The New School for City Builders

Build the Next Right Thing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. About this episode What if the people running our cities never actually learned how government works, because no school ever taught them? In this episode Seth Zeren talks with Daniel Golliher, founder of Maximum New York, a for-profit civics school th...

About this episode What if the reason American streets keep getting built wrong isn’t that engineers are careless, but that a whole profession is missing from the room? In this episode Seth Zeren talks with Steffen Berr, a civil engineer trained in California who moved to the Netherlands to learn and practice in a human-centered transportation system. Steffen made the case in his essay “America Ha...

Seth Zeren talks with Will McCollum (architect, urbanist, and founder of Citymakers Collective) and Christine Franck (architect, educator, and author; first executive director of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art) about what it means to be a "city builder," the gaps in professional design education, and the story behind Citymakers Collective's Summer Studio — the urban-design intensive...

Summary In this episode of The New School for City Builders , host Seth Zeren talks with George Proakis, city manager of Watertown, Massachusetts, about the winding educational path that shaped his career — from a civil engineering degree at Northeastern, to a master’s in public administration at Syracuse’s Maxwell School, to a master’s in city planning at MIT. George traces his rise from associat...

Show Notes In this episode, Seth talks with Sheinya Joseph — architectural designer at Dover, Little Diversified Architectural Consulting and president of the Emerging New Urbanists (ENU) — about her path into architecture and urbanism, what her education did (and didn't) prepare her for, the programs ENU runs for young professionals, and what a truly interdisciplinary school for city builders mig...

About the guest William Deresiewicz is an author, essayist, and literary critic. He taught English at Yale from 1998–2008 and was a graduate instructor at Columbia. His work has appeared in The New York Times , The Atlantic , Harper’s , The New Republic , The Chronicle of Higher Education , and elsewhere. * Personal site / newsletter: williamderesiewicz.com and deresiewicz.substack.com Books menti...

Show notes: * Incremental Development Alliance * Range Co. Build the Next Right Thing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The following transcript has been lightly edited for quality: Seth: Hello and welcome to the New School for City Builders. I’m your host, Seth Zeren, a recovering city planner turned neighborh...

In this episode, Seth talks with Paul Knight , architect and planner at Historical Concepts, about the study of urban form and why it matters for anyone trying to build better cities. Paul’s thinking was shaped by legendary Georgia Tech professor Doug Allen , whose course on the history of urban form is remembered by generations of students as one of the most formative classes they ever took. Seth...

Show Notes: * College of St. Joseph the Worker * Crabtree Group * Jacob on the Bottom Up Revolution Build the Next Right Thing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Edited Transcript Seth Zeren: Hello and welcome to The New School for City Builders. I’m your host, Seth Zeren, a recovering city planner turned neighb...

Show Notes: * Aaron’s Substack: On Housing * Aaron’s architecture & development practice (with Jenn Truman): Rocket Shop * Olin College * Deep Springs College * Front Porch Republic * Shop Class as Soulcraft , by Matt Crawford * YIMBYtown 2026 in Raleigh NC Build the Next Right Thing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subsc...

Show notes: * Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein * 70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green * Third Ward TX * Here Comes the Neighborhood * MassDevelopment's Transformative Development Initiative (TDI) * CitySeed (New Haven) * BU Metropolitan College — City Planning & Urban Affairs Edited Transcript Seth Zeren: Hello and welcome to The New School for City Builders. I’m your host, Seth Zeren, a re...

This week on The New School for City Builders, I’m joined by my good friend Nathan Norris to talk about our work together designing a new degree program for Lake Sumter State College in Florida. I hope you enjoy it! Seth Zeren: Hello and welcome to the New School for City Builders. I’m your host, Seth Zeren, a recovering city planner turned neighborhood developer in Providence, Rhode Island. This...

This week friend of the pod Aaron Lubeck joins to interview me about the origins of this podcast, and in particular my piece: Toward a New School of City Builders . Thanks for listening! Seth Zeren: Hello and welcome to The New School for City Builders. I’m your host, Seth Zeren, a recovering city planner turned neighborhood developer in Providence, Rhode Island. Joining me today is Aaron Lubeck,...

Thank you for joining me for the second installment of The New School for City Builders as I interview Sara Bega and Jack Duncan on Las Catalinas, studio education, building new architecture schools, and more. Please like and subscribe! Build the Next Right Thing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The following...

Hello and Welcome to the New School for City Builders. I’m your host, Seth Zeren. I’m a recovering city planner turned neighborhood developer living in Providence, Rhode Island. Build the Next Right Thing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I love cities. I’ve always wanted to know why most old places feel great...

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Seth Zeren: Hello and welcome to the New School for City Builders. I’m your host Seth Zeren, a recovering city planner turned neighborhood developer in Providence, Rhode Island. This is a podcast about how we can transform the education of city builders. If we want to change how our cities and towns work, we need to change the people wh...