136: Building Cities for people, not cars - the story of Culdesac with founder Ryan Johnson

This week Oliver interviews with Ryan Johnson, CEO and founder of Culdesac. This was first released over on the Infinite Block, our sister podcast looking at the intersection of urbanism, technology and the social contract (more on that below).

Ryan is building the first Micromobility-focused real estate development in the US, with the goal of eventually building the US’s first car free city. 

The majority of people want to live in walkable/bikeable neighborhoods, yet only 8% do. Culdesac are developing a system for building real estate that will bring that to the masses, and with it, put micromobility at the centre of how we can get around in these new developments. 

Oliver and Ryan discuss the implications it will have on things like zoning, parking, housing and cities. It’s clear that what Ryan is doing is super important and something that is hopefully becomes the example others point to for a new micromobility-centred real estate model going forward. 

Specifically they talk about:

- What Culdesac is trying to build, and why that matters.

- How Culdesac came together in Ryan’s mind.

- Why they chose Tempe in the first place and what they did as a city that enabled being there

- The roles and responsibilities of Culdesac as a developer/landlord in terms of the contract that it has with its citizens. 

- The role of capital formation in unlocking this type of urban form innovation.

- Is it really just as simple that they’re packaging all the things that have been done in Europe and working out how to bring them to the US?

- How we can increase a city's capacity and flexibility without getting tied up in council and regulatory purgatory.

- How Culdesac convinced venture capital to invest, and what they saw that other urbanists didn’t.

- Whether getting MPR amendments is a sustainable advantage in creating differentiated built form

- How Ryan considers cities emerging and responding in response to economic opportunity.

- How we can avoid the common pitfalls seen with the new urbanist movement in the past.

- How they consider emerging new forms of transport when selecting sites and designing communities.

Check out Culdesac’s website right here - https://culdesac.com/

The Infinite Block is a podcast about the intersection of tech, the social contract and cities, using the lens of disruptive technologies like micromobility and crypto to understand how cities of the future will work in an age of declining trust and agility in governments. Check out our newsletter and podcast.