational shifts affect the housing market, what an excess of supply could mean for cities' financial stability, and how a simple "build, build, build" mindset could cause serious problems down the line.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Forget YIMBY. The housing shortage could disappear on its own.” by Robert Showah, The Washington Post (September 2025). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Substack) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
For years, investors and speculators shaped Canada's housing market. But now, people who actually live in those homes are beginning to have more influence. Today, Abby is joined by Norm Van Eeden Petersman, Strong Towns' director of membership and a Canadian, to discuss how this shift happened, how it'll affect Canada's housing market, and the implications for the rest of North America.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “End-users, rather than investors, expected to drive Vancouver housing market higher” by Kerry Gold, The Globe and Mail (September 2025). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
Several high-profile members of the government have been accused of committing mortgage fraud recently, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Today, Chuck and Abby explore how mortgage fraud distorts the housing market, why it happens so frequently — and why no one in the financial system is interested in stopping it.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Ken Paxton Claimed Three Houses as His Primary Residence, Records Show” by Pooja Salhotra, The New York Times (July 2025). * “Mortgage-Fraud Accusations Are Trump’s New Political Weapon” by Gina Heeb and Brian Schwartz, The Wall Street Journal (August 2025). * Chuck Marohn (Substack) * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
Join Abby and guest John Pattison as they dive into the benefits and drawbacks of "sponge cities," cities that incorporate natural features like wetlands into their stormwater management infrastructure. Is this method more resilient in the long term? Do the benefits outweigh the massive cost? How does this relate to the incremental, bottom-up approach? They’ll cover all this and more in today’s episode of Upzoned.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “‘Sponge City’: Copenhagen Adapts to a Wetter Future” by Paul Hockenos, Yale Environment 360 (July 2025). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
Data centers power everything from cloud computing to artificial intelligence, and they use a massive amount of electricity, sometimes even rivaling major cities. Watchdogs claim that tech companies aren’t absorbing the costs of this electricity use, causing rate payers’ electricity bills to spike as they’re forced to subsidize these data centers. Today, Edward and Abby discuss the far-reaching implications of this kind of land use.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act.” by Marc Levy, AP News (August 2025). * Want to bring the conversation to your community? Book Edward as a speaker. * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
Colorado's population is rapidly aging. Soon, one in five people in the state will be be over 65 years old. Limited housing stock means seniors are stuck in too-large homes that they can’t afford to maintain. In turn, that means there’s fewer large homes for younger families who need them.
Today, Abby is joined by Katy Clagett, an incremental developer originally from Colorado who’s working to develop infill housing options for seniors. They discuss what Colorado’s situation means for communities and how we can reshape housing to be more adaptable to the needs of all age groups.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “As Colorado ages, seniors are colliding with the housing crisis” by Brian Eason, The Colorado Sun (June 2025). * Learn how to create a more flexible housing market. * Katy Claggett * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
In January 2025, wildfires swept across Los Angeles with record-breaking destruction. To encourage swift rebuilding, Governor Newsom suspended environmental regulations. But six months later, only a fraction of homeowners have even received permits, let alone started the rebuilding process. Chuck is joined by Edward Erfurt, Strong Towns’ chief technical advisor, to talk about why, as well as the deeper challenges of rebuilding in fire-prone areas.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Why it’s taking LA so long to rebuild” by Umair Irfan, Vox (July 2025). * Want to bring the conversation to your community? Book Chuck or Edward as a speaker. * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
In Lincoln County, South Dakota, a growing agriculture company is being charged $50,000 annually for wear and tear on township roads caused by the company's trucks and machinery.
Abby and Edward discuss the balancing act between infrastructure costs and municipal budgets, especially in rural areas with few taxpayers. They explore the public process behind this kind of decision and offer suggestions on how it could be improved.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Milk facility to pay $50,000 for road use” by Rae Yost, KELOLAND (July 2025). * Want to bring the conversation to your community? Book Edward as a speaker. * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership.
Sunbelt cities like Phoenix, Dallas, and Atlanta have long prided themselves on having affordable and abundant housing. However, they’re now seeing stagnation in housing construction and rapidly rising costs. Today, Abby is joined by Rachel Leonardo, a trained architect and Strong Towns’ video creator, to discuss how rigid single-use zoning has locked cities into expensive fragility. They explore whether these cities can course correct and how they could become more resilient and prosperous in the long-term.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* Here are 6 simple ways to make housing more affordable in your community. * “Sprawl made the American Sunbelt affordable. Now it’s breaking it.” by Marina Bolotnikova, Vox (July 2025). * See Rachel’s work:
+ Studio Leonardo (YouTube)
+ Strong Towns (YouTube)
- Abby Newsham (X/Twitter).
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership, including member-exclusive perks.
Today, Abby is joined by Bernice Radle, a small-scale developer and historic building preservationist from Buffalo, New York. They cover two developing stories: First, a new bill was proposed that would give the Buffalo housing court more power to sell or repair buildings taken from absentee or negligent landlords. Second, the Historic Preservation Fund is currently at risk.
Bernice and Abby discuss how these changes could affect small-scale developers and historic preservationists. Bernice also explores how these two fields are closely linked and should work together to save urban spaces.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Proposed bill would give Buffalo housing court greater authority over derelict properties” by Nate Benson, WGRZ (May 2025). * “Preservation Under Threat: A Critical Moment for the Historic Preservation Fund” by Preservation Buffalo Niagara, Buffalo Rising (June 2025). * See more from Bernice:
+ Strong Towns
+ Neighborhood Evolution
+ Preservation Buffalo Niagara
- Abby Newsham (X/Twitter).
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Click here to learn more about membership, including member-exclusive perks.
Residents of Boca Chica, Texas, have voted to turn their community into a new official city called Starbase. This new municipality is tightly controlled by SpaceX leadership and most residents are SpaceX employees, which has raised concerns about the reemergence of company towns.
In this Upzoned episode, Abby is joined by our Chief Technical Advisor Edward Erfurt to discuss the Strong Towns perspective on this story.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Elon Musk’s company town: SpaceX employees vote to create ‘Starbase’” by Nick Robins-Early, The Guardian (May 2025). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
As of the 2023-24 academic year, the University of California faces $9.1 billion in deferred maintenance, while California State University faces $8.3 billion. In today’s episode, Chuck and Abby explore how this problem arose, how it mirrors the challenges cities are facing, and what it'll take to manage this decline.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Inside a $17 billion maintenance backlog plaguing California’s universities” by Victoria Mejicanos, Matthew Reagan and Mercy Sosa, CalMatters (April 2025). * Learn more about the Growth Ponzi Scheme and how to evaluate your own city’s financial position. * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Substack) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
President Trump has proposed the privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, organizations that back the majority of mortgages in the U.S. and have been under a government conservatorship since the 2008 financial crisis. In this Upzoned episode, Chuck and Abby discuss the proposal and how it would affect the housing market.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “How Trump plans to get government out of the mortgage business” by Paige Sutherland and Meghna Chakrabarti, WBUR On Point (March 2025). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Substack) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In this Upzoned episode, Abby is joined by Strong Towns Chief Technical Advisor Edward Erfurt to discuss the emergence of food deserts in the United States. In the 1980s, the U.S. government stopped enforcing price discrimination laws, letting large supermarkets use their size to leverage better prices from suppliers. This led to the closure of many small, independent groceries and helped create today's food deserts.
Abby and Edward discuss the shift from grocery stores being neighborhood assets to regional destinations and how that extracts wealth from communities. Then they share bottom-up ways that everyday people can address these food shortages in their communities.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “The Great Grocery Squeeze: How a federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert” by Stacy Mitchell, The Atlantic(December 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn discuss the challenges faced by Victoria, Prince Edward Island, a town in Canada that only has 139 full-time residents. In an attempt to attract new residents, the town has adopted its first five-year development plan.
Chuck and Abby talk about how very small towns like Victoria show the absurdities of the Suburban Experiment best — and feel its consequences most keenly. They explore what the future could look like for communities like this and emphasize the importance of embracing the things that make a specific town special instead of trying to copy suburban subdivisions.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Population growth called 'critical' for the sustainability of Victoria, P.E.I.” by Sara Fraser, CBC News (February 2025). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Substack). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Residents of a neighborhood in Colorado are confronting a $434 million debt incurred by their community’s special taxing district, which was set up by developers to finance the neighborhood’s infrastructure. A group of neighbors are now organizing to take control of the district’s board and try to bring transparency to the financial situation.
In today’s episode of Upzoned, Abby is joined by Edward Erfurt, Strong Towns’ chief technical advisor. They discuss how using special taxing districts to fund developments is a common practice, how it leads to snowballing debt, and how difficult it is for residents to manage this kind of situation.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “The largest neighborhood of this Colorado city is $434M in debt. Neighbors are now seeking board control.” by Olivia Young, CBS News(February 2025). * This Thursday, February 27, Strong Towns will release a toolkit to help city officials welcome incremental housing development. Learn more here. Become a member to join the launch livestream with experts Alli Thurmond Quinlan (Incremental Development Alliance) and Eric Kronberg (Kronberg Urbanists + Architects). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
The U.S. senior housing market is poised to shift from a surplus to a shortage in the next five years, as the oldest baby boomers turn 80 by 2030. In this Upzoned episode, Abby is joined by Norm Van Eeden Petersman, Strong Towns’ director of Movement Building. They unpack the implications of this market shift and discuss what building more options for older adults could look like.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Aging Boomers Are About to Rekindle the Senior-Housing Market” by Peter Grant, The Wall Street Journal (February 2025). * Read more:
+ “Seniors Have Large Suburban Houses To Sell. Does Anyone Want Them?” (Strong Towns).
+ “The Great Senior Short Sale or Why Policy Inertia Will Short Change Millions of America's Seniors” (Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy).
- Abby Newsham (X/Twitter).
- Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn).
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In this episode, Abby is joined by Chicago aldermen Matt Martin and Andre Vasquez to discusses the Western Avenue corridor study, one of the most ambitious planning efforts Chicago has seen in decades. It includes widespread rezoning reform, and it also addresses affordable housing, economic vitality and transit efficiency. The aldermen share their approach to rezoning, emphasizing the importance of a community-first approach.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Let’s fix Western Avenue and make Chicago stronger” by Aaron Feldman, Chicago Tribune(June 2024). * There are 6 easy code reforms that city officials can use to bring more housing to their communities. We will release a toolkit to help you implement these changes in February 2025. Get a sneak peek here and join our mailing list to be notified when this resource is available. * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In 2021, Massachusetts signed a law requiring communities that are served by the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) to legalize multifamily housing development near MBTA transit stations. Recently, a state court ruled that the state has the authority to sue cities and towns that don’t comply.
In this episode of Upzoned, Abby and Chuck discuss whether that’s a good idea, the broader trend of states intervening in city zoning practices, and how the root issue is actually poor transportation investment practices.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Court Ruling Paves the Way For State to Sue Towns With Exclusionary Zoning Laws” by Christian MilNeil, StreetsblogMASS(January 2025). * “Our Financial System Favors Large-Scale Development…but at What Cost?” with Coby Lefkowitz. * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In California, many major insurers have recently dropped homeowners in high risk areas from their plans, forcing them to seek alternate coverage with the state. However the state has nowhere near enough money to cover current property damage costs, a situation that will likely get worse as wildfires continue to burn.
In this episode of Upzoned, co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn discuss the impact of natural disasters on the insurance industry, the feasibility of government-run insurance programs, and what this might mean for California in the long term.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* Support Southern California Wildfire Relief. (Thank you to Strong Towns Artesia for providing this resource!) * “California’s Insurance System Faces Crucial Test as Losses Mount” by Christopher Flavelle, The New York Times (January 2025). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In this episode of Upzoned, host Abby Newsham is joined by Kevin Klinkenberg, an urban designer, planner and executive director of a place management organization. They discuss how a middle-class life — especially homeownership — has become increasingly difficult for younger generations to attain. They also cover the factors that contribute to this difficulty and possible responses.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* Transcript available on our site. * “Is a Middle Class Life Still Attainable?” by Tom Owens, Aaron Renn Substack(December 2024). * Read more from Kevin Klinkenberg on Strong Towns or his Substack The Messy City. * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In this episode of Upzoned, co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn talk about satellite communities — towns that are developed a distance away from existing urbanized areas. They also discuss the psychological phenomena that incline people toward big projects that may solve an immediate issue (such as housing) but will cause larger difficulties later on (such as maintenance debt).
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Tewin's $590M infrastructure bill locks in 'forever sprawl,' councillor says” by Arthur White-Crummey, CBC Ottawa(June 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X).
Canada needs an additional 3.5 million housing units by 2030, and that means Canadian cities — as well as many others throughout North America — are facing the challenge of building more housing without wasting natural resources like mature trees. In this episode of Upzoned, co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn discuss this balancing act, the high value that trees bring to a community, and why sacrificing “urban forests” for housing doesn’t have to mean sacrificing those trees.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Can urban forests survive the housing boom?” by Hanna Hett, Canada’s National Observer(October 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In this episode of Upzoned, host Abby Newsham is joined byAndrew Ganahl, managing partner of a real estate development company that specializes in urban infill housing. They discuss a Washington Post article about townhouses, exploring the benefits of this style of development and Ganahl’s own experiences with building townhouses in Kansas City.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “The new American Dream should be a townhouse” by Amanda Shendruk and Heather Long, The Washington Post(October 2024). * Andrew Ganahl (AND Real Estate site). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Post-COVID-19, there’s been a resurgence of interest in mixed-use neighborhoods, leading some cities to allow for small corner stores even in neighborhoods that are otherwise residential only.
In this Upzoned episode, host Abby Newsham is joined by Norm Van Eeden Petersman, the director of membership and development for Strong Towns. They discuss the role that small corner stores play in local economies, the benefits of allowing residents to continue using and creating these kinds of businesses, and how to talk to your local government about allowing this kind of use in your own community.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES Become a member today! * “The Corner Store Comeback” by Linda Baker, Bloomberg* (October 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
After the collapse of a Florida condo made national news in 2021, new safety regulations were enacted, requiring nearly 90% of Florida units to be updated. This left condo owners and buyers blindsided by a large backlog of deferred maintenance costs with no money saved to pay for them.
In this episode of Upzoned, co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn explain that this situation is an example of the Growth Ponzi Scheme, where maintenance costs are hidden by rapid growth until they eventually come due and bury people or communities in debt. They discuss the effect deferred maintenance has on individuals and communities and explore possible paths forward.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Why Owning (and Buying) a Florida Condo Has ‘Turned Into a Nightmare’” by Julia Echikson, The New York Times* (October 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In this episode of Upzoned, host Abby Newsham is joined by John Anderson, a builder and developer in Georgia, to discuss the Strong Towns take on “urban homesteading,” where cities sell derelict houses to people for $1 in exchange for a promise to renovate the property and live there for a period of time.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Can Selling Off Homes for $1 Solve Urban Blight?” by Rowan Bridge, BBC* (October 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Editor's Note: We are deeply saddened to see the damage Hurricane Helene has done to Western North Carolina. Please see the additional notes for ways you can help. In this episode of Upzoned, co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn discuss managed retreat, where the federal government buys land from people to encourage them to move away from areas at high risk for natural disaster. According to the article, to actually move the necessary amount of people, the government needs to increase its efforts by a factor of 200.
Chuck and Abby talk about the issues with this method of natural disaster management, as well as other common approaches like rebuilding disaster areas to be more fortified, and share their thoughts on alternative responses to natural disasters.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* Ways to help Western North Carolina, suggested by Local Conversations in the area:
+ Manna Food Bank.
+ North Carolina Disaster Relief Fund.
+ Heart of the Foothills Animal Rescue.
+ Cajun Navy.
+ Beloved Asheville.
- “Retreating From the Coasts Makes Sense, But Our Current Approach Isn’t Working,” by Tim Robustelli and Yuliya Panfil, Shelterforce Magazine (August 2024).
- Abby Newsham (X/Twitter).
- Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X).
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
The U.S. Department of Transportation has announced a national deployment plan of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology, a wireless communication tool that allows vehicles to transmit data on speed, location, road condition and other basic information. The DOT plans to implement this technology in 75% of the nation's intersections over the next decade or so.
In this episode of Upzoned, host Abby Newsham is joined by Strong Towns Director of Community Action Edward Erfurt. They discuss how V2X technology works, the challenges and risks of implementing it, and the alternatives that cities can use to increase safety more quickly and cheaply.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “The Moonshot Plan to Eliminate Deaths on America’s Roads” by Maria Clara Cobo and Fola Akinnibi, Bloomberg* (September 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In this episode of Upzoned, co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn discuss the article “Toward a New Way of Educating City Builders” by Seth Zeren, a founding member of Strong Towns. They discuss the many different disciplines that are responsible for shaping the built environment, the professional silos that often develop between these disciplines, and how a shift in management or the way people think about urban development as a whole could break down these barriers.
If you’d like to hear more of Zeren’s thoughts on city building, check out his appearances on The Bottom-Up Revolution.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Toward a New Way of Educating City Builders” by Seth Zeren, Build the Next Right Thing* (September 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In this episode of Upzoned, host Abby Newsham is joined by small-scale developers Alli Quinlan and Bernice Radle. They discuss their experiences in the field of incremental development, how to make incremental development more feasible in your city, and the importance of encouraging women to become incremental developers.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* Alli Quinlan (LinkedIn). * Bernice Radle (LinkedIn). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In this episode of Upzoned, co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn discuss a Wall Street Journal article titled “The American Dream Feels Out of Reach for Most.” They talk about how inflation and high housing costs can put the American Dream out of reach for many people, as well as the trade-offs that people may be forced to make between different life priorities, such as career fulfillment and homeownership. They also explore the importance of strong community relationships in finding happiness.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “The American Dream Feels Out of Reach for Most” by Rachel Wolfe, The Wall Street Journal (August 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This week, Upzoned host Abby Newsham and The Messy City Podcast host Kevin Klinkenberg are working together in a special collaborative episode. They are joined by Jim Heid, a Californian landscape architect turned small-scale developer, to discuss the real estate profession and why he thinks it can solve a lot of modern problems.
Heid runs the Small Scale Developer Forum and has a new book called “Building Small: A Toolkit for Real Estate Entrepreneurs, Civic Leaders, and Great Communities.”
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES The Messy City Podcast*. * Jim Heid (site). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In this episode of Upzoned, co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn discuss the article “Huge Fire Trucks Are Making Us All Less Safe” by Collin Woodard. They talk about how North American fire trucks are unusual for their massive sizes, how accommodating such large trucks makes streets more dangerous and how fire departments could adapt to improve public safety.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Huge Fire Trucks Are Making Us All Less Safe” by Collin Woodard, Yahoo News* (August 2024). * The fire engine created by Abby Newsham’s ancestor. * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In this episode of Upzoned, co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn talk about the rapid population decline of children under five years old in large urban areas. They discuss the factors that can drive would-be urban families out of cities, how the rapidly declining population will affect services like schools and the importance of cities being able to accommodate diverse lifestyles in a dynamic way.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “The Urban Family Exodus Is a Warning for Progressives,” by Derek Thompson, The Atlantic (August 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In this episode of Upzoned, co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn talk about the Olympic Village that was built in Paris and what the city plans to do with the development now that the Games are over. They discuss the accusations of gentrification and greenwashing that Paris officials are facing, the challenges inherent in trying to complete large-scale, sustainable projects on a deadline, and lessons that both Paris and Los Angeles — which will be hosting the 2028 Games — can take from past hosts.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Paris Hopes to Forge a New Model for Olympics-Oriented Development,” by Sam Levitt, The Urbanist (July 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Indianapolis officials are encouraging residents to be involved in improving the city, both through fund-matching programs and by opening a lending library of tools and equipment to help residents start pilot projects.
In this Upzoned episode, co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn talk about how Indianapolis’ programs and initiatives are a great example of changing a city’s bureaucratic structure and processes to better meet residents’ needs. They discuss the growing pains that come with this kind of change and the necessity of officials and residents accepting failure as part of an incremental, experimental process.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Indy puts more resources toward helping communities make quick improvements” by Lauren Kostiuk, WTHR (July 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In this episode of Upzoned, host Abby Newsham is joined by Jason Carter-Solomon, an incremental developer and commercial lender in Kansas City, to talk about financing small-scale development. They discuss the layers of risk that small-scale developers must navigate, and Solomon offers his perspective and advice on facing common challenges, such as dealing with entitlements and building inspectors.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* Jason Carter-Solomon (LinkedIn). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This fall, seven states will have the opportunity to cut — or abolish, in some cases — property taxes, according to an article by Governing. In this episode of Upzoned, co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn discuss the Strong Towns perspective on property taxes, the consequences of removing them and how most people (including city officials) don’t realize how much it costs to run a city. Chuck emphasizes that Strong Towns is not anti-tax and that taxes are essential to successfully running any city.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Voters in Several States Can Cut — or Abolish — Property Taxes This Fall” by Zina Hutton, Governing (July 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
The governor of New York recently announced the dissolution of the city’s congestion pricing program after years of planning and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment. This program would’ve initiated a $15 toll on vehicles entering certain parts of Manhattan, and it was partly established to help support reinvestment in the transit system. It was shut down less than a month before it was supposed to start operating — after all the tolling infrastructure was already installed.
In this episode of Upzoned, Chuck and Abby discuss how this debacle shows a fundamental misunderstanding of congestion pricing, the politics underpinning this decision and how the city could’ve handled things better.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “17 Years, $700 Million Wasted: The Stunning Collapse of New York’s Traffic Moonshot” by Jimmy Vielkind and Joseph De Avila, The Wall Street Journal (June 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
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.
This week on Upzoned, hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn discuss a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “The Dollar-Store Showdown Comes Down to Real Estate.” It highlights the differences between Dollar General, which has stores located in mostly rural areas and is expanding its reach, and Family Dollar, which has stores located in mostly urban areas and is closing hundreds of stores.
Why is one of these companies succeeding while the other struggles? And what do dollar stores help or harm poor neighborhoods? Listen to this week’s episode to find out.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “The Dollar-Store Showdown Comes Down to Real Estate” by Kate King, The Wall Street Journal (April 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Incremental development is the most resilient and financially responsible way for communities to grow and improve. As North America struggles through a housing crisis, this style of development becomes increasingly important.
On this Upzoned episode, host Abby Newsham is joined by town builder Monte Anderson to talk about his experience as an incremental developer and the important principles of the field. Anderson is one of the founders of Incremental Development Alliance, which trains small-scale developers, and a managing partner of Neighborhood Evolution, a development consulting group.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES Monte Anderson (site). * “From Gridiron to Groundbreaking” by Nicole Ward, Dallas Innovates* (March 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In this episode of Upzoned, host Abby Newsham is joined by Doug Barrick, the town manager of Rutherfordton, North Carolina. Rutherfordton was one of the contestants in the 2024 Strongest Town Contest. Barrick discusses what it was like to compete, what Rutherfordton is doing to become a stronger town, and how the town’s unique location and history influence those efforts.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* Doug Barrick (LinkedIn). * Rutherfordton (LinkedIn). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Nonprofit organizations straddle the line between the private and public sectors, receiving both private donations and funding from the government to provide services. The problem with this model, an article in American Affairs says, is that nonprofits are then motivated to sabotage their own efforts so they can receive more money. This is only one example of the kinds of corruption that flourish within the poorly regulated, overly trusted nonprofit sector, the article argues.
What’s the Strong Towns take on this? And what does it mean for local governments? Join host Abby Newsham and co-host Chuck Marohn on this week’s episode of Upzoned to find out.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “The Nonprofit Industrial Complex and the Corruption of the American City” by Jonathan Ireland, American Affairs (May 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Last month, Strong Towns hosted the National Gathering in Cincinnati. It was a two-day event packed with different speakers and sessions, with many advocates meeting each other in person for the first time. In this episode of Upzoned, Abby talks with Strong Towns founder Chuck Marohn about his unique experience at the Gathering, the process of choosing a keynote speaker, how the National Gathering differs from the Congress for the New Urbanism and ways Gatherings might change in the future.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* Become a member today! * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This special edition of Upzoned was recorded last week at the 2024 National Gathering. Join host Abby Newsham as she talks to attendees about their efforts to build stronger towns.
Interviewees:
(0:00) Lisa Hutson, a business owner who’s turning an abandoned factory into a mixed-use community hub.
(8:52) Sean Suder, a zoning reform expert who helps cities make their zoning codes more people-friendly and defensible.
(18:40) Chris Wyatt, a transit advocate who’s working to make public transit more pleasant and useful.
(26:00) Hannah Stanton-Gockel, a bike commuter who uses her marketing experience to advocate for people-centric city design.
(38:41) Isaac Gonzalez, one of the National Gathering presenters, who discusses how to be a good long-term advocate.
(50:40) Jackson Lester, a public transit planner who intends to combat the housing crisis through infill development.
(1:02:15) Jaclyn Cheves, director of policy and partnerships for Blue Zones, who discusses how cities can become healthier places.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
The city of Cincinnati has pledged $200k to keep the popular bikeshare program Red Bike alive for another year. Joining us to talk about bikeshare programs and Red Bike’s financial difficulties is Bryce Mortera, a member of Civic Cincinnati. Are these programs really beneficial for residents? And if so, is there a more sustainable way to fund them than relying on sponsors?
The U.S. Department of Justice is opening a criminal investigation into a major software company called RealPage, which is described in the lawsuit as the “big tech” company of rental housing. It provides software that is used by landlords (and, typically, landlords who are large holders of rental property) to estimate supply and demand for their listings in order to help them maximize rents. The question is whether or not RealPage is facilitating algorithmic price fixing for some of the largest residential property owners and management firms—amounting to what DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb has described as a “housing cartel.” And since Strong Towns has just released Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis, we figured there was no better time to discuss this story than now.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES Order your copy of Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis today! * “DOJ escalates price-fixing probe on housing market,” by Josh Sisco, Politico* (March 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Since the 1970s, the number of cars on I-70 between Denver and its surrounding resorts have jumped more than 500%. Coloradans and frequent visitors know that, in order to reach the mountains during the gridlock of ski season, you must leave as early as 3 or 4 a.m. in the morning. Writer Gloria Liu decided to investigate this chaos by jumping directly into the traffic and interviewing the people stuck in it, and the article she penned about her adventure is up for discussion on this week’s episode of Upzoned. Can I-70 be fixed? And what do famous recreational arterials like I-70 reveal about our relationship with nature in the U.S.?
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Colorado’s I-70 Has America’s Most Notorious Ski Traffic. Is There a Solution?” by Gloria Liu, Outside* (March 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Cincinnati is currently undergoing a significant planning reformation effort, which involves unveiling what’s being called the Connected Communities plan. It includes a number of proposed land-use-related policy changes that are intended to help Cincinnati grow, with the goal of advancing zoning code changes, as well as supporting diversification and affordability of housing and bolstering business districts. Here on Upzoned this week to talk with host Abby Newsham about the proposal is John Yung, an urban planner, Program Manager at the Haile Foundation, and co-leader of the Cincy host committee for the upcoming Congress for the New Urbanism, which (along with the Strong Towns National Gathering) will be taking place in Cincinnati in May.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Mayor Pureval wants to redesign Cincinnati. Here's what that could look like,” by Becca Costello, WVXU* (January 2024). * Get your tickets for the National Gathering today! * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
On this week’s episode of Upzoned, host Abby Newsham and co-host Chuck Marohn are joined by Coby Lefkowitz, who penned the article that’s up for discussion: “Why small developers are getting squeezed out of the housing market.” It focuses on how finance shapes our cities, why debt is used to develop cities in the first place, how lenders deal with risk, and why risk mitigation is critical to understanding why the world looks the way it does. And, most notably, it dives into America's housing financial system and why it privileges large-scale institutional development at the expense of more incremental and community-based building.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Why small developers are getting squeezed out of the housing market,” by Coby Lefkowitz, Noahpinion* (March 2024). * Coby Lefkowitz (Website; X/Twitter). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Newsham is joined by Michael Schneider, founder of Streets for All and the campaign manager for Healthy Streets Los Angeles. They discuss an article from The Los Angeles Times titled, “L.A. bus and bike lane measure will cost $3.1 billion, a new report says. Backers cry foul.” This piece was written in advance of the ballot proposal Measure HLA, which was recently approved by voters, and mandates the installation of hundreds of miles of transportation improvements in L.A. over the next decade, with a focus on bike lanes and sidewalk improvements.
(Editor’s note: This episode was recorded before the results of the ballot were released.)
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “L.A. bus and bike lane measure will cost $3.1 billion, a new report says. Backers cry foul,” by David Zahniser, The Los Angeles Times (February 2024). * “The People of Los Angeles Just Said ‘Yes’ to Safer Streets,” by Asia Mieleszko, Strong Towns* (March 2024). * Streets for All (website). * Healthy Streets Los Angeles (website). * Michael Schneider (LinkedIn; X/Twitter). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney is joined by Mike Keen, a retired professor and incremental developer in South Bend, Indiana, to discuss a recent article in WSBT, “Major mixed-use development could be largest in downtown South Bend history.” It highlights a $350 million project that has been proposed in downtown South Bend: a mixed-use district that would include hotels, apartments, and commercial uses, to be completed by 2028. The development, led by nearby Memorial Hospital, will take up about two city blocks and is expected to be a catalytic project for the city. So, we ask: is this project going to be a positive for South Bend and its small-scale developers like Keen?
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Major mixed-use development could be largest in downtown South Bend history,” by Sean English, WSBT (February 2024). * “This ‘Accidental Developer’ Wants To Show You How To Revitalize Your Neighborhood,” by Seairra Jones, Strong Towns (April 2023). * Escaping the Housing Trap: A Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis* by Charles Marohn. Available for preorder now! * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Mike Keen (LinkedIn). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
A suburb of Washington, DC is exploring a new approach to creating more affordable housing through public-private partnerships. And it’s seeing success! In this episode of Upzoned, Chuck and Abby discuss the history of public housing and government housing subsidies in the US, the good, the bad and the ugly. Then they consider whether this new model could be helpful or harmful to cities.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “What if public housing were for everyone?” by Rachel M. Cohen, Vox (February 2024). * Escaping the Housing Trap: A Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis* by Charles Marohn. Available for preorder now! * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Local officials in Dallas are considering eliminating minimum parking requirements in the city. The zoning ordinance advisory committee just voted to advance the measure to the city planning commission, and if approved there, it would then go on to the city council.
Critics believe that this is a one-size-fits-all approach to parking reform and that it’s not an ideal solution to Dallas’s parking dilemma, whereas proponents say the change will cut down on unused parking spaces and accelerate the city’s economic development.
So, is this measure a good or a bad move for Dallas?
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Dallas Zoning Committee Advances Parking Reform,” by Andrew Terrell, The Dallas Express* (February 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This week’s Upzoned episode covers a story that sounded promising at the start: “The Town That Took Downtown Renewal to the Next Level”? Sounds great! Right? Alas, residents of Morristown, Tennessee, have discovered that the Skymark (i.e., an elevated sidewalk) they built in the 1960s was not the salvation for their downtown they’d hoped it would be. Join host Abby Newsham and co-host Chuck Marohn as they take a deep dive on how this huge investment, unfortunately, didn’t pan out as a long-term strategy for economic prosperity.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “The Town That Took Downtown Renewal to the Next Level,” by David Zipper, CityLab* (January 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Five families from Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Pittsburg move to the suburbs in search of the American dream, drawn by promises of better schools and all the other amenities promised by suburban life…but instead, they’re experiencing the decline of the suburbs, rather than the benefits that were sold to them.
On this week’s episode, host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn discuss this story, told in “The Suburbs Have Become a Ponzi Scheme,” and based on the book, Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America's Suburbs.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “The Suburbs Have Become a Ponzi Scheme,” by Alex Kotlowitz, The Atlantic* (January 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Millennials are officially getting old. They’re having children, buying houses, and getting replaced by Gen Z in urban areas. As one article from Business Insider puts it, “Millennials are getting priced out of cities,” and are starting to leave the urban neighborhoods that they’ve been building their lives in, up to this point. According to the author, since the cost and types of housing available in urban areas isn’t conducive to family life, millennials are having to instead flee to the only place they can afford to live: the exurbs.
What’s the Strong Towns take on this? Join host Abby Newsham and co-host Chuck Marohn as they discuss this article on this week’s episode of Upzoned.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Millennials are getting priced out of cities,” by Eliza Relman, Business Insider* (Jan. 2024). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Upzoned has been on a bit of a hiatus for the past couple of months, but we wanted to have at least one final episode of 2023 (and rest assured that the podcast will be returning with weekly episodes in 2024). This episode is an exciting one, as host Abby Kinney is joined by a guest whose work she’s been following for several years: Ryan Johnson, the builder and resident of the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the U.S., called Culdesac Tempe. We hope you enjoy this special end-of-the-year interview and look forward to more content coming soon!
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* Culdesac Tempe (website). * Ryan Johnson (X/Twitter). * Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Kentucky’s largest school system recently had to cancel the second and third day of classes due to what they're calling a disastrous overhaul of the bus system. On day one, some children were still on their bus at 10 p.m.
AP News reported this issue is partly the result of a bus driver shortage, which definitely plays a role in why Kentucky is having this transportation problem. But Kentucky isn’t the only place that’s struggled with getting children to and from school. There's more to the story, and it has to do with the suburban development pattern, and the closure of neighborhood schools.
In this Upzoned episode, host Abby Newsham digs into details of why, seemingly every year, many school districts have trouble with the transportation of students. She invites Dr. Michael Ralph, director of research at MultiStudio, and Daniel Herriges, Strong Towns’ editor-in-chief, to share their insights on the subject.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * “New school bus routes a ‘disaster,’ Kentucky superintendent admits. Last kids got home at 10 pm,” AP News (August 2023). * Abby Newsham (Twitter). * Dr. Michael Ralph (Twitter). * Daniel Herriges (Twitter). * Learn more about the 2023 Local-Motive Tour. * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Durham, North Carolina, is experiencing a hot debate over changing its zoning code.
The proposed “Simplifying Codes for Affordable Development” (or SCAD) presents tactical adjustments that focus on loosening the current rules so local people can make small-scale changes to their neighborhood. The changes would eliminate parking mandates, legalize smaller homes on smaller lots, and permit mixed-use development.
In this Upzoned episode, host Abby Newsham talks to Aaron Lubeck, who’s been closely involved in developing SCAD, about the proposed changes. They discuss why SCAD is such a controversial topic, and if it’s different from other reforms.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * “Op-Ed: The Purpose of Zoning is to Prevent Affordable Housing" by Bob Chapman, Indy Week (March 2023). * Aaron Lubeck (Twitter). * Abby Newsham (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
State-level officials in Arizona are getting more serious about water scarcity issues, despite the still-booming growth pressures that exist there. Some listeners may remember from a story we covered in July 2022 that rural areas outside of Phoenix, like the Rio Verde foothills, have found it almost impossible to drill wells and are now facing challenges from having their water delivered by truck.
Now, the state has determined that there is not enough water for already-approved housing projects and will stop some developers from building if they rely too heavily on groundwater, given that it has become a finite resource. Arizona's allocation of Colorado River water is also being decreased due to drought, making alternatives quite limited. Still, the Arizona water agency has given permission to build 80,000 housing lots, and for the most part, construction is going to move forward on these lots.
On today's episode of Upzoned, Chuck and Abby discuss why this development pattern in Arizona—and most of the Southwestern United States—is, as you might have guessed, unsustainable.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * “Arizona Limits Construction Around Phoenix as Its Water Supply Dwindles,” by Christopher Flavelle and Jack Healy, The New York Times (June 2023). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
The United States is in the midst of a housing crisis. More and more cities are recognizing that part of the issue is due to restrictive zoning laws, which make building affordable homes a difficult feat.
On this episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney talks with the principal of Krongberg Urbanists and Architects, Eric Kronberg, on Atlanta’s new approach to addressing their housing issue. They’ll introduce the “social housing model” Atlanta plans to adopt, talk about the mixed-income housing aspects of Atlanta's plan, and explain what makes up a “Capital Stack.”
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * “Atlanta plans to embrace ‘European-style social housing,’” by Sean Keenan, Atlanta Civic Circle (July 2023). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Eric Kronberg (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
It is extremely difficult to build housing in Rhode Island. It’s also expensive to buy homes, with prices having increased by 34% since the summer of 2020. Why? Adam A. Millsap makes the case in Forbes that because Rhode Island zoning laws are overly restrictive, developers are unable to meet the current and past needs of housing. Millsap writes:
“Places with fewer land-use regulations and more flexible zoning have lower housing prices and slower rent growth. Land-use regulations such as density restrictions, height restrictions, minimum lot sizes, parking requirements, and complicated set-back rules prevent developers from building more housing, especially more affordable housing.”
In this episode of Upzoned, join host Abby Kinney as she talks with guest Nolan Gray, author of Arbitrary Lines, about his perspective on zoning laws and Rhode Island’s efforts to address their housing crisis.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * “Zoning Reforms, Not Public Housing, Will Fix Rhode Island’s Housing Problem,” by Adam A. Millsap, Forbes (May 2023). * Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It by Nolan Gray. * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Nolan Gray (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
“Who Can Afford America’s Perfect Neighborhood?” asks The Guardian. Longmont, Colorado, holds many elements of the American dream: tree-lined streets, neighbors walking to fulfill errands, children racing about, cafes, beautiful parks, gyms, and community events. To many, it sounds like a place of paradise. But housing prices have skyrocketed, and it’s not uncommon for a million-dollar home to sell in less than a week. In this Upzoned podcast, host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn talk about this neighborhood and answer the question:
Why is this “perfect neighborhood” not easily copied in other places?
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * “Who Can Afford America’s Perfect Neighborhood?” by Courtney Tenz, The Guardian (May 2023). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
“Who Can Afford America’s Perfect Neighborhood?” asks The Guardian. Longmont, Colorado, holds many elements of the American dream: tree-lined streets, neighbors walking to fulfill errands, children racing about, cafes, beautiful parks, gyms, and community events. To many, it sounds like a place of paradise. But housing prices have skyrocketed, and it’s not uncommon for a million-dollar home to sell in less than a week. In this Upzoned podcast, host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn talk about this neighborhood and answer the question:
Why is this “perfect neighborhood” not easily copied in other places?
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * “Who Can Afford America’s Perfect Neighborhood?” by Courtney Tenz, The Guardian (May 2023). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
A few weeks ago, the first Strong Towns National Gathering took place in Charlotte, NC. While people buzzed back and forth between sessions, Upzoned host Abby Kinney sat at a table and invited those walking by to join her on the podcast. This week, you’ll hear Strong Towns members from all over talking about who they are, what they’ve seen in their communities, and what they’re doing.
Also, it’s Member Week at Strong Towns, and podcasts like Upzoned wouldn’t be possible without our members! Join today to support the movement and the advocates who are making our places stronger and more financially resilient.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * Note: When trying to make our communities a better place, we look for the “smallest next thing” that can be done. Strong Towns is no exception: it’s how we function as an organization. We’re always taking the smallest next step and learning as we go, and sometimes, it’s not perfect. The audio recorded for this podcast is an example. We experienced a handful of technical glitches and as a result, the audio is low quality, and sometimes difficult to hear. Because of all the people who put work into this episode, we opted to still publish despite the technical issues throughout. We hope you enjoy listening to people on the ground. Next year, we’ll be better prepared to record audio on site! * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In Kansas City, Kansas, parking regulations have threatened to demolish a local coffee shop for a parking lot. An out-of-state developer is trying to meet the city’s strict parking requirements for a new apartment complex across the intersection, and the coffee shop owner, T.J. Roberts, is trying to save what’s become a special community hub.
On this Upzoned episode, host Abby Kinney talks with Roberts about his inspiration for building community, and his struggle to keep his coffee shop, Kinship Cafe, from getting torn down. Also on the show is Dennis Strait, a principal at architect firm Multistudio, to talk about why city builders should care about a coffee shop over convenient parking spaces.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “‘It’s heartbreaking.’ Why parking rules threaten one of KC area’s few Black coffee shops,” by Kevin Hardy, The Kansas City Star* (May 2023). * Urban3 Land Use Analysis on Kansas City. * Help Save Kinship Cafe (GoFundMe). * Kinship Cafe (Instagram). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Not everyone who left the office for remote work returned after the pandemic lockdown ended. Many employees stayed remote, and, in doing so, they left behind a swath of empty office buildings in downtowns across North America. Developers see these abandoned places as easy cash, that is, if you can find the right sort of abandoned office space. On this episode of Upzoned, urban developer Andrew Ganahl talks with host Abby Kinney about the challenges of this pattern of growth, but also the good that could come out of it.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “The developers who see dollar signs in abandoned downtowns,” by Alex Mayyasi, The Hustle* (April 2023). * Andrew Ganahl (Twitter). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Have you ever wondered why multifamily housing has the same, copied look in most places? Part of the reason is due to the way regulations require architects to build stairs. On this Upzoned podcast, host Abby Kinney talks with special guest and architect Kevin Klinkenberg about how building codes and zoning laws can be helpful, yet at the same time limit building possibilities.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Why Does American Multifamily Architecture Look so Banal? Here’s One Reason,” by Michael Eliason, The Architect’s Newspaper* (March 2023). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Kevin Klinkenberg (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Like all major cities in America, Seattle is facing a housing shortage. And 100 years ago, Seattle faced a housing shortage bigger than the one it has now. The initial response to the historic shortage was to build small, boxy, apartment buildings holding four to six apartments (called Cowboy Hotels) that blended in with the houses already established in the neighborhood. In this Upzoned episode, host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn talk about Cowboy Hotels and their financial possibilities.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Small Apartments From 100 Years ago Offer Townhome Alternative,” by Joshua McNichols, KUOW,* (March 2023). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Homelessness in rural areas can look different than in bigger cities: as noted in a recent article by The Daily Yonder, rural homelessness is more “hidden,” and is expressed through couch surfing, roommate arrangements, and housing insecurity versus seeing people without homes on the street.
What can we do to address the housing crisis in rural communities? Join host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn on the Upzoned podcast as they talk about this growing problem and possible solutions.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Tackling Rural America’s ‘Hidden’ Housing Crisis,” by Taylor Sisk and Jan Pytalski, The Daily Yonder* (March 2023). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
High-earning Americans are renting instead of buying homes. Some even say they plan to rent indefinitely. Why is that? In this week’s Upzoned episode, join host Abby Kinney and guest Norm Van Eeden Petersman as they talk about this trend.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Three Million U.S. Households Making Over $150,000 Are Still Renters,” by Will Parker, The Wall Street Journal* (March 2023). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (Twitter).
“What happens when old buildings have reached the end of their life, either their useful life in terms of safety or their desirable life in terms of modern living?” aNext City article asks. The piece goes on to say that when buildings throughout the U.S. get demolished, the once useful construction materials often end up in landfills. But there’s a growing movement to try and disassemble buildings carefully, and rescue building materials to be used in other projects. In today’s Upzoned episode, host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn talk about this growing movement.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “How A Deconstruction Company And Salvage Shop Are Keeping Building Materials Out Of Landfills,” by Cinnamon Janzer, Next City* (March, 2023). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter).
The 15 Minute City: a term to describe mixed use neighborhoods, has become a political concept where critics believe the idea could result in an infringement on personal freedoms.
On this Upzoned podcast, host Abby Kinney and special guest Kevin Klinkenberg, talk about this contentious topic of the 15 Minute City and answer the question: Are the concerns people have (about 15 minute cities) warranted, or is this something that we should all be rolling our eyes at and moving on from?
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES
“The 15 Minute City - Where Urban Planning Meets Conspiracy Theories,” by Chris Standford, The New York Times (March, 2023) “The Messy City Podcast” by Kevin Klinkenberg. Abby Kinney (Twitter)Kevin Klinkenberg (Twitter)Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom
It’s important to build safe and productive streets, but how do we ensure those streets are a place people want to be and live in? Whose responsibility is it to ensure that buildings interact with the public realm in a delightful way? Design is hugely impactful in our daily lives: it can determine if a place is somewhere for people, or if it’s unlivable and unusable. And design isn’t wholly up to the “eye of the beholder.” It’s possible to quantify beauty.
Today on the Upzoned podcast, join host Abby Kinney as she welcomes a special guest: Tristan Cleveland, Strong Towns member, urban planner at Happy City, and PhD candidate with Healthy Populations Institute. In this episode, Abby and Cleveland talk about his recent Planetizen article, “The Responsibility of the Building to the Street.”
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “The Responsibility of the Building to the Street,” by Tristan Cleveland, Planetizen* (February 2023). * Tristan Cleveland (Twitter). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Despite global advantages and new technologies, we are getting worse at construction. At least, that’s the case that Ezra Klein makes in his New York Times article, “The Story Construction Tells About America’s Economy Is Disturbing.”
Today on Upzoned, join host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn as they talk about this idea and add on to the conversation with an explanation on the difference between “complicated” and “complex.”
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “The Story Construction Tells About America’s Economy Is Disturbing,” by Ezra Klein, The New York Times* (February 2023). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Portland’s Cully neighborhood is about to embark on a big urban renewal experiment with the intention of maintaining that area's current affordability. Yes, you heard that right.
In the past, the term “urban renewal” was mainly associated with mid-20th century schemes that displaced residents by seizing and demolishing large swaths of neighborhoods in order to modernize them with highways, roads, and other infrastructure elements.
Now, Cully hopes to use similar tools for the better. Under what the city has labeled an “urban renewal” plan, it would borrow against future tax revenues to invest in programs and purchases that are intended to stabilize residents and businesses (versus tearing them down for pavement projects).
In this Upzoned episode, host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn talk about the reality of a top-down plan like this and how it can be dangerous for communities to think this way, even if they only intend to do good.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “NE Portland’s Cully neighborhood fights displacement, climate change with urban renewal. But will it work?” by Gosia Wozniacka, The Orgonian* (January 2023). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
The state of Missouri has a $6 billion budget surplus due to an increase in tax revenue and unspent federal aid. Governor Parson wants to use $859 million of it to expand I-70, the major transport route which connects Kansas City and St. Louis. This expansion would bulldoze through key areas in downtown St. Louis, areas west of downtown, and even the suburban areas of Columbia (which sits right near the middle of the interstate). Lots of people, even those unfamiliar with the Strong Towns perspective, think this expenditure proposal is a bad idea.
Today, join host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn on the Upzoned podcast as they discuss this story and potential avenues for better spending.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES* “Missouri Gov. Parson Wants $859M to Expand I-70. Here Are His Other Budget Priorities,” by Kacen Bayless and Jonathan Shorman, The Kansas City Star (January 2023). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
The U.S. is crying out, saying we NEED more carpenters, plumbers, and other people in skilled trades and technical industries—but the generation about to take over the workforce, Gen Z, doesn’t seem interested. As time presses forward, we’re continuing to see more open positions, and not enough people to fill them. This could impact not only agriculture, infrastructure, housing, and transportation, but everyone’s daily lives, in general.
The “shortage of workers” discourse tends to point a finger at Gen Z’s lack of work ethics, but in this episode of Upzoned, podcast host Abby Kiney and guest Daniel Herriges talk about variables that are often left out of the conversation.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “America needs carpenters and plumbers. Gen Z doesn't seem interested,” by Mary Yang, NPR* (January 2023). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In a recent Planetizen article titled, “Is Exclusionary Zoning a Good Thing?” author Michael Lewyn examines a theoretical argument presented by Judge Glock in the American Affairs Journal: that because people move to places that have zoning laws, zoning must be good. In this Upzoned episode, host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn unpack the zoning debate between these two authors and how zoning is truly impacting cities.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Is Exclusionary Zoning a Good Thing?” by Michael Lewyn, Planetizen (January 2023). * “Two Cheers for Zoning,” by Judge Glock, American Affairs* (Winter 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
It's been a great year here on Upzoned; thanks for listening. We wanted to close out 2022 with one last message, and to wish you Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!
An increasing risk of wildfires has made insurance carriers wary of certain areas in Colorado—according to a recent Denver Post article—raising their premiums and, in some cases, opting to not cover them, at all. In just the past few years, heavily forested areas of the state have been hit hard by wildfires. The Marshall Fire of December 2021, for instance, caused $2 billion in damages and has turned out to be the most expensive wildfire in the state's history.
Quite often, homeowners discover that they're underinsured when these things happen, meaning their insurance policies don't provide enough money to rebuild their homes once a fire occurs. In mountain communities like Aspen, Vail, Telluride, Steamboat Springs, and others, insurance companies are starting to pull out, altogether.
So, what are homeowners to do? Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn discuss the situation in today's episode of Upzoned.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Will insurance companies opt to leave Colorado?” by Noelle Phillips, The Denver Post* (November 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
It's #BlackFridayParking week at Strong Towns, which means we've got a special parking-related episode of the Upzoned podcast today. Host Abby Kinney, co-host Chuck Marohn, and special guest Edward Erfurt (director of community action at Strong Towns) come together to discuss three stories from three different cities—Burlington, Vermont; Nashville, Tennessee; and Cambridge, Massachusetts—all of which are taking big steps to eliminate parking minimums. And in some cases, the cities are even looking at establishing parking maximums!
Does it make sense for cities to have a blanket policy on parking, one way or the other? How can communities have these conversations about parking, especially when there are people—residents and developers alike—who argue and push back against parking reform?
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * “Burlington may eliminate parking minimums for builders city-wide. Here are the possible effects,” by Lilly St. Angelo,
Burlington Free Press (October 2022). * “Bill to Eliminate Minimum Parking Requirements to Go Before Council,” by Connor Daryani, Nashville Scene (November 2022). * “Cambridge eliminates minimum parking requirements,” by Kaushar Barejiya, The Massmedia (November 2022). * Learn more about #BlackFridayParking. * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
A recent VICE article shares the conclusions of a report published by an NYU research group. The research, led by Alon Levy, spans some 15 years and demonstrates the extent to which transit projects in the U.S. are inflated compared to other countries around the world—and what we can do about it.
For instance, the cost of constructing a subway in New York is double what it costs in Tokyo and 10 times what it costs in Paris. The research found New York to be the most expensive place to build transit in the world, and the lack of efficiency means we get less transit for more money, and we have a lot of public sector debt.
Why is this the case? Levy offers several reasons, which Abby and Chuck unpack in today's episode.
And by the way, it's Member Week at Strong Towns! We’re celebrating our members and everything that they do to make their communities stronger and more resilient. If you want to join this movement of a million local heroes, then do so by becoming a Strong Towns member today.
An army veteran who was homeless in Los Angeles got tired of having his tent cleared out by the city's sanitation teams...so he decided to build his own house. By working with the community, the man, who goes by "Q," gathered the materials necessary to build a tiny home, complete with a generator and potted plants.
Q earns money fixing electric scooters and wants to start his own business, stating that he hopes to be an example for others in his situation. Given that, what can we learn from Q's housing solution, and from others who are responding to the housing crisis in unique—yet logical—ways?
Find out on today's episode of Upzoned, featuring host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn!
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * “Homeless Los Angeles man builds wooden house on Hollywood Boulevard sidewalk: ‘Gives me empowerment’,” by Louis Casiano, New York Post (October 2022). * Learn more about our incremental housing campaign. * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
There's been much speculation on the internet lately—to the point of almost becoming a meme—about whether we are witnessing the great "Airbnbust." In other words, people are saying that short-term rentals are a bubble that is popping right before our eyes.
As reported in Market Watch, many short-term rental owners are voicing concerns on forums like Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook about their bookings plummeting over the past three to four months. In some cases, hosts say they were at 80% occupancy, but now find themselves all the way down to zero.
At this point, it's not completely clear what's happening or why it's happening, but host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn unravel what we do know on today's episode of Upzoned.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * “Airbnb hosts say bookings ‘fell off a cliff’ amid influx of new vacation rentals and rising prices,” by Levi Sumagaysay, Market Watch (October 2022). * Learn more about our incremental housing campaign. * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
During the winter of 2019, a tunnel for State Route 99 (SR 99) opened, running beneath downtown Seattle, Washington. It was a long-anticipated project with a price tag of $3.3 billion—with an accompanying tolling program to cover $20 million in construction debt and operating costs.
The tunnel was toll-free for the first nine months after opening, so that drivers would be enticed to change their routes. However, only a couple of months after the tolling began, so did the COVID-19 pandemic. This drastically changed traffic patterns, and even now in fall 2022, traffic patterns have not picked up to 2019 levels.
Consequently, the tunnel is now facing what some call a "financial crisis," even after imposing an urgent 15% toll rate increase to make up for 2020 losses. In all, SR 99 is estimated to have a $29 million deficit right now—which podcast host Abby Kinney and Strong Towns Editor-in-Chief Daniel Herriges explore on this week's episode of Upzoned.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * “Fewer drivers in Seattle’s Highway 99 tunnel could create need for bailout,” by Mike Lindblom, The Seattle Times (October 2022). * Learn more about our campaign to end highway expansion. * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Daniel Herriges (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Are there enough construction workers to build the housing we need in the U.S. and Canada? According to The Globe and Mail, the Ontario government has stated that the province will need 100,000 new construction workers and 1.5 million homes over the next decade.
However, a current shortage in skilled trades and labor means that the process of building homes now takes longer than before, and the situation has only been exacerbated since 2020, as many construction workers retired during the pandemic. As such, industry leaders are not optimistic about meeting forecasted housing needs, as there are just not enough new people to replace those who recently retired—along with those expected to retire in a looming retirement boom.
This is one of those acute problems that feels overwhelming to the point where you want to step back and say, "How the heck did we get here?" Tune in to today's episode of Upzoned to find out.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * “Are there enough construction workers to build the housing we need?” by John Lorinc, The Globe and Mail (October 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Norm Van Eeden Petersman (Twitter, LinkedIn). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
According to a recent article from TIME, a new law mandates that cities in California will no longer be able to impose parking minimums for housing, retail, or commercial development that sit within half a mile of major public transit stops. While this isn't a blanket elimination of parking minimums, is it at least a step in the right direction? And was it helpful or not for the law to be framed around climate concerns?
Today on Upzoned, Chuck Marohn is stepping in as host for Abby Kinney as he talks with Strong Towns Program Director Rachel Quednau about the impact of this state-wide reform, what it means for this decision to have been made at the state level rather than locally, the myriad benefits of eliminating parking minimums (beyond just being good for the climate), and more.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * “Americans' Addiction to Parking Lots Is Bad for the Climate. California Wants to End It,” by Ciara Nugent, Time (September 2022). * Learn more about our campaign to end parking mandates and subsidies. * View our map of cities that have removed parking minimums, created as a joint project with the Parking Reform Network. * “The Bottom-Up Revolution Is...Ending Parking Minimums and Seeing the Results,” hosted by Rachel Quednau, The Bottom-Up Revolution (June 2022). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
A recent article from The Wall Street Journal posits that “The U.S. Is Running Short of Land for Housing.” Land values in favorable locations are booming right now, and land owners across the country are, in some cases, making extremely high returns on their long-term holdings—so long as conditions enable their land to support development.
Such opportunities are, according to the article, very limited. The U.S. is filled with a lot of open space, and one might think that means we have plenty of space for housing. But in order to support housing, this author believes that land needs to be positioned in a few different ways.
So, what are the three major requirements, according to The Wall Street Journal, that enable development potential in any given plot of land—and what’s the Strong Towns take on this?
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * “The U.S. Is Running Short of Land for Housing,” by Konrad Putzier, The Wall Street Journal (September 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
If you’ve ever been to Kansas City or have any awareness about Kansas City, you may have heard it called the Paris of the Plains or the City of Fountains. A lot of people associate the city with its fountains, and it’s a big source of civic pride.
However, recently the Kansas City Parks and Recreation Department was forced to shut down its 48 fountains, citing unmanageable operating costs. This has left residents up in arms, claiming that the out-of-operation fountains are attracting vandalism and causing issues for their neighborhoods.
Unfortunately, though, Parks and Rec has its hands tied, since the city has gone over its water budget for the year and can’t afford to keep fountains running. Today on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and co-host Daniel Herriges analyze this story against another article, produced a few years ago by the Urban Land Institute, that discusses the issue of Kansas City’s park system, the history of its park system, the costs, and—particularly relevant to this story—the deferred maintenance issues.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * “KC Parks and Rec shuts down several fountains early due to high water bill,” by JuYeon Kim, KSHB Kansas City (September 2022). * “Parks and Boulevard System, Kansas City, Missouri: Providing a More Equitable Approach to Investing in Parks and Recreation,” Urban Land Institute (December 2019). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Daniel Herriges (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
How cool are e-bikes? How revolutionary will they be? During 2020 and 2021, e-bike sales surged 2.4 times over previous periods and essentially transitioned from a fringe product to an almost mainstream purchase in North America.
E-bike sales could be considered a huge win for micromobility and alternative transportation advocates, but don’t tell that to Ian Bogost, whose recent Atlantic piece paints e-bikes in a humor-laced take as an awkward, doomed-to-fail Frankenstein of the motorcycle and bicycle. In “The E-bike Is a Monstrosity,” Bogost derides e-bikes as unsafe, awkward to ride, and less cool than a motorcycle or a $5,000 road-racing bicycle.
Clearly, Bogost is examining e-bikes through a cultural lens, rather than one focused on transportation.
Today on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn discuss the e-bike’s potential to hasten a transition to more thickly settled places with slower-moving streets, allowing families to own one car and then supplementing it with other micromobiity options.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES * “The E-Bike Is a Monstrosity,” Ian Bogost, The Atlantic (August 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Chuck Marohn (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
More than 40,000 people walking and biking are killed on America’s roadway each year by system designs that value speed and throughput more than safety and cost.
Charles “Chuck” Marohn, Strong Towns founder and president, made the decision a decade ago to step outside the cloistered halls of the engineering profession to advocate for change in the way North American cities and infrastructure are designed.
For those following a recent decision by the Minnesota licensing board to censure Chuck, today’s Upzoned episode (hosted by Strong Towns Program Director Rachel Quednau, as Abby Kinney takes a well-deserved break) offers a reflection of how his decision to become an activist, as well as a professional engineer, has caused ripples and fissures throughout the industry.
Additional Show Notes * Learn more about Strong Towns’ fight for engineering reform. * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom. * Cover image source: Flickr.
More than 40,000 people walking and biking are killed on America’s roadway each year by system designs that value speed and throughput more than safety and cost.
Charles “Chuck” Marohn, Strong Towns founder and president, made the decision a decade ago to step outside the cloistered halls of the engineering profession to advocate for change in the way North American cities and infrastructure are designed.
For those following a recent decision by the Minnesota licensing board to censure Chuck, today’s Upzoned episode (hosted by Strong Towns Program Director Rachel Quednau, as Abby Kinney takes a well-deserved break) offers a reflection of how his decision to become an activist, as well as a professional engineer, has caused ripples and fissures throughout the industry.
Additional Show Notes * Learn more about Strong Towns’ fight for engineering reform. * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom. * Cover image source: Flickr.
America’s first experiment with charging a toll to enter a congested urban area is going to begin in New York City next year.
All next week, a public hearing battle over the details will rage between advocates for and against congestion pricing, which might cost as much as $23 per trip for a passenger vehicle and more than $100 per trip for a commercial vehicle.
New Yorkers enjoy the most well-used transit system in America, but it’s in need of billions of dollars’ worth of maintenance. Congestion pricing might raise $1 billion per year to start paying for it, but the impacts will be profound to almost 2 million people driving into Manhattan daily.
Congestion isn’t all bad. The average travel speed for a car in Manhattan has dropped into the single digits—about the same speed as a recreational runner, but these slower speeds reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries.
Can New York drivers commuting in from the outer boroughs afford to pay to get below 60th Street? How can New York City afford to keep allowing so much space for automobiles? Geometry, after all, is a key to this question.
Upzoned host Abby Kinney, an urban planner with Multistudio in Kansas City, takes on these questions (and more) raised in the Guardian article, “No Car for Me: Will a $23 Toll Finally Rid Manhattan of Gridlock?” Abby is joined by podcast guest Jay Stange, Content Manager for Strong Towns, who drove a car four (4!) times during a five-year Manhattan residence beginning in 2010.
Additional Show Notes * “No Car for Me: Will a $23 Toll Finally Rid Manhattan of Gridlock?” by Wilfred Chan, Guardian (Aug. 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Jay Stange (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
America’s first experiment with charging a toll to enter a congested urban area is going to begin in New York City next year.
All next week, a public hearing battle over the details will rage between advocates for and against congestion pricing, which might cost as much as $23 per trip for a passenger vehicle and more than $100 per trip for a commercial vehicle.
New Yorkers enjoy the most well-used transit system in America, but it’s in need of billions of dollars’ worth of maintenance. Congestion pricing might raise $1 billion per year to start paying for it, but the impacts will be profound to almost 2 million people driving into Manhattan daily.
Congestion isn’t all bad. The average travel speed for a car in Manhattan has dropped into the single digits—about the same speed as a recreational runner, but these slower speeds reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries.
Can New York drivers commuting in from the outer boroughs afford to pay to get below 60th Street? How can New York City afford to keep allowing so much space for automobiles? Geometry, after all, is a key to this question.
Upzoned host Abby Kinney, an urban planner with Multistudio in Kansas City, takes on these questions (and more) raised in the Guardian article, “No Car for Me: Will a $23 Toll Finally Rid Manhattan of Gridlock?” Abby is joined by podcast guest Jay Stange, Content Manager for Strong Towns, who drove a car four (4!) times during a five-year Manhattan residence beginning in 2010.
Additional Show Notes * “No Car for Me: Will a $23 Toll Finally Rid Manhattan of Gridlock?” by Wilfred Chan, Guardian (Aug. 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Jay Stange (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Several months ago, a tragic shooting took place in Buffalo, New York, that drew the nation’s attention. In the wake of that tragedy, C.J. Hughes has written an article in The New York Times about the city’s identity and its history and where it’s moving, going forward.
Buffalo has experienced de-industrialization and suburbanization—both causing the city decades of decline. And now, for the first time in 70 years, Buffalo is seeing a population increase and signs of economic recovery after WWII. Hughes attributes much of this recovery to a years-long effort to improve the city through strategic public and private partnerships.
Here today on Upzoned to talk about this story of progress and revitalization is Bernice Radle, a small-scale developer who has written and spoken for Strong Towns before about Buffalo. Radle joins Upzoned host Abby Kinney as they discuss the city’s recent evolution and growth.
Additional Show Notes * “Buffalo’s ‘Other Story’ Is Told in Redevelopment and Growth,” by C.J. Hughes, The New York Times (July 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Bernice Radle (website). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
In the mid-1990s, another oil boom was on in Calgary, Alberta, and it was literally possible to stand in the prairie and watch suburban development coming at you: bulldozers pushing out new roads, linemen installing power cable, and flatbeds full of stick lumber roiling the dust.
There’s no oil boom in the outlying desert of the Phoenix, Arizona, metro region, but there is a continuous growth push onto the fringes there, fueled by attractive winter weather, favorable tax rates for business developments creating jobs, and transplants escaping high housing prices in California. Maricopa County has been at the top of the annual population growth charts for many years.
At Strong Towns, we talk about financial challenges inherent in patterns of suburban development like those we’re seeing recently in Maricopa County. Developers take advantage of higher home sales prices supported by low interest rates to build out fringe development and leave future maintenance costs to local governments in an endless Growth Ponzi Scheme.
We are most interested in understanding the intersection between local finance and land use. How does the design of our places impact their financial success or failure? We’ve found that 20–25 years out from development, many municipalities struggle to maintain the infrastructure created in this pattern.
In the Rio Verde foothills outside Phoenix, unincorporated developments on the fringes are running up against another, more immediate, issue in their development pattern, one which isn’t taking 25 years to become obvious: They are out of water as the Colorado River continues to dry out in a generational drought.
A recent New Yorker piece by Rachel Morse called “The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs” points out the almost insurmountable issue facing families who are buying $600,000, 2,000-square-foot plus homes in the Rio Verde foothills and then finding it impossible to drill wells or have water delivered in trucks.
Those with water are worried those without will ruin it all by bringing county-level interventions or regulations, or even (gasp!) Home Owner Associations, into the mix. It’s currently a Wild West rural lifestyle full of stars, dirt roads, gorgeous desert landscapes, and quiet nights. But neighbors fighting neighbors over a diminishing water supply isn’t stopping suburban-style development, which continues unabated.
“Despite the ruptures within the community, the one thing that everyone seemed to agree on was that there was way too much development in the Rio Verde Foothills,” Morse writes in her New Yorker piece. Karen Nabity, a Rio Verde resident featured in the article, is well aware that last year Maricopa County added more residents than any other county in the country. “Well, yeah, it’s because they’re issuing building permits with no water,” Nabity tells Morse. “We are building way beyond our means.’”
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney of Multistudio in Kansas City is joined by Strong Towns Content Manager Jay Stange to discuss the water wars in Arizona. Both agree that rural lifestyles are attractive for many reasons, as long as people are truly independent. But what happens when the bill comes due for all that independence? Is it fair to ask county-level governments to step in to stop a water war?
Additional Show Notes * “Governor Ducey Signs Legislation to Secure Arizona’s Water Future,” Office of the Governor Doug Ducey (June 2022). * Listen to this show here, or check it out on YouTube! * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Jay Stange (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This week on Upzoned with Abby Kinney, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) makes her co-host, Strong Towns President Charles Marohn, almost want to start swearing.
For many years now, TxDOT has studied the feasibility of removing Interstate 345, which is a 1.7-mile segment of elevated highway that dissects downtown Dallas in Deep Ellum. Proposals to make the downtown stronger and more productive by creating a boulevard have been in the works for almost a decade, supported by prominent urban planners such as Patrick Kennedy.
Then last month, the agency released their official conclusion that removing the highway is unfeasible.
Instead, TxDOT now recommends tearing down the elevated freeway and rebuilding it in a 65-foot-deep trench that will contain 10 travel lanes and cost more than a billion dollars. An article by Matt Goodman in D Magazine outlines the agency’s proposal to bridge local streets over that trench to reconnect the neighborhoods, instead of creating a boulevard to distribute traffic and create neighborhood streets that build wealth in a people-centered design.
If this hybrid approach moves forward, it seems to send a pretty clear message that highway capacity and maintaining commute times are the central priority of the Dallas Metro, not reconnecting neighborhoods or improving the downtown neighborhood quality of life.
Urban planners Kennedy and Brandon Hancock first pitched the idea of tearing I-345 out, which would free up land the city could re-zone to create a mix of housing, office, and retail. The D Magazine article says TxDOT estimated in 2016 that removal would generate about $2.5 billion in new net value, a “significant increase in employment totals,” and an additional $67.4 million in property tax revenue over 30 years.
“This is the quintessential situation where a Strong Towns approach … says this is a corridor for building wealth and capacity in the community (with an) investment that would be lower cost, the payoff would be way higher,” Marohn says. “And that whole mindset is trumped by this delusion that we are going to try to move vehicles quickly. And that somehow the city of Dallas itself is going to benefit more from a marginal, theoretical increase in traffic counts, than it will from billions of dollars of private sector investments.”
So what happened? That’s where we almost lose our tempers here at Strong Towns. Find out more on this episode of Upzoned.
Additional Show Notes * “Dallas City Council Members Walk Back Promise to Remove I-345,” by Matt Goodman, D Magazine (June 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
A recent Governing article, “The Bad Things That Happen When States Tell Cities What to Do,” features an interview with University of Virginia law professor Richard Schragger on his book, City Power: Urban Governance in a Global Age.
One of the major things Schragger’s book argues against is state preemption—ad in general, Schragger is interested in re-articulating the appropriate constitutional relationship between cities and states. He’s also expressed skepticism about regionalism as a viable strategy for equalizing the resources between cities and suburbs.
So, Schragger’s view is that state and federal land use interventions are typically disastrous—citing urban renewal and the Mount Laurel doctrine as examples. His concern is that state preemption will be used to override local opposition in a way that promotes market-rate developers at the expense of low-income urban neighborhoods, and that local reform to zoning needs to be driven by affordable housing coalitions and activists at the local level.
State preemption is a controversial issue in the planning world, and one can’t make a blanket statement on whether it’s good or bad. Nevertheless, on today’s episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn talk about whether or not there is a Strong Towns stance on the subject of state preemption.
Additional Show Notes * “The Bad Things That Happen When States Tell Cities What to Do,” by Jake Blumgart, Governing (June 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
More than 75,000 kit homes in 400 different styles were ordered from Sears Roebuck and Co. and put together by the people who bought them a century ago. A new White House proposal aims to fill a need for affordable starter homes with a new generation of manufactured homes.
The Sears kit home has many examples still standing in good shape in Kansas City, where Upzoned Host Abby Kinney lives and works. Those homes arrived on railroad cars and were assembled by the homeowners, for the most part. They were somewhat more complex than the modern manufactured home, but the concept is similar.
Kinney and her guest, Strong Towns Senior Editor Daniel Herriges, talk over the possibility that manufactured homes might be a realistic approach to the problems encountered by people seeking affordable housing in 2022 and beyond.
The question is brought to the podcast this week by an article in Bloomberg’s CityLab called, “Factory-Built Homes Could Make a Comeback as Affordable Housing.”
“We just can’t continue to build the houses we grew up in,” says U.S. Housing Secretary Marcia L. Fudge in the CityLab piece. “These houses are more efficient, more resilient. But the other thing is, we need so much new housing. These can be built quickly, installed quickly. They are at a great cost point. And so it is a big part of the solution.”
A 450-square-foot manufactured home model can be purchased and assembled for $100,000, resulting in a mortgage payment below $1,000 per month, Kinney notes. But stigma surrounding whether they fit into a neighborhood, issues with financing, and zoning hurdles remain unaddressed.
But the potential to provide affordable, safe options in many overheated housing markets—perhaps even as accessory dwelling units—is undeniable, says Herriges. “How does this reshape the American landscape if it catches on big?”
Find out on this week’s episode of Upzoned.
Additional Show Notes * “Factory-Built Homes Could Make a Comeback as Affordable Housing,” by Kriston Capps, CityLab (June 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter). * Daniel Herriges (Twitter). * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
A quote from Batman, “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to become a villain,” echoes through a great discussion on this week’s Upzoned.
Host Abby Kinney brings “Twilight of the NIMBY,” a New York Times article by California-based housing and economics writer Connor Dougherty, to the table. Dougherty profiles retired teacher Susan Kirsch’s two-decade battle to stop 20 condos from being developed in her neighborhood in the Bay Area community of Mill Valley.
Kinney, a senior planner with Multistudio in Kansas City, was fascinated by this profile of Kirsch as a NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) American archetype, a suburban homeowner who runs a nonprofit that “pushes back against statewide housing policy measures intended to subvert local anti-development activism.”
In the profile, Kirsch is cast as a crusader for local control of development, working to protect her single-family home neighborhood from a condo development on an empty lot at the end of her street.
“She believes in slow growth as a perspective and it’s partly reinforced by a distrust in large institutions…(a) ‘small C’ conservatism that local government is better and more responsive to citizens than a bigger one that is further away,” Kinney says in her introduction. “So she represents one person in this longer movement, fighting development and campaigning for the right for local cities and suburban cities to have control over the built environment.”
Kinney’s guest, Strong Towns Senior Editor Daniel Herriges, recognizes the archetype Kirsch represents. Herriges is sympathetic to the idea that “neighbors who know the place best, who care about the place most…get the ultimate say in what happens around them.”
The problem, however, is that Kirsch and many in her generation who seek local control of housing policy are eating from two plates.
They are sitting atop a mountain of equity in their homes buoyed by a system of market supports in the form of government-backed mortgages and other state and federal development policies. Kirsch’s home, a modest, single-family residence she bought for $100,000 in 1979, is now valued at almost $2 million. A state law intended to give homeowners protection from property taxes rising alongside astronomical home values, Proposition 13, keeps the taxable value of Kirch’s home at $250,000.
Herriges says, “The reality is that this whole cohort of people have been incredible beneficiaries of large institutional forces…massive subsidies for suburban homebuilding in the post-WWII era of billions and billions of dollars of investment in the interstate highway system, in freeways that opened up huge swaths of suburban land to development.”
“We see it is unable to be replicated generation after generation, and so there's a whole bunch of younger people who would love to live Susan Kirsch's American dream, who can't dream of it. Middle-class, white-collar people in California who have given up on ever owning a home. That's the dissonance you have to reckon with.”
Kinney agrees, but points out it’s too easy to turn homeowners like Kirsch into villains, reducing people who are, in the end, our neighbors, into cartoon characters. Should we see NIMBYs as heroes or villains? Dig into this episode of Upzoned to hear how name-calling won’t win any arguments, and the nuances of housing policy don’t lend themselves to broad stereotypes.
Additional Show Notes * “Twilight of the NIMBY,” by Conor Dougherty, The New York Times (June 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Daniel Herriges (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
During the height of the pandemic, the nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve (aka The Fed), started a new round of bond purchases that swelled its portfolio of mortgage-backed securities to $2.7 trillion from $1.4 trillion it held in February 2020.
That created ultra-low mortgage rates which heavily stimulated home buying and refinancing activity in America.
To combat inflation, the Fed is now planning to let its holdings shrink as securities get paid off, writes Neil Irwin in his recent Axios post called “The Fed's $2.7 trillion mortgage problem.” The problem is that “[e]xtracting itself from this market risks crashing the housing industry and creating intense political blowback for incurring financial losses.”
Irwin writes that the Fed’s pandemic actions to loosen up capital unseized a market and fueled a housing boom, but the opposite reaction could lose U.S. taxpayers billions and be bad for housing.
Since housing is 15% of the U.S. economy, these decisions will have major implications.
Upzoned Host Abby Kinney asks her podcast guests, Strong Towns President Charles Marohn and Andrew Ganahl, an infill developer in Kansas City who used to work for the U.S. Treasury, to put it into perspective on this edition of the podcast.
Additional Show Notes * “The Fed's $2.7 trillion mortgage problem,” by Neil Irwin, Axios (May 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Uber has been providing cheap and convenient rides for the last decade, and has been knocking out transportation alternatives like Zipcar, taxis, and even public transit.
As noted in a recent article from Slate, though, Uber is notorious for burning through cash. The company has lost more than $30 billion since it became public in 2019, amounting to an enormous investor-fueled subsidy of America’s ride-hailing habit. In a memo released earlier this month, Uber’s CEO called the past decade an “unprecedented bull run,” and that this next period will be different and will require a different approach.
And consequentially, ridesharing will get much more expensive. In fact, both Uber and Lyft prices have already risen between 45 and 92%—and more recently, surcharges have been added to account for high gas prices.
So, does this mark the beginning of the end for Uber? Join Upzoned host Abby Kinney and her regular co-host Chuck Marohn as they “upzone” this topic—and talk about how it relates to the economy, as a whole.
Additional Show Notes * “The Decade of Cheap Rides Is Over,” by Henry Grabar, Slate (May 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
One hundred years ago, homes were primarily places for people to live, and weren’t considered as investments. Most Americans acquired wealth through income, and homes were only partially an investment consideration. For many reasons since the Great Depression, home ownership has begun to play a larger role than income in carrying generational wealth for Americans. “Housing has become (more of) a financial investment, not a place where you live,” Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn states in this latest episode of Upzoned. “And that changes everything about how we deal with housing.”
Those changes include the role of institutional investors, who have become a much more significant player in many housing markets.
Upzoned host Abby Kinney and Marohn, her regular guest, talk over an article about research done by the Rutgers Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity (CLiME). The study found corporate investors in Newark, New Jersey, now own nearly half of Newark’s residential property, the highest rate in the nation, researchers said.
Dig into the details of this discussion and hear an early notice about an upcoming Strong Towns book on housing on this week’s Upzoned.
Additional Show Notes * “Who Owns Newark? City Fights Back Against Corporate Home Buying Spree,” by Eric Kiefer, Patch (May 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney wades into a proposal for a new Philadelphia-based public bank, a financial institution being created to provide new loans with reduced cost of capital in marginalized neighborhoods. Along with co-host Charles Marohn, president and founder of Strong Towns, Abby examines the concept of public banks as presented in a podcast by the progressive non-profit media outlet, Next City.
Next City Executive Director Lucas Grindley and Senior Economics Correspondent Oscar Perry Abello ask whether the first public bank owned by a city can be a “systemic gamechanger for the racial wealth gap,” according to the group’s summary of the podcast. Derek Green, a Philadelphia city council member championing the city’s public bank, joins the Next City hosts to explain that loans to small businesses can be a source of jobs in economically stagnant “bank deserts.”
This could be a creative option if you're looking for creative financing solutions in your place and find that local Community Development Financial Insitutions (CDFIs) are too strapped to make loans. Nevertheless, it might make sense for public bank shareholders—aka local taxpayers—to be watchful.
Additional Show Notes * “The First City To Launch Its Own Bank,” hosted by Lucas Grindley and Oscar Perry Abello, Next City (May 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Are cars here to stay? This week on Upzoned, Host Abby Kinney leads a spirited discussion (joined by Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn and Strong Towns Board Member John Reuter) on just such a provocatively titled post written on the Persuasion Substack by Alex Trembath.
For Kinney and her guests, the summary or subtitle, “Real progress on climate change will require innovations that some on the left won’t like” was the poke in the ribs that got the conversation rolling and moods shifted.
Trembath writes that fossil fuel manufacturers and automakers are not responsible for the appetite Americans have for commuting to suburban developments. The author criticizes the urbanist and climate movements for not adequately reckoning with the enduring appeal of suburbs and car commutes.
What's the Strong Towns take on this issue? Find out in this episode of Upzoned!
Additional Show Notes * “Cars Are Here to Stay,” by Alex Trembath, Persuasion (April 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * John Reuter (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
The U.S. Department of Transportation was the administrative tool with which the Interstate Highway Act of 1956 was implemented, a massive public works program of a scope not seen since in the United States. It resembled the scale and transformative impact of the high-speed rail China built in the 21st century.
Now, the USDOT is rolling out a $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) over the next five years. Among its 539 amendments and 127 related bills is the law of the land for transportation funding for the next five years. Contained within are new requirements for equity in the way IIJA locates minority-owned contractors and conducts public hearings in underserved neighborhoods.
In their blog, Pedestrian Observations, Alon Levy takes issue with USDOT’s equity action plan. Levy’s April 15 essay, called “The Solution to Failed Process isn’t More Process,” says the plan “suffers from the same fundamental problem of American governance, especially at the federal level: everything is about process, nothing is about visible outcomes for the people who use public services.”
In this episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney points out that local knowledge and participation are critical to successful projects in her experience as an urban designer. But transportation budgets are more telling than rhetoric, Kinney argues.
Her co-host Charles Marohn of Strong Towns says in order to get $8 billion of equity funding, Congress had to pass a $1.2 trillion budget. That’s less than 1% for equity. IIJA funding for projects such as $1 billion dedicated to removing freeways built through poor neighborhoods of color in the 1960s (originally $20 billion) pale in comparison to the hundreds of billions which will be spent to expand the highway system in America in the next decade.
Since the Interstate Highway Act, massive DOT budgets and the highway projects they support have served to marginalize and pollute urban neighborhoods where poverty is concentrated. “Maybe we should just abolish the U.S. Department of Transportation?” Marohn asks.
Additional Show Notes * “The Solution to Failed Process isn’t More Process,” by Alon Levy, Pedestrian Observations (April 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
With the housing market still hot as a red poker despite an uptick in interest rates, Nolan Gray, in a recent article from Bloomberg’s CityLab, explores the idea of building brand-new cities (in the mode of 21st-century China or the Brasilia of the latter 20th century) to address the housing crisis. Alain Bertaud, a fellow at the Marron Institute for Urban Management and a former city planner at the World Bank, engages with Gray in this published interview to explain whether or not this is a realistic solution.
Host Abby Kinney and her co-host Charles Marohn of Strong Towns chew it over in this episode of Upzoned.
“Historically, infrastructure follows the market, not the other way around,” Kinney notes. “Huge public investments in infrastructure where there are no jobs are not really a very smart investment because the upfront costs of building an entire city's worth of infrastructure are so incredibly high. The public sector would have to be in a negative cash flow for a very long time.”
Marohn talks about places where this has actually been done, with the government fronting the money for infrastructure and subsidizing individuals through mortgages and commercial real estate loans. “They fail in every financial metric that is longer than the immediate sugar high you get out of the transaction,” he says.
There are interesting examples, as both hosts discuss, but it’s hard to beat an organically grown, incrementally developed city, where historic trial and error has made places that work. Where do you fall on this question?
Additional Show Notes * “The Problem With Building a New City From Scratch,” by Nolan Gray, CityLab (April 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
Should states and counties push back against local governments to crack open more options for housing? Will that be counterproductive? How much do multiyear litigation strategies by “Neighborhood Defenders” affect new housing production in tight markets?
A recent post in the DCist blog written by Ally Schweitzer got a lot of traffic from the housing, transportation and urbanist communities, who debated this nuanced question. A zoning battle ten years ago in the affluent Maryland suburb of Silver Spring was so contentious it’s still hot as a coal today and provides the infrastructure for this debate.
“Fights like this play out every day in cities and suburbs across the country, “ Schweitzer wrote. “But in the D.C. region, where local governments are struggling to address a severe housing shortage that is driving up prices, elected officials are under growing pressure to push back against civically engaged homeowners who mobilize against new housing construction. Montgomery County, an affluent D.C. suburb that has experienced transformative growth and demographic change in the last 30 years, exemplifies how hard that can be.”
Jenny Schuetz, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who examines the national housing shortage in her book Fixer-Upper: How to Repair America’s Broken Housing Systems, told Schweitzer: “We have this system where local governments are the gatekeepers for new housing production…local governments, in turn, have outsourced a lot of their authority to existing residents, so existing homeowners in particular have essentially veto power over proposals to build new housing.”
Upzoned host Abby Kinney and her guest, Strong Towns Content Manager Jay Stange, discuss how to respect local neighborhood’s choices about where and how new housing options should be considered in tight markets. Top down solutions rarely work, but change has to be greater than zero or communities will stagnate.
The cost of gas has been rising rapidly for the past couple of months, and a recent VICE article reminds us that this is something that has happened before. The author, Aaron Gordon, posits that this happens once every decade or so, and Americans panic over it, but never commit to any kind of change that would impact the fundamental dynamics that make this such a problem, to begin with.
Today on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and regular co-host Chuck Marohn “upzone” this story, discussing how these crises and our responses to them highlight the fragility of our transportation system and built environment. And why it needs to change.
Additional Show Notes * “‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ Is America’s Only Idea,” by Aaron Gordon, VICE (March 2022). * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.
As many people know, homelessness has grown at an alarming rate in recent years and pursuing solutions is becoming a major challenge for cities across the country. There doesn’t seem to be a one-size-fits-all approach and much of the work is left to local municipalities or nonprofit organizations—even activist groups and charitable organizations. This means that approaches vary from city to city, and so does the rate of success and actual outcomes.
Much has been published on the issue over the last couple of weeks specifically looking at Los Angeles and how, according to an audit, the city spends as much as $837,000 per unit for housing homeless people—an approach that has raised a lot of criticism. Moreover, homelessness has actually decreased in other parts of the L.A. metropolitan area, such as in Pasadena and Glendale.
That’s making people wonder what part of L.A.’s approach isn’t working, and a recent article from the L.A. Times has suggested that maybe the city should be taking its cues from another massive Sunbelt city: Houston, Texas. Today on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and special guest Rachel Quednau “upzone” this proposal, analyzing it through the Strong Towns lens.
Additional Show Notes * “Op-Ed: What can Houston teach Los Angeles about solving homelessness?” by Marshall Ingwerson, Los Angeles Times (January 2022). * Check out The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel, which features stories of the Strong Towns movement in action! * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, pedestrian fatalities have grown to record levels. In 2020, they were up roughly 5% from the previous year, and pedestrian deaths per vehicle miles traveled was up 21% in that same year. Preliminary data from 2021 suggests that this trend is only continuing.
Originally, experts believed that the opposite would happen: they asserted that pedestrian deaths were going to decrease due to reduced driving during lockdown and stay-at-home orders, and increased numbers of people working from home. Instead the emptier roads are permitting people to drive faster, so the official narrative has pivoted to blame accidents on increased anxiety levels, increased alcohol consumption, and the general fraying of social norms.
This narrative was repeated recently in The New York Times, in a piece titled “Pedestrian Deaths Spike in U.S. as Reckless Driving Surges.” So, today on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and cohost Chuck Marohn take this piece and “upzone” it, analyzing it through the Strong Towns lens. Here’s a hint: The problem has a lot less to do with driver error and a lot more to do with bad street design.
Additional Show Notes * “Pedestrian Deaths Spike in U.S. as Reckless Driving Surges,” by Simon Romero, New York Times (February 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom
“Would you take free land in rural America?” asks a recent article in The Hustle. Because, as it turns out, small towns in Kansas are basically giving away free land and ultra-cheap houses.
Of course, land and housing are commodities that have become the center of many of our debates in expensive cities across the country, and even beyond. As such, small towns in rural Kansas are experiencing a small real-estate boom of their own, as price-conscious urban dwellers seek out different opportunities and lifestyle options outside of the city.
Because these small towns have lost so much of their tax base over the years, and are struggling to pay for basic public services, they’re doing whatever they can to welcome these urban newcomers. Today on Upzoned, Abby Kinney is joined by special guests Jay Stange, Content Manager at Strong Towns, and Kevin Klinkenberg, Executive Director of Midtown KC Now. They “upzone” this story, examining it through the Strong Towns lens and asking each other: (1) What does this mean for the future of small towns, and (2) would you take free land in rural America?
Additional Show Notes * “Would you take free land in rural America?” by Mark Dent, The Hustle (January 2022). * Midtown KC Now website * Kevin Klinkenberg (Twitter) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Jay Stange (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom
After her marriage of 17 years ended, Holly Harper, a consultant and entrepreneur in Washington, DC, rented a one-bedroom apartment for herself and her daughter. Harper wanted to own a home again (it was a priority for her financial stability) but she was a self-employed, single parent in an expensive city. What to do?
In two recent articles in Insider, Harper tells the story of how she became “a post-divorce homeowner” through cohousing. Harper now lives with two other single moms, and their five children, in a multi-unit home in Washington. Harper estimates that she saved $30,000 last year by cohousing. “The financial, social, and emotional benefits have been life-changing,” she writes. “Not only do I get to save money every month, but I get to live beyond my means by pooling our extra belongings and using them when needed.”
This week’s Upzoned looks at cohousing and the essential role it can play—should play—in a city’s housing strategy, and how it can make homeownership a reality for more people. Host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, is joined this week by guest co-host John Pattison, the community builder for Strong Towns.
Abby and John talk about where cohousing fits in the housing ecosystem, and the ways in which towns and cities make it easier or harder for people to pursue. John also talks about his own family’s experience with cohousing—or something very like cohousing—and the financial and social benefits it has brought them.
Then in the Downzone, Abby talks about her upcoming trip to the CNU gathering in Oklahoma City, and John recommends a recent National Geographic article about why the restoration of Notre Dame cathedral begs the question: “Restore to what?”
A reminder: Nominations for the Strongest Town contest are due by Sunday, February 20. Want to highlight the progress your town or city is making toward becoming stronger and more resilient? Nominate your community today!
Additional Show Notes * “I bought a house with another single mom to share costs and maintenance. Now we have a kid paradise, with built-in babysitting, car-sharing, and a craft studio,” by Holly Harper, Insider (January 2022) * “I'm a single mom who shares a house with other single moms. Cohousing saved me $30,000 last year,” by Holly Harper, Insider (January 2022) * Sharing Housing, Inc. * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * John Pattison (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom
Following WWII, many corporations fled from city centers to settle down in the suburbs alongside homeowners. Now, though, it seems that some large companies are pivoting their real-estate models toward building more compact, mixed-use centers, rather than the typical single-user suburban office park for their corporate campuses.
A recent New York Times article by Keith Schneider describes this as the “urbanization of the suburban experience.” It points to several examples, such as Capital One’s 24-acre campus in Tysons, Virginia; Walmart’s soon-to-be 350-acre headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas; JPMorgan Chase’s regional headquarters in Plano, Texas; and Microsoft’s future 90-acre regional headquarters on the western edge of Atlanta.
Many of these examples have some kind of public-interfacing, mixed-use, residential component to them—a merging of both the modern models for corporate campuses and retail, mixed-use centers as a way of dually anchoring the development project. But is this approach a net positive or a net negative when it comes to suburban development? Find out today as host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn “upzone” this story, unpacking and analyzing it through the Strong Towns lens.
Additional Show Notes * “After Urban Flight, Corporate Campuses Add a Taste of the City,” by Keith Schneider, New York Times (January 2022). * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom
In September of 2020, an article was featured on Upzoned titled, “They Know How to Prevent Megafires. Why Won’t Anybody Listen?” It discussed the frustrations that people working on the ground in forest fire management felt, knowing that the fires were being caused by decades of overzealous fire oppression and the lack of controlled burning efforts. They knew that the situation was only going to get worse—and sure enough, nowadays California is having to take a reactive approach to the situation, rather than a proactive one.
Today, host Abby Kinney and Strong Towns Senior Editor Daniel Herriges follow up on this story, looking at the current situation in California. They discuss a new article from POLITICO that highlights a different approach to the problem: discouraging development in hazardous areas from the get go. This is happening primarily because insurance companies are starting to recognize that they cannot continue to insure properties in high-risk areas.
Is this the right answer? It’s certainly a very controversial move, and some argue that we can’t afford to raise insurance rates during a housing crisis. Join Abby and Daniel as they “upzone” this controversy, analyzing it through the Strong Towns lens and exploring why it is that seemingly “nothing will deter people from moving into some of the most disaster-prone corners of the United States.”
Additional Show Notes * “California continues to face wildfire risks. Insurers think they have an answer,” by Debra Kahn, POLITICO California (December 2021) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Daniel Herriges (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom
Today on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and regular co-host Chuck Marohn are joined by a special guest: Shomari Benton, the co-founder of Benton Lloyd & Chung (a law firm in Kansas City, Missouri, that specializes in land use and real estate). He is also an avid urbanist, historic preservation advocate, and small-scale developer.
Together, they discuss an article from The Atlantic by Nolan Gray, titled “Stop Fetishizing Old Homes.” Gray takes a rather spicy approach to talking about historic preservation, and how it has ultimately harmed the capacity for many cities across the U.S. to develop a sufficient number of housing units in a housing crisis.
He argues that the fetishization of old homes has encouraged our society to weaponize preservation in a self-righteous pursuit that clouds the more important need of building more housing. According to the author, we need to start getting serious about new construction, as opposed to preserving old housing—which he compares to poorly maintained, unsafe junker cars being forced back into service after their intended lifespan.
What’s the Strong Towns take on this conversation? Find out as Abby, Chuck, and Shomari “upzone” it!
Additional Show Notes * “Stop Fetishizing Old Homes,” by M. Nolan Gray, The Atlantic (January 2022) * Shomari Benton (Twitter) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom
Upzoned is back after a short hiatus for the winter break! To kick off 2022, Abby Kinney and regular cohost Chuck Marohn are looking at an article from Bloomberg, titled “U.S. Housing Crisis Only Gets Worse as Population Shrinks.”
While this may seem contradictory, a smaller population does not necessarily result in more affordable housing for those looking for it. The author, Conor Sen, argues that people don’t want to live in places that are shrinking, and there will be even less housing demand in metro areas that were stagnant before the pandemic.
Sen’s suggestion? When thinking about housing dynamics, we should start framing the U.S. as “384 metro areas (plus 50 million Americans who don't live in places big enough to qualify as a metro area) rather than one continuous country.” He argues this could help us understand where in the U.S. we might see continued decline or growth in population, and that national population stagnation could mean that housing affordability issues will worsen over time as people leave declining metro areas.
Abby and Chuck “upzone” this notion of population growth driving the prosperity of cities, analyzing it through the Strong Towns lens—starting with the underlying premise that drives this article’s thesis, in the first place.
Additional Show Notes * “U.S. Housing Crisis Only Gets Worse as Population Shrinks,” by Conor Sen, Bloomberg (December 2021) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom
$75 billion of support for at-risk renters and homeowners was distributed during the COVID pandemic to prevent evictions and foreclosures. Such a level of funding was spurred under the context that our country is facing an unprecedented and unpredictable emergency situation that is requiring disaster relief—but what about when the pandemic ends?
Should we consider reutilizing the systems that have been set up during COVID to distribute federal aid, to alleviate the pressures of the housing market? That’s what host Abby Kinney and regular co-host Chuck Marohn discuss on this week’s episode of Upzoned, where they address this “wickedest of wicked problems” through the Strong Towns lens.
Additional Show Notes
- “America’s Housing Crisis Is a Disaster. Let’s Treat It Like One,” by Gregory Heller, Governing (November 2021)
- Abby Kinney (Twitter)
- Charles Marohn (Twitter)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom
The moment everyone has been waiting for has finally arrived: The $1 trillion infrastructure bill is being signed into law. The bill will deliver $550 billion in new federal investments over the next five years, and includes $110 billion in new spending for highways, bridges, and roads. It also includes $105 billion for transit and rail investments, $65 billion for broadband upgrades, and a whole lot more—everything from investments in airports and ports to environmental remediation.
As one might imagine, the original aspirations of the bill from the perspective of a lot of people were not necessarily met, as the legislation required a consensus from all ends of the political compass. According to a recent article from The New York Times, critics of the bill are not only concerned with the particulars of what is funded, but also how the funding will be administered.
The decision for how half the money is spent falls on the states, meaning that states that are not aligned with what the federal government envisions for infrastructure spending (particularly with regard to racial equity) could neglect projects that would remediate the negative impacts of past infrastructure decisions, and potentially invest in projects that make matters worse.
This week on Upzoned, regular host Abby Kinney and special guest Strong Towns Board Member John Reuter take this article from The New York Times and “upzone” it. That is, they examine it through the Strong Towns lens—which was already plenty skeptical of the infrastructure bill to begin with, as our readers and listeners know!
Additional Show Notes
- “Racial Equity in Infrastructure, a U.S. Goal, Is Left to States,” by Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Madeleine Ngo, The New York Times (November 2021)
- Abby Kinney (Twitter)
- John Reuter (Twitter)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom
You may have noticed that bike lane projects tend to draw ire from neighborhood residents, but once they’re actually in place, residents realize they like their community when it’s more people centered and less car centered. Moreover, they tend to vote to reelect local leaders who implemented the bike projects in the first place.
A recent article from The Guardian examines this pattern in different international cities, where new bike infrastructure is first created, and, subsequently, the local leader (usually a mayor) who led the project gets reelected. This, in spite of the backlash (or, if you like, “bikelash”) that such bike projects get in angry tweets and article headlines.
The reasons behind this phenomenon are the subject of this week’s episode of Upzoned—hosted by special guests Strong Towns Program Director Rachel Quednau (who also hosts The Bottom-Up Revolution) and Strong Towns Board Member John Reuter.
By the way, it’s also Member Week at Strong Towns, and podcasts like Upzoned wouldn’t be possible without the support of our members! So join today to support the movement and help get this message out to more people who, like you, believe in making our places stronger and more financially resilient.
Additional Show Notes
- “The bikelash paradox: how cycle lanes enrage some but win votes,” by Janette Sadik-Khan and Seth Solomonow, The Guardian (October 2021)
- Check out The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel, which features stories of the Strong Towns movement in action!
- John Reuter (Twitter)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom
- Cover image source: Unsplash.
For the past couple of years, the website Zillow has expanded their business model into the home speculation and flipping game. The “Zillow Offers” program offers cash for homes, followed up by Zillow going in and implementing home renovations—and the company planned to do this with thousands of homes in 2021.
Yet now, two months before the year has even ended, Zillow announced that not only would it no longer be buying homes, but it also needs to offload thousands of the homes it did buy —and not to homeowners and landlords, but to institutional investors. Additionally, the company will be laying off 25% of its workforce, and estimates that it’ll lose over half a billion dollars.
Why? That’s the question on today’s episode of Upzoned: Using a recent article from The Verge as a springboard for discussion, host Abby Kinney and regular co-host Chuck Marohn discuss the possible reasons why Zillow has had to reverse course on its foray into the home-flipping business.
Additional Show Notes
- “Zillow reportedly needs to sell 7,000 houses after it bought too many,” by Mitchell Clark, The Verge (November 2021)
- Check out this 2019 episode of Upzoned that covered Zillow’s decision to start getting into the home-flipping business.
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Abby Kinney (Twitter)
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Charles Marohn (Twitter)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom
It’s no secret here at Strong Towns that the many places that urbanists consider to be the most enduring and timeless and wonderful—from small towns to big cities—were the result of incremental development. In other words, they weren’t the result of careful planning, but rather of a decentralized process with ad hoc adaptation over time.
Rooted in the creation of these places were ecosystems of tradespeople, laborers, lenders, and small-scale developers. The latter, in particular, are the focus of Strong Towns Senior Editor Daniel Herriges’s recent series, Unleash the Swarm: Reviving Small-Scale Development in America’s Cities.
In this week’s special episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney talks with Daniel about incremental development, and what work still needs to be done in order to truly build up a “swarm” of small-scale developers across North America.
Additional Show Notes * Read part one of Unleash the Swarm here, and sign up here to get a copy of the e-book for the series when it becomes available! * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Daniel Herriges (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Cover image via Unsplash.
Question: As the demand for office and retail space shrinks (especially with changing workplace habits, the rise of online retailing, and issues with the global supply chain), and demand for residential and warehousing space (think Amazon fulfillment centers) grows, are our zoning codes prepared to adapt to rapidly changing consumer needs?
A recent article from Market Urbanism Report, by author Scott Beyer, says no, and that the way we regulate property primarily by land use has caused major mismatches between what is allowed and what consumers actually want. To address this, Beyer offers two suggestions. First, that cities should become more adaptable by updating their zoning codes to focus on demand for more residential and warehousing space. Second, that we should eventually consider an approach to zoning that leans away from regulating by use, altogether.
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and regular co-host Chuck Marohn “upzone” this article, and how it ties in to the larger market urbanism conversation—and what parts of it do and don’t jive with a Strong Towns approach to zoning reform.
Additional Show Notes
- “Modern Zoning Is Incompatible With Modern Needs,” by Scott Beyer, Market Urbanism Report (September 2021)
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Abby Kinney (Twitter)
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Charles Marohn (Twitter)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
From ports to warehousing to trucking to railway systems, the supply chain is clogged across the board, and it's causing all kinds of ripple effects on a global scale. It’s just one of the many consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, recently dubbed the “great supply chain disruption” by Peter S. Goodman in The New York Times.
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and regular co-host Chuck Marohn “upzone” Goodman’s article, discussing how what was once expected to be a temporary phenomenon (an unintended consequence of the pandemic lockdowns) is increasingly being viewed as a new reality, one which could require a substantial refashioning of the world shipping infrastructure.
Additional Show Notes
- “‘It’s Not Sustainable’: What America’s Port Crisis Looks Like Up Close,“ by Peter S. Goodman, The New York Times (October 2021)
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Abby Kinney (Twitter)
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Charles Marohn (Twitter)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
Millions of people around the globe are soon going to feel the impact of soaring natural gas prices—or so says an article recently published in Bloomberg Businessweek titled, “Europe’s Energy Crisis is Coming for the Rest of the World, Too.”
European governments have been warning their citizens of blackouts, factories are being forced to shut down, and other sources of energy, such as wind turbines, have not been producing enough output to pick up the slack. Gas is becoming more necessary and more expensive, especially in climates where gas is relied on to heat homes during the winter. And the crisis is spreading beyond Europe.
This week on Upzoned, regular host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn “upzone” the rising costs of gas—i.e., they look at it through the Strong Towns lens. They discuss how the underlying story here is the fragility of these large, complex, interconnected systems, and how it impacts us all at the local level.
Then, in the downzone, Chuck needs a vacation from his vacation and Abby is getting ready to welcome a special guest to Kansas City (hint: it’s Chuck).
Additional Show Notes
- “Europe’s Energy Crisis Is Coming for the Rest of the World, Too,“ by Stephen Stapczynski, Bloomberg Businessweek (September 2021)
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Abby Kinney (Twitter)
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Charles Marohn (Twitter)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
- Cover image via Flickr
In a recent press conference, John Sherman, the primary owner of the Kansas City Royals, was asked if the team was exploring the possibility of building a new stadium in downtown Kansas City. This is something that’s been talked about in Kansas City for years, and it’s a question Sherman gets asked often. It made news this time because Sherman publicly acknowledged that, yes, the team was exploring that option (among others) and that he anticipated some level of public funding would be needed.
In this episode of Upzoned, we’re talking about the potentials and pitfalls of a downtown stadium and how much (if any) of it should be paid for by Kansas City taxpayers. Regular host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn are both out for the week. Subbing in for them are Rachel Quednau, program director at Strong Towns and host of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, as well as John Pattison, the Strong Towns content manager…and lifelong Kansas City Royals fan.
Rachel and John evaluate the case for building a new stadium in Kansas City’s downtown, its risks and rewards, and why the clock is ticking for the Royals on whether or not to pursue this. They also discuss whether or not the economic rationale for public funding—more jobs, more tax revenue, etc.—is likely to live up to the hype.
Then in the downzone, John describes a book that has him taking photographs of his pencil sharpener (the promised pictures are below), and Rachel recommends this weekly digest from her Strong Towns colleagues.
Additional Show Notes * “Royals exploring downtown ballpark options,” by Anne Rogers * “Should Kansas City Taxpayers Foot the Bill for a New Downtown Stadium?” by John Pattison * “Conventional Thinking: Stop Pinning all Your City’s Hopes on Big Projects and Events,” by Rachel Quednau * “The Trickle of the Fire Hose,” by Daniel Herriges * John Pattison (Instagram) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
The Colorado Department of Transportation recently drafted a new rule that would require state and local governments to measure and potentially offset greenhouse gas emission impacts of transportation projects.
In this scheme, local government entities would have preset greenhouse gas emission budgets, and would be required to offset emissions if they exceed those budgets when implementing transportation projects. That could take the form of transit services, bicycle infrastructure, zoning decisions that enable density, et cetera. If these public entities do not meet requirements and don't offset emissions, then the state may restrict their use of certain funds. (Note that this is literally the wording of the legislation itself: "certain funds." It doesn't specify which funds.)
This, of course, all comes as CDOT is slated to receive billions of dollars of new funding from the state and the federal government. The intent of the new rule, then, would be to shift conditions that are currently enabling status quo infrastructure investment that would continue to spread Colorado's development pattern out farther and farther.
This week on Upzoned, Abby and Chuck take a look at an article from Colorado Public Radio that tackles this subject and they "upzone" it—i.e., they look at it through the Strong Towns lens. They talk about what does and doesn't work with the top-down, bureaucratic approach this legislation is taking to address our development and climate issues.
Then, in the downzone, Chuck is following up on old characters, and Abby's gearing up for a fun trip.
Additional Show Notes
- “A Proposed Rule Would Target Colorado’s Polluting Road Projects,“ by Nathaniel Minor, Colorado Public Radio (August, 2021).
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Abby Kinney (Twitter)
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Charles Marohn (Twitter)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
This week on Upzoned, we're shaking things up with something a little different: To celebrate the launch of the newest book in the Strong Towns series, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town, host Abby Kinney is interviewing Strong Towns President and author of the book, Chuck Marohn.
In particular, they discuss the fifth chapter of Confessions, which is all about great streets. So many cities bear remnants of formerly great streets—streets that were originally designed to be wealth generators, supporting public space and public activity. Those streets have since degraded in favor of allowing the free flow of cars, to move people in and out of cities as quickly as possible. Undoing this degradation is going to be a vital task for this generation, and generations to follow.
So, have a listen as Abby and Chuck discuss the insights Confessions provides about streets as platforms for building wealth, strategies for planning streets (including the use of a street design team), and more! Then afterward in the downzone, Chuck and Abby are both brushing up on their history, though Chuck's readings place him on the other side of the world, whereas Abby's studies situate her a little closer to home.
And if you're interested in reading more of Confessions of a Recovering Engineer, order it today at wherever books are sold!
Additional Show Notes * Abby Kinney (Twitter)
- Charles Marohn (Twitter)
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn is back on the Upzoned podcast after returning from a family vacation to Italy that included visits to Rome and Venice, among other classic sites. Part of the impetus for the trip, Chuck tells host Abby Kinney, was his desire to show his teenage daughters some of the things that make the traditional development pattern (still the default in many European towns and cities) so superior to the suburban development pattern that holds sway in North America.
By coincidence—kind of—the article Chuck and Abby discuss on this week’s episode of the podcast is about the converse: the experience of a European newly transplanted in America. Guillaume Rischard moved to New York City barely a month ago. As a former member of the Luxembourg city’s mobility commission, Rischard writes in Streetsblog, “I have…spent a lot of time looking at how infrastructure moves New Yorkers around.” There are things about New York Rischard wishes more European cities would emulate. But Rischard is kind of shocked by other aspects of the transportation system. Like how much capacity is reserved for moving car traffic…in a city where 80% of the people don’t own cars. Or why street parking is so inexpensive. Or why biking in the city is dangerous, which means the people on bikes aren’t families—as in Europe—but “young daredevil men like me.”
Abby and Chuck talk about why the common cultural knowledge about how to build great places endures in Europe but is fading here. They discuss the importance of making places for people vs. making places for automobiles. (This is a major theme of Chuck’s new book, out next week.) They also talk about how seeing one’s own place—whether you’re in Europe or North America—through the eyes of outsiders can help you see what’s working, what’s not, and how it can be fixed.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck describes a kayak tour that showed his family parts of Venice that even many Venetians may not have seen. And Abby weighs whether it’s finally time to read the Harry Potter series.
Additional Show Notes * “Seeing New York Through European Eyes Reveals Our Flaws,” by Guillaume Rischard * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Not Just Bikes (YouTube) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Cover image via Unsplash
Our modern, conventional city-building approach for both infill and greenfield development is overwhelmingly geared toward a broad-scale master planning approach, where a single developer or developer group takes control of a large area to implement their plans.
Such developers are not only in charge of constructing buildings, but also investing in all of the infrastructure, laying out streets, etcetera, etcetera.
A recent article, titled “Against Master Developers,” argues that this all-at-once, large-scale development doesn’t offer the environment in which resilient economic ecosystems emerge, and that the lack of risk distribution among the developers and public entities is inherently fragile. Clearly, it’s a take that’s relevant to the Strong Towns approach, which often contrasts this type of development pattern with traditional, incremental development.
So, this week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and special guest Daniel Herriges, Senior Editor of Strong Towns, “upzone” this article—i.e., they look at it through the Strong Town lens. They parse out the development process and all the components involved in developing a site, in general. They also discuss some of the nuance around how we define the terms “master developer” and “master planner,” and how that relates to the specific usage of these terms, in this article.
Then, in the downzone, Daniel took some time off of work to bring his daughter back to his old stomping grounds, and Abby is getting ready for next month’s Parking Day festival.
Additional Show Notes * “Against Master Developers,“ by Matthew Robare, The American Conservative (August 2021). * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Daniel Herriges (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Cover image via Flickr.
Have you heard of Walla Walla? It's a city of 32,000 located in the southeastern region of Washington state, in the Walla Walla valley. Given that it's a fairly secluded place (the closest big cities, Portland and Seattle, are four or more hours away), we wouldn't blame you if it hasn't turned up on your radar.
You should definitely be paying attention to Walla Walla, though, because starting in 2018, it's been quietly adapting zoning changes that have eliminated single-family-only zones.
These changes were prompted by the recognition that the city is growing, but it is unable to grow outward. Walla Walla acknowledged that it must reinvest in itself. So, after a two-year process, the city consolidated its neighborhood zoning districts into one, and reformed the regulations to allow a broad spectrum of neighborhood-friendly uses. The site and development standards have been radically simplified.
On this week's episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and special guest Strong Towns Board Member John Reuter "upzoned" this story—i.e., they look at it through the Strong Towns lens. They discuss why single-family zoning is ultimately unhelpful for the evolution of communities, and look at Walla Walla as a case study for possible alternatives to single-family zoning.
Then, in the downzone, John has been reading about the toll of racism, and Abby just got back from a hiking trip.
Additional Show Notes * “Walla Walla: A Washington City Without Single-Family-Only Zoning,” by Stephen Fesler, The Urbanist (July 2021). * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * John Reuter (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
The U.S. Senate has been in the final hours of debating a 2,700-plus-page infrastructure bill. The bill is part of a compromise between Senate Democrats and Republicans, and has thus been subject to heavy negotiations.
One of the things put forth by the administration into the original American Jobs Plan was the idea of a “Reconnecting Communities Act,” which would use $20 billion to undo some of the damage that had been done to urban neighborhoods (and particularly minority neighborhoods) in the early days of highway building. However, that figure of $20 billion has now been brought down to $1 billion.
In other words, out of a $1 trillion bill, a token amount of money has been dedicated to the Reconnecting Communities initiative. Naturally, people are disappointed.
This week on Upzoned, regular host Abby Kinney is out on vacation, so Chuck Marohn takes up the mantle of host and invites Strong Towns Board Member John Reuter on to “upzone” this story about the Reconnecting Communities Act—i.e., they discuss it through the Strong Towns lens. They talk about how advocates are pushing back on the Senate’s decision, and the disillusionment people are feeling over what has been promised by the infrastructure bill versus what’s being delivered.
Then, in the downzone, John has been obsessed with a parody of old school musicals, and Chuck has been reading a real page-turner about microbes invading the sun.
Additional Show Notes * “Cut in infrastructure money for communities hurt by highways disappoints advocates,” by Phil McCausland, NBC News (August 2021) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * John Reuter (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Cover image via Flickr.
"Seattle Black Faith Leaders Urge Mayor Durkan Not to Sign Amended Density Bonus Bill," says a recent article from The Urbanist. Since the passage of HB 1377 around 18 months ago, black churches in the city anticipated being able to use their valuable land by providing affordable housing for their communities, as the bill would grant density bonuses to them in exchange for doing so.
However, this initiative has been threatened by a recent decision made by the Seattle city council to introduce a last-minute amendment to the bill. Initial research found that turning churches into housing units would be feasible with income requirements at the 80% area median income level (AMI) but unviable at the 60% AMI threshold. Well…this is precisely what the amendment to HB 1377 does: it shifts the income requirement from the 80% AMI threshold to 60% AMI.
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney is joined by Strong Towns Program Director Rachel Quednau as they "upzone" this story—i.e., they look at it through the Strong Towns lens. They examine how city leaders in Seattle have essentially shut out minority religious institutions from utilizing this piece of legislation, and why other churches around the country need to pay attention to this story.
Then, in the downzone, Rachel predicts a tomato downpour, and Abby does battle with snakes and spiders.
Additional Show Notes * “Seattle Black Faith Leaders Urge Mayor Durkan Not to Sign Amended Density Bonus Bill,” by Natalie Bicknell, The Urbanist (July 2021) * Check out The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel, which features stories of the Strong Towns movement in action! * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
A long-established principle of environmental economics holds that the traditional development pattern provides the kind of efficiency needed to decrease resource use on a per capita and a per acre basis. The traditional urban development pattern makes multimodal transportation options work, because not every trip requires an individual to use a car. It also takes pressure off of the surrounding natural areas that are central for keeping our environment healthy.
However, a recent article from CBC Canada argues that COVID-19 has shifted consumer interests from cities back to suburbs. Data shows that in many large cities, people are moving out of dense urban areas due to the pandemic. This is creating new market pressure that is expected to add momentum to the suburban sprawl trend.
Consequently, some Canadian researchers are advocating that we shift climate change focus from cities to suburbia, saying that the reality is that Canada and the U.S. will continue to trend towards sprawl after the pandemic—and that the only pragmatic solution would be to develop policy to mitigate the worst impacts of suburban and ex-urban sprawl.
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and regular cohost Chuck Marohn "upzone" this story—i.e., they look at it through the Strong Towns lens. They discuss the article's position that we should give up on trying to set up an urban development pattern, and instead should just try to mitigate the growth of suburbia.
Then, in the downzone, Chuck has been reading about generational theory, and Abby has been getting out on (though not in) the water.
Additional Show Notes * “Climate change focus moves to the suburbs as cities continue to sprawl,“ by Don Pittis, CBC News Canada (July 2021) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Cover image via Flickr
As we all know, following World War II, many individuals who had once lived in cities left urban centers to move into newly created suburbs. Retailers and servicers naturally followed their market. This left empty downtown cores with prominent buildings, the uses of which had to evolve over time if they were to survive and remain standing.
This transition bred the urban monoculture of downtown office districts, supported by highways and seas of parking lots. According to CoStar data, in some downtowns 70–80% of all real estate is now dedicated to office space.
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and regular cohost Chuck Marohn look at an article from The New York Times titled “The Downtown Office District Was Vulnerable. Even Before COVID.“ They “upzone” it—i.e., they look at it through the Strong Towns lens. They talk about how office-heavy, monoculture downtowns are inherently less sustainable, and how this was the case long before COVID. However, the pandemic has led to shifts in how we think about the future of office work, which in turn has created a heightened uncertainty about what a downtown should be.
Then, in the downzone, Chuck takes a fresh look at—or rather, a fresh listen to—a book he’s read and admittedly mischaracterized before. Meanwhile, Abby attended a wedding in a town close to where she grew up, but which she had never fully appreciated.
Additional Show Notes * “The Downtown Office District Was Vulnerable. Even Before COVID,“ by Emily Badger and Quoctrung Bui, The New York Times (July 2021) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Cover image via WikiCommons
Editor’s Note: This podcast was recorded on July 9, and therefore does not reflect any updates that have since come out on the Surfside condominium story.
In the middle of the night on June 24, a building in Surfside, Florida, collapsed, destroying 55 of the complex’s 136 units. At least 50 people are known to have died in the collapse, and over 100 people are still unaccounted for.
This tragic event will most likely turn out to be the deadliest building accident in United States history; our hearts go out to the families of those who have been injured, killed, or who remain missing.
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and Strong Towns Senior Editor Daniel Herriges discuss the larger problem that the disaster in Surfside points to: the fact that the American condominium experiment began 60 years ago, and many condos are now reaching the end of their first maintenance life cycle. The hard truth is that condo owner associations are often not adequately prepared for the cost of this maintenance, especially when it gets deferred for several decades.
The situation is laid out in a recent Slate article: “Condos Are in Uncharted Territory.” Abby and Daniel “upzone” this piece—i.e., they look at it through the Strong Towns lens, to see how condo boards can be viewed as American local governance, in a nutshell.
Then, in the downzone, Daniel is reading about how people band together in the face of disaster, and Abby has discovered a nice little urban oasis.
Additional Show Notes * “Condos Are in Uncharted Territory,“ by Henry Grabar, Slate (July 2021) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
Last year, Strong Towns published a twelve-part series on Kansas City’s fateful suburban experiment. Drawing on a detailed survey of the city’s fiscal geography, conducted by Urban3, we explored the history of Kansas City and the financial ramifications of its development pattern. (The series was made possible by the generous support of the Enid & Crosby Kemper Foundation. It culminated in a free e-book, available here.)
As part of that series, Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn wrote an article entitled “The Local Case for Reparations.” In it, Chuck described Kansas City’s history of redlining, a practice that emerged in the Great Depression ostensibly to identify which neighborhoods were deemed too risky for the federal government to insure mortgages, but which in practice led to generations of neglect and disinvestment along racial and economic lines. The legacy of these policies include decades of chronic poverty in once-redlined neighborhoods. But the opportunity costs have affected everyone. For example, it’s estimated that one ½-sq. mile neighborhood could have generated over $30 million in tax dollars for Kansas City since 1937. Now multiply those opportunity costs across many such neighborhoods, and it’s clear that redlining squandered an enormous amount of prosperity for the region.
In that same article, Chuck proposed a local approach to reparations, a way of putting wealth back into the hands of people who live in redlined neighborhoods. Two things must happen, he wrote. “First, the neighborhood must experience investment, an inflow of capital that stays within the neighborhood. Second, that capital must be allowed to accrue to the people who are already there; it can’t result in their displacement.” Moreover, the tools for such development—zoning changes, grants, and tax increment financing—already exist.
Last month, KCUR, a local NPR affiliate, reported that Quinton Lucas, the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, was one of 11 founding members of MORE (Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equity). And according to KCUR, some of the concepts being discussed by these city leaders are similar to the ones Strong Towns proposed for Kansas City last summer.
In this episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and regular cohost Chuck Marohn discuss how, when it comes to reparations, mayors are turning their good intentions into action. Abby and Chuck talk about why redlining was a “self-inflicted” wound for Kansas City, why it’s important that local communities lead the charge for reparations, and how cities can take tools that usually hurt cities (like tax increment financing) and use them for good by scaling them down to the neighborhood level.
Then in the downzone, Abby talks about a fun new bike ride in Kansas City, as well as an iconic ‘80s movie she just saw for the time. And Chuck gives an update on his boat...or should we say BOAT?
Additional Show Notes * “Mayor Lucas Signs On To Test A Reparations Program For Black Kansas Citians,” by Chris Haxel * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Strong Towns content related to this episode:
+ “The Local Case for Reparations,” by Charles Marohn
+ Strong Towns Kansas City Series
+ “Mayors Leading the Push for Reparations Programs,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “Why Cities Shouldn’t Wait for the Feds to Do Something about Reparations” (Podcast)
+ “A Preview of Bi-Partisan Compromise on Infrastructure (Sorry, It's Not Good),” by Charles Marohn
Last month, the I-40 bridge connecting Memphis, Tennessee, to West Memphis, Arkansas, was closed unexpectedly after a large crack was discovered in one of the bridge's steel support beams. The closure has resulted in 40,000 vehicles being rerouted every day, turning a 10-minute drive across state lines into a three-hour slog through traffic. Unsurprisingly, the region's economic recovery has taken a hit as millions are being lost to the disrupted local and national supply chains.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal, titled "One Failed Bridge in Memphis Is Costing Business Millions," covers this disquieting story. Across the United States, 45,000 bridges are in poor condition and 42% of bridges are at least 50 years old. I-40 is not just a Memphis problem; it's a national infrastructure crisis that will get worse and worse as more bridges begin to fail.
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and regular co-host Chuck Marohn "upzone" this looming crisis—i.e., they examine it through the Strong Towns lens. They discuss the implications of national and regional infrastructure failures, and why people need to become more interested in maintaining and effectively managing our aging infrastructure.
Then, in the downzone, Chuck talks about the recent staff retreat that he hosted in Brainerd, Minnesota, for the Strong Towns team. Meanwhile, Abby is reading a rather positive book about global trends and world history.
Additional Show Notes * “One Failed Bridge in Memphis Is Costing Business Millions,” by Scott Calvert, The Wall Street Journal (June 2021) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Cover image via Unsplash
The federal government has proposed $20 billion in infrastructure spending to be allocated toward targeted freeway removal, a concept that has become fairly mainstream as more people are becoming aware of what's been lost to 60 years of freeway expansion. Not only has freeway expansion reinforced segregation, but the costs associated with urban freeways make them an unproductive liability that undermines the social and economic health of everything around them. So, they need to go, right?
Maybe, but a recent article from VICE posits the argument that "Tearing Down Highways Won’t Fix American Cities." It points out that freeway removal alone will not solve many of the problems that American cities face, and rather than asking whether or not freeways should be removed, what we really should be concerned with is what to do with the land once that infrastructure is gone. If we don't start addressing this question, then many of the top-down mechanisms that segregated cities in the first place could just end up being reinforced.
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and co-host Chuck Marohn "upzone" these questions—i.e., they look at them through the Strong Towns lens. They discuss some historical points behind freeway expansion and what happens next after freeway removal, when the time comes to decide how that freed-up land should be utilized.
Then, in the downzone, Chuck has been listening to some Hardcore History, and Abby is reading a book that was recommended by Strong Towns.
Additional Show Notes * “Tearing Down Highways Won’t Fix American Cities,” by Aaron Gordon, VICE (June 2021) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
Companies like Tesla have been very effective in creating a perception amongst the public that the self-driving car industry is heading a positive direction. But in reality, will cars ever be able to fully drive themselves?
Missy Cummings, director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory at Duke University, thinks not. In an interview pointedly titled “Self-driving cars might never be able to drive themselves,” she makes the argument that there are problems with the so-called “deep learning” that is requisite to support fully autonomous vehicles. What often appear to be self-driving cars are actually being monitored by a team of humans—and at that point, the driver may as well just be operating the vehicle themselves.
And at the end of the day, do we actually need self-driving cars? Are they a solution looking for a problem—or perhaps the wrong solution for problems (traffic deaths, traffic congestion, etc.) that could be solved in better, easier ways?
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and regular cohost Chuck Marohn “upzone” the conversation about self-driving cars; i.e., they examine it through the Strong Towns lens. They discuss whether or not such technology could truly address all of the sticky fiscal and socioeconomic implications that have been derived from building a world for cars. Moreover, has our fixation on automated vehicles sidelined, or even stifled, conversations about other solutions that could more immediately improve people’s lives?
Then, in the downzone, Chuck’s daughter has presented her own solution for our faulty transportation system, and Abby got to attend a local hot air balloon event.
Additional Show Notes * “Self-driving cars might never be able to drive themselves,” hosted by Molly Wood, Marketplace Tech (May 2021) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Cover image via Unsplash
"Minnesota Threatens to Fine This Engineer for Calling Himself an Engineer," says the headline of a recent article from Reason. Who's the engineer in question? None other than Strong Towns founder and president, Chuck Marohn.
The article covers the recent lawsuit that Strong Towns has filed against the Minnesota Board of Engineering Licensure in federal court. Our announcement last week about the case has sparked multiple discussions around the internet about freedom of speech and the right (or, rather, lack of right) of professional associations to silence their critics.
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney is joined by Chuck as they "upzone" this discussion—i.e., they look at it through the Strong Towns lens. They talk about the lawsuit, the engineering profession, public trust, and Chuck's thoughts on having to take this step in defense of the guaranteed right that all Americans have to advocate for change, free from harassment by government agencies and industry insiders.
Then in the downzone, Chuck took some time to unwind this weekend by indulging in fiction-reading and baseball, and Abby has been testing out her new bike.
Additional Show Notes * “Minnesota Threatens To Fine This Engineer for Calling Himself an Engineer,” by Christian Britschgi, Reason (May 2021) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
Back in the sixties, writers like Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs recognized that parking lots are dead spaces that destroy the spirit of a city. Fast-forward 60 years later and we have yet to resolve the issue, as driving has become required for many living situations and most cities in the United States.
In theory, personal vehicles have revolutionized transportation by increasing mobility and enabling autonomy. In practice, however, the promise of autonomy and mobility are only truly fulfilled if your car has a place to store itself. Consequently, the development of parking lots and structures is now systematic within zoning and development codes. In other words, the cost of driving has been brought down, but in doing so, we’ve driven the cost of development up.
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney is joined by special guest John Reuter, a former councilman and columnist of Sandpoint, Idaho, and bipartisan strategist and board member for Strong Towns. Together, they "upzone" a recent article from The Atlantic—i.e. they look at it through the Strong Towns lens. The article, entitled "How Parking Destroys Cities" (formerly, “How Parking Drives Up Housing Prices”), examines how the cost of auto-centric development is ultimately passed on to tenants and consumers, regardless of whether or not they themselves actually drive.
Then in the downzone, John has been learning about how the brains of octopi can teach us a lot about our own. Meanwhile, Abby has been watching a series on Netflix that has got her thinking about the benefits of short-form storytelling.
Additional Show Notes * "How Parking Destroys Cities," by Michael Manville, The Atlantic (May 2021) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
According to a recent article from Orlando Weekly, "Orlando is a car-reliant hellscape," but its new director of transportation, Tanya Wilder, intends to change that.
Central Florida is famous for its tourism industry, but it's also one of the fastest-growing regions in the United States, and has subsequently seen a growing demand for better multimodal infrastructure and more walkable development patterns. For Wilder, this means thinking more regionally about transportation, while also taking more targeted approaches to managing investments, including outside of city limits.
Here at Strong Towns, we love talking about Disney World, but on today's episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn focus instead on "upzoning" Wilder’s approach to regionalism—i.e., they look at it through the Strong Towns lens. They also discuss how did such an auto-oriented "hellscape" came about in Florida, and in other places in the U.S., particularly in southern regions. And, well, it can't be helped: there has to be some discussion about Disney World, too.
Then in the downzone, Chuck has been doing yard projects while thinking about how humans deal with "end of the world" scenarios, and Abby has been listening to interviews with a Gonzo journalist.
Additional Show Notes * "Orlando is a car-reliant hellscape. Tanya Wilder hopes to fix it," by Ken Storey, Orlando Weekly (April 2021) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
Is America on the path to experiencing a small-town revival? A recent article by James Kunstler posits that, especially in the wake of COVID-19, we have entered into "an era of stark economic contraction that will change the terms of daily life in America." One major such change would be that our living arrangements will shift from focusing around big cities and suburbs back to small towns.
We live in a society where the tendency is to scale up more and more; we’re going from the Walmart economy to the Amazon economy, which is likely a larger scale than we ever envisioned, and this would seem to be the total opposite of Kunstler’s thesis. How would his suggested “scaling down” happen, and would it be a rapid change or something that will follow the Amazon age—or is it perhaps something that will happen as a part of the Amazon age?
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney is joined by Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn as they "upzone" these questions—i.e., they look at them through the Strong Towns lens. They dive into the reasons why Kunstler suggests we might be facing an economic collapse (not quite as an apocalyptic event as the word “collapse” might imply), and they discuss the allure of small towns, especially in regards to quality of life.
Then in the downzone, Chuck shares some exciting extraterrestrial news, and Abby is starting a thriving seed collection.
COVID has had a major impact on how we live, but what about where we live? A recent Bloomberg article shows that migrations of people during the pandemic (specifically, March 2020–February 2021) accelerated a trend that was already in motion beforehand. Namely, that "[d]ense core counties of major U.S. metro areas saw a net decrease in flow into the city, while other suburbs and some smaller cities saw net gains."
In other words, people are moving outward from cities.
Why is this the case? It's largely due to the shift to remote work for many "professional," affluent people who can afford to make the move. Where workers choose to position their living situations (and their tax bases) has huge implications for how cities function and thrive. Those that have focused too heavily on being centers of employment, rather than habitation, may struggle as people shift to remote work and choose to live elsewhere.
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney is joined by Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn as they "upzone" this subject—i.e., they look at it through the Strong Towns lens. They discuss what this "urban shuffle" means, considering that, from Strong Towns perspective, suburbs are less fiscally sustainable than urban centers. Will these migrations therefore lead to further insolvency for our cities?
Then in the downzone, Chuck's reading about pre-Colombian civilizations, and Abby's prepping for an exam that's coming up in November.
Shopping malls are dying off left and right with the rise of ecommerce. Consequently, mall owners wanting to get out of the retail game are starting to sell their buildings to Amazon, whereupon they are converted to fulfillment centers. For critics of Amazon, this shark-like snapping up of competition is a source of concern.
But could it, perhaps, also be viewed as a stepping-stone (even if not a pleasant one) on the path to fighting the influence of big box stores? Could Amazon actually be helping local economies, in the long run?
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney is joined by Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn as they "upzone" a recent article from Archinect—i.e., they look at it through the Strong Towns lens. The article in question, written by Katherine Guimapang, is titled "Amazon is buying up dead malls—adaptive reuse, or just eating its prey?" It covers Amazon's conversion of 25 abandoned malls into fulfillment centers from 2016 to 2019, which Abby and Chuck dive deeper into as they discuss the implications of this expansion for local economies.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck is reading a book that he's not sure actually merits recommendation. Abby is in the market for a new bike, which steers the discussion towards biking trails and…real estate?
When people go to a wedding, it's implicitly understood that the bride should wear the fanciest dress, and everyone else's outfits should act as compliments to it. But what if guests started showing up wearing Lady Gaga's meat suit, in an effort to compete with the bride for attention? One could say that's what's happened with our cities: rather than having a focal point (say, a church or theater in the center of town) with surrounding buildings acting as compliments to it, the modern movement in architecture has produced a sort of "hyper-individualism" in building styles. And it's not always easy on the eyes.
However, in a time of extreme housing scarcity and out-of-control rents, are aesthetics something we should even care about right now? Or indeed, should we eschew them on the principle that they drive the prices of housing further upward?
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney is joined by Chuck Marohn and special guest Kevin Klinkenberg as they "upzone" a recent article from Slate—i.e., they look at it through the Strong Towns lens. Titled “'Good Design' Is Making Bad Cities, but It Doesn’t Have To," the article searches for "a third way in the battle between aesthetics and affordability." Abby Kinney is an urban planner in Kansas City, Chuck is the founder and president of Strong Towns (and the regular cohost of Upzoned), and Kevin Klinkenberg is an urban designer, writer, and the executive director of Midtown KC Now. Together they discuss the natural human desire to make our habitations beautiful, and how we've ended up with systems governing our architecture that don't make anyone happy. They also brainstorm ideas on how we can begin addressing the issue.
Then in the Downzone, Kevin talks about his immersion over the past year in WWII-era stories. Chuck finally finished watching a highly popular show, and Abby is just starting to read a highly popular book. Speaking of books, Chuck's newest one, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town, is coming out on September 8, 2021! Find out how to preorder it here, and get involved with the accompanying Confessions Book Tour.
Who actually owns the house that’s been sold down your street? There’s a good chance it’s someone who has no plans to ever live there. A recent article from The Wall Street Journal outlines how nowadays, one in five homes are bought not by prospective residents, but by large-scale institutional investors looking for single-family homes to flip. In bulk.
Housing is both a pillar of the economy and something that’s marketed as an investment vehicle, and because of that, we have a policy apparatus that’s designed to continuously drive the price of housing up—without letting it fall. It’s become less about housing and more about real estate. Of course Wall Street wants to get in on that game, and unfortunately, it’s a game that normal people don’t stand a chance of competing in.
So at the end of the day, what is housing really about? Supply and demand? Providing homes for people? For families? Is it about the American dream?
Maybe the truth is that it's about capital flow, and always has been.
Every week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and Chuck Marohn, the president of Strong Towns, take one story from the news and they “upzone” it—they look at it through the Strong Towns lens. This week, Abby and Chuck are joined by Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges as they talk about how the housing market has become dominated by investors. They explore how this dynamic informs the Strong Towns perception of the housing market (and specifically, what’s wrong with the housing market), and what it means for America when a growing number of its homes aren’t actually owned by residents.
Then in the Downzone, Daniel talks about the “classics” he’s reading, while Chuck rhapsodizes about the start of baseball season. Abby, meanwhile, is heading off to the woods soon for mushroom-hunting, and the show devolves (or evolves?) into a hack version of National Geographic.
In an increasingly divided Washington, D.C., there has been one point on which Republicans and Democrats have been able to agree: that the path to prosperity for America will be paved—literally, paved—by spending trillions of dollars on infrastructure.
This consensus is so unquestioned—and even unquestionable—that we at Strong Towns have said for years that it amounts to a kind of “Infrastructure Cult.” As Chuck Marohn wrote in the Strong Towns book, the “collective belief in the power of infrastructure spending is now so deeply embedded within our society that we struggle to identify it as belief, let alone systematically question it. We take it as truth, unequivocally.”
Late last month, President Joe Biden released his $2 trillion infrastructure plan. Yet instead of Republicans and Democrats coming together to pass infrastructure legislation posthaste, the president’s plan has been controversial. Wait, what happened? Is this the end of the Infrastructure Cult?
Michael Grunwald, writing in Politico, says that infrastructure has become “the ultimate partisan battleground.” The problem, he says, is that “Democrats and Republicans now have very different ideas of what counts as infrastructure...” The traditional infrastructure projects Biden prioritizes take a fix-it-first approach rather than building new highways. There are many billions of dollars in non-traditional infrastructure projects too, including clean energy research, medical research, subsidies for electric vehicles, energy-efficiency upgrades for homes and schools, and more. Critics are also concerned the plan prioritizes cities over rural areas. Grunwald writes:
But in our shirts-and-skins political culture where how you vote has become so intricately connected to where you live, infrastructure has really become a fight over how Americans will live in the future. New highways help connect hollowed-out rural areas to the global economy and encourage migration to Republican exurbs. The Biden plan would make cities more attractive by investing in their competitiveness and connectedness.
In this week’s episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and Chuck Marohn, the president of Strong Towns, talk about President Biden’s infrastructure plan and Grunwald’s Politico article in particular. They discuss the traditional and non-traditional interpretations of “infrastructure” in the plan and how it may be perceived differently in rural and suburban and urban areas. They talk about how the plan will be paid for (does it require “magical math”?), why infrastructure should bring a return on investment, and whether Grunwald is right when he claims that vibrant cities “create Democrats.”
Then in the Downzone, Chuck recommends a book he reads every year before Easter. And Abby talks about an animated movie she watched half of with a toddler…and couldn’t wait to finish on her own later.
One final note: Late Night with Strong Towns, our free members-only event, is tomorrow night. If you’re not a member, this would be a great time to become one!
Additional Show Notes: * “Biden's plan is pocked with potholes,” by Michael Grunwald * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Strong Towns content related to this episode
+ “Revisiting the ASCE Infrastructure Cult,” by Charles Marohn
+ “A Better Use of Federal Infrastructure Spending (Podcast)
+ “#NoNewRoads Gains Traction in D.C.”
+ “Joseph Kane: Prioritizing People (Not Projects) In Infrastructure Spending” (Podcast)
+ “The Worst Possible Thing We Can Do With This Money” (Podcast)
+ “What Can We Hope For from a Mayor Pete D.O.T.?” (Podcast)
In a recent article in The American Conservative, Jordan McGillis, a policy analyst specializing in energy, climate, and urbanism, describes how politicians are doubling down on cars...but this time on cars “with a different energy system under the hood.”
As an example, he points to a recent bill introduced by Rep. Peter Welch, a Vermont congressman who sits on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. According to Rep. Welch, the Electric CARS Act encourages people to buy electric vehicles (EVs)—which he calls “next generation transportation”—as “a key step...to bring down our global emissions and combat the current climate emergency.”
McGillis begs to differ: not only are many of the green benefits of widespread EV adoption debatable or negligible, they “neglect the deeper problem,” the perpetuation of car-centric culture. “Getting to the heart of the issue,” he writes, “a car is a car, even if it’s electric.” He goes on to say that instead of subsidizing new cars, we would be better served by redirecting our energies and resources toward improving development patterns so that cars don’t have to be so central to our lives in the first place.
Every week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and Chuck Marohn, the president of Strong Towns, take one story from the news and they “upzone” it—they look at it through the Strong Towns lens. This week, Abby and Chuck are talking about McGillis’s article, “The Electric Slide: Car Culture Captures Climate Policy.” They talk about McGillis’s claim that EVs really are “the climate idol of the unimaginative” (one of several memorable phrases from the piece). They discuss whether pushing the purchase of electric cars distracts from the underlying issues of the suburban development pattern, whether or not Strong Towns is “anti-car,” and why building cities around cars—even electric ones—is “antiquated.”
Then in the Downzone, Chuck talks more about the audiobook he’s listening to on the story of human language. And Abby talks about watching her favorite film for the hundredth time—a movie Chuck has yet to see once.
Also in this episode you’ll hear more about a fun upcoming event for Strong Towns members: Late Night with Strong Towns. If you’re already a member, we hope to see you there! If you’re not yet a member, this is the perfect time.
Additional Show Notes
- “The Electric Slide: Car Culture Captures Climate Policy,” by Jordan McGillis
- Abby Kinney (Twitter)
- Charles Marohn (Twitter)
- Daniel Herriges (Twitter)
- Gould Evans Studio for City Design
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
- Strong Towns content related to this episode
- “Will Electric Vehicles Save the World, or Make Our Cities Weaker?” (Podcast)
- “The Negative Consequences of Car Dependency,” by Andrew Price
- “5 Reasons America Needs Walkable Neighborhoods,” by Rachel Quednau
- “How Zoning Codes Reinforce Car Dependency,” by Antonio Graña
- “We need more car-optional neighborhoods. Here’s how to get started,” by Quint Studer
Are you a Strong Towns member? If so, don’t miss the announcement inside the podcast for a fun, free event with games, a live recording of Upzoned, and, apparently, chocolate milk and Diet Mountain Dew.
Last May, we devoted an episode of the Upzoned podcast to talk about the decision of Sidewalk Labs (a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet) to pull out of Toronto’s Quayside development. The project, first announced in 2017, had intended to transform 12 acres of industrial land on Toronto’s waterfront into a “high-tech utopia,” complete with “mass timber housing, heated and illuminated sidewalks, public Wi-Fi, and, of course, a host of cameras and other sensors to monitor traffic and street life.” The project was controversial from the start—not least because of privacy concerns. Then last spring the CEO of Sidewalk Labs announced the company was no longer pursuing the Quayside project due to “unprecedented economic uncertainty.”
Earlier this month, the City of Toronto released a new RFP for the 12-acre site. The new vision is not for a neighborhood reimagined “from the internet up”, but rather, according to a recent article in The Guardian, a “people-centred vision” in which “affordability, sustainability and environmentally friendly design are prioritized over the trappings of new and often untested technologies.”
Upzoned host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and regular co-host Chuck Marohn, the president of Strong Towns, return to talk about Toronto’s new plans for Quayside. How “people-centered” is the new vision? In fact, how different is the vision, really? The wooden skyscrapers and heated sidewalks may be gone, but what remains—the underlying chassis—appears the same: building all at once and to a finished state. Abby and Chuck talk about why Toronto seems stuck in the big planning mindset and what happens when mega-projects get new marketing brochures. They also discuss a truly people-centered approach: a city shaped by many hands, and projects that can be adapted, re-used, and are good for more than just one thing.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck talks about an audiobook he’s listening to on the story of human language. And Abby recommends the podcast miniseries Nice White Parents.
Additional Show Notes: * “Toronto swaps Google-backed, not-so-smart city plans for people-centred vision,” by Leyland Cecco * “Smart Cities: "Are we creating solutions looking for problems?" (Podcast) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Daniel Herriges (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Strong Towns content related to this episode
+ “A City Shaped by Many Hands,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “In Defense of Dumb Cities,” by Michael McGinn
+ “Inefficient but Smart,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “Failure Is an Option,” by John Pattison
+ “Unleash the Swarm,” by Daniel Herriges
New York City is at a crossroads.
So say Carlo Ratti and Saskia Sassen in a recent Bloomberg CityLab article, “The Case for a Duty to the City.” Many wealthy residents are fleeing New York City for the suburbs. Perhaps a third of the small businesses that closed down last year won’t be returning. And, according to a recent survey, executives report plans to reduce office space by 30%. Ratti, the director of the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Sassen, a Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, say New York has a choice right now:
If we do not act, we might end up with a metropolis of zombie neighborhoods, engulfed in a downward spiral of struggling businesses catering to increasingly empty offices. However, if we implement the right policies and foster a quick restructuring of real estate assets, the looming disruption may give us an opportunity—to test out urban policies we have never had the will or the necessity to imagine, much less implement. With familiar options destabilized, the times are inviting us to be innovators.
To revitalize the city they suggest policy changes like vacancy taxes, more flexible zoning regulations, and working with governments and nonprofits to provisionally repurpose properties. They make the case that owners and tenants have a “duty” to the city: If you have a property in the city, you should not leave it empty. Why a duty? Because a city “is not just an agglomeration of real estate assets; it is primarily a repository of human vitality, without which those assets would be worthless.”
Ratti and Sassen’s article is the topic of this week’s episode of Upzoned, with host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and regular cohost Chuck Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns. Abby and Chuck talk about the challenge of transitioning the financial and regulatory environments in a place like New York, the pros and cons of a vacancy tax, and the systems that encourage land speculation. They also talk about the powerful rhetoric of “duty,” and how it might help towns and cities—including, but certainly not limited to, New York City—get unstuck and start building real prosperity.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck recommends Uprooted, the new book by Grace Olmstead. (Olmstead was our guest on Monday’s Strong Towns podcast.) And Abby talks about an upcoming vacation.
Additional Show Notes * “The Case for a Duty to the City,” by Carlo Ratti and Saskia Sassen * “Grace Olmstead: The Legacy—and the Future—of the Places We’ve Left Behind” (Podcast) * “Richard Florida: Remote Work and ‘The Rise of the Rest’" (Podcast & Video) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Strong Towns content related to this episode:
+ “New York transit is facing ‘Doomsday’ cuts. Should non-New Yorkers bail it out?” by Charles Marohn
+ “Pandemic Fallout: Will New York City Experience Long-term Decline?” (Podcast)
+ “Thank You from a Land Speculator” (Video)
+ “This $15 Trillion Market Is On the Verge of Collapse” (Podcast)
+ “Why Is That House or Storefront Vacant?” by Tracy Hadden Loh and Michael Rodriguez
+ “The Paradox of Persistent Vacancies and High Prices,” by Charles Marohn
Recent winter storms in Texas and elsewhere around the United States are just the latest example of how vulnerable cities and residents are to sudden shocks to their electrical grids. Last summer, about half-a-million homes in Californians experienced rolling blackouts. Wildfire concerns last year also prompted Pacific Gas & Electric—or PG&E, which provides electricity and gas to 16 million Californians—to make “preemptive power shutoffs.” This was in response to lessons learned from the 2018 Camp Fire, which was ignited by PG&E power lines, and which killed at least 86 people.
Big utility companies like PG&E have a near-monopoly in their respective regions. What alternatives do cities have—if any—to providing safe, reliable electricity to residents and businesses? The farming town of Gonzales, California (pop. 9,000) is finding a way. As described in a recent story on KCRW, Gonzales is creating California’s largest multi-customer microgrid. Microgrids are local power grids that can be either separate from, or connected to, the larger grid. “In California,” says KCRW contributor Joe Mathews, “[microgrids] are seen as tools to make electricity service more resilient and to better integrate renewable energy sources, like solar and wind. But efforts to establish microgrids face complex obstacles, including scarce financing, regulatory barriers, and utility opposition.” He continues:
What distinguishes Gonzales is how the town is bringing together different entities—a technologically advanced microgrid developer, agricultural businesses, and a municipal energy authority—to surmount those obstacles. If the microgrid launches successfully next year, Gonzales could provide a model for other communities, especially those in outlying areas poorly served by the existing grid.
In this episode of the Upzoned podcast, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and regular cohost Chuck Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns, talk about why cities and residents are looking for resilient alternatives to the big utility companies. They discuss the history of how electric power went from something managed locally to the more centralized systems we have today. And they talk about the disconnect between the producers of electricity and the users of electricity, whether more cities should pursue the course being charted by Gonzales, and the role individual producers—for example, folks with their own solar panels—play in energy resilience.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck describes a book he’s reading by a former insider at the Federal Reserve. And Abby talks about binge-watching a show considered to be one of TV’s best ever.
Additional Show Notes * “A small farm community leads the way on energy independence,” by Joe Mathews * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
On February 22, 2011, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck near Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 185 people. Writing in Slate last month, James Dann said that the quake’s impact on the built environment of Christchurch, a city built on drained swampland, was unprecedented. “More than 1,200 buildings inside the central four avenues were destroyed by the quake or by demolition crews in the years after.” He continued:
In the suburbs, a process called liquefaction was just as devastating. As the ground shook, water and sand squeezed up through the soil to the surface, leaving the soil to subside into the space the water had vacated. Houses slumped, and roads folded inward like the icing on a failing chocolate cake. In the hardest-hit eastern suburbs, the government eventually bought out and demolished about 6,500 houses, upending countless families.
In his article—“The Last City of the 20th Century”—Dann describes not only the catastrophe of the earthquake itself but also the catastrophic missteps of local and national leaders in rebuilding Christchurch. In the months after the earthquake, there was a huge amount of public input—10,000 people with 100,000 ideas, literally—on how the city should move forward. Yet the national government rejected the community-generated, bottom-up proposal; it went instead with a top-down plan (created behind closed doors) called “the Blueprint.” The results will be sadly familiar to North American readers: Expensive and risky megaprojects, restrictive zoning, clustering activities into “precincts” (there’s even a Justice and Emergency Services Precinct), limiting the number of developers who can be involved, a focus less on current residents and more on luring tourists and out-of-town businesses—all couched in familiar buzzwords like “innovation” and “livability.” Dann concludes that the Blueprint plan “fundamentally misunderstood the organic, spontaneous nature of cities. Places evolve because of the people who live and work in them.”
Dann’s article and the Christchurch rebuild are the topics of this week’s episode of Upzoned, with host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and regular co-host Chuck Maroh, the founder and president of Strong Towns. Abby and Chuck talk about how Christchurch has become an object lesson in how not to rebuild after disaster, why great places aren’t manifestations of big projects, and about the Robert Moses theory-of-change that leads to top-down plans like the Blueprint in Christchurch...and to similar plans across North America. Chuck also reflects on meeting people from New Zealand at CNU and other gatherings in the years immediately after the earthquake...and how he watched those New Zealanders grow increasingly frustrated at the government’s handling of the rebuild.
Then, in what must be one of the most unusual Downzones ever, Chuck recommends a book by a Harvard scientist about the search for extraterrestrial life. And Abby talks about a book she’s reading with the subtitle “Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties.” We won’t blame you if the Downzone makes you want to go rewatch The X-Files.
The truth is out there.
Additional Show Notes
- “The Last City of the 20th Century,” by James Dann
- Abby Kinney (Twitter)
- Charles Marohn (Twitter)
- Gould Evans Studio for City Design
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
- Strong Towns content related to this episode:
- “You Can't Achieve Jane Jacobs Ends with Robert Moses Means—But What If You Don't Have a Choice?” by Daniel Herriges
- “Robert Moses' Methods Can't Achieve Jane Jacobs' Goals”
- “Let's End ‘Entertainment Districts,’” by Nathaniel M. Hood
- “It Should Be About People,” by Nathaniel M. Hood
- “The Opportunity Cost of Tax Incentives in Kansas City,” by Daniel Herriges
- “Ready, Fire, Aim: Tax Incentives in Kansas City,” by Daniel Herriges
- “Conventional Thinking: Stop Pinning all Your City’s Hopes on Big Projects and Events,” by Rachel Quednau
Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn has said that one change every city should make is to allow the next increment of development intensity by-right—i.e., single-family zoning would now permit duplexes, and so on. But if every city should make that change, does that mean states should come in and make that decision for cities—as Oregon recently did for cities with House Bill 2001? Not necessarily.
This week’s episode of the Upzoned podcast is inspired by a recent article in Governing magazine called “States Preempt Cities Almost to the Point of Irrelevance.” In that piece, senior staff writer Alan Greenblatt describes how, over the past decade and across many issues, state governments have preempted local decision-making. For example, Texas, Arizona, Indiana and Louisiana are considering legislation that would prevent cities from reducing police or public safety budgets. Texas governor Greg Abbot went as far as to tweet: “We will defund cities that tried to defund police”. Yet as Greenblatt says, “If states are going to stop cities and counties from adopting their own spending priorities—no matter how misguided they may be—that raises the question of whether localities will be masters of their own fates or merely subservient branch offices of the state.”
In this episode, Upzoned host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and cohost Chuck Marohn talk about the trend of states preempting cities: When (if ever) should states step in to preempt local governments...and when does it become micromanaging?
Using examples from California and Missouri, among other states, Chuck and Abby discuss where decisions should be made, the principle of subsidiarity, the consequences of “removing dynamism from the system,” and the rude awakening may experience when a tool (state preemption) used to push through a policy they like is later used to force a policy change they don’t. They also talk about those times when state preemption might make sense—and how they can be kept under control.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck talks about a book he at least gave a shot. And Abby describes a recent homeowner’s scare involving frozen water pipes, a subsequent water leak, and an electrical box.
Additional Show Notes * “States Preempt Cities Almost to the Point of Irrelevance,” by Alan Greenblatt * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Strong Towns content related to this episode:
+ “When should the state jump in to address local problems?” by Spencer Gardner
+ “Accessory Dwelling Units Rock. But Should States Be Overriding Cities' Laws About Building Them?” (Podcast)
+ “Do Property Tax Caps Help or Hurt Communities?"
+ “Mapping the Effects of California's Prop 13,” by Connor Nielsen
+ “The Local Case for Reparations,” by Charles Marohn
In 2015, the city of Peoria, Arizona made a deal to persuade Huntington University, an Indiana-based private Christian university, to open a satellite campus in Peoria. The agreement involved $2.6 million in subsidies; most went to Huntington, but $700,000 dollars also went to a private company that renovated a building for the university.
The specifics here may be unique, but cities make deals like this all the time to lure businesses to town, in the name of “economic development.” So what makes the case in Arizona so interesting?
Well, earlier this month, that state’s supreme court determined Peoria's Huntington deal violated the Arizona constitution’s gift clause. In an unanimous decision, the court ruled that state and local governments must ensure the public receives real benefits in exchange for subsidies. Bob Christie of the Associated Press wrote that the case will have “wide ramifications” for state and local governments that feel the need to cut deals to lure new business. Henceforth in Arizona, “providing subsidies must do more than provide greater economic activity, they must bring the city some real return on its investment or they are illegal.”
This story out of Arizona is the topic of this week’s episode of Upzoned, with host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and regular cohost Chuck Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns. Abby and Chuck discuss the ways cities often use subsidies now, which more closely resembles gift-giving than investing. They also talk about a Strong Towns approach to incentives, why cities really do have to function like families, and how this ruling in Arizona may make room for projects so long relegated to the sidelines—the ones that are less flashy, but much more likely to generate real wealth.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck talks about a book he’s reading about a pragmatic, non-alarmist response to climate change. And Abby describes how battling frigid temperatures have kept her too busy to read or watch much.
Additional Show Notes: * “Arizona high court says cities must benefit from subsidies,” by Bob Christie * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Recent Strong Towns content on economic development + “Building Strong Local Economies (without Cheesecake Factory),” by Charles Marohn + “Chris Bernardo: Filling the Gaps to Support Local Businesses” (Podcast) + “This Is How You Grow a Local Economy” (Podcast) + “Fighting for Small Businesses and Local Economies” (Podcast) + “How Does Your Economic Garden Grow?” (Podcast) + “How should my town be doing economic recovery right now?” By Rachel Quednau
One of the arguments against YIMBYism—YIMBY stands for “Yes in My Backyard,” a response to NIMBY (“Not in My Backyard”)—is that adding housing units in a neighborhood will actually increase housing scarcity, because, in the words of journalist Nathan J. Robinson, “we’re luring rich people from elsewhere to our city.” This scenario would be the housing equivalent of the “induced demand” phenomenon seen with traffic, whereby expanding road capacity induces more people to drive, quickly negating the benefits of the expansion.
In an article last month, Matthew Yglesias, took on the induced demand objection against YIMBYism. (Yglesias was also a guest on the Strong Towns podcast last month.) He says the induced demand critique “fails on four scores”:
- It is empirically false, at least most of the time.
- Accepting its logic would counsel against all efforts to improve quality of life.
- If it were true, it still wouldn’t follow that new construction is bad.
- It misconstrues what the YIMBY proposal is in the first place.
Yglesias’s article is the topic of this week’s episode of Upzoned, with host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and regular co-host Chuck Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns. Abby and Chuck discuss the argument that increased housing worsens housing scarcity, where Strong Towns aligns with YIMBYism (and where it may diverge), and the problem with approaching the “wicked problem” of housing with a Suburban Experiment mindset: big solutions, big developers, big development. They also talk about why the fundamental problem of scale is crowding out the possibility of a city shaped by many hands.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck discusses reading “On the Shortness of Life,” by Stoic philosopher Lucius Seneca. (He referenced it in his Monday article too.) And Abby talks about rewatching Breaking Bad and rediscovering just how good it is.
Additional Show Notes * “The ‘induced demand’ case against YIMBYism is wrong,” by Matthew Yglesias * Matthew Yglesias on the Strong Towns podcast: Part 1, Part 2 * “How to Talk to a NIMBY” (Webcast) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Strong Towns content related to this episode:
+ “Unleash the Swarm,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “Why Housing Is the Wickedest of ‘Wicked Problems’” (Podcast)
+ “Is Strong Towns NIMBY, YIMBY, or What?” by Charles Marohn
+ “What Can Hives and Barnacles Teach Us About Solving a Housing Crisis?” by Patrick Condon
+ “Here's What Happens When a Handful of Developers Control the Housing Market,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “Gentrification and Cataclysmic Money,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “The Trickle or the Fire Hose,” by Daniel Herriges
Strong Towns is a nonpartisan organization. Rigorously so. But it’s fair to say we allowed ourselves to be hopeful when then-President-Elect Joe Biden picked Pete Buttigieg to head the U.S. Department of Transportation. As mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg assembled a brilliant team of people who broke with the status quo, slowed the cars, made walking and biking a priority, and helped revitalize that city’s downtown. A recent Washington Post headline summarizes it well: “In South Bend, Pete Buttigieg challenged a decades-old assumption that streets are for cars above all else.” The Post article begins this way:
For years, South Bend drivers held in their heads a magic number: Get the car to hit that speed, and you could whip through downtown without seeing a red light.
When Pete Buttigieg took office as mayor of the Indiana city in 2012, he changed that. He pitched a $25 million plan to convert downtown’s wide, one-way roads into two-way streets with bike lanes and sidewalks. He hoped making it safer to get out on foot would encourage more people to spend time and money in the area.
Some residents who were skeptical of the changes became converts: “Downtown was a ghost town. You wouldn’t go there after dark,” one man said. “The results speak for themselves. It’s more than just the number of businesses, it’s the feeling of it not being dead anymore.”
Every week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and regular cohost Chuck Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns, take one story from the news and they “upzone” it—they examine it from the Strong Towns perspective. This week, they discuss the Washington Post article and why—in Chuck’s words—our cities need “a heaping helping of what South Bend did.”
Abby and Chuck talk about how for many years, South Bend, reeling from the effects of deindustrialization and depopulation, focused on speeding traffic: “building more and more lanes for fewer and fewer people.” Then they describe some of the changes Mayor Pete’s administration made and what cities can learn from South Bend’s example of doing much more with much less.
They also talk about what Strong Towns advocates can realistically hope for from a Mayor Pete D.O.T. On the one hand, Buttigieg says the South Bend program to slow cars and revitalize downtown will shape his approach to being Transportation secretary. (“It feeds my perspective on the value of local work around mobility,” Buttigieg told The Post. “I think a successful department is one that really empowers local leaders to makea and drive decisions that work in their communities.”) Yet, as Abby and Chuck describe, it will be a challenge to effectively allocate resources in a federal system designed for bad projects.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck talks about how he has been captivated by the GameStop/reddit story. And Abby is loving Skin in the Game, by the “patron saint” of Strong Towns thinking, Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Additional Show Notes * “In South Bend, Pete Buttigieg challenged a decades-old assumption that streets are for cars above all else,” by Ian Duncan * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Other Strong Towns articles on South Bend, Indiana
+ “6 Ingredients in a Troubled City's Impressive Recovery,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “You Can't Understand the Rust Belt Without Understanding Its Suburbanization,” by Daniel Herriges
+ "‘A High School Education and an Hour of Your Time,’" by Daniel Herriges
+ “The Bottom-Up Revolution is... Using Art and Stories to Strengthen Your City” (Podcast)
+ “The Case for Tactical Urbanism in the Age of Coronavirus,” by Joshua Pine
We’ve written a lot at Strong Towns about the problems with big box stores: the acres of valuable land they (and their parking lots) consume, the way the buildings are designed to be obsolete, the way they siphon money out of town rather than build wealth from within. Yet it’s hard to put all the blame on the Walmarts and Home Depots and Costcos of the world; they have figured out how to succeed under the rules that we—the towns and cities—have established. If we consistently get outcomes we don’t like, we need to change the rules of the game.
The same is true of parking. American cities are massively overbuilt on parking. This has both real costs and opportunity costs. Some of the blame might be put on a parking developer who turns otherwise valuable land into a surface parking lot, holding onto it like a land speculator until it can be sold for a big profit. But don’t we the residents deserve some of the responsibility too? After all, parking developers are thriving within the system we made...or at least allow to continue.
In a recent article, Joe Cortright of City Observatory described aspects of that system: “We have too much parking for many reasons: because we’ve subsidized highway construction and suburban homes, because we’ve mandated parking for most new residential and commercial buildings, and because we’ve decimated transit systems. But a key contributor to overparking is the strong financial incentives built into tax systems.” Cortright then detailed a proposed ordinance in Hartford, Connecticut that would begin to correct this. Expanding fees on private commercial parking lots and structures, the ordinance would, he said, mimic the important features of a land value tax. “Call it LVT-lite,” he wrote.
In this week’s episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and Chuck Marohn, the president of Strong Towns, discuss Joe Cortright’s article and how cities essentially subsidize parking. They talk about the land value tax, the way current tax systems incentivize parking and disincentivize improvements, and why all that parking is an anchor on our prosperity.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck talks about a course he’s been taking on the Black Death. And Abby talks about new adventures in cooking and making music.
Additional Show Notes: * “How to Stop Giving Parking Developers A Free Ride,” by Joe Cortright (Streetsblog) * City Observatory * City Observatory (Twitter) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Select Strong Towns articles on parking:
+ “Detroiters Push for Parking Reform in the Heart of Motown,” by Francis Grunow
+ “Asphalt City: How Parking Ate an American Metropolis,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “Parking Dominates Our Cities. But Do We Really *See* It?” by Daniel Herriges
+ “Life After Parking,” by Alexander Dukes
+ “Parking is Important and Not Important,” by Kevin Klinkenberg
+ “The Many Costs of Too Much Parking”
In a recent op-ed for The New York Times, journalist and novelist Ross Barkan wrote about public housing and the housing crisis. An eviction crisis is looming, Barkan wrote, staved off only by an eviction moratorium. But that moratorium will eventually expire. “When it does, a crushing housing emergency could descend on America—as many as 40 million Americans will be in danger of eviction.”
Barkan goes on to say the federal government must play an important role in addressing the short-term crisis as well the underlying problems in the housing market. One “major step,” according to Barkan, would be to repeal "an obscure 22-year-old addition to the Housing Act of 1937, the Faircloth Amendment. Passed in an era when the reputation of housing projects was at a low, the amendment prohibits any net increase in public-housing units.” The repeal of Faircloth is a regular feature in progressive proposals, including the Green New Deal and other efforts by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
In this week’s episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, is joined by regular co-host Chuck Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns, as well as by Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges. The three of them discuss the Faircloth Amendment and the role of the federal government in addressing the housing crisis. They talk about where a federal response could align with a Strong Towns response, the problems with supersized solutions, and to what extent repealing Faircloth will address the underlying dysfunctions in the housing market.
Then in the Downzone, Daniel says he’s finally reading E.F. Schumacher, Chuck talks about a course he’s starting on the plague, and Abby discusses a show she’s been binge-watching, a terrifying psychological thriller.
Additional Shownotes:
- “It’s Time for America to Reinvest in Public Housing,” by Ross Barkan
- Online Course: “Creating Housing Opportunities in a Strong Town”
- Abby Kinney (Twitter)
- Daniel Herriges (Twitter)
- Charles Marohn (Twitter)
- Gould Evans Studio for City Design
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
- Recent Strong Towns content related to this podcast
- “What's Missing From the Green New Deal, by Daniel Herriges
- “Form Without Function in Public Housing,” by Johnny Sanphillippo
- “What Happens When a Third of U.S. Tenants Don’t Pay Rent” (Podcast)
- “Can We Afford to Care About Design in a Housing Crisis?” by Daniel Herriges
- “The Connectedness of Our Housing Ecosystem,” by Daniel Herriges
In the first few months of the pandemic, many towns and cities moved quickly to create “slow streets,” streets that restricted vehicle access in order to make room for socially distanced walking, biking, play, etc. While the thinking behind those adaptations may have been justified, the speed with which they were implemented often came at the expense of meaningful public engagement and buy-in from residents.
As Laura Bliss writes in a recent article for Bloomberg CityLab, slow streets have drawn “controversy, community resistance and comparisons with racist urban planning practices of earlier decades.” Bliss quotes Corinne Kisner, the executive director of the National Association of City Transportation Officials, who said, “I think there’s a tension between planners wanting to act fast, because their work is so critical to reduce fatalities and greenhouse gas emissions — the reasons for this work are so compelling and historic. But the urgency to move fast is in conflict with the speed of trust, and the pace that actually allows for input from everyone who’s affected by these decisions.”
This article is the topic of this week's episode of Upzoned -- our first episode of 2021 and our 100th episode overall -- with host Abby Kinney, an urban planner from Kansas City, and regular co-host Chuck Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns. Abby and Chuck discuss why improving how streets and public spaces are utilized isn’t worth much if you get the process wrong. (“Robert Moses tactics can’t achieve Jane Jacobs goals.”) They also contrast the one-size-fits-all solutions that create resentment with the benefits of iiterative, truly collaborative approaches.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck talks about finishing The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix and recommends a blockbuster new religion podcast by a hometown host. And Abby talks about why climbing is the best sport for understanding incrementalism. Oh, and also about skydiving, which prompted Chuck to recommend this video.
Additional Show Notes
- “‘Slow Streets’ Disrupted City Planning. What Comes Next?” by Laura Bliss
- Robert Moses Tactics Can’t Achieve Jane Jacobs Goals
- Abby Kinney (Twitter)
- Charles Marohn (Twitter)
- Gould Evans Studio for City Design
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
- Select Strong Towns content on “Slow Streets” and “Open Streets”
- “Oakland’s Open Streets Programs Are Still a Work in Progress. That’s a Good Thing.” by Daniel Herriges
- “The Bottom-Up Revolution is... Working Together to Make a Street for People” (Podcast)
- “How’s that temporary street redesign your city started this spring doing now?” by Rachel Quednau
- “The Evolving 2020 Open Streets Movement, or What if We Threw Out the Rule Book and Everything Was Fine? By Daniel Herriges
- “Hearing One Engineer's Call to "Sit in the Ambiguity" of Transportation Planning,” by Daniel Herriges
Every week on the Upzoned podcast, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and regular co-host Chuck Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns, take one big story in the news and they “upzone” it—they look at it through a Strong Towns lens.
At the close of a year in which towns and cities were tested in profound ways by a global pandemic and social unrest, it seems fitting that the final episode of the year should be about an article called “Will Cities Survive 2020?” Writing in Reason magazine, Christian Britschgi says that COVID-19 has reignited age-old debates about land-use and public health:
The history of America's cities is, in a very real sense, the history of zoning regulations, which have long shaped real estate development, labor, and living arrangements. So it's no surprise that COVID-19, the biggest public health crisis in a century, which has occasioned an equally massive public health response, has already begun reshaping how people live in cities and how they are governed—rekindling old debates over urban density vs. suburban sprawl while raising new questions about the value of many land-use regulations.
In the article, Britschgi describes the ways in which public health crises shaped cities in the past. But, says Britschgi, zoning codes initially justified as a way to protect health "have now gone far beyond nuisance laws...and control of infectious disease. They instead incorporated planners' desires to scientifically manage cities, protect property values, and combat the moral corruption that supposedly came with high-density housing." The coronavirus pandemic is similarly placing immense pressure on cities, but it remains to be seen whether communities will be allowed (because of that constrictive zoning) “to grow, evolve, and adapt to new challenges.”
In this episode of Upzoned, Abby and Chuck discuss the Reason article and what effect 2020 will have on towns and cities going forward. They talk about why most cities are likely to survive, but probably not in their current form. They discuss why cities were so fragile in the first place, why disruptive change has become exponentially more common, and the surprising cities that can teach us about how to adapt creatively to a crisis.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck continues his Christmas tradition of baking while listening to novels, most recently The Sentinel, by Lee Child. And Abby is doing some holiday crafting of her own...with a to-scale, gingerbread version of her own home.
Additional Show Notes: * “Will Cities Survive 2020?” by Christian Britschgi * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Additional Strong Towns content on the coronavirus and the future of cities: + "Effective Quarantines and Strong Towns," by Spencer Gardner + "9 Things Local Government Needs to Do Right Now in Response to the Pandemic," by Charles Marohn + "This Is the Great Reshuffling," by Johnny Sanphillippo + "We're In the Endgame Now for Small Towns," by Charles Marohn + "Is Your City Willing to Be Flexible So Small Businesses Can Survive?" (Podcast)
When you were a teenager, where did you go to hang out with friends? For many of us, the first places we think of are school (and school activities), the mall, arcades and movie theaters, parks, rec centers, restaurants, and coffee shops.
There’s a good chance that whatever came to mind for you just now isn’t currently available to teenagers. Only 35% of K-12 students are daily attending school in-person. Education has moved online and school activities are canceled. Many malls, arcades, restaurants, theaters, and rec centers are closed altogether, have strict occupancy limits, or are open by appointment only. The parks may be open but many towns and cities conspire against groups of teenagers lingering too long in parks, paranoid they are up to no good. It’s been said that cities are built with an “anti-teen bias.” As a result, communities that offered few options for teenagers before the pandemic have even fewer options today.
This is more than mere inconvenience for teens and their families, as Amy Crawford describes in a recent article in CityLab. “Eight months into the pandemic,” Crawford writes, “life under coronavirus restrictions has proven especially hard on teens, who, despite being at lower risk from the virus itself, have fewer opportunities to be with their peers than perhaps any other demographic.“ Crawford quotes Tamar Mendelson, director of the Center for Adolescent Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:
Isolation is a big issue for young people right now...Adolescence is a time of incredible growth and development. A big piece of that is developing more of a social identity, and that’s getting disrupted a lot during Covid. Young people are resilient, and they’re adept at technology, but it’s a hard adjustment.
Crawford’s article is the inspiration for this week’s episode of Upzoned, with host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and regular co-host Chuck Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns. Abby and Chuck discuss the challenges facing teens in cities largely not built with them in mind, the impacts of social isolation on adolescents, and why we, as a culture, must not overlook the deep effect the pandemic is having on teenagers. This isn’t merely an academic discussion, as Chuck describes the sacrifices his own teenage children have been asked to make during the pandemic.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck talks about his annual ritual of listening to novels while baking Christmas cookies. And Abby recommends a book that was recommended to her by Joe Minicozzi of Urban3: Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, by Richard Thaler.
Additional Show Notes
- “There’s No Room for Teens in the Pandemic City,” by Amy Crawford
- Abby Kinney (Twitter)
- Charles Marohn (Twitter)
- Gould Evans Studio for City Design
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
- Related content from Strong Towns on building cities for people of all ages:
- “The Isolation of Aging in an Auto-Oriented Place,” by Sara Joy Proppe
- “The Next Baby Boom: Affordable Urban Lifestyles for Millennials with Children,” by Jennifer Griffin
- “To build a strong town, get the kids involved,” by Jonathan Holth
- “The Livability of a Multi-Generational Neighborhood,” by Daniel Herriges
- “What makes a home truly work for people of all ages and abilities?” by Rachel Quednau
- “Want to Start a Local Revolution? Ask a Kid This Question.” by John Pattison
A key figure in the mythology of the American West is that of the rugged individualist, the impressively self-reliant person, rarely needing help from anyone, least of all the federal government. The self-reliant ethos is a powerful one, not just at the level of the individual but at the level of the city. Yet the reality is that most towns and cities in the American West are reliant to a remarkable degree on state and federal governments, as well as on a few large (often extractive) global industries: coal, oil, natural gas, etc.
What happens when demand for those resources drops? What happens when the state or federal government runs out of money? Wyoming is finding out.
In an op-ed last month in the Casper Star-Tribune, Nate Martin, the executive director of Better Wyoming, wrote: “Faced with COVID-19 and the collapse of Wyoming’s coal industry, Republican Gov. Mark Gordon said recently that the state might have to start abandoning small towns because there’s not enough money to maintain their sewers and streets.” Wyoming has no income tax and some of the lowest property and sales taxes in the country. Martin makes the case that, to help cover its projected two-year, $1.5 billion budget shortfall, the state should increase tax revenue — perhaps by instituting an income tax or raising its other taxes.
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and regular cohost Chuck Marohn, founder and president of Strong Towns, discuss Martin’s op-ed and the situation in Wyoming...and, really, throughout the West. Abby and Chuck talk about why saying Wyoming has a revenue problem doesn’t go deep enough in diagnosing the underlying issues there. They talk about the ways in which the extractive economies of many Western states are mimicked in extractive development patterns. They also discuss how towns and cities in Wyoming can begin to build local economies strong enough to weather the hard times. (Hint: It starts not with minerals in the ground, but with the people.)
Then in the Downzone, Chuck recommends the book 1493, by Charles C. Mann, and talks about finally signing up for Netflix. And Abby recommends a show on Netflix that Chuck can now watch, The Queen’s Gambit.
Additional Show Notes
- “Martin: Wyoming needs to bite the bullet,” by Nate Martin
- "Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon Faces Massive Budget Hole As COVID-19 Cases Rise," by Peter O'Dowd
- “Just Print the Money” (Podcast)
- Abby Kinney (Twitter)
- Charles Marohn (Twitter)
- Gould Evans Studio for City Design
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
- Additional content from Strong Towns on small towns and rural economies:
- “A Plan for Building Strong Rural Communities,” by Charles Marohn
- “Small Towns Are Dying. Can They Be Saved?” (Podcast)
- “We’re in the Endgame Now for Small Towns,” by Charles Marohn
- “What happens when an entire region of rural communities buys into the same bad approach to development?” by John Pattison
- “Local Leaders Are Reshaping America One Small Town at a Time,” by Quint Studer
Among the most heartbreaking stories of 2020 are those coming out of assisted-living and independent-care facilities: stories of the virus spreading like a brush fire among vulnerable elders; stories of isolated seniors unable to receive loved ones as visitors for months at a time; or the recent story about the Minnesota National Guard being called in to serve at nursing homes because so many of the staff were sick. The pandemic should cause us to take a cold, hard look in the mirror at the way we have segmented our society — reminiscent of Euclidean zoning — by age, socioeconomic class, and other criteria. As our friend Gracy Olmstead wrote back in June:
Yet we often like to see the various parts of our world as separate entities: churches, nuclear families, schools, grocery stores, office buildings, hospitals, assisted living centers and nursing homes, apartments and townhouses all subsist in detached zones...We approach our world like a machine: divorcing ourselves from every other part, pulling apart the various strands in the tapestry.
Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal ran an article about how the pandemic is giving the “multigenerational home business” a boost. While occupancy rates in assisted-living and independent-care facilities have seen their biggest drop ever, homebuilders say interest in accessory dwelling units has exploded. “Reluctant to send their elderly parents to senior-living facilities,” says the article, “some homeowners are building properties equipped to house extended family.”
This article, and the rise of multigenerational housing, are the topics on this week’s episode of Upzoned. Host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and regular cohost Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn talk about how nursing homes and other senior living facilities have been hit hard by the pandemic. They discuss why it’s critical that cities give homeowners and builders the freedom to be flexible with housing, including the flexibility to add or include accessory dwelling units. (In fact, the longterm survival of the suburbs may hinge on this flexibility.) They also discuss why it’s not helpful that the Journal article seemed to frame multigenerational housing as novel and upscale.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck describes a work trip he took recently to Disney World and recommends a book by Strong Towns content manager John Pattison. And Abby talks about decorating for the holidays, including building a to-scale gingerbread replica of her house that we can’t wait to see pictures of.
Additional Show Notes:
- ”Covid-19 Is Giving the Multigenerational Home Business a Big Boost,” by Katy McLaughlin
- “I just want to see people smile again.” by Chuck Marohn
- Abby Kinney (Twitter)
- Charles Marohn (Twitter)
- Gould Evans Studio for City Design
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
- Further content from Strong Towns on ADUs and multigenerational living:
- “Want a city that works for people of all ages? Take these 3 steps.” by Rachel Quednau
- “The Livability of a Multi-Generational Neighborhood,” by Daniel Herriges
- “The Isolation of Aging in an Auto-Oriented Place,” by Sara Joy Proppe
- “If You're Going to Allow ADUs, Don't Make It So Hard to Build One,” by Daniel Herriges
- “Making Normal Neighborhoods Legal Again,” by Daniel Herriges
- “So You Want to Build an ADU?” by Aubrey Bryon
This year, thanks to a grant from the Enid & Crosby Kemper Foundation and members like you, Strong Towns has taken an in-depth look at the growth of Kansas City, Missouri and the financial ramifications of its development pattern. The series was based on a detailed survey of Kansas City’s fiscal geography—its sources of tax revenue and its major expenses, its street network and historical development patterns—conducted by geoanalytics firm Urban3. The series comprises ten articles in all, as well as several related podcasts. Several articles have now been compiled into a new ebook, which was released today.
What makes Kansas City such a powerful case study is not that it is an outlier among North American cities. Quite the opposite. Kansas City may no longer have the most freeway miles per capita (they were recently edged out by Nashville), but it is still a powerful object lesson in how the suburban experiment—the conventional approach to building towns and cities since the 1950s—drains wealth, squanders precious financial resources, and makes our communities fragile. And yet, as our senior editor, Daniel Herriges, wrote in the series conclusion, Kansas City also has everything it needs to turn this ill-conceived experiment around.
But will it?
In this special episode of Upzoned, we’re turning the tables: Daniel is interviewing regular host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, as well as special guest Kevin Klinkenberg, an urban designer and the executive director of Midtown KC Now. The three of them discuss how COVID-19 has illuminated and intensified Kansas City’s budget woes, the city’s biggest near-term challenges, and why Kansas City must now take care of four times the infrastructure it had 70 years ago...with relatively the same number of people.
But they also talk about the winds of change blowing in Kansas City—including reasons to hope that a city once known as the “Paris of the Plains” is rediscovering the joys and virtues of the “chaotic but smart” approach to city-building. Yes, Kansas City has been the poster child for the suburban experiment. Yet it could also be a model for how North American cities can change course and start building strong and more financially resilient places again.
Then in the Downzone, Daniel talks about the work he and his wife are doing to convert their carport into a front porch perfect for mild Sarasota winters. Kevin recommends—as Chuck Marohn and Abby did before him—The Myth of Capitalism, coauthored by Denise Hearn, a recent guest on the Strong Towns podcast. And Abby recommends a recent article by Kevin Klinkenberg in The American Conservative, “After COVID, a Bright Future for American Cities.”
Additional Show Notes
- Strong Towns Kansas City Series
- “Worse Than Great Recession? Pandemic May Force Kansas City To Change Expensive Ways” (KCUR)
- “Kansas City: Car City, USA,” by Kevin Klinkenberg
- Kevin Klinkenberg (Website)
- Kevin Klinkenberg (Twitter)
- Midtown KC Now (Website)
- Midtown KC Now (Twitter)
- Abby Kinney (Twitter)
- Daniel Herriges (Twitter)
- Gould Evans Studio for City Design
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
The global pandemic has revealed just how fragile our global supply chains are. This is something we’ve talked about a lot at Strong Towns—see here, here, here, here, and here—but of course the disruptions aren’t only being experienced in the United States.
Damien Cave starts his excellent New York Times article, “What if Local and Diverse is Better than Networked and Global?,” at a farmers’ market in New South Wales, Australia. “We’ve just been shown how fragile and not resilient it all is,” Andrew Cameron, a cattle rancher selling grass-fed meat at the market, said of the broken supply chains. “Our resilience now comes from local producers.”
Cave’s article is actually a profile of Helena Norberg-Hodge, the founder of Local Futures and an important advocate for localism since the 1970s. Norberg-Hodge has seen firsthand how globalization is decimating more traditional cultures, as in the Indian village of Ladakh. Cave writes: “The path to ‘development’ for Ladakhis meant ending centuries of self-reliance, where they found everything they needed around them, except salt, which they traded for. It also meant accepting policies that favored choices they would not have made on their own.”
Cave boils down Norberg-Hodge’s ideas to two simple but profound concepts:
- Shorter distances are healthier than longer distances for commerce and human interaction...
- Diversification...is healthier than monoculture, which is what globalization tends to create, whether it’s bananas or mobile phones.
Her work has earned the respect of everyone from the Dalai Lama and chef Alice Waters, to the British comedian Russell Brand. Activist and bestselling author Bill McKibben had this to say:
She got the opportunity to see a different world, and she was smart enough to understand that she wasn’t looking at a relic, she was looking at a vision of a working future. And she has kept that vision close over many decades, helping all of us see that the metrics we’re used to—G.D.P., say—are not the only possibilities.
Localism, and Cave’s article in particular, are the topics on this week’s episode of Upzoned. They are timely subjects too, as host Abby Kinney and regular cohost Chuck Marohn were speaking just a few days after the presidential election...but before the results were fully known. Abby and Chuck discuss why the conventional Left-Right understanding of politics is so inadequate, and why we need another axis, one that runs the spectrum from centralized, top-down power to decentralized, bottom-up energy. They discuss the problems that arise when systems get too big and complex. And they talk about the principle of subsidiarity, which states that problems not only should be addressed—but must be addressed—as locally as possibly.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck discusses the challenging but rewarding experience of reading How to Be an Anti-Racist in conversation with others. And Abby recommends a recent article by Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges, “We Don’t Live In a World of Cartoon Villains.”
Additional Show Notes * “What if Local and Diverse is Better than Networked and Global?” by Damien Cave * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Additional Strong Towns content on localism and taking local action:
+ “It’s All Local Now,” by Charles Marohn
+ ”The New Localism” (Podcast)
+ “Big, Impersonal Institutions Are Failing Us. Loyalty to Our Communities Might Save Us.” (Podcast)
+ “The Dignity of Local Community: A Conversation with Chris Arnade” (Podcast)
+ “How Relevant is Localism in an Age of Urgency?”
Earlier this year, The Economist ran a piece making the case that the West’s “obsession” with home ownership “undermines growth, fairness and public faith in capitalism.” The roots for this go back to a shift in public policy in the 1950s to encourage home ownership over renting. The benefits of home ownership, writes the author, are overblown. What’s more, the “cult of owner-occupation has huge costs. Those who own homes often become NIMBYs who resist development in an effort to protect their investments.”
This article is the topic of discussion on today’s episode of Upzoned, with host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and regular cohost Chuck Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns. Abby and Chuck discuss whether there really is an infatuation with home ownership in the United States, and what effect that infatuation may be having on the housing crisis and economic inequality. They talk about the role of home ownership in giving residents a stake in creating wealth and stability. And they discuss why it’s important to resist oversimplifying the phenomena of housing unaffordability.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck talks about finally finishing Union, by Colin Woodard, a great book he started before his accident. And Abby recommends The Myth of Capitalism, co-authored by Denise Hearn, who was also a guest on Monday’s episode of the Strong Towns podcast.
Additional Show Notes * “Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake” (The Economist) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Further reading from Strong Towns on the housing crisis
+ “What Can Hives and Barnacles Teach Us About Solving a Housing Crisis?” by Patrick Condon
+ “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Housing Prices” (Podcast)
+ “Could This Bottom-Up Method to Address the Housing Crisis Work Where You Live Too?” by Rachel Quednau
+ “Want to make housing more affordable? Start by designing neighborhoods, not just buildings.” by Quint Studer
+ “We Used to Just Call These Houses,” by Daniel Herriges
“Commercial real estate is in trouble,” Katy O’Donnell wrote in Politico earlier this month, “and turbulence in the $15 trillion market is threatening to bleed over into the broader financial system just as the U.S. struggles to emerge from a recession.” She continues:
The longer the pandemic paralyzes hotels, retailers and office buildings, the more difficult it is for property owners to meet their mortgage payments—raising the specter of widespread downgrades, defaults and eventual foreclosures. As companies like J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus and Pier 1 file for bankruptcy, retail properties are losing major tenants with no clear plan to replace them, while hotels are running below 50 percent occupancy.
The United States was way overbuilt before the pandemic decimated brick-and-mortar retail. The U.S. has about 23.5 square feet of retail space per capita, more than five times as much as the U.K. (4.6 square feet per capita), Japan (4.4), The Netherlands (4.1), and France (3.8). (Note: Other sources actually have that figure much higher, and our friend Josh McCarty of Urban3 showed back in 2017 that if we consolidated all U.S. retail space and its parking, it would be visible from space.) We’ve been propping up large-scale retail (malls, strip malls, and big-box stores) for years. But now those supports are crumbling, and it’s not hard to imagine this sector collapsing—with devastating direct impacts and ripple effects throughout the economy.
That’s the topic on this week’s episode of Upzoned, with host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and regular cohost Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn. Abby and Chuck discuss the past—why malls and big-box stores were perfectly adapted to the suburban development pattern—as well as the future, including the possibility that existing big-box stores may become distribution centers for delivery and drive-through services. They also talk about why conventional retail space is so difficult to revive, and which types of retail are more likely to survive than others.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck recommends The Structure of Political Positions, by Blake Pagenkopf. (Blake will be Chuck’s guest on the November 9th episode of the Strong Towns podcast.) And Abby talks about getting ready for winter, including gearing up for cold weather biking.
Additional Show Notes * “The next economic crisis: Empty retail space,” by Katy O’Donnell * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Further reading from Strong Towns on retail and commercial real estate
+ “What Comes Next for Commercial Real Estate,” by Charles Marohn
+ “Want more local businesses in your neighborhood? Then legalize ‘Accessory Commercial Units.’” by Ashley Salvador
+ “Here's how much of America is occupied by big box stores.”
+ “The Real Reason Your Local Mall Is Failing,” by Charles Marohn
+ Big Box Stores: America’s Rigged Game for Retail (free ebook)
Here’s a taste of our newest podcast, The Bottom-Up Revolution, hosted by Rachel Quednau. In this episode, you’ll hear from Alexander Hagler, an entrepreneur and urban gardener based in Milwaukee, WI who founded a store called Center Street Wellness, a space for local makers to sell their handcrafted products focused on mental and physical wellbeing. And you’ll learn about how to support entrepreneurs in your own community—or become one yourself. Find out more about this new podcast and keep up with new episodes here: https://www.strongtowns.org/podcast
Last week, Jason Segedy, the director of planning and urban development for the City of Akron, Ohio, published a piece in The American Conservative called “Towards a More Inclusive Urbanism.”
Segedy contends that too much of the urbanist conversation is permeated with “an unmistakable strain of elitism.” It emanates from, is focused on, and takes as its model “front-row cities,” where issues like high housing costs, rent control, NIMBY-ism, and rail transit are among the most-discussed topics. At the same time, urbanism tends to be “dismissive of disinvested and economically challenged places,” the back-row cities. He writes:
The most widely read and disseminated urbanist thinking around urban design and public policy has little or nothing to say about heavily disinvested places. It is written mostly by, and for, people who live in economically successful places.
This week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and regular co-host Chuck Marohn discuss Segedy’s article. They talk about why good planning looks more like social work than a kinder-gentler Robert Moses, what front-row and back-row cities have in common, and why urban planners go astray when they try to please other urbanists instead of responding to the needs of people. They also describe an option that goes beyond the conventional choices of Top-Down Beautiful or Top-Down Pragmatic. “We can’t micromanage great urban design into existence,” says Abby, an urban planner in Kansas City. “It needs to happen naturally.”
Then in Downzone, Chuck recommends The Myth of Capitalism by Jonathan Tepper and Denise Hearn. (Hearn will be a guest on an upcoming episode of the Strong Towns podcast, which recently returned from hiatus.) And Abby recommends two articles by Mark Manson as well as a recent episode of James Howard Kunstler’s Kunstlercast.
Additional Show Notes * “Towards a More Inclusive Urbanism,” by Jason Segedy * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Related reading from Strong Towns
+ “Why Urban Design Should Come from the Bottom Up,” by Nolan Gray (Part 1 | Part 2)
+ “A Reminder for Planners: ‘Every Projection Is Wrong,’” by Daniel Herriges
+ “6 Rules for Unlocking the Potential of Mid-Sized Cities,” by Dennis Strait and Abby Kinney
+ “The Living City vs. the Mechanical City,” by Andrew Price
+ “The Dignity of Local Community: A Conversation with Chris Arnade” (Podcast)
The pandemic has obviously been brutal on the economy, and restaurants and coffee shops have been especially hard-hit. During the warm, dry summer months, outdoor dining proved to be a lifeline for many establishments. But as we head into fall and winter, when colder temperatures and wetter weather make dining outside more challenging, many restaurant owners are worried about their business and their employees. According to the Washington Post, between 40% to 85% of restaurants (depending on who’s doing the estimating) don’t expect to survive the next six months. Celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern warned in August of a restaurant “extinction event.”
To discuss all this, Abby Kinney—an urban planner in Kansas City and the host of Upzoned—invited a special guest onto the podcast. Kevin Klinkenberg is an urban designer, writer, and the executive director of Midtown KC Now. (He last joined the podcast in May, in a kind of Part 1 to this episode called “Is Your City Willing to Be Flexible So Small Businesses Can Survive?”) Together, Abby and Kevin talk about how restaurants will adapt (again) for the fall and winter, why business owners aren’t banking on a new federal stimulus, and how the challenges of COVID-19 are compelling restaurants to find new models and new collaborations.
Then in the Downzone, Kevin recommends an article called “Why You Should Quit the News?”—as well as a new novel by his brother. And Abby recommends two recent documentaries: The Social Dilemma and a fascinating look at the world of fungi.
Additional Show Notes * “Outdoor dining has helped restaurants avoid disaster. But winter is coming.” By Tim Carman * Kevin Klinkenberg (Website) * Kevin Klinkenberg (Twitter) * Midtown KC Now (Twitter) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Recent Strong Towns content on the “open streets” movement:
+ “The Evolving 2020 Open Streets Movement, or What if We Threw Out the Rule Book and Everything Was Fine?” by Daniel Herriges
+ “4 Lessons from a Temporary Street Redesign Process,” by Rachel Quednau
+ “What Do Americans Love More than Car Access? Partying.” by Arian Horbovetz
+ “Hearing One Engineer's Call to ‘Sit in the Ambiguity’ of Transportation Planning,” by Daniel Herriges
In late September, Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn published an article making the “local case for reparations.” Drawing on a detailed study conducted by the economic consulting firm Urban3, Chuck described the long-term fiscal impact of redlining policies in Kansas City, Missouri. He wrote:
This difference in margin of error is perhaps the most pernicious aspect of redlining. The people in one neighborhood [chosen for investment] are dealt face cards and aces. Those in the other [redlined] neighborhood get dealt twos and threes. It doesn’t matter how good you are at poker. It’s hard to mess up a winning hand, just like it’s hard to play your way to success when the deck is stacked against you.
The economic and social impact isn’t just felt by people who live in formerly redlined neighborhoods. For example, in a single half-square-mile neighborhood, redlining has cost Kansas City $30 million in lost tax revenue. Now multiply that across many such neighborhoods in Kansas City—where more than 50% of the city was “redlined” in the 1930s—and then consider that most towns and cities across the Unite States implemented similar policies. We start to get a clearer sense of the broad economic devastation wrought by decades of disinvestment in poor, predominantly black—though not exclusively black—neighborhoods.
Chuck goes further, though. Conversations about reparations often focus on a federal response to redlining—whether it should happen, and what it should look like. But Chuck says that cities shouldn’t wait for the federal government to do something about reparations. There are things towns and cities can do right now, using tools already at their disposal, to begin building last prosperity in disinvested neighborhoods.
On this week’s episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney—an urban planner in Kansas City—is discussing “The Local Case for Reparations” with the article’s author (and regular cohost) Chuck Marohn, as well as with Joe Minicozzi, principal at Urban3. Abby, Chuck, and Joe talk about Urban3’s data-driven analysis in Kansas City, the policies that have made Kansas City financially fragile, and what it will take to stop the bleeding in disinvested neighborhoods. (It’s less than you might think.) They talk about the high price cities are paying for inaction, and why cities already have the tools they need to make the change they say they want.
Then in the Downzone, Abby talks about an upcoming mountain biking trip to Arkansas. Joe recommends a trifecta of books on race, as well as a book on human behavior. And Chuck recommends the newest book by Bob Woodward.
Additional Show Notes * “The Local Case for Reparations,” by Charles Marohn * “An Old Building Should Get a Birthday Present,” by Daniel Herriges * “Ready, Fire, Aim: Tax Incentives in Kansas City,” by Daniel Herriges * Read more Strong Towns articles about Kansas City * Urban3 * Joe Minicozzi (Twitter) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Recent Strong Towns articles by Joe Minicozzi
+ “Not So Fast: Density Isn’t Plague-Inducing”
+ “Greetings from Anywhere: Supporting Postcard-Worthy Places”
+ “The Power of Information Equity”
California is experiencing its worst fire season since 1910. So far (the fire season typically runs into December), more than 3.4 million acres have burned. Among the state’s six biggest fires of the last 90 years, five are from August or September 2020. The Creek Fire alone has destroyed nearly 287,000 acres in two counties, making it the largest single fire in California history.
Superlatives like these—superlatives we seem to update every year or two—suggest that we really don’t know how to prevent megafires. But that’s not the case. We know what to do...we just lack the cultural and political will to do them. As Elizabeth Weil recently wrote in ProPublica:
The pattern is a form of insanity: We keep doing overzealous fire suppression across California landscapes where the fire poses little risk to people and structures. As a result, wildland fuels keep building up. At the same time, the climate grows hotter and drier. Then, boom: the inevitable. The wind blows down a power line, or lightning strikes dry grass, and an inferno ensues.
On this week’s episode of Upzoned, Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn, talk about fire suppression, development, and other policies that are putting California’s land, people, and economy more at risk from megafires. They talk about the “spooky wisdom” of Native Americans who used controlled burns to clear underbrush and encourage new plant growth...and how we’ve largely ignored that wisdom. And they discuss why laying all the blame on climate change obscures the things we can do right now to make our lands—and our cities—stronger and more resilient.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck describes the joys of watching Minnesota Twins baseball with one of his daughters. And Abby is looking ahead to Halloween.
Additional Show Notes * “They Know How to Prevent Megafires. Why Won’t Anybody Listen?” by Elizabeth Weil * “The Spooky Wisdom of Cities,” by Charles Marohn * Collapse, by Jared Diamond * The World Until Yesterday, by Jared Diamond * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Select Strong Towns articles about California
+ “5 Questions Facing Local Leaders Right Now (and 5 Creative Responses),” by Rachel Quednau
+ “California’s Housing Crisis,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “Can we make California wildfires less destructive by changing the way we build?” (Podcast)
+ “Mapping the Effects of California's Prop 13,” by Connor Nielsen
+ “Crony Capitalism,” by Charles Marohn
+ “What happens after half your town burns down?” by Johnny Sanphillippo
+ “A Small Town Mayor Living a Big Life,” by Rachel Quednau
Aiming for community consensus when making planning decisions sounds like a noble goal. Yet in practice, says Jeremy Levine in a recent article in Shelterforce, a consensus approach to community participation often supports “elite authority” and the status quo rather than challenges them.
Levine uses an example from the affordable housing debates in the Bay Area, where public meetings were, in effect, “veto points that can block new development.”
New projects generally require community agreement in order to move forward, and so all it takes is a handful of opponents to signal a lack of consensus. By design, then, public meetings give the people who say “no” a much louder voice than the people who say “yes.”
Levine’s article in particular—and community consensus in general—is the subject of this week’s episode of Upzoned. Host Abby Kinney, a planner in Kansas City, and Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges, discuss the ways in which conventional public engagement can actually hurt the planning process. They talk about why asking people where they struggle (not to mention observing firsthand) can yield better results than asking people what they want. They also discuss why reforming public engagement should go hand in hand with reforming public works.
Then in the Downzone, Daniel recommends The Overstory, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about trees that inspires awe, wonder, and even humility in the reader. And Abby is getting ready for Fall with a scary yet thought-provoking film.
Additional Show Notes * “It’s Time to Move On From Community Consensus,” by Jeremy Levine * “Stop Asking the Public What They Want,” by Daniel Herriges * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Daniel Herriges (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Select Strong Towns articles about public engagement
+ “Most Public Engagement Is Worthless,” by Charles Marohn
+ “Most Public Engagement Is Worse than Worthless,” by Ruben Anderson
+ "‘Public engagement’ is about knowing your neighbors, not planning a meeting.” by Rachel Quednau
+ “Don't Leave Your Community's Challenges to the Professionals,” by Rachel Quednau
+ “We Don't Need More ‘Invitations to the Table.’ We Need a New Table.” by Charles Marohn
A recent article in The Guardian described the “death spiral” looming for public transit in the United States. Country-wide, the pandemic has resulted in a 90% drop in ridership. This has led to cuts in services—which means even less ridership—and higher fares to make up for lost revenue. Higher fares lead to fewer riders…which means more higher fares, more cuts in services, or both. And so on. You see where this is going.
To save public transit, Congress may have to fill a $32 billion funding gap...but no funding package currently exists. Transportation advocates also warn that cuts in services exacerbate a “mobility crisis” that already existed for our cities’ most vulnerable people.
This article prompted a lively conversation on this week’s episode of Upzoned, with host Abby Kinney—an urban planner in Kansas City—and cohost Chuck Marohn, president of Strong Towns. Abby and Chuck discuss why the mortal danger facing public transit was always going to be an option when you overlay a dysfunctional transportation system on a dysfunctional land-use pattern, why public transit is a long-term investment in people, and how the U.S. subsidizes automobiles too. They also discuss whether making the “compassionate argument” may unintentionally undermine transit advocates’ case for public transportation.
Additional Show Notes * Public transit faces 'death spiral' without $32bn injection from Congress, by Miranda Bryant * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Some recent Strong Towns articles on public transit
+ “The Only Thing More Expensive Than Saving Transit is Not Saving Transit,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “In Transportation Costs, ‘It's the System, Stupid,’” by Daniel Herriges
+ “What the Left Gets Wrong about Public Transportation” (Podcast)
+ “Transit’s Chicken & Egg Fallacy,” by Chuck Marohn
+ “Why Development-Oriented Transit is better than Transit-Oriented Development,” by Rachel Quednau
As the suburbs—and, more specifically, single-family zoning—emerge as a political issue in the presidential election, what can get lost is context, nuance, and even the opportunity for consensus.
The irony is that, in the first half of the 20th century, the Suburban Experiment—an approach to growth (not actually limited to the suburbs) in which Americans build human habitats in large blocks and to a finished state—was launched and sustained through nonpartisan consensus.
Today, ending the Suburban Experiment should have broad bipartisan appeal. Because the Suburban Experiment hasn’t worked. In fact, it’s been a disaster. People on the political Left and the political Right might get there via different paths and priorities, but moving on from the Suburban Experiment could be an opportunity for common ground and the chance to point our towns and cities toward financial strength and resilience.
That’s the topic of this week’s episode of Upzoned. Host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn discuss a recent article in The American Conservative, “Zoning Reform Is Not Leftism.” They look at how we’re being pressured to view this issue through an increasingly partisan frame, why the predictability of single-family zoning is necessary when building at huge scale, and how the Left and the Right could actually find consensus on this topic.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck talks about a new book he’s reading on the life and death of ancient cities. And Abby recommends The Geography of Nowhere. She also talks about a recent visit to a lovely town in Northwest Arkansas.
Additional Show Notes * “Zoning Reform Is Not Leftism,” by Theo Mackey Pollack (The American Conservative) * “It’s Time to Abolish Single-Family Zoning,” by Charles Marohn (The American Conservative) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Related articles from Strong Towns
+ “The Is the End of the Suburban Experiment,” by Charles Marohn
+ “Nobody wants to ‘destroy the suburbs.’ But everyone should want to end the Suburban Experiment.” by John Pattison
+ “The Conservative Case for Ending Single-Family Zoning”
Every week on the Upzoned podcast, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, takes one big story in the news and she “upzones” it—examining it through a Strong Towns lens. Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn is back this week as Abby’s co-host.
Today, Abby and Chuck look at a story playing out in New York City. Apartment vacancy rates there are climbing, as people flee the city due to the pandemic, and rental costs are plummeting. According to a recent article in the New York Times, the number of apartments available for rent in July (67,300) was the highest in at least a decade:
In June and July combined, more than 120,000 apartments were for lease, a nearly 26 percent increase over the same months in 2019.
The surge in supply has driven down rental costs across the city and forced landlords to offer generous concessions, including up to three months’ free rent and paying the expensive fees brokers command.
Abby and Chuck discuss the “great reshuffling” happening in America’s largest metropolises, the fragile model that undergirds so much of the rental housing market in New York City, and how likely it is that New York will experience a long-term decline. They also discuss why “the Lindy effect”—named for a deli in Manhattan—gives hope that New York will survive the coronavirus fallout...though the journey is likely to be a painful one.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck describes his own journey back from an accident, as well as his experience with a doctor-prescribed media fast. Abby looks ahead to a mountain biking trip to northwest Arkansas and recommends a meditation app from neuroscientist Sam Harris.
Additional Show Notes * “Manhattan Vacancy Rate Climbs, and Rents Drop 10%,” by Matthew Haag * “This Is the Great Reshuffling,” by Johnny Sanphillippo * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Additional reading related to this episode:
+ “10 Tasks for Cities Responding to the Pandemic,” by Charles Marohn
+ “Pandemics Take Advantage of Everything Good in Cities. Here’s How we Protect Them.” by Tristan Cleveland
+ “Is COVID-19 the End of Cities?” by Joe Cortright
+ “Effective Quarantines and Strong Towns” by Spencer Gardner
Someone on the Strong Towns staff wanted to name this episode of the Upzoned podcast:
Plan? “No,” says Plano.
The dad jokes—and, yes, the staff member is a father—are plentiful with this story out of Plano, Texas. So too are the head-scratching details. You see, Plano (population 288,000) worked for years to create a new comprehensive plan. The Plano Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan wasn’t perfect, but it contained good faith efforts to address the city’s looming financial crisis—a crisis brought on by the rapid outward expansion and mounting maintenance obligations of Plano’s Suburban Experiment. But now the city has abruptly scrapped the Plano Tomorrow plan and is defaulting instead to the older master plan that should be called “Plano Yesterday,” because it dates back to 1986 (when the city’s population was one-third of what it was). And it was this plan that helped guide so much of the city’s fragile-making decisions over the last 30-plus years.
Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges wrote about the situation in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb last week, saying:
It’s no small task to tell someone who’s used to getting something on the cheap—in this case, a big house with a big yard, smooth roads, ample parking, and uncrowded, high-quality schools and parks—that it never really was that cheap and it’s going to cost a lot more going forward.
The time for Strong Towns advocates to start insisting on that tough conversation in your own places is yesterday. But barring that, it’s now. Plano’s problems aren’t going away, but the can has now been kicked years further down the road.
In this week’s episode of Upzoned, Daniel is back to talk more about Plano with host Abby Kinney, a planner with Gould Evans in Kansas City. Abby and Daniel discuss the bizarre fate of the Plano Tomorrow plan. ("This makes no sense.") They also discuss how the situation in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb reveals common misunderstandings about comprehensive plans, why it could stifle good planning in Texas, and why towns and cities must be allowed to evolve if they are to stay solvent.
Plano, Texas is the unfortunate object lesson: We can’t solve the Suburban Experiment using the same kind of thinking we used when we created the Suburban Experiment.
Then in the Downzone, Abby talks about the throwback music and movies she’s been consuming lately, and Daniel discusses the Murphy’s Law of air conditioner repair in Florida: If your A/C is going to break down, it’s going to break down in August.
Additional Show Notes * “What a NIMBY Victory in Plano Means for the Future of Urban Planning in Texas” (D Magazine), by Peter Simek * “A Plannner’s Nightmare in Plano. A City’s Nightmare Too.” by Daniel Herriges * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Daniel Herriges (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Additional reading related to this episode:
+ “What Does a Strong Towns Master Plan Look Like?” by Kevin Klinkenberg
+ “A Strong Towns Comp Plan,” by Rachel Quednau
+ “A Town Well-Planned” (a six part series by Alexander Dukes)
+ “A Texas-Sized Pavement Problem,” by Daniel Herriges
A couple weeks ago, we posted a link on the Strong Towns Facebook page to a recent article about how the city of Boulder refused to lift its cap on the number of unrelated people who can live in the same home. Housing advocates in Boulder had hoped to put an initiative on the November ballot to reform the laws. But the city seems to have changed the rules, and now housing advocates plan to sue.
The Facebook post generated a lot of conversation—79 comments so far, and not a few angry emojis—and so we are unpacking the story further in this week’s episode of Upzoned.
Host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and Rachel Quednau, program director at Strong Towns, discuss some of the factors that make Boulder, Colorado such a complex and highly competitive housing market. They discuss why lifting the cap on unrelated people almost certainly would legalize a practice that’s already happening, and how the current limit effects not just renters but landlords. And they explore why cities should explore removing barriers to natural growth, including allowing the next increment of development intensity.
Then in the Downzone, both Abby and Rachel talk about an addictive show on Netflix that should probably be watched with a pen and paper in hand. And, just in time for Strong Towns Food Week, Rachel recommends the podcast The Splendid Table and Abby talks about her forays into food preservation.
Additional Show Notes * “Boulder Refuses To Lift the Cap on Unrelated People Living Together. Housing Advocates Plan To Sue the City,” by Christian Britschgi * Bedrooms Are for People * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
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Roger Valdez is the director of a housing advocacy organization in Seattle “promoting more housing, of all types, in every neighborhood, and for all levels of income.” In a recent Forbes article, Valdez summarized the results of a study he’s done on the long-term effects of rent control. According to his analysis, rent control policies have historically been introduced as emergency measures...but they have a pesky way of outlasting the crises that prompted them.
Valdez warns that, if we’re not careful, communities may experience something similar with the pandemic:
The endlessly beguiling temptation of trying to fix or democratize prices is once again dancing in front of politicians eager to please during COVID-19 response…
The COVID-19 crisis could end up leading to price controls on housing that outlive the pandemic. Already in many states, including my own state of Washington, state and local government have imposed price freezes on residential and commercial rents. One can easily see, based on the history I cover in the analysis, how these freezes may become permanent, and lead to making eviction bans permanent too.
Rent control is one of those conversations that reminds us of just how complex the affordable housing problem is. In fact, it’s so complex, it probably can’t be called a “problem” at all. As host Abby Kinney says in this week’s episode of Upzoned, problems have solutions; there is no easy solution for the housing crisis.
In this episode, Abby and regular cohost Chuck Marohn, founder and president of Strong Towns, talk about Valdez’s article, about how the housing predicament becomes even more challenging during the pandemic, and how Strong Towns advocates should respond. They discuss the temptation to apply blanket policies to complex systems, the importance of feedback loops, and why we can’t just build our way out of the crisis. They also identify a first step cities can take that would be a quantum leap forward in bringing sanity back to the housing market.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck, still recovering from his boating accident, discusses his recent deep dive into World War II history. And Abby recommends the essential book The Geography of Nowhere, by our friend James Howard Kunstler.
Additional Show Notes: * “Analysis: The Covid-19 Emergency Should Not Lead To Rent Control,” by Roger Valdez * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Chuck Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Select Strong Towns articles and podcasts on renting, rent control, and the housing crisis:
+ “What Happens When a Third of U.S. Tenants Don’t Pay Rent” (Podcast)
+ “Can We Afford to Care About Design in a Housing Crisis?” by Daniel Herriges
+ “Statewide Rent Control: Solution or Distraction?”
+ “A Real-World Look at How Rent Control Hurts Tenants,” by Steven Greenhut
+ “Winners and Losers from Rent Control,” by Joe Cortright
+ “The Challenges of Building More Rental Housing,” by Spencer Gardner
"If no one ever built a skyscraper ever again, anywhere, who would truly miss them?”
That’s how architecture critic Rowan Moore begins his recent article in The Guardian, on his way to calling skyscrapers outmoded, damaging, and wasteful. Skyscrapers, he says, aren’t necessary to achieve the kind of density city advocates want for their urban core. Moore also punctures one of the longstanding arguments in favor of skyscrapers: that they are friendlier to the environment. Speaking about embodied energy, he writes: “Tall buildings are more structurally demanding than lower ones—it takes a lot of effort, for example, to stop them swaying—and so require more steel and concrete.”
Each week on Upzoned, we take a look at one big story in the news that touches on then Strong Towns conversation and we “upzone” it — examining it in light of the Strong Towns approach to building more financially resilient cities. This week, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, is joined by cohost Chuck Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns. They discuss Moore’s article and explore the question:
A skyline full of skyscrapers makes for a nice postcard…but do skyscrapers actually make our cities stronger?
Abby and Chuck compare the “vertical sprawl” of skyscrapers to the density found in iconic cities like Paris. They discuss the problems of building all-at-once to a finished state, why skyscrapers are ultimately a pass/fail test, and the power and beauty of incremental ownership.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck recommends a novel about Pearl Harbor by Jeff Shaara and the TV series Yellowstone, and he gives an update on his recovery from a boating accident. Then, Abby talks about Drawing the Landscape, a book she’s using to prepare to begin painting again this winter.
Additional Shownotes * “Wasteful, damaging and outmoded: is it time to stop building skyscrapers?” by Rowan Moore * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Chuck Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Recent Strong Towns articles about urban design
+ “What Is Traditional Development?” by Daniel Herriges
+ “A City Shaped by Many Hands,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “The Streets of Paris,” by Charles Marohn
+ “Greetings from Anywhere: Supporting Postcard-Worthy Places,” by Joe Minicozzi
+ “Why Urban Design Should Come from the Bottom Up,” by Nolan Gray
+ “Deadwood and Strong Towns,” by DJ Sullivan
Heading into general election season, Americans are about to be deluged with ads, speeches, debates, articles and commentaries about all the ways in which President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden—the two presumptive major-party nominees—differ on the issues. But there is at least one thing on which the candidates agree: both want to try to jumpstart the economy by spending trillions on infrastructure.
This point of agreement is no surprise to us here at Strong Towns. We even gave it a name: the “Infrastructure Cult.” As Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn wrote in the Strong Towns book, “Our collective belief in the power of infrastructure spending is now so deeply embedded within our society that we struggle to identify it as belief, let alone systematically question it. We take it as truth, unequivocally.”
Still, there are hopeful signs that the devotion to infrastructure spending may be eroding. One of the latest is an opinion piece published last week in the New York Times. Entitled “Stop Building More Roads,” the authors—two engineering professors, one at the University of Toronto, and the other at Cambridge—write that “the economic benefits of expansion are marginal and the downsides significant.” The first step to recovery, they say, should be focused on job creation, “but without saddling it to shortsighted, status quo projects we will later regret—highways, for example.”
The same goes for projects that emphasize technological infrastructure, which risks becoming rapidly obsolete. Such projects should be “shovel ready” and “shovel worthy,” and sufficiently funded so that they don’t linger in aspirational planning documents. In the immediate term, this means emphasizing lots of small projects. They can quickly be planned, discussed and constructed once virus spread conditions allow. This will look different than 1930s New Deal images of heavy construction everywhere.
That article, “Stop Building More Roads,” is the subject of this week’s episode of Upzoned. Host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, is joined by Strong Towns Program Director Rachel Quednau. They discuss where Dr. Shoshanna Saxe and Dr. Kristen MacAskill’s alternatives for federal stimulus spending dovetails with a Strong Towns approach. They also talk about why the Infrastructure Cult has been economically (and socially) ruinous, why it’s time to reimagine what “progress” looks like, and what a much better use would be for all that stimulus money.
Then in the Downzone, Rachel recommends an excellent novel about Nigerian immigrants in the US and UK, as well as a TV show about the personal computing revolution. And Abby describes making the most of her opportunities to be outside before we’re all forced back inside by cold weather and COVID-19.
Additional Show Notes: * “Stop Building New Roads,” by Shoshanna Saxe and Kristen MacAskill * “Use stimulus to maintain viable infrastructure, not build more,” by Dennis Strait * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Select Strong Towns articles about #NoNewRoads
+ “You Were Mentioned on the Floor of Congress,” by John Pattison
+ “A $7.5 Billion Boondoggle Advances in Austin,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “Just Say No,” by Charles Marohn
+ “The Fight For #NoNewRoads Is Alive and Well in Washington State”
+ “#NoNewRoads Gains Traction in D.C.”
You’ve probably seen them: photos of malls that seemed to be thriving just a few years ago but which now stand lifeless — along with their many acres of parking — except for the odd tree growing up where a sunglasses kiosk used to be. These are the fossils of the “retail apocalypse,” the long trend (now accelerated by COVID-19) that has seen the shuttering of thousands of brick-and-mortar retail stores over the last 20 years.
Cities, planners, architects, developers, and residents alike have wondered what can be done, if anything, with America’s growing stock of abandoned malls. One idea gaining traction — including offers of federal assistance — is to retrofit dying mall sites into something new: apartments. Each week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, takes a news story that touches the Strong Towns conversations and she “upzones” it, examining it in light of the Strong Towns approach to growing stronger and more financially resilient cities. This week, Abby and her regular cohost, Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn, look at a recent article by Patrick Sisson in Bloomberg CityLab, entitled "The Dying Mall’s New Lease on Life: Apartments.”
Together, Abby and Chuck discuss plans by the Trump administration to help convert old malls into affordable housing. Is this a good use of federal stimulus funds? They talk about the problems with top-down approaches to affordable housing, the “psychology of previous investment” (a phrase coined by our friend James Howard Kunstler), and why the U.S. keeps pumping money into “Big.” They also look at an example of someone who is trying to redevelop an old mall site from the bottom-up, but then ask: Can that approach scale?
Then in the Downzone, Chuck talks about becoming a surprise boat owner. And Abby recommends Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood, the new book by Colin Woodard.
Additional Show Notes:
- "The Dying Mall’s New Lease on Life: Apartments,” by Patrick Sisson
- Abby Kinney (Twitter)
- Chuck Marohn (Twitter)
- Gould Evans Studio for City Design
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
-
Other Strong Towns articles about shopping malls
- "The Real Reason Your Local Mall is Failing,” by Charles Marohn
- "Just when you thought the end of malls couldn't get any worse…," by Rachel Quednau
- ”The Shopping Mall Death Spiral," Charles Marohn
- ”The End of Big Malls Means Big Problems," by Rachel Quednau
All around the United States, monuments deemed to be racist are being officially removed or—as was the case with a George Washington statue in Portland—toppled. This trend led Matthew Fleischer, senior digital editor at the Los Angeles Times, to suggest the demolition of what he called “one of the most noxious monuments to racism and segregation in the country”: Los Angeles freeways.
Our own Daniel Herriges wrote back in 2017:
America has a long and shameful history of ramming ill-conceived freeways through—almost always—low-income neighborhoods populated largely by people of color. These projects have invariably destroyed and displaced whole communities, devastated the tax base of cities while subsidizing suburban commuters, and created unseemly “moats” of high-speed traffic and polluted air that ruined the urban fabric of city neighborhoods for a generation or more.
In his op-ed, Fleischer gives highlights from L.A.’s chapter in this national tragedy. And he says that while Americans are “[tearing] down insidious monuments to racism and segregation,” Los Angeles freeways should be bulldozed too.
On this week’s episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney, a planner in Kansas City, and regular co-host Chuck Marohn, president of Strong Towns, discuss Fleischer’s op-ed and the problem of urban freeways. They talk about the past and future of urban freeways, including how feasible it is to actually tear down or repurpose them. They also discuss how the U.S. freeway system is different from its counterpart in European cities, how North America has doubled-down on the commuter mentality, and why we should measure highways by travel time rather than speed.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck recommends an audiobook from comedian Tom Papa. And Abby talks about listening to—and playing—more music.
Additional Show Notes: * “Opinion: Want to tear down insidious monuments to racism and segregation? Bulldoze L.A. freeways,” by Matthew Fleischer * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Chuck Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Select Strong Towns articles about Urban Highways
+ "‘Kansas City's Blitz’": How Freeway-Building Blew Up Urban Wealth,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “A Highway (Used to) Run Through It,” by Arian Horbovetz
+ ”Want to Understand How Freeways Destroyed U.S. Cities? Watch This Guy Play Cities:Skylines.”
+ “The History of Urban Freeways: Who Counts?” by Daniel Herriges
+ “Who supports this inner city highway and why?” by Rachel Quednau
Every few months, photojournalist Vincent David Johnson sets out on a road trip. His purpose: to document “rural America and the little pieces of Americana I find along the way.” Writing earlier this month in The American Conservative, Johnson said he thinks of his work as “modern-day exploration.” The problem with that description, he acknowledges, is that explorers go to find something new. In contrast, “I know what I’m going to find and it hasn’t changed for almost three decades now.”
Small towns are in serious trouble. Tens of millions of people left rural communities in the second half of the 20th-century, and many communities continue to lose their young people to larger cities. Businesses and population alike have taken huge hits, as freeways run motorists around (or over) these towns, but never slowly through them. Rural taxpayers subsidize their own demise, even as they pursue an approach to growth that is designed to decline.
Vincent David Johnson’s article, and the challenges facing rural America, are the subjects of this week’s episode of Upzoned. Host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, is joined again by regular cohost Chuck Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns. Together, Abby and Chuck discuss the macro-forces arrayed against small towns, as well as the ways in which small towns become their own worst enemy. They talk about whether air travel is “one giant overpass for most of the country.” And they discuss the #1 thing we can do to help small towns.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck talks about reading Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment, by the former Greek finance minister. And Abbey recommends American Nations, by Colin Woodard, a book about the 11 regional “nations” that comprise North America.
Additional Show Notes * “A Rural Roadtrip In Search Of Lost Americana,” by Vincent David Johnson * Lost Americana documentary project * Lost Americana (Instagram) * Vincent David Johnson (Instagram) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Chuck Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Additional Strong Towns articles on small towns
+ “We’re in the Endgame Now for Small Towns,” by Charles Marohn
+ “Walkable? Check. Urban? Check. Rural? Also Check.” by Daniel Herriges
+ “What happens when an entire region of rural communities buys into the same bad approach to development?” by John Pattison
+ “No, Revitalizing Rural America Isn't A Lost Cause. But the Way You're Thinking About it Might Be.” by Kea Wilson
+ “Rural by Design”
+ “A Small Town Mayor Puts Strong Towns Principles into Action,” by Rachel Quednau
When the Large Hadron Collider opened in 2008, deep beneath the French-Swiss border, some people feared it would be the literal end of the world—that slamming particles together at 99.999999% the speed of light would create an all-consuming black hole, or even strangelets, hypothetical particles that may convert existing matter into “strange matter.” Twelve years later, scientists continue to smash particles together in the name of discovering what the universe is made of, and the earth is still here...for now.
Why bring that up here, in a podcast about building stronger and more financially resilient cities? Because right now it feels like Americans are the ones in the collider. That’s the metaphor our friend Chris Arnade used in an excellent article on what the COVID-19 crisis is revealing about the United States. He writes:
In physics, to reveal deeper truths, you slam particles together to expose their inner structure.
The pandemic has been like that, slamming different parts of the country together, revealing it to be deeply divided by geography, race, education, and wealth. It is hard to imagine it once fit together or will ever fit together again.
Each week on Upzoned, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, takes one article from the news and she “upzones” it, looking at it through the Strong Towns lens. In this episode Abby is joined by Strong Towns Program Director Rachel Quednau, and together they discuss Chris Arnade’s American Compass article, “Chaos in the Time of Covid.”
Abby and Rachel talk about how Americans are experiencing the pandemic very differently from one another, Arnade’s ability to lift the veil on communities too often obscured or ignored, and whether or not politics has become a religion. Abby and Rachel also discuss reasons for hope, including the way divisions often start to break down at the neighborhood level.
Then in the Downzone, Rachel recommends a book from her Strong Towns colleague on how faith communities can join in the work of neighborhood revitalization. And Abby discusses her experience—both as a presenter and as an attendee—at last week’s CNU virtual gathering.
What about you? Do you believe, as Chris Arnade seems to, that the colliding particles of American society will continue to decay and dissipate? Or do you see reasons for hope in your community? Listen to this episode, then let us know over on the Strong Towns Community site.
Additional Show Notes * “Chaos in the Time of Covid,” by Chris Arnade * “Rise of the Essential Class,” by Pete Saunders * Chris Arnade (Twitter) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Rachel Quednau (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Slow Church, by Strong Towns content manager John Pattison * The Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein * Additional Strong Towns content featuring Chris Arnade
+ 2019: “The Dignity of Local Community: A Conversation with Chris Arnade” (Strong Towns Podcast)
+ “Dignity in an Alienated America,” by Charles Marohn
+ “The Best Books I Read in 2019,” by Charles Marohn
+ 2017: “Approaching America with Divided Eyes” (Strong Towns Podcast)
The ongoing demonstrations sparked by the murder of George Floyd have Americans considering as never before not just racial justice and police accountability, but also our public spaces.
Who owns our streets, sidewalks, and green spaces? Who is entitled to be there? Who feels safe there? What is the role of public spaces in the democratic process and movements for social change?
These are some of the issues we were trying to get at when we asked, early in the Strong Towns Strength Test:
If the revolution came to your town, would people know where to go?
They are also some of the questions at the heart of the most recent episode of Upzoned.
This week, regular host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, is joined by very special guest Kemet Coleman. Kemet is a rapper, entrepreneur, and urbanist in Kansas City. (He’s also the artist behind the Upzoned theme music.) Together, Abby and Kemet talk about what the demonstrations are revealing to us—or reminding us—about who owns our public infrastructure and why public spaces are at the crux of democracy. They talk about why a strong country starts with strong neighborhoods. And they discuss the dual function of public spaces right now, both in returning to normal (as with the “open streets movement”) and disrupting normal.
Then in the Downzone, Kemet talks about how he’s been staying busy during the COVID-19 crisis, including a four-album saga he’s working on. (Parts 1-3 are out now.) And Abby describes what it’s been like recently to experience her local parks at slower pace.
Additional Show Notes * “Recent Protests in Public Space: It's All About Equity,” by Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman * Strong Towns Strength Test * KemetColeman.com * Kemet Coleman (Instagram) * Kemet Coleman (Twitter) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
We’ve seen a number of proposals coming out of Washington over the last couple months, all aimed at giving the sputtering economy a jumpstart. One of the most recent is a plan that may excite some transportation advocates: a high-speed rail network. As outlined in a white paper by Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), the high-speed rail network would connect Chicago to Atlanta, and Portland to Vancouver. It’s projected to cost the federal government $205 billion, with another $243 billion coming from state, local, and private investments.
Rep. Moulton’s plan—and this article about it in Wired—is the subject of this week’s episode of Upzoned. Each week, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and regular co-host Chuck Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns, take one story from the news and they “upzone” it—examining it in light of the Strong Towns approach to building stronger and more financially resilient cities.
In this episode, Abby and Chuck discuss the appeal of the high-speed rail network, as well as their concerns. They talk about why equating high-speed rail to the creation of major transportation systems in the past (including other rail networks) just doesn’t work. And they compare the economic impact of Moulton’s plan to the benefits of maintaining the infrastructure we already have.
In the Downzone, Chuck talks about his experience reading (for the second time this year) The Great Influenza, by John Barry. And Abby recommends an inherited book about woodworking.
Additional Show Notes * ”A Lawmaker Wants Fast Trains to Rev Up the US Economy,” by Aarian Marshall * “American High-Speed Rail & Rebuilding the U.S. Economy” (white paper) * “Learning from the 2009 Recovery Act” (Smart Growth America/Transportation for America) * “The California High-Speed Train that Wasn’t: The Opportunity Cost of Megaprojects,” by Daniel Herriges * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
Last week, two dams on the Tittabawassee River burst, forcing more than 10,000 residents of Central Michigan to flee. The economic toll will be high, not to mention the environmental and public health impacts.
In addition to the immediate crisis, the failures of the Edenville Dam and Sanford Dam are a grim warning about the integrity of Michigan’s other dams, says The New York Times. Of the state’s 1,059 dams, at least 320 have been classified with “high” or “significant” hazard potential by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The two failed dams were also 95 years old. “That makes them far older than the average age of American dams, which is 56 years old, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.”
The story out of Michigan is the subject of this week’s episode of Upzoned, featuring host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn. Abby and Chuck discuss how the dam failures shed light on our fragile infrastructure (there are some 20,000 high-risk dams across the U.S.), including the catastrophic consequences of dams aging in a development pattern that would have been unimaginable to their early 20th-century builders. Abby and Chuck also connect dams—the physical manifestation of suppressed volatility in water management—to the suppressed volatility in our other major systems.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck talks about re-reading The Big Short, a book about the subprime mortgage crisis by master storyteller Michael Lewis. And Abby recommends Living in the Long Emergency, the new book by James Howard Kunstler (who was also a recent guest on the Strong Towns podcast).
Additional Show Notes * “Two Dams That Failed Were Rated ‘High Hazard.’ A Third of Michigan’s Dams Hold a Similar Risk,” by Anjali Singhvi and Troy Griggs * “A Dam Mess,” by Charles Marohn * “The Growth Ponzi Scheme: Water Edition,” by Rachel Quednau * "James Howard Kunstler: Living in the Long Emergency" (Podcast) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
A controversial project in Toronto that would have transformed “a slice of Toronto’s waterfront into a high-tech utopia” has been shut down by Sidewalk Labs (a subsidiary of Alphabet) due to "unprecedented economic uncertainty."
“At one point,” writes Andrew J. Hawkins in The Verge, “Sidewalk Labs’ plan was to spend $1.3 billion on mass timber housing, heated and illuminated sidewalks, public Wi-Fi, and, of course, a host of cameras and other sensors to monitor traffic and street life.”
The project had raised a variety of concerns, not least from privacy advocates, who objected to the intrusion of technology into their everyday lives. Chris Teale, a reporter at Smart Cities Dive, said the Quayside project “spawned what many called a ‘techlash’ against big tech companies asserting themselves in such a ways, and has led to a belief that future projects must be less focused on sensors and data analytics and instead look to partner better with everyone.”
Each week, our Upzoned podcast takes one story in the news that touches the Strong Towns conversation and we “upzone” it. This week we’re looking at the smart cities movement in general—and the Quayside project in particular. Host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, is joined by regular co-host Chuck Marohn (president of Strong Towns) as well as by our senior editor Daniel Herriges, who has been closely following the Quayside story for years. Abby, Chuck, and Daniel discuss the allure of high-tech cities, why a lot of smart city initiatives seem designed not to serve people but rather make us better consumers, and the consequences of creating systems with built-in fragility.
Then in the Downzone, Abby talks about the role Strong Towns has played in how Gould Evans and other leaders are building a stronger and more financially resilient Kansas City. This is Member Week at Strong Towns. If Strong Towns has helped you think about your city in ways that are truly smart, consider becoming a member today. Let’s grow this movement together: https://www.strongtowns.org/membership
Additional Show Notes * “'Techlash' at Sidewalk Labs could mean smart city rethink,” by Chris Teale * “Is Strong Towns Anti-Smart City?” by Kea Wilson * ”In Defense of Dumb Cities,” by Michael McGinn * Become a Strong Towns Member * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Daniel Herriges (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
We recently came across an article in The Guardian about how Vilnius, the capital of Lithunia, is converting itself into “a vast open-air café by giving over much of its public space to hard-hit bar and restaurant owners…” According to the mayor of Vilnius (population 544,000), cafés can apply to set up outdoor tables free of charge in nearby plazas, squares, and streets. Eighteen of the city’s public spaces have been opened up — and that’s just the start. So far, more than 160 food establishments have applied to participate.
Small businesses are reeling from the effect of the COVID-19 crisis, especially those that rely on groups of people to congregate. And in a cruel twist of fate, it’s not the drive-thru chains that are hurting most, but rather the locally-owned businesses, the ones with the most vested interest in the community.
In this week’s episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner at Gould Evans, is joined by Chuck Marohn and Kevin Klinkenberg to talk about the flexibility our cities and towns will need if many of our small businesses are to survive. Chuck is the founder and president of Strong Towns, and the regular cohost of Upzoned. Special guest Kevin Klinkenberg is an urban designer, writer, and the executive director of Midtown KC Now.
Abby, Chuck, and Kevin discuss the example set by Vilnius and other cities in giving small businesses the best chance to thrive in what promises to be a volatile six to 24 months. They also talk about the opportunity the crisis provides to test the impact of sacrificing some driving and parking to improve walkability—not to mention improved safety in a time of continued social distancing.
Then in the Downzone, Kevin has high praise for a book about a Russian aristocrat sentenced to house arrest in a hotel near the Kremlin—historical fiction Kevin describes as “wonderful, interesting, and surprising.” Chuck recommends a book about growth that was also recommended by Bill Gates. And Abby describes the renovation project that’s kept her from reading this last week.
Additional Show Notes * “Lithuanian capital to be turned into vast open-air cafe,” by Jon Henley * Kevin Klinkenberg (Website) * Kevin Klinkenberg (Twitter) * Midtown KC Now (Website) * Midtown KC Now (Twitter) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Strong Towns Content Featuring Kevin Klinkenberg
+ Live in Kansas City: "We’re a suburban community learning we can be urban." (Podcast)
+ “What Does a Strong Towns Master Plan Look Like?” by Kevin Klinkenberg
+ “Dangerous Nostalgia: Why Romanticizing the 1950s and 1960s Won't Get Us Anywhere,” by Kevin Klinkenberg
+ “Parking Is Important and Not Important,” by Kevin Klinkenberg
We’ll let you in on a secret: most highway investments are not primarily about moving vehicles more effectively. If that was the main goal we would spend a lot less money on expanding capacity and start pursuing smart strategies to manage demand.
The thing is, traffic engineers already know this. We have data going back decades. But what’s happened with COVID-19 is that we’re now seeing it play out in real-time, in city after city, as traffic flows shift.
City Observatory’s Joe Cortright has written a provocative article on just this topic. Looking at traffic patterns on I-5 in Portland, Oregon, Joe concludes that, if we’re willing to learn, the experiment foisted upon us can teach us how to fight congestion and get a more efficient transportation system—even after the worst is over.
On today’s episode of Upzoned we look closer at Joe’s article, with host Abby Kinney—an urban planner in Kansas City—and regular co-host Chuck Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns. Abby and Chuck discuss two tools mentioned in the article (ramp meters and congestion pricing), both their promise and potential unintended consequences. They discuss what’s really behind most highway investments. And they talk about how to replace demand for long-range trips with demand for short-range trips.
Then in the Downzoned, Chuck recommends a book by Jane Jacobs that feels especially perceptive during the coronavirus crisis. And Abby recommends The Color of Law and says the history of de jure segregation needs to be more widely taught.
Additional Show Notes * “What COVID-19 Teaches Us About How to Fix Freeways,” by Joe Cortright * City Observatory (Website) * Joe Cortright (Twitter) * “How the Government Segregated American Cities by Design,” by Daniel Herriges * Select Strong Towns Articles on Jane Jacobs * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Recent Strong Towns articles on congestion:
+ “The Congestion Con: How Bad Land Use and Transportation Decisions Go Hand-in-Hand,” by Stephen Lee Davis
+ ”No, Mathematicians Have Not ‘Solved’ Traffic Jams,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “It’s Time To Stop Repeating This Damaging Myth about Traffic,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “‘Carmageddon’ Does a No-Show in Seattle. Again.” by Joe Cortright
After two decades of robust population growth, America’s cities are no longer booming. According to a recent New York Times article, growth in major metropolitan areas is half what it was about ten years ago. And people are understandably wondering what the COVID-19 crisis will mean for the future of cities. From that article:
Mayors are already warning of precipitous drops in tax revenue from joblessness. Public spaces like parks and buses, the central arteries of urban life, have become danger zones. And with vast numbers of professionals now working remotely, some may reconsider whether they need to live in the middle of a big city after all.
Have big cities lost their allure, as the title of the Times article says? And will the pandemic accelerate a rush to smaller cities, the suburbs, and exurbs?
These are some of the questions Abby Kinney and Chuck Marohn explore on this week’s episode of the Upzoned podcast. They also discuss why the places likely to take the biggest economic hit from the pandemic are those with the most debt, the most long-term liabilities, and the least amount of flexibility—i.e., places built according to the suburban development pattern. And they describe the type of cities most likely to experience a renaissance in the post-coronavirus future. (Hint: It’s not the suburbs, but it’s not necessarily New York and San Francisco either.)
Then in the Downzone, Chuck recommends two very different books — a crime thriller set in Minnesota, and a book on the future of the American worker — and Abby describes the experience of mushroom hunting.
Additional Shownotes * “America’s Biggest Cities Were Already Losing Their Allure. What Happens Next?” by Sabrina Tavernise and Sarah Mervosh * “Is COVID-19 the End of Cities?” by Joe Cortright * “Not So Fast: Density Isn’t Plague-Inducing,” by Joe Minicozzi * When Will Your City Feel the Fiscal Impact of COVID-19? (Podcast) * “This is the End of the Suburban Experiment,” by Chuck Marohn * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
Every city will feel the economic impact of the coronavirus crisis. That’s a foregone conclusion. What will vary from community to community is when they will feel it, for how long, and how bad it will be. This is what Michael A. Pagano and Christiana K. McFarland are trying to anticipate in a new study for the Brookings Institution.
Pagana and McFarland—respectively, Dean of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Research Director for the National League of Cities—write that “the impact on cities’ bottom line will be driven not only by overall economic conditions but specifically the parts of the economy where revenue is generated: retail sales, income and wages, and real estate.” The towns and cities most likely to feel the impact quicker are those places most reliant on (a) “elastic” sources of revenue (such as sales and income tax), and (b) employers in “high-risk industries,” such as mining, oil and gas, transportation, travel, and more.
“The results,” they write, “indicate an uneven geography of fiscal impact, with many heartland cities likely to be hit harder and more quickly than others.”
In this week’s episode of Upzoned, hosts Abby Kinney and Chuck Marohn discuss the Brookings study and which communities are in the most trouble. They talk about the “suppressed volatility” of the last decade and how it is effecting cities now, why a city budget really is like a family budget, and how the crisis is reminding us why we need stable local governments.
Then in the Downzoned, Abby and Chuck are both turning their attention to yard work. And Chuck recommends a great audiobook about a daring World War II rescue mission.
Additional Shownotes * “When will your city feel the fiscal impact of COVID-19?” by Michael A. Pagano and Christiana K. McFarland * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
The COVID-19 crisis is ravaging nearly every aspect of the economy, very much including the housing sector. Data tracked by the National Multifamily Housing Council found that nearly one-third of residential tenants didn’t pay rent in April. Even before the pandemic, says James Brasuell, managing editor at Planetizen, Americans “were straining to cover the high cost of housing…creating a pressure point in the economy that was, according to reports, booming.”
[Pre-existing] trends were stressing the housing markets and the millions of renters in the country before stay-at-home orders gutted the employment market. On April 1, with millions of Americans suddenly unemployed, and a public health crisis weeks, or potentially months, away from its expected peak, U.S. renters owed a collective $22 billion for rent, according to analysis by CoStar.
During the crisis, many tenants have lost income or lost their jobs outright. While some cities and states have allowed tenants to defer rent payments, those tenants face the prospect of having to make up missed payments before the economy is back on its feet.
Brausell’s recent article “Rent Crisis Deferred” is the subject of this week’s episode of Upzoned. Host Abby Kinney, a planner at Gould Evans in Kansas City, and Chuck Marohn, founder and president of Strong Towns, discuss how the housing market is responding to massive non-payment, and it is rippling throughout the rest of the economy. They explore why much-lauded “market responsiveness” is not always a happy thing, the historical roots of our volatile housing system, and what happens when a volatile system seeks equilibrium. They also discuss a few ideas (like a debt jubilee) that have been floated to respond to the crisis.
Then in the Downzoned, Abby and Chuck take a break from recommending media and offer their “Quarantine Chronicles,” including family walks, bike rides, and the experience of cutting one’s own hair.
Additional Shownotes * ”Rent Crisis Deferred,” by James Brasuell * James Brasuell (Twitter) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Select Strong Towns Articles about Housing
+ Two Simple Rules For Healthy Neighborhood Change, by Daniel Herriges
+ Skinning Your Knee vs. Breaking Your Leg, by Johnny Sanphillippo
+ Why Housing Is “The Wickedest of Wicked Problems” (Podcast)
+ Jenny Schuetz: Who's To Blame for High Housing Costs? (Podcast)
+ Stuck: Why Rent and Mortgage-Burdened Americans Don’t Always Move to Cheaper Pastures, by Kea Wilson
+ More “Landlords on the Street,” by Gracen Johnson
+ 17 Head-scratcher Housing Terms, Defined, by Rachel Quednau
As talks begin about how to kickstart the economy after the worst of the COVID-19 crisis, lawmakers, policy wonks, and the media are resurrecting a familiar plan: a huge infrastructure bill that will “get money flowing” and “put Americans back to work.”
The belief that infrastructure spending can cure what ails us, that infrastructure is a “good financial investment,” has gained such widespread acceptance (in both major parties, among advocacy groups, and in the media) that we here at Strong Towns call it the “Infrastructure Cult.” But we’re not buying it. Because when you do the math, you soon discover that the more-is-better dogma is financially ruinous for local communities in even the best of times.
On this week’s episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn discuss a recent article from The Hill about the $2 trillion infrastructure bill gaining steam in Washington, DC. They talk about where the money is likely to come from and how it will be spent, the problems with comparing the bill to Great Depression-era recovery plans, and why we can’t fix the economy using the same thinking that made it fragile in the first place.
Then on the Downzoned, Chuck recommends a modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes and previews something big he’s been working on. And Abby, a Kansas City-based planner at Gould Evans, recommends a Netflix show that should be must-watch even for people who don’t live in Missouri.
Additional Show Notes: * “Infrastructure bill gains new steam as coronavirus worsens,” by Mike Lillis and Scott Wong * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Charles Marohn (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Select Strong Towns articles about the Infrastructure Cult
+ A Reminder for Planners: "Every Projection is Wrong," by Daniel Herriges
+ The Hyperloop Is Always Greener from the Other Side of the Stroad, by Charles Marohn
+ What Should My City Do About Our Infrastructure Backlog? by Charles Marohn
+ Shreveport's Highway Emperors’ New Clothes, by Kim Mitchell
+ Why Does Infrastructure Cost So Much?, by Charles Marohn
The coronavirus has upended life as we know it. Without minimizing the grief, fear, and uncertainty that has gripped the entire world all at once, the pandemic has also revealed things that were always true but were frequently obscured...or ignored.
Case in point: Bikes are an outstanding way to move around, get exercise, see your town, spend time with friends, reduce pollution, and build the economic resilience of your community. Yet we’ve built our cities in such a way that biking is not only impractical and inconvenient, but often a dangerous nightmare.
What’s happened during the coronavirus crisis is that, on many roads, the proportion of cars to people has flipped. More people are out walking and biking. Some towns and cities are even rushing to adapt existing car-centric infrastructure so pedestrians and cyclists can move around while still observing social distancing guidelines.
In a recent CityLab article, “In a Global Health Emergency, the Bicycle Shines,” Laura Laker describes how cycling rates are skyrocketing around the world, and how cities are responding.
Many experts view cycling as a safe way to avoid crowded public transportation systems — and the citizens in a number of world cities appear to agree. In New York, cycling spiked by 52% over the city’s bridges after social-distancing protocols were put in place. In Chicago, bikeshare use doubled in early March. In Dublin and London, advocates are offering support to new riders who are taking to the streets in droves.
In this week’s episode of Upzoned. Host Abby Kinney, a planner at Gould Evans in Kansas City, and Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges discuss the CityLab article and what the pandemic reminds us about the benefits of cycling, in both good times and bad. What if we could shed our assumptions that streets are for cars? What opportunities do we have to improve bike infrastructure, benefiting folks now but also long into the future?
Then in the Downzone, Daniel talks about how he and his wife are using the quarantine to reconnect with an eclectic mix of friends and family. And Abby and Daniel both discuss a bizarre a documentary series on Netflix that the whole country seems to be watching. You know the one.
Additional Show Notes: * “In a Global Health Emergency, the Bicycle Shines,” by Laura Laker * Neighborhoods First, by Chuck Marohn * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Daniel Herriges (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Recent Strong Towns articles about biking
+ The Right-Hand Rule for Passing a Bike, by Buff Brown
+ Cyclists are somehow both “vehicles” and “pedestrians.” This ambiguous status puts lives at risk. By Greg Walker
+ “Which Way to Your Car, Sir,” by Daniel Herriges
+ Hey Peloton, Here’s How Real Cycling “Changes” You, by Arian Horbovetz
+ So Your City's Getting More Bike-Friendly. How Do You Identify the Next Best Step? by Tim Wright
If you’ve followed Strong Towns for a while, you’ve likely heard us talk about Nassim Nicholas Taleb. We frequently refer to him as the Patron Saint of Strong Towns thinking, because—as we wrote last year—“his insights about risk, uncertainty, and fragility have profound implications for how we build our places.”
One of Taleb’s key concepts is antifragility. The opposite of fragility is not resilience (or robustness). Something that is resilient, when it encounters a shock or disruption, merely returns back to its original state. In contrast, something that is anti-fragile actually gains from the disruption. One example is our bones, which get stronger as we subject them to the many small impacts of walking or running.
For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, the coronavirus outbreak has a lot to teach us about just how fragile many of our social systems have become. This includes, but is certainly not limited to, our economy. A recent article in The Atlantic gets at one aspect of this. In “The Modern Supply Chain Is Snapping,” Lizzie O’Leary describes how the coronavirus is exposing “the fragility of an economy built on outsourcing and just-in-time inventory.” As she shows, we are reliant on China for many of our manufactured goods, including components for prescription drugs and medical supplies. When something disrupts that system—like the coronavirus outbreak—the effects ripple throughout the global economy and our public health efforts.
On today’s episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney, a planner at Gould Evans in Kansas City, talks about The Atlantic article with Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn. Abby and Chuck discuss some of the choices from the last 70 years that have made the economy more brittle, the work ahead to pick up the pieces, and also the choice we have to make: Will we double down on failed, fragile-making systems, or will we rebuild in a way that makes us more antifragile?
Then on the Downzoned, Chuck recommends Peak Prosperity, a daily YouTube show from Chris Martenson offering commentary and analysis on the news. (Peak Prosperity has been warning about coronavirus for more than two months.) Both Chuck and Abby also discuss the steps they’ve taken to make time for contemplation and rest in the midst of the massive changes wrought by the pandemic.
Show Notes
- “The Modern Supply Chain Is Snapping,” by Lizzie O'Leary
- Peak Prosperity (YouTube)
- Abby Kinney (Twitter)
- Gould Evans Studio for City Design
- Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
- Recent Strong Towns articles on antifragility
- Why Decline Is Not Normal, by Charles Marohn
- Why Massive Piles of Cash Can Be Bad for Both Companies and Cities, by Tristan Cleveland
- Is a City More Like a Washing Machine or a Cat? (Podcast, Part 1 of 2)
- Lots of Small Earthquakes: How a Place Becomes Antifragile (Podcast, Part 2 of 2)
- Winning Is the Absence of Losing, by Charles Marohn
Many towns and cities have at least one: the physical reminder of some particularly egregious development mistake.
In Minneapolis, one such legacy is a Kmart—the last Kmart store in Minnesota—built in the late 1970s in a plan that went south right from the start. As Jessica Lee wrote in a recent article in the MinnPost, Kmart agreed to occupy the space only “on the condition that the city would close Nicolett Avenue so the retailer could build a massive, sprawling store.”
Since then, the Kmart, a grocery store and parking lots have spanned the 10 acres between Lake and West 29th Street. Residents and businesses for decades have protested the street layout. To this day, the closure of Nicollet has been called “the worst planning mistake in Minneapolis history,” said David Frank, the city’s director of Community Planning and Economic Development.
Now, at long last, Kmart has agreed to “terminate its lease and vacate the building.” It is the culmination of a “years-long debate over what should come of the 10-acre site that interrupts the city’s street grid system.”
On this week’s episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner with Gould Evans in Kansas City, and Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges (a Minnesota native) discuss the past and future of a project that’s long been a thorn in the side of locals…and people everywhere who love cities. They look at why planners in the 1970s spent millions of dollars in public funds to essentially replace urban blight with suburban blight. They also discuss how Minneapolis can ensure that one top-down mistake isn’t replaced by another, and what city governments everywhere can do to be more supportive of bottom-up energy.
Then in the Downzoned, Abby recommends The Righteous Mind, a book by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt about why “good people are divided by politics and religion.” (The Righteous Mind happens to be on the Strong Towns essential reading list.) Then Daniel talks about how the latest season of Dr. Who has been a welcome distraction from all the distressing coronavirus news.
Show Notes * Minneapolis’ decision to buy and demolish Minnesota’s last Kmart, explained, by Jessica Lee * The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt * Strong Towns Essential Reading List * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Daniel Herriges (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Select Strong Towns stories about the Twin Cities
+ A Minor Miracle in St. Paul, by Christa Moseng
+ Three Cheers for Minneapolis (The 3 is for Triplex), by Daniel Herriges
+ One House at a Time on St. Paul’s East Side, by Daniel Herriges
+ Who Gets to Decide How a Neighborhood Gets Redeveloped, by Nate Hood
+ How to Make City Streets More Friendly, by Jay Walljasper
Do we really want our mayors to have a vision? This is the provocative question asked by Alain Bertaud in an article on The MIT Press Reader. Bertaud is a Senior Research Scholar at New York University’s Marron Institute of Urban Management, an urban planner, and the author of the 2018 book Order without Design.
In his article, Bertaud writes that a mayor “convinced of the necessity of having a vision” is less inclined to support innovation welling up from the population and more inclined to impose his or her own vision.
A mayor with a vision needs to be followed, not questioned by people who lack one. Visionary leadership implies a top-down approach, in other words, but a city is mostly created from the bottom up.
Bertaud’s alternative?
Mayors and their municipal staff, including urban planners and economists, should be considered not visionaries or rulers, then, but a well-coordinated team (one hopes) of competent managers and janitors.
Bertaud’s article is the subject of this week’s Upzoned. In this episode, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner with Gould Evans in Kansas City, is joined by Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges. They discuss visionary mayors, the role of city managers in creating good feedback loops, and how local governments can act as support systems for local innovation rather than gatekeepers.
Then in the Downzoned, Abby recommends a podcast that’s taking a hard look at the lucrative wellness industry. And Daniel recommends a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about North Vietnamese spy living in Los Angeles after the Fall of Saigon.
Show Notes * Do We Really Want Our Mayors to Have a Vision?, by Alain Bertaud * Order without Design, by Alain Bertaud * Dongo Chang (Twitter) * The Dream Podcast * The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen * Daniel Herriges (Twitter) * Abby Kinney (Twitter) * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Select Strong Towns articles on local government
+ Let's Make Public Hearings More Public, by Travis Parker
+ Learn from Peers but Think for Yourself, by Charles Marohn
+ Prototyping the City (podcast)
+ Beyond the Buzzword: Innovation and How it Can Help Local Government Create Meaningful Change (podcast)
Kansas City, Missouri recently made news by becoming the first major metropolitan area to announce plans to offer free bus service throughout the city. Coverage of this story has been mostly positive...but there have been critiques and warnings as well.
Among the latter is “There’s no such thing as a free bus.” Writing last month in The Hill, Patrick Tuohey, director of the Better Cities Project, describes previous fare-free experiments in Austin and Denver that led to “overcrowded buses, disruptive passengers, and unhappy bus operators.” There are other concerns, says Tuohey, not least of which is that the money to pay for it isn’t there yet:
The city’s next fiscal year does not begin until May 1, and the just-released budget proposal does not include enough money for fare-free buses.
Kansas City’s free transit—and Tuohey’s article—are the subjects of today’s episode of Upzoned. Host Abby Kinney, an urban planner based in Kansas City, is joined by Chuck Marohn, founder and president of Strong Towns. Together, they discuss the promise and perils of “free” transit, the kinds of conversations (especially around equity and land use) this plan is spurring locally, and why the argument that we should subsidize transit because we’re already subsidizing cars doesn’t hold water.
Then on the Downzoned, Chuck recommends The Chaos Imperative, a book about why businesses and organizations should create room for disruption, and Abby introduces the new website for Gould Evans Studio for City Design.
Additional Show Notes * The Hill article: “There’s no such thing as a free bus,” by Patrick Tuohey * Patrick Tuohey on Twitter * The Chaos Imperative: How Chance and Disruption Increase Innovation, Effectiveness, and Success, by Ori Brafman and Judah Pollack * Abby Kinney on Twitter * Gould Evans Studio for City Design * Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud) * Recent Strong Towns articles on Kansas City
+ Live in Kansas City: "We’re a suburban community learning we can be urban."
+ “We’re Overbuilt on the Public Side, and Underbuilt on the Private Side.”
+ How Better Design Can Help Solve Parking Problems, by Kevin Klinkenberg
A recent article in the New York Times called “Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build”—that’s fourteen “builds,” by the way—chronicled the drama (and a fair amount of absurdity) surrounding a proposed development in Lafayette, California.
Lafayette, a wealthy suburb east of Berkeley, is known for being notoriously anti-development. When a developer proposed to build hundreds of new homes across the street from a BART station—something the land was zoned for—it set off a firestorm of protests. Some people protested that the plans were too big, others that they were too small. At one point, the developer, Dennis O’Brien, found himself in the farcical position of being sued in support of himself.
The article by Conor Dougherty is the kind of story that brilliantly illustrates the complexities, controversies, and personalities of the housing crisis. Which also makes it the right kind of article to get the Upzoned treatment.
In this week’s episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney is joined by Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn and Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges to unpack the Lafayette story. Together, they discuss what the situation in Lafayette says about the degree to which housing policy should be controlled at the state level vs. the local level, the dangers of one-dimensional solutions for complex problems, and whether or not it’s time to reform our laws to simply get more building done.
Then on the Downzoned, Chuck Marohn tells the story of how he met Kansas City rapper Kemet the Phantom, whose song, “Get Out (The Streetcar Song),” is the new Upzoned bumper music. That meeting was a reminder to Chuck that the movement to build strong towns goes far beyond built environment professionals: engineers, planners, and architects.
Show Notes * The New York Times article: “Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build,” by Conor Dougherty,” * Abby Kinney on Twitter * Kemet the Phantom on Soundcloud * Conor Dougherty on Twitter * Recent Strong Towns articles on the housing crisis in California
+ “California Housing Crisis,” by Chuck Marohn
+ “One Important Question About California's Housing Future,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “Best of 2019: California’s Housing Crisis,” by Daniel Herriges
+ “Hey Google, Tell Me How to Make Bay Area Housing More Affordable,” by Daniel Herriges
Strong Towns board member Ian Rasmussen once likened the conventional approach to growth and development to a “bad party.”
At a good party, everyone who shows up is contributing more to the party—in food, drink, and energy—than they consume. Quite literally, the more the merrier. But what if you threw a party and everyone who shows up eats and drinks more than they brought? Each person who walks through the door only accelerates the decline. If your goal is make the party last as long as possible, you’d be foolish to let anyone else in.
The same can be said of the North American development pattern. The way we build our towns and cities—stretching ever outward, building more roads, increasing the cost of infrastructure, and increasing our reliance on cars—is a net-loss. The increased tax revenue from people moving into suburban-style neighborhoods doesn’t come close to paying for that growth over time. The result: a bad party. One in which growth paradoxically increases decline, making the whole community more fragile. If this was your town, and you realized what was happening, but weren’t willing to change the nature of the party itself—what would you do? The only thing you could do: bar entry to newcomers.
This is the situation Lake Wylie, South Carolina finds itself it in. Lake Wylie, an exurb of Charlotte, North Carolina, has tripled in size in the last two decades. As a recent Wall Street Journal article described, people were drawn to the town by its good schools and low taxes. But the party turned sour as schools filled, the water system got overwhelmed, and commute times exploded. So late last year, the local governing council slammed the door shut on growth. The party is no longer accepting newcomers...which makes you wonder how good the party really was to begin with.
Lake Wylie, South Carolina is the subject of this week’s episode of the Upzoned podcast. That’s right, Upzoned is back, with new host Abby Kinney—and a cool new theme song too, “Get Out (The Streetcar Song)” from Kansas City-based rapper Kemet the Phantom.
In this week’s episode, Abby and Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn talk about the dilemma facing Lake Wylie (and exurbs like it all around the country), the physical and cultural challenges of retrofitting an exurb for a healthier approach to growth, and the fundamentally fragile flaw in the very idea of a “bedroom community.”
Then in the Downzone, we get to know our new host a bit better. A native of St. Louis, Abby Kinney is an urban design and planning consultant at Gould Evans in Kansas City, Missouri. She facilitates the ad-hoc Kansas City chapter of the Incremental Development Alliance. When she’s not geeking out on cities, Abby is an avid urban mountain biker, audiobook and podcast junkie, amateur rock climber, and guitarist. Make sure to connect with her on Twitter at @abbykatkc.
Show Notes * Wall Street Journal article about Lake Wylie * The Journal. podcast episode about Lake Wylie * “The Party Analogy,” by Charles Marohn * Abby Kinney on Twitter * Kemet the Phantom on Soundcloud * New Theme Song: “Get Out (The Streetcar Song),” by Kemet the Phantom (Music video on YouTube)
This will be our last Upzoned episode for a while. This episode was recorded in Santa Ana, California, at our SoCal Regional Gathering. We talk bullet trains, big projects, and how Southern California can shift their top/down approach to start to build Strong Towns.
It’s Black Friday—and at Strong Towns, that means it’s time to hang with family, nap off yesterday’s food coma, and reflect on how dumb mandatory parking minimums are. Thousands of our readers across America are out there right now happily snapping photos of half-empty lots outside their local stores as part of our annual #BlackFridayParking campaign, reflecting on the insanity of the fact that our cities actually require many of their merchants to build so many parking spots that their customers can’t even fill on the biggest shopping day of the year. (You can totally join them, by the way.)
But not everyone thinks their town has a too-much-parking problem. And if you want to go to ground zero for people who think the Strong Towns call to end parking minimums simply doesn’t apply to their community, look no further than Southern California.
In a recent podcast from KCRW’s Greater LA, host Steve Chiotakis dug into Los Angeles’ peculiar relationship with its parking landscape. LA, after all, is a city that devotes a whopping 27 square miles of its land to the storage of private vehicles, (yes, really,) but whose residents still always seem to be endlessly circling for a spot. And while some Los Angelenos Chiotakis talks to think their city will simply never kick their autodependency habit, others see hope for getting people out of their cars and onto modes of transportation that don’t require that we pave over acres upon acres of our most valuable downtown land.
So what’s the Strong Towns take? Is Southern California beyond repair, or is it time for a transformative overhaul of the City of Sunshine?
In this episode of Upzoned, Chuck and Kea tackle that tough question—and offer a preview of what you can expect at their lived podcast recording at December 4th’s Southern California regional gathering. And their answers might surprise you—especially if you think #EndParkingMinimums means #BanTheCars.
For months now, wildfires have been raging across the state of California—and along the way, they’ve sparked some heated conversations about whether our own building choices are to blame for the destruction and tragedy that have followed nearly every blaze.
It’s not hard to see why. California is pretty much the poster child for the #Suburban Experiment, and they’ve never quite stopped building further and further out from their coastal cores, growing at a robust post-war pace long after the rest of the country saw fringe development slow. In California, though, those fringes are located deep into fire-prone forests that are increasingly beset by drought—and building infrastructure way out into those edges doesn’t do much for their cities’ finances, either.
So California should just say an unequivocal “no” to new development in the wilderness-urban interface and start densifying its core neighborhoods, right? And we definitely shouldn’t be running power lines out into the middle of those tinderbox landscapes, yeah?
Well…it’s not quite that simple.
Today on Upzoned, we bring in a special guest: Brian Isom, wildfire management expert, researcher, and author of a great recent article over on the Orange County Register. In his article, Brian argued that negligent power companies actually aren’t the bogeyman of the wildfire crisis that many would have you believe—and that keeping Californians and their homes safe will take a lot more than the efforts of you, me, your local zoning commission, and Smokey the Bear. And in this conversation with Kea, he discusses all of this along with his work at the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University, as well as how a Strong Towns approach can help align market incentives to make even the driest, most overbuilt corners of the US fire-safe and financially prosperous.
Minneapolis just became the first major city to end single-family-only zoning. As Kea Wilson and Chuck Marohn discuss, this isn’t a radical idea but it is sure to have a subtly radical impact over time. What do the new guidelines mean for Minneapolis and for other cities and states considering a similar approach?
This episode was recorded as a webcast in the Strong Towns Facebook group, which gave Kea and Chuck the chance to answer questions live from our Facebook members.
By the way, it’s fall member drive week here at Strong Towns. The change in Minneapolis is one example of how Strong Towns is helping to shift the national conversation around growth, development, and financial strength. If you want to see that see that conversation spread to more communities, consider becoming a member at strongtowns.org/membership.
You would think that your city’s wealthiest suburb would always have enough money to keep the streetlights on and the roads paved. You’d probably also think that the suburb that the two wealthiest people on Earth call home would be able to pave its roads in gold and light its streets with Hollywood-style glamor lighting that makes everyone it shines on look ten pounds thinner. On both counts, you’d be wrong.
Earlier this week, CNBC offered an update to the story of Medina, Washington, a wealthy enclave outside of Seattle that billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates both call home. Medina has been making headlines for a surprising reason: they’re struggling to find the money to deliver the services that residents need, even though some of those resident’s homes (CoughGatesCough) have 24 bathrooms, something called a “trampoline room,” valuations of over $131 million, and owners who can comfortably pay over $1 million a year in property taxes. The reason why, CNBC suggests, has to do with a state cap on property taxes that distorts how much money actually goes to local needs and keeps the Bezoses of the world from paying what it actually costs to maintain the infrastructure that surrounds their mega-mansions—and if Washington just let the Medinas of the world have a little more local control, they’d finally be able to make the math work.
The Strong Towns staff wondered, though, whether making Medina strong was really just a matter of twiddling a few taxation knobs on the governance control panel. So host Kea Wilson, and guest host + reluctant Seattleite, John Reuter, decided to dive in and talk it out.
Would raising local and state tax rates really give wealthy communities like Medina the cash they need to pay for the suburban way of life—or is their development pattern simply so insolvent that even their high-earning residents would balk at that price tag? If Bezos and Gates decided to pay their city’s tax bill themselves, should Medina throw a party, or start worrying about what happens when the billionaires (or their heirs, or even the mere millionaires) pack up someday and leave, as has happened in so many American suburbs already? Do luxury homes and overbuilt road networks even make us happy in the long run, even if we can figure out how to afford it all? And most importantly: is one of Bill Gates’ 24 bathrooms also a trampoline room?! The comedic possibilities are endless!
Then in the DownZone, John and Kea talk the very different ways they’re celebrating Halloween: John, by dressing his dog up as Chewbacca and reflecting on the role of heroism in the Star Wars franchise, and Kea, by reading a spooky-good new novel by Helen Phillips (and, okay, dressing her dog up as Superman, but that’s just a gimme.)
If you’re even a casual follower of the urbanist blogosphere, there’s a good chance you’ve already heard about the “Miracle on 14th Street.” That’s what transit advocates have been calling New York’s newest bus rapid transit line, which has fought its way through lawsuits from irate neighbors to become what Citylab calls “the first glimpse of a true bus-centric street in America’s largest city.” But this project is about more than just paint: car traffic is now banned on 14th street for most hours of the day, and with the road all to itself, the M14 Bus is now running at more than twice the speed of the M42.
But here’s what’s really stunning Strong Towns advocates about this story: the fact that it’s considered miraculous at all.
On today’s Upzoned, Chuck and Kea are back to break down why simple policy and paint-driven transportation improvements like the 14th street makeover aren’t more common in American cities, from federal funding structures that make it easier to build a massive light rail project than incrementally improve a bus schedule, to pop culture that makes riding the bus the butt of too many national jokes. And then we dig a little deeper and explore the range of even humbler transportation improvements our communities are leaving on the table—and a few instances where, despite what you think, a transportation fix isn’t what your community needs at all.
Then in the Downzone, Chuck and Kea talk about their favorite recent reads: For Chuck, Malcolm Gladwell’s latest exploration into the nuances of human communication, and for Kea, an audibook by a beloved Tennessee novelist read for 9 blissful hours by Tom Hanks.
Welcome to a special mash-up episode of the Upzoned and Strong Townspodcasts! In this episode, Kea Wilson, host of Upzoned, and Strong Towns president Charles Marohn, Jr. discuss the “spooky wisdom” contained in the cities of our ancestors, reflecting the ways in which humans and human habitats have co-evolved with each other. What lessons should we be learning and how did we come to throw away that ancient wisdom so casually and so completely?
Kea and Chuck explore why so many North American neighborhoods built after World War II may have been designed by humans but can’t be said to have been designed for humans. They also talk about the difference between complex systems and systems that are merely complicated, why a massive influx of resources isn’t always a good thing, and about the power of incrementalism. We’re doing something unique this week. We're releasing one episode every day and inviting special guests to commandeer the Strong Towns podcast microphone to talk with Chuck about his first book, Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity, which releases on Tuesday, October 1. This is episode one of that series. Make sure you don’t miss a single episode. Subscribe to the Strong Towns podcast on iTunes. For more information about the book—and to take advantage of soon-to-be-expiring bonus offers—visit strongtowns.org/book.