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 Homes 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 successes and failures. But that desire to connect to truly human values and needs continues to drive him forward.

Mike and I talk about how the actual types of households in our communities are far more diverse than most realize. And, what that all means for people trying to build new housing. We pause for a minute to discuss the notion of why having diverse households in a neighborhood is actually a good thing, and how it helps communities.

The changes in household makeup over the last 70 years or so is very stark, and surprises many people. I’ve found that most people still assume the 2 parents with kids at home is still the dominant household arrangement. It’s not at all, and we take a look at the numbers. For anyone trying to build or develop, or anyone trying to improve their community, this is really important baseline information. We can all imagine that world we might want to have, but we must start and work with the world as it is.

Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.

Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.

Intro: “Why Be Friends”

Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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 realities of real estate and development.

In this episode, we trace her path that started from a simple duplex house hack, to now running a company with hundreds of apartments, commercial properties and even a construction arm. I particularly love how she says, “We sell math, not buildings. If you can get creative with the math, you can do just about anything.”

Audrey and her firm have also endeavored to work in the “supportive housing” world, and we talk about the trials and tribulations, as well as the possibilities, for anyone taking on that ask. Lastly, we talk about WIRED, which is a very cool effort to encourage women to be more involved in the real estate business.

Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.

Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.

Intro: “Why Be Friends”

Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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 honestly heroic efforts for two or three decases - those trying to build “new urbanist” or walkable projects. Some of these are small, and some quite large, but they’re all challenging.

Ward Davis is one of those guys. He’s been at it in Northwest Arkansas for a couple decades now, and has all the scars to show it. He also has had a lot of success, and he’s someone worth learning from when it comes to the ins and out of development. His company is High Street Development, based in Fayetteville, and he pretty much works just in that very fast-growing region.

There are a LOT of gems in this episode, so I highly suggest you stick with my lousy audio recording to hear it all. Ward and I talk bout what their approach is with doing “town center” types of projects, how to make money doing it, what is wrong with the development business, and the promise but pitfalls of doing small-scale “incremental” development. In a certain sense, this is a great companion piece to my interview with John Zeanah from Memphis, as they both are trying to figure out how to change our many flawed systems, and get beautiful places built that stand the test of time.

I love how Ward says, “There's not a business in the country that looks easier from the outside and is more difficult on the inside.”

Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.

Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.

Intro: “Why Be Friends”

Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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 means what's happening on the street, and how the people are shaping it. In companies it means the front line staff or factory worker being empowered to make changes when they notice something.

Anyway, my most recent guest for Challenger cities was Kevin Klinkenberg who has been writing about The Messy City for a while now. So I loved hearing his stories of applying this in his own realm of Kansas City.

We talked art walks, roundabouts, neighbourhoods, backyard cottages and the trouble of trying to be neat, tidy and perfect all the time. I suspect people will be really into this one, and a bit thanks to Karen from Strong Towns for making the connection!

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.

There’s a lot in here for the policy wonks, and I’m here for it as well. But what I love the most is the attitude displayed by John, and his statement that they want to be problem solvers, not just regulators. What you hear from him is someone not content to check a box, do a plan and let it sit, or issue platitudes. This is what it looks like when people get their hands dirty, and truly work to fix issues that need fixing.

The episode I had with Emily Hamilton is a great companion to this one, where she went into detail on State-level reforms for housing policy.

For more, here’s John’s website.

Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.

Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.

Intro: “Why Be Friends”

Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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 not sure they talked much basketball (Kansas - the birthplace of North Carolina basketball as the saying goes), but they did talk a lot about economic development. And while here, Jed had a chance to check in with our local small development group. We talk about why it’s important to have a local ecosystem of small developers like we have, and what he hopes to achieve by having one in the Triangle. Jed also has some insights on what it’s like to live in a fast-growing region, vs. the sort of slow and steady growth we have in most Midwestern markets.

Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.

Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.

Intro: “Why Be Friends”

Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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.

Stay tuned through the whole episode, as we also get into an interesting discussion on money, Bitcoin and place-making.

Jaime’s book: “Main Street Mavericks”

Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.

Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.

Intro: “Why Be Friends”

Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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 just trying to fix problems generally, I hope this offers something useful for you.

Key link: Symphony in the Flint Hills

Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.

Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.

Intro: “Why Be Friends”

Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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 enjoys.

John Haigh, who’s the Chair of the Architecture program at Benedictine College, in Atchison, Kansas, aims to do something about all this. You likely haven’t heard of Benedictine before, as it’s a small college in a small town in flyover country. But you might want to pay attention to what they’re doing now, and what is rumbling up from the grass roots in higher education.

We cover a lot in this podcast, including

* the importance of learning to draw by hand, in the computer age

* What is the impact of AI on the school and the students?

* Why this is happening in Catholic schools?

* can a college teach architects to become developers?

Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.

Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.

Intro: “Why Be Friends”

Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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 and Director of the Urbanity Project at Mercatus Center, George Mason University. That’s a long title and way of saying, she’s someone who does a LOT of research into housing policy, and really knows her stuff.

I’ve been in this game long enough to be able to detect people who act like they’re serious about housing policy, but really aren’t. As in, they really don’t much about how housing gets built, who builds it, why they build it, and why they might build more. Emily is not one of those people. She has a clear interest in getting more of all kinds of housing built, to help with the price crunch that exists in so many markets.

If you want to talk code reform and housing policy, this is your episode.

Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.

Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.

Intro: “Why Be Friends”

Outro: “Fairweather Friend”