The Messy City Podcast

Nolan Gray is the author of the very successful book, “ Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. ” If you’re in the planning and zoning world, you’ve likely heard of it or read it. If you haven’t, run right out and do it. Most of this episode focuses on the unique nature of Houston, Texas, and its approach to land use regulation. Often-scorned by planners because the...

A developer colleague recently said to me, “I’ve only lived and worked in an era where cities are getting better. Now, I’m not so sure that’s the case anymore.” His comment along with a whole lot of other inputs got me to thinking - what if he’s right? Today, I consider a potentially dark path for big American cities. Are we in the midest of a new era of decline and retreat from urban areas? Will...

Mike Hathorne has been around the New Urbanism movement for over twenty years. That means he has that rare combination of idealism, practicality, and persistence. Nowadays, you can find Mike with Visionary Home s in Utah. While the principles of New Urbanism have guided his work for years, Mike has also been on the front lines trying to figure out how to get it all built. Like all of us, he’s had...

If you’re fortunate and diligent, you’ll encounter people in your field that are just supremely knowledgable about the details, and willing to talk about them. Audrey Navarro , the Managing Partner of Clemons Real Estate in Kansas City, is one of those people. I’ve found Audrey to be incredibly nice and pleasant to talk with, but also very ruthless (in a good way) with the numbers and the realitie...

You’re not going to find too many movies with developers as the hero. For most of the public, their opinion of developers is somewhere below Congress. And that’s saying something. I find that all unfortunate, since developers are the ones who build virtually everything in our world - our homes, our offices, our shops, our entertainment. And there’s a group of developers who have been undertaking h...

From Iain, whose excellent site you can find at this link : The term 'messy' is a growing one when it comes to cities just now, and it's a refreshing one in what has for the last little while been the domain of the planner, who tends to see the world from the top down. But what makes cities, and indeed a lot of companies, so good is that they embrace what comes from the bottom up. In cities that m...

Usually when a Kansas Citian talks about Memphis, it’s to discuss their bbq vs ours. And trust me, they do make some good ribs on Memphis. But today we are here to learn about housing and redevelopment. The City of Memphis has taken some solid steps in recent years to reform all manner of codes and processes to enable more and better housing options. John Zeanah joins me to discuss the specifics....

Jed Byrne is a man of many hats, but what he really cares about is demystifying real estate development for ordinary people. Jed’s podcast, Dirt NC , focuses primarily on issues in North Carolina and especially the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill “Triangle” area. Earlier this year, Jed and a group of people from the local Chamber visited the Kansas City region on a mission to learn from each other. I’m...

One of the critical dilemmas of our time for people in retailing is, how do you get people to put down their devices and come out to shop in the real world? Jaime Izurieta of Storefront Mastery , talks about how shopping has become commoditized, and what to do about it. We discuss how to create an experience that makes people want to come out, and how businesses are adapting to the new reality. St...

Today’s episode isn’t exactly Coughlin’s Laws, nor is it my whole list of Klinkenberg’s Rules, but it is full of some life advice I’d like to share for the dog days of Summer. I’ve long enjoyed solving problems of all kinds, and trying to help my community progress. But it isn’t easy, and it takes the right mindset to have success. Whether you are working in development, planning, policy change or...

What's it like to start an architecture school from scratch? That’s a question that has run through my mind for years. So much of the education of architects and designers is, at best, misguided. As I discussed on my appearance on The Aesthetic City podcast , it’s also very cult-like and sends people down roads that aren’t terribly productive nor do they produce beautiful buildings that the public...

Why is the production of housing, especially new housing in big cities, so expensive? Why doesn’t inclusionary zoning make our cities more affordable? How can cities amend the building code itself to help in housing production, and even make for better quality apartments? To answer these questions and more, I had a long and code-nerdy chat with Emily Hamilton. Emily is the Senior Research Fellow a...

Terrell Jolly didn’t start out making it his mission in life to become a small-scale developer. But somewhere along the way, from Detroit to Kansas City, he made it happen. And boy is KC lucky to have him. TJ, as most people know him, is a unique guy in this town, and has a very unique process. But should it be unique, or should what he does be much more normal? He talks through how he bootstrappe...

“The solution to the housing problem is more housing. Getting there is the hard part.” So says my friend Dennis Strait, now retired Principal of multistudio in Kansas City. Dennis is a planner, architect, landscape architect, civic volunteer and frequently wise counsel on all matters related to city-building. Dennis has been lately working on his notion of housing as an economic development strate...

Not long ago, I started noticing these long and interesting regular Facebook posts coming through my feed by an account named “Revitalize or Die.” Often compelling rants on towns, economic development and planning, this was right in my wheelhouse. I like people with actual thoughtful (and sharp) opinions, especially when they cut to the core of issues I’m familiar with. For example, “growth doesn’...

Many of us don’t like to think too much about banking and money until we REALLY need to. As an architect, I’m as guilty as anyone as not taking the time to think through the financial side, and to also get easily intimidated by it. But it doesn’t have to be this way, truly. Money is just a tool, like any other tool, and it’s not hard to learn how to use it and to meet people who can help you becom...

Patrick Tuohey is the Policy Director and co-founder of a think tank called the Better Cities Project. While his own views are politically right of center, the organization is non partisan and aims to give cities advice on the basics of good governance. He’s also an unabashed lover of cities, which is something not common in “Urbanist” circles. We have a wide-ranging discussion, though largely foc...

Rodney Dangerfield once famously said, “golf courses and cemeteries are the biggest wastes of prime real estate.” We won’t touch cemeteries in this episode, but we do talk about golf courses. Monte Anderson joins me as we discuss different ways of looking at so-called “obsolete” properties. As a teaser: Monte shares with me what I think is one of the most brilliant ideas I’ve heard about how to wo...

We often don’t realize that the “way things are” is just a reflection of some radical change that happened in a previous era. While I’m a firm believer that aspects of human nature haven’t really changed much through the millennia, it is true that we’ve shaped, reshaped, and reshaped our societies over and over again. And the most visible evidence of that change is our cities and towns. Today’s di...

Rik Adamski is a man of many hats. But first and foremost, he’s someone that cares deeply about the people side of urban planning. So often, planners, architects and developers get mired in the technical side of building community. And of course, we have to, because there’s a lot that requires our attention. But in this episode, Rik reminds us that planning is really about people, and about helpin...

From the earliest days of my interest in urban planning, I became very interested in the overlap between design and culture. By that I mean, how cities shape human interaction, and how human interaction shapes cities. Why are some places successful when others aren’t, even when they have similar design and planning features? Why do some communities seem so tight and together, when others do not? I...

I had the pleasure of meeting Charles Brewer right when he was starting to get interested in becoming a real estate developer. This was after a very successful short career in the dot-com world, as he was a founder of Mindspring. When he exited, he became interested in New Urbanism, and decided to shift his career toward the building of new, walkable communities. Twenty-plus years later, we get a...

It’s truly a rare thing in life to run across people that are uber-talented, thoughtful, and just fantastic human beings. Dhiru Thadani is one of those rare people. An architect, urban designer, author, teacher, and prolific sketch artist, Dhiru has been involved in the New Urbanism movement since the earliest days. He’s written multiple books about the famous new town of Seaside , Florida, and we...

The world of architecture is full of megalomanicas, wanna-be stars, and also a whole lot of good people just grinding out beautiful work outside the spotlight. One thing I enjoy with my little platform is shining a light on some of the people that do that beautiful work, and rarely get national attention. Don Powers, of Union Studio in Providence, Rhode Island, has one of those firms. Union Studio...

Austin Tunnell is one of the shining stars of a new generation of designer/builders for creative smaller projects, and he also happens to work in the world of mass masonry construction. In this episode, we talk about his journey from accountant to mason and beyond, with his really cool company called Building Culture . Austin now lives and works in the Oklahoma City area, and he’s aggressively exp...