I’m getting an early start on 2023 resolutions, which includes making a few changes to this site and expanding future content.

I’ll be joining the hordes and moving the blog over to Substack. I’ll still cross-post back to this original site, but going forward I’ll be moving the email list to Substack. So, you’ll likely see a change in how emails come to you. Of course, if you don’t like it, you can unsubscribe easily through their system.

One new item for 2023: I’ll be starting a Messy City podcast. I’ve spent way too much time looking at the technology and having a little paralysis by analysis, but now I’m ready to roll. As a certifiable podcast junkie, this is something I’ve wanted to do for several years. I’m really excited to be able to have conversations with interesting people and share content in this format. The podcast will be hosted through Substack, but available on Apple and Spotify as well. More info on that to come, when I have episodes ready to release.

It’s been a crazy last few years. I’ve had very little time or desire to write like I used to. But I’m resolving to change that going forward, and produce regular content. A lot has changed in cities, in our country, and in our world. There’s much to discuss, and so much work to be done. I’ve been very engaged on a hyper-local level in Midtown Kansas City, and also have much to share about those experiences.

Happy New Year -

Kevin

It took about four decades to complete the Star Wars series. I remember watching the original in the theater in 1977, and don't think I ever imagined Episode 9 wouldn't drop until I was deep into middle age. During that time period, no one really bothered to ask, can we still call this a series?

I say this because it's taking me forever to take a variety of thoughts on cities and planning and turn them into a series. It appears I'm on a good pace to beat Star Wars, but we'll see.

This thought stream has been all about what I called the Urban Experiment. It's a slight twist on what Chuck Marohn has aptly written about for years at Strong Towns. This piece is going to dive into one more aspect of this topic that we don't talk about nearly enough in planning and design circles: wealth-building. I'd like to say this is the "final" topic in this series, but it probably won't be.

We have mountains of articles and research on housing affordability. It's been a hotly debated topic in planning for going on three decades, and picking up a lot of steam in the last decade. (Hat tip: most of the best writing on the subject has been done at City Observatory.) And yet, there's precious little discussed on what we do that can impact household wealth building. I’d suggest we have this completely backwards.

It might seem out of our league to tackle the topic of personal or household wealth. After all, who among the urban planning tribe are financial wizards or financial planners? Affordability seems somewhat measurable, but how do you adequately measure and discuss wealth? Isn't that very personal?

I'll start this piece by going back again to the pre-zoning era that I discussed in the post on my Klinkenberg family ancestors.

Here's something I wrote:

"Back to my ancestors for a moment. They could effectively buy a piece of property, and do as they wished with it immediately. This was true on the farm, and If they had lived in the city itself, this was also true. There was no central authority to appeal to if someone wanted to build an apartment building next to a single family house. Some neighborhoods could deed-restrict themselves through private agreement to only single-family houses if they so desired (and some did)."

The Big Divide

I've been giving more and more thought lately to how divided we are as a society, especially by economic class and educational attainment. I'm far more aware than I've ever been at how the professional class tends to live in its own tiny bubble, often very much out of touch with the rest of the population. This has seemed to only grow in recent decades, as that same group of people now also clusters geographically into the same small group of cities, and the same parts of those cities. It seems troublesome, to say the least.

Wealth building hasn’t been in the lexicon of the professional class and the college educated because we mostly came from families already comfortable financially. Instead, we talk about affordability because people generally are charitable and want everyone to have a basic level of comfort and decency in their lives. We forget that the majority of people really value making money primarily. Yes, they want an affordable place to live, but they what they really want is to have more income, more stuff, a bigger house, a nicer car, etc.

Household wealth in the US is mostly a function of real estate ownership. You’ve heard time and time again that a house is the largest financial asset for the vast majority of households. That's true. The numbers are inarguable. Real estate ownership is also the primary source of the racial difference in wealth. There's an obvious legacy of racist practices that contributed to this disparity, as how been well documented by others. And, that legacy has persisted into the current era.

But as always, there's more to the story. I wrote in other pieces about how we went through a massive change in our systems for how cities and buildings are built in the 20th century. We professionalized everything involved in the construction of a building, set up complex approval systems and instituted a series of regulatory apparatuses that our ancestors would find completely bewildering. I suppose we could say that's the inevitable growth of a modern, hyper-specialized society. Maybe, maybe not. We'll examine that more later. But, have we ever truly examined how those changes impacted wealth disparity or wealth building?

In the pre-zoning era (before the 1920s), it was common to use real estate ownership as a means to create more income. For example, people would add an apartment onto their existing property. They might make a duplex into a triplex, or add a carriage house to the back of their house. They would rent out spare rooms to strangers. A widow might turn her home into a boarding house. Sometimes extra rooms were for household servants, sometimes they were for extended family members, and sometimes people just wanted to use their ownership of an asset to make more money for themselves. Real estate finance was much more short-term and localized than today. And real estate law and policy (to the extent it even existed) allowed this to happen as-of-right in most places. Wealth-building was baked in to the concept of ownership.

The rise of the "modern" city changed all of that. And I mean all of it. The city planning movement and modern movement in architecture pushed for a separation of uses and professionalization of city design. Architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright created idealized cities that look much like today's suburbia. The Progressive movement pushed "scientific and technical" management of cities and society, instead of the more "chaotic" approaches that had heretofore been the norm. Rapid industrialization and the American ascendance on the world stage created greater societal wealth. With our increasing wealth, we began to codify the single-family detached house as the societal ideal, and we set up all sorts of mechanisms to protect that type of building. We created special financing programs for houses, especially for newly-built ones in the New Deal and after WWII. We created zoning laws starting in the 1920's that kept out other types of housing, and we created building codes that made multifamily housing more expensive to build. We eliminated many types of housing, from boarding houses to apartment hotels to garage apartments. We made self-building virtually impossible in cities. There's a long list; this is just a sample. But it was truly a revolution in how we build places that evolved over the early decades of the 20th century.

Houses Aren’t Bad

Now, I feel obliged to say I'm not saying all of this was "bad." Some amount of it was probably inevitable, with changing tastes, politics and urbanization. I also have nothing at all against single family detached houses. I own one, and live in it. I've owned others. There's a very good chance it's how I'll live the rest of my life. Living in your own house is wonderful - I enjoy most of it. It's great to have your own four walls, your own yard space, and a bit of distance from your neighbors. As the famous quote in "It's a Wonderful Life" noted, "It’s deep in the race for a man to want his own roof and walls and fireplace..."

Here's where it gets tricky, and complicated.

As we altered our systems to legally and administratively favor single-family houses on purpose, we changed the entire dynamic of how people build wealth. Prior to this era, wealth in real estate was largely created through income. Subsequent to it, wealth is "created" by the value of a house going up, and capturing that value through buying and selling or sometimes with creative financing. When wealth is created primarily by income, it encourages a fairly entrepreneurial approach to the asset, and all sorts of positive side effects: more people are better (more customers), more variety is welcome (diversity of product), and wealth is created more typically at the local level through lots of small actions.

When wealth is created as we've done the last 100 years, you tend to see the opposite. Restricting supply becomes important, so your asset becomes rarer and thus more valuable. People become more exclusionary, and start to force exclusion through regulations. Variety isn't a good thing, because you're likely to sell and move on at some point, and more regularized assets are easier to buy and sell. They're also easier to package for Wall Street into commodity-like funds, no different than buying or selling live cattle. Eventually, the asset becomes so easy to standardize, package and sell to large investors as we're now seeing all over the country, and wealth gets shifted upwards to larger corporations.

For neighborhoods that aren't going up in value, the results are even worse. Idealizing the one, virtuous type of housing means people have been restricted from using their asset for income, too. I should clarify and say I mean legally restricted, since some just do it and ask forgiveness if they're caught. So neighborhoods that have faced discrimination or disinvestment simply circle the drain slowly because they aren't allowed to evolve and change organically.

The notion of helping to create some short and medium-term gain for people by encouraging one "ideal" type of housing eventually created a lot of long term pain.

Complexity and Contradictions

Today, many people advocate for solutions to these problems that add more complexity and layers to a system already fraught with issues. Some think a solution is ever more complex ownership structures and community investing. Some think we need affordable housing set-asides, to make developers solve these issues with new construction. Some think we need a whole category of "community benefits" as a condition for new development.

With every added dose of complexity, we edge ever more closely to a system of only big owners (private and public), and no middle class of substance. Our wealth divides don't improve, and the general public gets more and more angry with elected officials, government staff and their policies. We also increasingly have a system that makes it virtually impossible to get on the first rung of the wealth-building ladder and move up gradually. What are we doing? What is all this headed towards?

None of this is to admonish city planners. It's to simply evaluate what has been done in the context of politics and culture. We got wealthy as a country, then we did what wealthy people do - we got exclusionary, protective and soft. We thought we could manage away all difficulties of urban life, without creating any painful by-products. Unfortunately, the problems don't usually show up right away, and we tend to find decades later that the utopian cure for one era is the disease for the next one.

In a desire for better places, we ultimately created some very top-down political processes and solutions. Politics provides sound bites and talking points, but rarely does it provide effective long-term solutions. At some point, the politics inevitably change in ways the original politicians couldn't anticipate, and politics turns against them. The people become frustrated and angry. That's where we are today.

Moving Forward

In a previous era, when our cities were messier and more driven by bottom-up development, they were done with many hands. People of all means could not only participate, they also could directly profit from the improvement. They could create generational wealth for themselves, without relying on increasing home values or home-equity loans. Our neighborhoods were not the pristine ideal of modern suburban development, but they did mix up all kinds of people in coherent, human-scaled places. Today, those neighborhoods still have multiple owners and a mix of types of people. In a historical irony, they've become some of our most-cherished places.

We had a LOT of places like this before the era of the suburban experiment, and before the era of "urban renewal." Efforts led by the professional class of the Progressive era tore them down, in favor of the big, utopian idea of the day. People like to say it’s all about racism, but it’s far more complex than that. Those ideas were fully embraced by the professional/political classes because they thought it made for better cities and a better future. And of course, it also made immense amounts of money for well-connected contractors, land owners, engineers and gave newly-minted government agencies something important to do.

This "messier" approach I'm describing is not meant to be a recipe for all cities, and all neighborhoods everywhere. In America especially, we have a great bifurcation between suburban and urban places. People want different lifestyle options, and that's ok. Urbanists don't want to hear this, but the suburbs are not going away. They will evolve, change and adapt as necessary, but four generations have grown up with them and a majority currently prefers the modern suburban lifestyle. In America, "urban" is a niche market. If you've read this blog before, you know I believe we should adopt a mindset of, "let urban be urban, and let suburban be suburban."

When it comes to the "urban" places, though, we spend far too little time actually studying what made those places 100 or more years ago tick. And we don't like to acknowledge the failures of our own professions over the course of time. It's easier to say those people in the past were all "bad" people, then to realize many of them were actually quite smart and idealistic, but had some ideas that didn't work out well at all. Let's ask, "why didn't they work out?" Or, "what did people long ago get right?"

I've lived as long now as my great-great grandfather. I've seen a fair amount of change in our cities, too. But in our era, every effort at change is a difficult struggle, and seems to not be easing the divides in our society. What is our role in creating the problems, and what is our role in charting a different course for the future?

Do we care to make a real difference in people’s lives, to help households and communities build wealth? Or do we care to just keep doing what some other bigger, sexier city is doing, and virtue-signal to members of our own tribe? Do we care to plan and manage for the many, or for the lucky few?

There has to be another way.

Klaas and Klaasina Klinkenberg (yes, you read that right), left the Netherlands in 1871 with a large family in tow. My great-great grandfather Klaas reportedly said, “I won't have my children fight the Kaiser's wars." Smart man. Germany had just unified in 1871, and some of history's bloodiest battles were on the horizon.

The Klinkenbergs found their way to Leavenworth County, Kansas, to work some farmland. Klaas had experience as a mason and a carpenter, all of which no doubt came in handy in that era of settlement of the Great Plains. Eventually, they purchased a farm of their own in 1879, and put down roots that led to yours truly among many others. They built a small home for themselves, and soon after some of the children similarly acquired farms and built homes.

About twenty-five miles away to the east was Kansas City, Missouri. The young city had a population of just over 30,000 people in 1870. Today we would call that a "small town,” though it was the largest city in the region. By the time Klaas passed away in 1889, KCMO had ballooned to 130,000 people. That was in just 18 years. And when Klaasina passed in 1917, it was around 300,000 people. Think about that for a moment. This particular city, in the middle of an enormous, continent-sized country, had a 10x growth spurt in the half-life of one person. There were no Autocad experts, no 3-D printing, no heavy construction equipment and no iPad apps. Technical professions were few and far between. And yet, the city grew - and kept growing.

The KC population surge eventually reached almost 400,000 by 1930, when it started to level off, shortly before my parents were born. The "boom" era of KC was mirrored in many other Midwestern cities and towns. Take a look at the growth numbers for cities like Chicago, Detroit and many more, and you can see the incredible change that happened in a short period of time. Mass immigration fueled a substantial portion of the change, with the enormous wave of people that came to the US in the 1880s through the 1910s. The railroads were the facilitator of continental settlement, since they enabled a much easier movement of large numbers of people.

There's so much about that era that's fascinating to consider today, especially for those of us who find ourselves in the world of city planning, architecture and development. One of the obvious elements is that essentially every one of the most loved "historic" neighborhoods and buildings were built in that era. Cities that were lucky enough to have the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a boom time truly reaped the rewards of a fabulous period of architecture and design. The neighborhoods are littered with examples of what we call "Missing Middle" housing and commercial today. The City Beautiful movement inspired great civic architecture and beautiful parks and boulevards. In any arena of life, look at the quality of an average building from that era to one of today: schools, industrial buildings, homes, and utility structures. The built legacy is astounding.

Our cities also got wealthy, very quickly. Urban life was a relatively new phenomenon to America, which was a decidedly rural country for the first 100+ years of its existence. That new urban wealth built much of the civic legacy that we enjoy today. And the pattern of building, in what we might call Strong Towns now, created very productive neighborhoods financially. Even today, we benefit from that wealth-creation. The neighborhoods in KC that were built in that era still generate 6x the revenue to local taxing jurisdictions than an average neighborhood in our city. And that's after decades of decline and abandonment. So we can safely say, whatever we did in that era created generational wealth for people and for communities.

One final fascinating note is that all this was undertaken in an era of what we'd describe today as a laissez-faire approach to regulation and building. There was no Planning Commission, no Zoning Code, and effectively as free market approach as can be imagined for real estate development by those of us in 2021. The City Plan Commission in KCMO wasn't established until 1919 and the first zoning map and code in 1923. Essentially, the new regulations were put in place at the tail end of the boom wave. The Parks Commission was established in 1893 to oversee the Parks and Boulevards Plan, but its scope was strictly limited to that effort.

While we created a great deal of urban wealth in the boom era, there was also criticism and pushback. Some people found the new development too “chaotic” and not worthy of a rising metropolis. Others were concerned about the shanty towns that popped up around the city. So we began to see a push for more exclusive neighborhoods, more "designed" approaches to our cities and a professional management team to oversee it all.

The timing of the new"scientific" and technocratic approach to city-building is interesting since we soon had a generation impacted by the Great Depression and World War II. Not much was built in that era, nor was much renovated. Many buildings were in fact torn down, as the new authorities and its allies in the big-business community were eager to usher in the exciting era of automobile travel. While most people probably didn't realize it much at the time, an entire new approach to building the "new modern city" had been established.

But we are so much smarter now

It's now well worth comparing the results of approximately 40 years of that "boom" era from 1880 to 1920, to everything that has happened over the last 100 years. We tend to accept our practices and programs today as inevitable and correct, but are they? Do our modern approaches actually produce measurably better results for people? Have we been creating beautiful places, or generational wealth? Could our centralized, managed approach to city planning handle a growth spurt like we saw in that era? Are we adding a similar diversity of housing options?

This is not to say the boom era didn't have its problems. It certainly did. A substantial portion of our population was discriminated against based on race, religion or heritage. They weren’t able to fully participate in the rising tide of increasing wealth. We also had a lot of substandard housing. "Informal settlements," as we call them today, were fairly common. But our cities also didn't seem to have problems with "affordability" or access to opportunity. Even in the face of an effective doubling of the US population through immigration, our cities managed to get wealthier, build great public amenities for people, and accommodate the new residents. And we didn't just build "housing." We built arguably the most beautiful and livable neighborhoods in the history of our country.

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How is this possible? How could today's much more sophisticated people, technology and systems be less effective at meaningful outcomes than the efforts of millions of amateurs that basically copied each other? Is this what happens when we "unleash the swarm?"

Back to my ancestors for a moment. They could effectively buy a piece of property, and do as they wished with it immediately. This was true on the farm, and If they had lived in the city itself, this was also true. There was no central authority to appeal to if someone wanted to build an apartment building next to a single family house. Some neighborhoods could deed-restrict themselves through private agreement to only single-family houses if they so desired (and some did). And it's true that some reformers didn't like this more chaotic, messy approach to city-building. The reformers found it to be ugly, too unpredictable and perhaps ill fit for the new urban upper-middle class. Developers and reformers like JC Nichols in KC wrote often about what was wrong with this, and that we needed planned neighborhoods and cities. His book, "The Community Builders Handbook" is the culmination of his thinking on the topic, and many of his contemporaries.

So I come back to, what of the actual results of our modern efforts?? We've had 100 years of increasingly-managed cities. Zoning codes and development processes just get bigger and more complicated. What is that actually doing for us?

When we face issues or challenges today, the typical responses are to take complex, siloed and centralized systems and make them ever more complex, siloed and centralized. Our systems tend to feed themselves, and politicians tend to enjoy creating sound-bite promises of how they can "fix" whatever ails us. And yet, we have housing issues that are spiraling out of control virtually everywhere, more neighborhoods declining than improving, a wealth gap that is widening and environmental issues that seem daunting. 100 years of professional management of cities has given us this, and for many the present situation seems hopeless.

We all know the definition of insanity. Why would we believe that doubling or tripling-down on our current systems and approaches is the answer?

Perhaps it's past time for us to take a couple steps back, and re-examine our entire foundational belief systems as they relate to cities, development and the management of change. It's entirely possible our professional approaches are not as wise as we think they are, nor are we any less fallible than our predecessors. Perhaps we can learn an awful lot from my great-great grandparents' generation.

This is a mixed-use, walkable development that has been created out of whole cloth west of downtown, near the airport. It’s a sort of second generation version of these types of projects, and measurably better than the first generation.

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Before I describe it further, though, it’s interesting to trace a brief history of apartment communities in the US.

Not long ago, not far away

In America, renting an apartment has been a choice of a minority of households since the New Deal incentivized home ownership. About 1/3 of households today are renters, though early in the twentieth century it was close to 2/3. I won’t comment on if that was good or bad policy. It’s just to note the context, note the incentives and how we’ve changed.

Apartments were most commonly rented in small buildings in that previous era. They were the Missing Middle types so often discussed, and highlighted very well by Dan Parolek of Opticos Design. Yes, there were larger buildings as well, and a wide variety of SROs, apartment hotels and boarding houses. But most of what housed people were ancillary apartments, duplexes, triple-deckers, fourplexes, etc etc. This was very common for middle-class people, virtually all over America.

As we became wealthy, single family ownership became all the rage, egged on by financing incentives and regulatory changes (zoning). At the same time, larger capital flows became more dominant in real estate, and the nature of apartment living began to change. Apartments increasingly were built in larger “complexes” of 100 or 200 units all at one time in one location. In order to make apartment living an attractive alternative to home ownership, and not just for the poor or those without choices, developers began adding “amenities” such as pools and common green spaces. Those were the sorts of things not even contemplated in the "Missing Middle" era. Back then, an apartment was just a place to live in a neighborhood, no different than the house next door or around the corner. The “amenities” were often in public parks.

As time went on, the arms race for amenities ramped up. Soon were added fitness centers, spas, covered parking, valet services and more. Newer apartment complexes today are often touted as “luxury apartments.” In addition to the amenities, they also tout granite countertops, stainless steel appliances and whirlpool tubs in the units. Going after the renter by choice market has necessitated this push to go ever more upscale and out-class the competition. That's not surprising, it's just a certain element of markets and competition at work.

The Walkability Factor

Now enter the 2000s, and the slow but noticeably growing interest in urban living. In some cities, the newly thriving commercial districts, walkable to many apartments, became a new, sexy amenity. Many smaller developers smartly capitalized on this with renovations of historic buildings, loft conversions and some new urban infill. They helped create an urban market that had some of the new amenities renters (and some home owners) were looking for. Their buildings didn't have pools or covered parking, but they had cool bars and restaurants to walk to, art galleries, lively streets and more things that appeal to a certain part of the population.

The folks who deploy big investment capital naturally noticed this change. And they didn’t want to miss out on the trend. For over a decade, every healthy market has seen an influx of large “luxury apartment” buildings of about 200 units in urban areas, complete with all the amenities they’re used to providing in suburban locations. You guessed it - the pool, the fitness center, covered parking, etc etc.

Again, I’m not passing judgment. This is simply an example of how development happens in modern America. In many cases, these larger entities deploy tens of millions of dollars to buy and upgrade buildings, build new ones and create portfolios of hundreds and hundreds of apartments. It’s very smart business. Some of the end results can be excellent, some very mediocre, but nearly all have been well received in the marketplace. Urbanist snobs like me might ask questions, but clearly the people renting the apartments are responding positively.

Enter Midtown Tampa

Midtown Tampa is simply another in the latest version of this phenomenon. It’s a brand new place, by different accounts, either 12 or 30 years in the making.

The apartments are very well appointed, the amenities are first-class. It also includes fantastic eating and drinking options, some retail, a Whole Foods and new office space. It truly is an "instant city" in the sense it has so much of what someone might need as part of a daily or weekly routine in one compact location. Despite the Florida heat, you can walk from your apartment indoors to the gym, where you can work out in perfect air conditioned comfort. This is the new, 21st century apartment complex.

Midtown has the trendiest new bar in town, and it looks like the kind of place I'd enjoy spending too much time in. It has a "signature scent." Yes, that's actually a thing. It’s not a cheap place at all, and not intended to be. The rents are about $3 per square foot. That's the top of the market in Tampa, and in many similar markets in the US. You can do the math on what a simple, 900 square foot two bedroom apartment costs.

Everything in this development is impeccably managed. They do everything well that our cities do poorly. Trash and cleanliness, security, parking, and public space management are all incredibly well thought-through and executed. It gives people who advocate for privatization of city governance great ammunition.

So again, I'm not saying this is BAD. I think there's much to admire and like. It's just that this is another example of how we only produce this kind of development anymore. It's either large single-family subdivisions on the edge of the city, or mega-investment "instant cities." There's nothing in between. It's not just that the Missing Middle buildings are often zoned out of existence, it's that the entire ecosystem of finance, acquisition, construction and more seems to make it virtually impossible to do again.

There’s no space in our system for the kind of change that gave us Chicago, or even my city. The professionalization of everything has created this predicament where the entire system pushes for bigger and more complicated projects and efforts of all kinds. This is not a “find a magic policy” problem. It’s the direct result of decades of policy, all made with good intentions and responding to constituents, but quietly damaging our systems piece by piece.

This isn't healthy for our cities, and it's especially not healthy for a democratic society. In this system, there seems to be little opportunity for people to build for themselves, to build wealth for themselves, and create the kinds of "messy" places that urbanists like myself most admire. The only option is to do it "sub-rosa" as Johnny Sanphillipo would say. And he's right. That's exactly what happens in the real world, often outside the view of the local authorities.

I have no objection to Midtown Tampa at all. In fact, it's quite well done in many ways. But this simply cannot be the only solution to the development of our cities. We've got to unleash the swarm, as I like to say, or else all the current problems we fret about will only get worse.

More to come.

And it's clear the locals who presented these changes really are proud. I don't blame them - it was not long ago that downtown Tampa was basically a ghost town. To see people walking around, construction cranes dotting the area and new businesses popping up - it's quite a transformation in a short period of time. There's still the inevitable urban freeways that rip through, the legacy urban renewal projects, etc, but all in all, it must be a very exciting time to be from Tampa (setting aside all their sports championships).

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Here's what I'm wresting with: I'm finding this sort of change doesn't excite nor impress me anymore. And I'm trying to figure out why.

I'm not a hater of new development at all. My reflex is to generally be very pro-development and pro-change. As I've said before, humans are always changing, and cities are just collections of humans. At a certain point, you have to roll with change, or you'll make yourself miserable. So what is it, now, that is making me less and less enthusiastic about these kinds of new urban developments?

The Urban Experiment

Chuck Marohn is fond of calling the post-WWII era of American development "The Suburban Experiment." I like and generally agree with his analysis, and have written about it before here. In the aftermath of our success winning a world war on two fronts, we endeavored very confidently to remake our society in a brand-new fashion. And we did so with a similar approach to the war effort: lavishly funded, centrally organized and efficiently managed. We had no patience anymore to let our places evolve gradually, nor for the outdated concept of local/regional character. We had the hubris and the money to instead build to a finished state, all at once, and to create the new America.

Of course, it was also built around the automobile, but that's probably as much coincidence as anything. All human settlements are organized around the dominant mode of transportation at the time. The post-war boom era just happened to coincide with the car. The physical result is American suburbia as we've known it now for three generations.

But in retrospect, the most important change was this idea that the growth of our cities could be successfully planned like a massive military operation. All negative outcomes could be accounted for, collateral damage could be minimized and we could undertake it in giant surges. We could have housing for returning veterans and their families over here, housing for the poor over here, shops in another place and lots of highways in between to shuttle people back and forth. It's easy to mock this approach now, but it must have seemed magical and inspiring at the time.

Today, we have a new emerging paradigm, which we might as well start calling The Urban Experiment. From a process and capital flow standpoint, it's really no different than the Suburban Experiment. Large entities, sometimes international, invest millions of dollars to acquire properties and create "assemblages" of land. They do this hand in hand with local and sometimes State authorities. A master plan of sorts is devised by the powers-that-be (with a token effort at public input), and then giant capital flows move in to execute the plan in swift, efficient fashion. The target demographics are the college educated, the upwardly mobile and the wealthy. The end result today looks and feels different - it’s an urban community, with an emphasis on walking, social spaces and a "live, work, play" lifestyle. But the spirit is similar - we can build the ideal community to a finished state, all at once.

This new urban community has all the amenities desired by today's young and creditworthy. There's the Starbucks on the ground floor, the yoga studios and gyms, the trendy bars and restaurants with $10 beers and clever menus, co-working facilities, "playful" outdoor spaces and an apartment with a nice view.

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I'm not saying any of this is bad. In fact, a lot of it is very nice. It's highly desirable to those who can afford it, and easy to see why. It attracts enough of the beautiful people to make the sightseeing always enjoyable. Some might say to me - “hey, Kevin, these are your people! Why wouldn't you love this?” And they wouldn't be totally wrong. For pretty much all of my adult life, I've reveled in being part of the upwardly-mobile, college-educated “urban” world. These new instant cities are very sexy, in the same ways that the suburbs were once sexy to another generation.

But there's something about it all that feels just as fragile as the Suburban Experiment, which has been unraveling all over America for a couple of decades. It's not just that it's built upon a mountain of debt, which it is. It's not just that it's targeted to a very narrow demographic, which it is. It's not just that these places feel the same in every city in America, which they do. It's a bit of all of those together. What happens when this class of people (my people) grows bored of it all, and moves on to the next thing? What will become of these places? Can they evolve easily into something else, or for someone else? The history of large-scale development would generally say - no.

Design Matters

Setting aside the issues of fragility for a moment, there are also design issues to examine. As a designer, it’s impossible for me to turn off this part of my brain, as I look at buildings and public spaces. And there’s much to discuss and consider, as these developments proceed across America.

The truth is, the latest wave of urban development is just a smarter face on what was done in a pervious era. In the 1960s-80s, we also saw developers sometimes build urban towers for offices and condos or apartments. Some of those still remain, you can spot them quite easily. They had all the elements of mid-century architectural and urban design moves, including the windswept, empty plazas, buildings set back off the street and copious, obvious parking garages.

The developers and designers of today have learned enough basics of urban design to improve upon those projects. We've collectively figured out how to enhance the amenities, the “in between spaces” and the ground floor. We’ve learned how to create much better people spaces for the common areas. Otherwise, these are basically the same buildings. They are tall towers, often unattractive - sometimes downright goofy, sometimes striking - with parking podiums. It’s just now the wrapping is much better. And that does make a difference, at least for now. Developers and designers, like all fields of life, do tend to get smarter and better.

The really uncomfortable truth for all Americans, is the buildings and spaces don’t actually have to be great. They don't have to be timeless, nor do they have to connect to their neighboring areas and create a bigger whole. They just have to have one or two good human spaces, and the target demographics will be happy. We're not building Paris or Rome. Our bar for success is much, much lower, due to a dearth of high-quality urban communities. At the end of the day (and the beginning), most people will leave their apartment to drive off from a parking garage onto big, ugly streets and highways anyway.

Seeking Balance

OK, so what’s the bottom line? As always, it’s nuanced. The truth is, there's nothing inherently wrong with these places. Twenty or thirty years ago, most urban advocates would have absolutely loved this and given their left arm to see more of it in their city. The real problem is, in our cities today, this is ALL we build, and have been building.

We've always had large-scale buildings in our cities, in every era. We just also used to have a whole lot of small-scale efforts as well. Those efforts used to be much more localized and unique to an area. The owners were generally local people who benefited directly from the growth and change of their city. They owned rental properties or small commercial buildings and made money from the rent. They used that money to invest in their own communities - to sponsor the little league team, or the church social or the widows and orphans funds.

Today's instant cities only directly benefit very large investors and developers. There's virtually no opportunity for the startup business or small investor to actually own something. Sure, a local business can lease a space, but chances are they can’t actually own the space itself. We have an investor class that is national or global, and everyone else effectively is a renter. Not only does that deprive the local community of potential local wealth, it also makes the whole endeavor more subject to the whims of the renters. When that class decides they’ve had enough, they move on. No local wealth was created, and any renovation or change will again take massive amounts of capital.

Can we truly rebuild our cities, and prepare for America 6.0 in this fashion?

When I see these places now, I see fragility. I see fragility for investors, for cities that co-invest, and for our society in total. This is not to denigrate any of the individuals involved in any of this. I've worked on efforts like this, and know many friends and colleagues that have and continue to do so. There are many exceptional people working in this world, including many I sincerely admire.

But the systems and incentives we’ve created in planning and development are what cause us to see these Urban Experiments, and virtually nothing else.

Is there another way? What does it look like? How does it work?

Stay tuned.

I left the readers off in the heart of Westport on Mill Street, showing how easy and inexpensive it is to create a first-class bicycle connection from Westport through the Plaza and to two major trails in the city - the Brush Creek Trail and the Trolley Track Trail. Doing so brings together people from a very large area into two of the most active places for entertainment and employment in our city. Did I mention, it’s rather easy and practically costs nothing?

But ending in Westport doesn’t seem good enough, when our city has so much more to explore, and since we have other excellent opportunities for first-rate biking. So where can we go, and go with the most bang for the buck?

First, we need to move north and west on Mill Street to reach its terminus at Southwest Trafficway. The portion of Mill Street north of Westport Road is a rather wide and fast street, as it was designed in a suburban fashion to serve the strip malls and fast food outlets along its path. Again, a simple change can still accommodate the current needs but create a very safe and attractive route for cyclists. Simply taking over the outside lane (as has already partially been accomplished) with bollards and concrete delineators can easily take cyclists up to Southwest Trafficway. There’s nothing lost by making this change, other than potentially losing an unnecessary center turn lane on a low-traffic street.

But now what? Now we find ourselves at the beast of Midtown: Southwest Trafficway; easily one of the most horrendously designed and ill-considered pieces of infrastructure in our city’s history. It’s made even more ignominious by the use of “Trafficway” in the name. No city street that moves through neighborhoods should ever be named “Trafficway.” 

In this location, we have an advantage for crossing because of a traffic signal. The signal takes you across to a bizarre little stub street of west 40th Terrace or an abandoned right of way just south of it. From there, it’s easy to loop around on very safe, low-volume and narrow residential streets to end up at 39th and Roanoke Road. Proceeding north on Roanoke takes you ultimately into Roanoke Park. Now while I dream of the day that Roanoke Road is closed to traffic in the park, for now we can imagine a newly-constructed bike path through the park on the east side of the street. I say newly-constructed, since the current sidewalk itself is too narrow to serve both purposes, and the street is not conducive to cycling as a brick street. Still, this is nothing more than widening a sidewalk to take one to Karnes Boulevard.

That’s where it starts to get really interesting. Beginning at Karnes and heading north all the way to Southwest Boulevard is an old and abandoned railroad right-of-way. It curves around the bluffs and has the opportunity to be one of those gems of a rails-to-trails pathway. As it slithers northward, it moves through a current lumberyard property that is certain to be a redevelopment in the near future. But, the right of way is still there, and still open for potential use as a pathway. Hat tip for future development: don’t forego this important asset!

Next up: Southwest Boulevard. Southwest Boulevard today has a bike lane, but it’s sadly one of the city’s least safe and least enjoyable. But again, some simple changes with paint and bollards and concrete parking stops can make this an excellent route that continues all the way to Summit Street (and certainly even farther).Now you’ve made your way through KC’s Westside neighborhood, and connected even more people to opportunity and entertainment.

At Summit Street, a quick jog north two blocks brings you to West Pennway. From here, you find yourself on the Riverfront Heritage Trail and eventually Beardsley Road. Much of this route is already well-marked and safe. It also has some of the most interesting features of any trail experience in the region, as it winds above and through the West Bottoms. When it continues under the I-70 viaduct, it pops over the Kansas River in a fantastic bike/pedestrian-only bridge. Following the route eventually takes you to Kaw Point Park, which affords an amazing view of downtown KCMO, as well as a great opportunity to get up close and personal with where the Kansas and Missouri rivers come together. It’s one of my favorite spots in the whole city.

At this point, you’ve now traversed some of KCMO’s most interesting urban neighborhoods and destinations, and found yourself in KCK.

What happens next??

From Kaw Point Park, all we need are some open minds and bureaucratic flexibility. We have an extensive levee system in our region, for very obviously-needed reasons. But sadly they are mostly closed off for recreational use. KCK has had success recently with a trail along the Kansas River levee south of this area in Armourdale, and it gives us all a preview of what could happen elsewhere. There’s simply no compelling reason to object to more use of the levees for recreational aspect, as other cities have done for decades. 

In this case, if the levee north of Kaw Point Park could be officially just opened for bicycle / pedestrian use, you could now loop around for over four miles to find yourself looking up at the Fairfax Bridge. A quick loop around some industrial development gets you right to a ready-made path to take you over the bridge back into Missouri. You might say, how scenic is coming through an industrial era? I might say - incredibly scenic! It’s an important part of our city and heritage, and I have always enjoyed getting up close and personal with big industry at work - even the post-industrial.

So guess what, now you’re across the Missouri River and the path takes you down the Argosy Casino. Anyone care for crab legs? 

Argosy Casino. How can this be a good place to land? Well actually… here’s the thing: the Argosy Casino is also the end point for the beautiful (and long) Line Creek Trail that winds for over 8 miles into the Northland. It just takes following a few by-the-road pathways to get there, but it’s quite safe and easy for nearly any cyclist.

And there you have it. This meandering pathway connects up the best trail in the Northland with the best trails south of the river. It takes you through a montage of Kansas City like nothing else you’ll encounter, for nearly 25 miles. And, it’s all incredibly easy and inexpensive to stitch together. This is not a pie-in-the-sky scheme that should take decades to implement. Most of it just takes agreement to make it happen.

The most iconic aspects of every region tend to spring from their own unique attributes. Atlanta’s Beltline, New York’s Highline, Minneapolis’ lake trails. These are all rooted in each city’s own history and geography. In Kansas City, we have a unique combination of rivers, bluffs, waterways and industry that has shaped our city. It’s all far more beautiful than we often realize. It could be even more beautiful, and used, if we created more opportunities for direct engagement. The interplay between nature and our industrial history is long, fascinating and worth exposing - not hiding behind walls or levees. What if we could link all that up on one spine, for recreation and transportation? What if it all literally told the story of our city along its path?

Of course there are other options and possibilities for routes. We have some excellent routes today that are tailor-made for e-bikes, as detailed here. If we’re thinking ahead, e-bikes will be a huge part of our transportation ecosystem, and I continue to argue will be much more prevalent than autonomous vehicles. The bikes will only get better and better over time, and less and less expensive. For the early adopters among us, they’ve already become life-changing. How much fun would a 25+ mile e-bike ride be on this route?

But progress has to start somewhere, and in this case it starts with a single, high-quality spine. Once the spine is in, the possible connections become exciting and more important. We’ve seen this already with the streetcar spine in downtown, and its effects on development, on civic spirit, and on how we are now planning for future public transportation. There’s no doubt that once we make the spine happen, we’ll have a huge demand to connect from existing and possible paths. If we were to pursue this with a sense of urgency and cooperation, the rest of the magic will happen on its own.

I hope this illustrates the power of thinking in small, incremental steps to create something transformative. None of this needs a massive infusion of cash or infrastructure dollars. A great deal of it is just lying there waiting to be connected. None of this requires a massive policy overhaul. But it does require people to take action with intention, and to have a sense of cooperation and progress. It requires leaving behind some ideas from decades ago - about traffic movement, about levees, about divisions in our city. And that’s ok. In fact, it’s high time. Let’s embrace moving on from 20th-century notions of our city and our region which haven’t served us well. Let’s embrace some small changes that lead to big ideas. We’ve got 80 years left in the 21st century. How about we chart a new course now to make the most of it?

There’s been a lot of talk lately in Kansas City about renaming JC Nichols Parkway and the Nichols Fountain. While the focus is on the legacy of JC Nichols and our historic racial divides, we seem to avoid the subject of the street itself and its design. This feels like a missed opportunity, given how a few tweaks could dramatically improve the physical connections in our city. I’d like to spend a little time in this space to highlight not just what is possible, but also the power of fairly small, incremental changes. 

For the purposes of this piece, I’m going to lump together the four blocks of Nichols Parkway (soon to be changed back to Mill Creek Parkway), and the three blocks that continue south as Baltimore Avenue. If you’re traveling that stretch of roadway, you might not realize they are two different names, but indeed they are. Of course to the north it transitions to Broadway Boulevard, north of 43rd Street. Thank you, George Kessler for the confusion. Why it isn’t all just Broadway is beyond me, but that’s for discussions another day.

The street itself in this stretch is four lanes of traffic, plus parking or bus stops on both sides of the street. The diverse and constant activity in the area generally means the street parking is quite heavily used, though traffic volumes themselves are very low for a 4-lane street. Mill Creek Park on the east is a very active and beautiful space, with an exercise path running around the perimeter.

Here’s an approximate section of what the street is in this area:

It’s long been established that these types of four-lane configurations are some of our least-safe streets, and that they are frequently over-designed relative to the amount of traffic. Our metro area is littered with such streets that only serve to encourage reckless, speeding traffic.

So let’s imagine what we might do to change this circumstance, and also what can be done with some simple paint, some flex-posts, and some concrete parking stops. In fact, we don’t have to imagine too much, since this was just implemented on Gillham Plaza farther north and east in Midtown. Imagine a two-way bicycle path (in parlance, a cycle track or protected bike lane) on the west side of the street. Imagine converting the unnecessary four lanes and replacing them with two lanes plus a center turn-lane. Thus, a classic four to three road diet that’s proven to work in countless locations for better safety for all. Then imagine keeping the street parking since it is popular, necessary and protects people on foot and bicycle.

Connections to the Brush Creek Trail can then happen just west of Baltimore for the north side of the creek, and right at Baltimore for the south side of the creek.

Finally, while we’re at it, let’s go ahead and do something similar to the absurdly-wide, four-lane, one-way section of Ward Parkway between Baltimore and Brookside Boulevard. Here’s what that change looks like.

From this point we just claim the existing, and almost never-used, sidewalk on the west side of Brookside Boulevard as the “Trolley Trail,” and its signalized connection across 49th Street. This requires nothing more than a couple of signs.

Altogether, these are two very simple, very inexpensive changes for seven blocks of north and south roadway and one block of east and west roadway. What does it do for us? All of a sudden, there’s now a low-stress bicycle connection from the doorstep of Westport to the Plaza, the Brush Creek Trail and the Trolley Track Trail. Whether for recreation, for necessity, for opportunity, or for simple human pleasure, one can safely and easily travel by bicycle to many points east, west, north and south. And this is your daily reminder: an awful lot of people ride by bicycle because it’s their only reliable way to get around town.

I know this isn't top of mind for people right now, but at some point we have to get to work on fixing the physical divisions in our city. We talk a lot, rightfully so, about the racial divisions and our sordid history that closed the doors of opportunity to many. But many of those divisions manifested themselves into physical divides as well. Just look at the horribly over-designed Main-Brookside connector, which served to cut off the Plaza from its neighbors to the east, all in the name of making traffic flow easier from north to south. 

If we want to heal the divides in our community, let’s work on actually healing the physical divides, too.

The good news is, some of these changes require rather tiny amounts of money. What they mostly require is an openness to change, to experimentation, and a setting aside of the notion that the purpose of our streets is solely to move speeding traffic at all hours of the day.

But wait, there’s more!

Of course, I can’t just leave people at the doorstep of Westport, and not actually get people safely in and out of Westport. Just on the north side of 43rd Street, sits the old streetcar right-of-way to Mill Street. Today it’s a sad remnant of a bridge that used to cross the intersection, and now is only a grassy berm. The KCATA still owns the right-of-way.

If our new protected bike lanes were simply connected by a short multi-use path (aka, a sidewalk) up the hill to Mill Street, we’d have a high-quality, very safe route into the heart of the entertainment area. Mill Street itself is a narrow, quirky and fairly charming little street. It’s very low traffic, and very low speed. It’s the kind of street that mixes bicycles, pedestrians and cars all very well. Sidebar: it’d be Kansas City’s best street if the west side of it matched the east side in terms of architectural quality and scale.

Is there even more? Can this be extended farther? In fact, yes, it can. But that’s the subject for another post, coming soon. I think people will be amazed what is possible (yes, that’s a tease).

Bonus!

OK, OK I can’t just leave it there. These are the wages of sin for a designer. No problem is every finished. In this case, there are two other small, but important bonuses to be had in this stretch of Mill Creek Parkway. Both of them involve right-turn slip lanes that only exist to move traffic at speed. At both 47th Street and Ward Parkway, little pedestrian orphans have been created by these slip lanes. Did I mention this is one of the busier parts of our city for pedestrians?

Simply eliminating these two slip lanes allows for much shorter, safer protections for people walking AND some connected, interesting public space. Why not have the space at 47th Street turn into a beautiful extended plaza at the front of the businesses in this location? Imagine the Seville Light Fountain actually surrounded by people lingering, instead of in the middle of a forgotten traffic island?

We can often get trapped into thinking human progress can only happen in large, dramatic steps. We do have occasional moments in time where that needs to happen and does happen. But let’s not also forget that change – lasting change – is almost invariably a series of seemingly small steps. A simple gesture. An invitation. A personal connection. These are the kinds of things any of us can do, and many people do daily.

Our physical city needs lots of small, healing gestures too.

We can start today to make small, incremental changes to address these issues. They aren’t as headline-grabbing as renaming streets, but they can have immense power to positively impact the lives of real people, today, tomorrow and for decades to come.

Coming up next: how far can this idea be extended? You might be surprised.

But there’s another reason I’ve been holding back, too. Frankly, the act of making bold claims and assertions right now seems rather, well, shallow and not worth my little remaining brain power. I’d much rather do what I’ve been doing in the down moments, which is to plant a garden, re-do our landscaping, and read some books. I enjoy a good debate and discussion as much as anyone - probably too much, in fact. But up until now, it just hasn’t seemed important enough to me to stake out intellectual territory or be “right” about what is going on.

Of course, I have read quite a bit of what others have written, since I’m not immune to thinking about things. And for those of us in the world of city planning, design, development, etc etc, it’s always interesting to opine and debate.

Here’s my main takeaway, though, from everything I’ve read. 

We have a really hard time saying “I just don't know.”

This is especially true for people of high intelligence (who I generally really like and consider myself among), and even more so in the age of the hot take. We are all so desperate to be the first one to predict something, and the one that someone points to years later to say, “see, he/she knew what was coming all along!” We are each and all desperate to be Michael Burry.

I get the impulse. I feel it, too. I suppose it’s just waned in me over the years, especially since I have much more immediate concerns.

What I actually wish is we would all just take the edge off. Turn down the volume. Chill out a bit. Try to be useful and helpful today, and not be so desperate to be right about long-term, macro issues. In the end, who cares? Is it better to have been the one right about “the end of (fill in the blank)” or is it better to have done something meaningful for yourself, your friends and family, your community, your city, etc, in this time period?

Can’t we all just admit we have no idea what will happen over the coming months and years?

Will we all be ok with the virus? We don’t know. There’s still so much we don’t know about the virus itself, though we are about to learn a lot more as society gradually reopens. 

Will a treatment emerge soon? We don’t know. There’s hopefulness in this regard, but it’s still so early. 

Will the virus persist with us for years? We don’t know. Will it go away after this summer? We don’t know. 

Will the economic stimulus be enough to keep us out of a deep or long recession? We don’t know. These are uncharted waters for everyone. 

Will we be able to keep issuing mountains of debt without consequences? We don’t know, and neither do any macro-economists or those who dabble in economics.

Whether you lean more towards optimism or pessimism, it still doesn't matter - there's too much uncertainty. Anyone who seems certain is only really projecting their temperament and view of the world to whomever will listen. Someone who is darkly pessimistic can find plenty of reason to validate that mindset today. Someone who is relentlessly optimistic can also find hope in the good side of humanity. Stories of both natures can be found every single day.

Less than three months into a pandemic affecting the US, I find any prediction of what will happen long-term to be unconvincing at best. That’s true even if it’s one I might be inclined to hope for. The truth is, what no one wants to admit is, we just don’t know. It’s so early, there are so many factors at play, and we all have very large intellectual blind spots. It’s rather easy to pick apart any big predictions at this stage, since they all have legions of built-in assumptions. 

To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” - George Orwell

It’s interesting to speculate. It’s fun to speculate, I get it. It’s even more compelling when you have a particular interest or issue that you hope the pandemic validates. I hear a lot of smart people mocking a return to “normal,” for a variety of reasons. I don’t understand that reaction. No matter what your particular axe to grind is with modern life (and trust me, I have a few), I don’t get the antipathy towards some sort of normality returning to people’s lives. It’s frankly inhuman. It’s a bit like rooting for all of modern life to fail.

I don’t root for failure. I root for success, for moderation, for boring normality.

I suspect, if asked to wager, that our economic life will get worse in the near term, and that was the direction of my comments in this CNU “On the Park Bench” discussion. I also suspect, like all economic and societal shocks, we will recover. Life will resume. People will adapt and move on. Fragility gets exposed in every crisis, and so does the remarkable spirit of humans to innovate, adapt and make a better life.

I hope that each of us can look back at this time and tell a story about something you did that was meaningful. Did you find a new hobby or skill? Did you help your neighbors or family? Did you add some beauty to the world? Did you take some time to think about your own fragility in the world, and ask what you can do about it? Did you enjoy some slow time? Did you reconsider a deeply held belief? Did you read a really good book? Have you done something that will inspire someone else?

I hope I can find time to write a bit more, now that the immediate emergencies in my life have settled into more of a routine. I do think there’s some important lessons we can all learn from this very unusual, and certainly disquieting time in our lives. I may even opine a bit. But I’ll do my best to stay focused on the tangible, the here and now, and not delve deeply into topics about which I understand just well enough to be terribly wrong. My interest, as always, is how humans live in cities and towns, and how to make them more pleasurable, safer, and more financially beneficial. If you care about those things, I’m delighted to have you as a reader.

Stay well,

Kevin

Doing any kind of interview is always a funny thing. I never quite know what questions will be asked or how they will be asked, which of course is the point of it all and the fun part. But that inevitably leads me to think about my own answers long afterwards. Sometimes I am quite happy with the conversation and my own contributions, and sometimes I wish I’d said something else instead. 

I thought this particular conversation went quite well. But there’s always a few missed opportunities on my own part. 

I’ve got pretty deep roots in Kansas City, even though I only briefly lived in the metro area as a child. My father’s family goes back to the 1870’s in the KC region, and I have a large extended family here. Truth is, at nearly 50 years old, I’m only now becoming more aware and more appreciative of those roots. I’d always had an emotional connection to this region, but I feel I’m understanding it more now and embracing it in ways I’d previously ignored or resisted. 

That relationship, too, has always been a bit love-hate, admittedly. Perhaps everyone has that sort of feeling with their hometown. You love what it is, you love the people, and you also get frustrated by how it could be so much better in your own eyes. I’ve struggled with all that over the years. In particular, I’ve always been amazed at the incredible urban legacy this city has from what I called the “city-building era” on the podcast. The opportunities and potential for KC to be one of the great urban communities in the country has seemed obvious to me. But personally and professionally it’s frustrated me to be part of the slow pace of change, and how we (and I mean we), just can’t seem to get out of our own way at times.

And yet, I still love the place, am defensive of it to outsiders, and will always feel that way, even if life again takes me away in the future.

Chuck asked a question toward the end of the podcast on what the rest of the country can learn from KC. I don’t dislike my answer, which is understanding and appreciating the abundance of “missing middle” urbanism we have in our urban core. If we could simply learn to value those assets ourselves culturally, I sometimes feel everything else would fall into place.

But in retrospect, there’s something else I’d say about what others can learn from KC. I’d say what I find here often are people that are willing to dig in and solve tough civic problems by taking matters into their own hands in a civil manner. Of course we have issues; we have negativity, we have politics, we have all the human problems of everywhere. But I also see people willing to be entrepreneurial and not necessarily wait for permission from someone up above. Individuals and groups see a problem and try to create a solution. 

That civic entrepreneurship is indicative of the streetcar effort, of our very strong charter school system, of our growing small developer cohort, of our bike sharing service and many more examples. You may or may not like any or all of those particular solutions, and that’s fine. But that’s not the point, really. The point is there’s virtue at times in not assuming “the system” has all the answers or is the right place to solve problems. Instead, it’s often better for people working outside the system to create positive change and bring that change to our bigger systems. I find that to be a great quality, and one I personally admire. It’s not done in a “be a nasty person” way, but in a “I’m going to work with people I know to find a solution to this problem” way. The world could use a lot more of that sort of mindset.

Finally, I can’t write this without noting how deeply impressed I am by Chuck Marohn’s ability to create a meaningful conversation with short preparation. There’s clearly an art to podcasting, and Chuck has mastered it. We sprung this podcast idea on him in the midst of a book tour, and he was able to not just perform well, but very quickly create space for a thoughtful and deep conversation. Those qualities truly impress me. I’m a devoted listener to his podcast, which is clearly the best there is that touches on issues of urban planning and development. I hope this episode inspires more local listeners to subscribe as well.

Why would we do this, what are the benefits? Quite simply, the primary benefits are financial. Here’s something I wrote in my book, “Why I Walk: Taking a Step in the Right Direction,”

I’m under no illusions that we can all suddenly ditch our cars and walk everywhere. As I noted earlier, too many of our communities are not set up for that today. Many people have no choice but to drive to work, sometimes very long distances. But what if you could reduce your car use and walk, bike or take transit more? If you own one car, you likely can’t eliminate it, but by making some changes, you could pretty easily save $4,000 to $5,000 per year. What would you do with an extra $4,000 in your pocket?

and

But what if you drive only five thousand miles per year instead of fifteen thousand? At the end of a five-year car loan, you’d have a vehicle with twenty-five thousand miles on it—if you bought it new. But even if you bought it used, with ten thousand miles on it to start, your car would have still only have about thirty-five thousand miles. A car with that relatively low mileage is a long way from requiring the more expensive maintenance. And most importantly, that car is a very long way from needing to be replaced.

How I might say this today: the positive compounding financial and health effects of living car-lite, and driving as little as possible, are astounding. Having one moderately-used car instead of two easily saves us $5,000 per year, perhaps much more. Over the course of a decade, $5,000 carries a compounding value of about $80,000. Over twenty years, it’s about $225,000. I don’t know about your own financial situation, but it’s absolutely worth it to us to have $225,000 more in our net worth in 20 years.

In the new documentary, Playing with FIRE, blogger The Mad Fientist shows how just eliminating one car from a two-adult, one-child household eliminates 5 years of mandatory work time. Whether you desire to retire at all or not is immaterial. I love work, for example, and hope to keep doing some sort of work as long as I still have a few marbles kicking around in my head. But the notion of financial flexibility - having the option of what you really want to do - is what is so attractive about the financial independence movement. If you could make one choice in your life and get to that flexibility five years sooner, would you do it?

So how do we really do it?

The truth is, for most of our daily or weekly life, living with one car and sharing it has been very easy. We chose to live in a centrally-located neighborhood, where we have some neighborhood features that are an easy walk. A wonderful park with playgrounds is only a block away. A neighborhood “main street” with entertainment and some shopping options is only a block away, too. We live near a fairly frequent bus line that can connect us pretty easily to many destinations. With just a little bit of planning on our part, it’s been easy to coordinate our schedules and figure out who needs the car at what time.

Probably the biggest game-changer for us is the local bike sharing organization. RideKC Bikes operates dozens of bike sharing stations around the city, and one station is two blocks from our house. What has made this especially important and enjoyable are the new electric bikes or e-bikes.

These pedal-assist bikes are not just incredibly fun to ride (seriously, try one – it’s amazing), but they get me around the city in ways I wasn’t sure was possible. Folks on the coasts might be surprised to learn that Kansas City is a very hilly city. Since we lie at the confluence of two major rivers and an assortment of tributaries, our city and region has numerous bluffs and deep valleys. That alone makes routine cycling with normal bikes a challenge. When you then combine the hills with the spread-out nature of our city and many streets hostile for bikes, it becomes even less desirable. Recent years have seen an increase in the number of very tough and hardy people that do it, but I’ve never been in that camp.

The e-bikes, however, completely change the equation for me. The hills are no longer an issue. I breeze up and down them, and even arrive at my destinations without a need to freshen up or change clothes. Importantly, I am far more confident on city streets and can ride on a wider variety of streets than I ever would without the pedal assist. In the past, I would avoid some low-traffic streets that are conducive to cycling because they have steep hills. Now, I can easily take those routes and avoid the most dangerous streets. My friend Dave Scott and I even created a website to highlight the best longer-distance routes in the city, and encourage other people to use them.

I love cycling, and it makes me feel really great physically and mentally. But I also value my life, and don’t want to end up as roadkill. For me at least, the e-bikes have opened a whole world of cycling up to me that wasn’t there before. With our local bike share program, I can be a member for $39/month and ride more or less everywhere I need to for daily needs. I imagine I will eventually buy an e-bike to make even more locations available to me, but for now this membership does wonders.

The challenges – now and future

The most immediate challenge we face is the impending colder weather. While I’ve lived through many years of winters, I’ve also been spoiled the last eight years in Savannah with very moderate temperatures. And, in the past, I’ve never really tried to ride a bike through the cold weather. This year I’m going to make a go of it. It will require some additional planning (and clothing) on my part, but the payoff is worth it. And, I’m increasingly taking to heart Mr Money Mustache’s advice to “do something hard every day.”

As our lives get busier and our professional lives get busier, we will likely face other challenges. The reality is we can pretty easily control our transportation expenses and habits for everything within a few miles of our home. Living in an older neighborhood that’s centrally located affords us that opportunity. But we also live in a big, sprawling region with many destinations well beyond those few miles. Family and friends live farther away than a realistic e-bike ride. Many social or work-related destinations simply require a car. As my wife and I both get busier, I expect it will require even closer coordination on our parts to share the car. One tip for those not already doing it: we use a shared Google Calendar to help with coordination. 

Our kids are also growing and changing, and their lives will get more complicated. We have one in daycare now, and soon will have two. A year or two down the road, and the oldest will be in school. We think we can solve how that all works, but it will present another challenge to us in sharing one vehicle. My current dream is to e-bike my oldest daughter to school in the first phase of change, and hopefully get both of them on their own bikes when they reach school age. I have a personal desire to encourage that sort of mobility and independence in them.

In our typical American cities, making the choice to live car-lite or car-free is not an easy choice. We live in a world designed for cars, trucks and fast driving. I wish that weren’t the case, and do my best professionally to correct the negative consequences of this reality. But we also have to live in the world as it is every day. For our family, we are trying to go against the grain a bit. We aren’t rebels by any means. We have a pretty typical family, pursuits, dreams and life. Our hope is that by being smart with a few, key choices, we can markedly improve our lives today and tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Can this tension be resolved? Is it one approach or the other?

I’ll admit I have a bias towards both-and, instead of either-or. Living enough years teaches you that life is rarely simple or clear cut. And, there’s a place for everyone and everything. I do, for example, believe very deeply in the Strong Towns approach, the goal of iterative processes and incrementalism, and a general attitude of taking ownership of change in your own place. These are deeply important, and American society has largely strayed away from these mindsets to our own misfortune. It’s imperative for today and for tomorrow that we find our way back to the approaches so well described on this website and the new book.

But I also remain steadfast that humans need to dream big occasionally, and to have a sense of what the big picture could be. It’s a very human quality to have aspirational visions of the future. George Bailey, in It’s a Wonderful Life, epitomizes this notion with his constant desire to do big things. That’s a core part of his internal struggle as a character, and one reason I think the movie is so relatable to people in all times and places.  

In the planning world, it’s why we are drawn to Daniel Burnham’s famous quote,

“Make no little plans - they have no magic to stir men’s blood.”

If you turn to the following page on the Plan of Chicago, though, you’ll see Burnham’s qualifier, which says,

“It should be understood, however, that such radical changes as are proposed herein cannot possibly be realized immediately. Indeed, the aim has been to anticipate the needs of the future as well as to provide for the necessities of the present; in short, to direct the development of the city towards an end that must seem ideal, but is practical.”

In essence, big dreams are really important, but hey – let’s be practical and work incrementally.

But what do we remember? That first quote. It’s very American. A popularized version of what Burnham said is what Casey Kasem used to close with on every episode of American Top 40, which I used to listen to weekly as a kid, “Keep your feet on the ground, but keep reaching for the stars.”

It’s that very human tension that makes me wonder, “what would a Strong master plan look like, when master plans by nature are about big dreams and big actions?” A great deal of big plans, fanciful renderings and utopian schemes are rightly pilloried on this site. We’ve had more nightmares than successful dreams in recent decades. But none of that stops our desire to want to dream, and the reality that many people get up every day and actually do big things – either in the public or private sector. What shall we say about that, in an effort to offer productive solutions for our cities and towns?

Those questions were a part of what a team of us tried to answer with a recent downtown master plan in Savannah, Georgia. Savannah, in fact, is a potential case study as a way forward. The city was conceived by Gen. James Oglethorpe as a very idealistic, almost utopian human settlement. Thomas Wilson’s book, The Oglethorpe Plan, is probably the most complete resource on the social, physical and economic ideals of Savannah. What evolved on the ground after Mr. Oglethorpe left and returned permanently to England in 1752, is a classic example of a bold but simple plan, and a very gradual, incremental implementation over many decades. Oglethorpe’s complete transect of human settlement, most realized in a plan of a series of wards, built around a public square at the center, was a really big idea. It was ambitious, aspirational and steeped in Enlightenment ideals. It was also very simply platted in a uniform pattern of 60’x90’ lots that have been built, modified and rebuilt by thousands and thousands of people over nearly three centuries. The results are magnificent. It’s not just beautiful and walkable, but the historic core is financially resilient and productive – the epitome of a strong town.

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We can find similar bouts of hopefulness combined with practicality throughout American history. Virtually every city or town has what is effectively a marketing poster that looks something like the one here from Lawrence, KS. Lawrence was largely settled by New England abolitionists (the main street is Massachusetts Avenue), in an effort to create a bulwark against the expansion of slavery. What you see in the poster, and many like it, is a bold and daring notion of what this place could be (come move here!) combined with a gradual, incremental and simple approach to day to day building.

Keep your feet on the ground, but keep reaching for the stars.

The new Savannah downtown plan, completed as a community-led effort and recently adopted by City Council, uses a similar mindset. Today’s situation is much more nuanced and challenging than 1733, so by nature the specific answers are complex. It’s also necessarily couched in the terminology of the moment. Boiled down to its core, however, it sounds familiar: it’s a series of aspirational notions of what the place can evolve towards, combined with a series of practical steps towards implementation. Those steps are a combination of many small actions and a few very big ones. It has a series of five key goals, some of which sound familiar to many plans:

1.     Connect people and neighborhoods with the street grid

2.     Expand public space and make it a cornerstone of city life

3.     Focus on active transportation

4.     Prioritize quality of life over commuting time

5.     “Legalize” Savannah by enabling the original incremental, built pattern to be built again by-right.

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So what makes this unique or strong? I’d suggest it’s that element of both-and, instead of either-or. It’s fundamental in nearly every community I’ve been to that doing the little things, the incremental change, is far too difficult and expensive. Master plans need to not just understand this, but figure out how to truly enable it. This should be job one. But we also have some big efforts to undertake, too. Unwinding some of the destructive ideas of the 20th century by nature requires some big money and some big change. Let’s harness this to the productive advantage of our communities.  

Let’s also not minimize that people need to have an idea of what their individual, small efforts could add up to over time. That’s a very human reality. The idea of the beautiful rendering isn’t to say a street or block or place will look like this; rather, it’s to say this is the direction we are headed in together. This is what is possible, if we motivate our many small actions and a few big ones.

I’d suggest a few key mindsets when thinking about what a “strong” master plan could be:

1.     Use time-tested principles for city-building & design

2.     Understand and do the math

3.     Enable lots and lots of small, incremental change by many hands

4.     Find some opportunities for big, aspirational change

5.     Identify a series of first steps to test that are inexpensive

6.     Most importantly: don’t take years to complete a plan, since this just wears people out and builds cynicism. Radically shorten the process, especially by using the NCI charrette model.

Many, many more of our “solutions” to today’s problems do need to be found by enabling bottom-up creativity and action. We unwittingly stifle far too much creative and productive activity with a dizzying maze of bureaucracy and regulation, even though much of it is well-intentioned. But it’s also true that some problems simply require top-down, coordinated solutions. Some issues are so complicated or expensive that there isn’t an incremental step forward. We need to find room for those solutions, too.

Today’s story is from one of my favorite colleagues and friends in the urban design world, Marina Khoury.

I recently moved from one great city to another: Miami to the DC metro area, but my life here feels nobler and distinctly richer. I currently live in Lakelands, work in Kentlands, and every day, I am gratified to see these new towns function exactly the way they are intended to. I have dedicated my professional life to designing vibrant communities and adding vitality to neighborhoods. And walking, or the elegant, safe and always interesting possibility walking brings, is one of the greatest contributors to that happy success.

I can extol the virtues of walking all day and its many tangible benefits are well documented. I know it is better for the environment simply because it decreases my personal carbon emissions. I know it is better for my physical health and emotional well being as it not only decreases my chances of obesity-related diseases, but it actually promotes happiness. I am all for that! I can attest to the fact that is a financial boon for my wallet as these two walkable communities perform better economically and command significantly higher premiums in housing values than the sprawl that surrounds them. These are all worthy rewards, but it is a walk’s intangible benefits that are even more compelling. 

As seasons evolve and time flows, so does my experience of walking. Most recently, I am the mother of an active eighteen-month-old daughter, Lyla, who absolutely delights in being outdoors, regardless of the weather. So we go on walks to parks, to explore and discover or to spend time in an activity we both enjoy, separately but together.  We see the world differently, partly because she is happily discovering it for the first time. Personally, as an architect, I enjoy the casual study of the buildings I stroll by and walking gives me the feel and understanding of the character of a place like nothing else can. But as a twin, I thrive on human contact and chance encounters that keep me connected to my community. I chat easily, if briefly, with many neighbors, whether in their garden, on their porch or on the sidewalk. I notice the new couple strolling hand in hand, oblivious of anything but each other. I smile at the teenage skateboarders who have willfully taken over the street, even if temporarily.   Sometimes these walks are meditative and have a way of calming me and clearing my head. My husband and I have solved plenty of challenges, as ideas somehow come easier when strolling. As Henry David Thoreau eloquently said, “the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.” How true.

As we walk, I notice the usual while Lyla notices things within her height. Walking is her great adventure and she is truly experiencing the sidewalks as her own personal outdoor playroom.  It is a joy to watch the world reveal itself to her in this manner. She squeals with delight as she notices the ladybug crawling on the colorful flowerbed we pass or as she haplessly chases the squirrel she glimpsed at the base of the tree. She boldly attempts to pat each and every dog we stroll by. She tap dances around the paving patterns etched in the plaza. She has made plenty of new friends while out on walks while providing me with yet another good excuse to humbly do so as well. So much flows from our precious walks together and I want to keep enjoying them for as long as I can, because I know this carefree and innocent time will pass. And then it will be on to the next compelling reason to keep on walking, hopefully always with Lyla, for the rest of my life.

Marina Khoury

About a year ago, I wrote a long post on how house hacking can combine with a car-lite lifestyle to hack the American dream. That post inspired a partnership with the Project for Lean Urbanism to produce a House Hacking Catalog.

Here’s what Brian Falk, Director of the Project for Lean Urbanism has to say about this catalog:

House hacking offers a low-barrier path to building wealth, entering the small-scale development field, and improving neighborhoods. We’d seen many articles recommending it, and a few how-tos, but nothing that laid out the various options for building types, rental types, construction and financing. So we worked with Kevin Klinkenberg, a three-time house hacker and member of the Incremental Developer group, to create a House Hacking Catalog. We think it will be a valuable tool in the Lean Urbanism toolkit.

I’m excited to share this product with readers of this site, and it’s been graciously allowed by the team to be free of charge.

The catalog dives deep with specific examples of building types, rental types and explores renovation versus new construction. It includes case studies from several people who’ve done it successfully. And, it gives an overview of common questions related to financing and regulatory issues.

I’d very much like to thank the Project for Lean Urbanism, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and Brian Falk in particular. I’d also like to thank all the people who contributed their individual stories.

You can download the catalog by clicking here or at the Project for Lean Urbanism’s website.

Today’s story is from my long-time friend Lee Sobel, who talks about how moving to a place with transportation options has changed his life for the better.

When I lived and worked in Miami, Florida, I would fill up my car two or three times a week. Then I moved to Montgomery County, Maryland, to take a job in Washington, D.C. One of my housing requirements was to live near a metro station and take advantage of DC's subway. Metro is a smart way to commute. The train gave me 45 minutes of extra time each way to read, write, or simply relax. A round trip commute, plus parking, was cheaper than driving downtown and paying for parking.  Most of my weekly drive time was spent just shuttling back and forth to the Metro parking lot.

Once I got comfortable as a rail commuter, I decided to take one of the three buses in my neighborhood to the Metro station. Yes, I was saving some money by not paying for parking, but I really started riding the bus because the opportunity was there. I wasn't losing commute time by bus. And I made a personal decision to use the infrastructure my tax dollars were investing in. I never considered riding a bus in Miami for all the reasons suburbanites don't and won't ride a bus if they don't have to. Now my drive time was further reduced, mostly for weekend errands.

Then one Spring I did something unexpected, I rode my bike to the metro station. It was incredibly fun but it wasn't enough for me. I started biking to work. First one way on alternative days, then full round trip commutes every day. Goodbye car! Goodbye subway costs! Goodbye 20 extra pounds! Now I only drive a few times a month. 

For the past two years, biking has been the primary way I commute to work. I joined DC's bikesharing program last year. During the day, I try to make bikeshare my first means of travel when going to meetings, lunches, and events. Depending on the weather, my business schedule or my family plans, I can commute to work by bike, bus or drive to Metro. I have options and choices about how to get around that I never had in Miami. I’m not biking to save money or the environment, or to be healthy (though these are additional benefits of course). I bike because it's fun and easy. And it's fun and easy because I live in a place that provides the infrastructure and facilities to make such a choice safe and available.

Lee Sobel - Washington, D.C.

Read through to the end for 5 simple suggestions on “what to do”

Two recent projects with new, structured parking in the Crossroads neighborhood of Kansas City have further highlighted this issue, along with the more-complicated question of financial incentives for development. I recently called one project “a failure of planning and urban design,” since it proposes three stories of parking and three occupied stories above it, directly on the streetcar spine. I do so not to malign any individuals nor agencies – in fact, quite the opposite. There’s no single person nor group of people that I think is “at fault.” What I do think is we have a systemic failure, like so many American cities, to think proactively about transportation and parking, and also to act on possible solutions. We also generally under-value the role that design can play to solve problems, and instead look solely to financial or policy solutions.

Today, I want to highlight this dilemma, and show how design can help solve multiple problems at once. I don’t write this to say it’s the only way, but rather to say if design isn’t in the toolkit, we’ll never create places with long-lasting value, and we’ll likely miss some excellent solutions.

About fifteen years ago, a group of urban advocates in KC called the Urban Society produced a master plan of sorts called “What’s Next? 2006-2020.” I was one of the authors. In the plan, we did an analysis of the Crossroads area, and called for a series of publicly-owned garages, strategically placed, to accommodate future demand. Here’s some language:

We recommend that a civic parking authority build five garages of 400 spaces each scattered throughout the neighborhood. The garages would be open to the public and would be used to satisfy the parking demands for the development of surrounding buildings and vacant property.

We estimate the public subsidy would be less than 20% of the total cost of the garage. Because the garages would be shared use, they would support both day and night users, making them much more efficient than the typical garage that sits empty half the time. The garages would ideally be positioned in the middle of their blocks, enabling all four sides to be wrapped with shops, residential, restaurant and office space, which would help cover the cost of the garage. Developers would be given strong incentives to use this parking, and Tax Increment Financing (TIF) would be reduced to projects with private garages.

Such strategic thinking about parking design, financing and management is critical to the success of Crossroads and other City neighborhoods. Additional tools that should be on the table include payment in-lieu fees for parking, so that small businesses can pay into a fund instead of providing parking on-site; reduced parking requirements in targeted zones to avoid suburban-style parking lots; and market-based metering of on-street parking, so long as the revenue generated stays in the neighborhood for improvements.

The idea of publicly-owned, shared garages is not exactly new nor ground-breaking. In fact, it’s been a commonly-used best practice in cities for decades. But many cities, like Kansas City, have been reluctant to take steps to do so. Instead, they rely on project-by-project design, parking and financing solutions. The end result becomes an urban area filled with numerous, occasionally-used garages, many other parcels remaining undeveloped due to parking challenges, and a controversial approach to financing and maintenance.

The Urban Society’s approach suggested several public, shared garages built around the neighborhood. Those garages could then lease space to new development, so each project wouldn’t have to provide its own. It could easily solve the question of, “how much do we subsidize new garages?” The answer: none. Use the public garages, or pay for your project’s space yourself. And, if walking a couple minutes in an urban area isn’t your cup of tea, then perhaps another location would be better-suited for you. Below is a diagram showing the two recent projects in question, and several options for large garage locations within a 5 minute walk.

In the case of these two specific projects, nearby garages could support their uses as well as multiple other developments. The shared garages would support much more infill, and would importantly do so without giving preference to large-scale or small-scale efforts. Business users could use spaces during the day, and residents and visitors could use them in the evening and weekends. A small business could lease three spaces, just as easily as a large project wanting one hundred. The financing and operations of the publicly-owned garages would be clear and obvious to the public, and not part of complicated, project-specific development agreements. Developers could do their job - provide new housing, new shops, new offices, etc.., and the public sector can do its job - coordinate infrastructure and transportation needs. The developers could still even supplement their projects with a small amount of on-site parking, should they so desire. Both of these particular sites could use alleys or the backs of buildings to easily conceal some space for cars.

The proposed building along the streetcar line, in this case, could remain a four or five story truly urban building without a need for structured parking. Less expensive! The proposed 120 spaces could easily be accommodated in a garage within a couple of blocks, while providing a dozen or so spaces on-site off the alley. In fact, the owner might find they don’t really need 120 spaces, and only wish to lease 80. Oh by the way, this building happens to be located on the streetcar line, too. The City and the property owners have already invested heavily in its success.

The larger, mostly residential site, proposes to build 400 spaces. Does it really need 400? No one really can know. But if 50 or spaces could be built inexpensively on-site, and another 200-300 offered for lease within a short walk, we’d have a much better idea of what the market truly demands. It would also make for a much less expensive building, and a more inviting street presence.

You own it, you control it

Publicly-owned garages can also serve broader needs very easily, instead of trying to coerce private entities. For example, the public agency can simply make the new garages hubs for new mobility, for ride-share drop off, for car share spaces, for links to transit, for e-bike charging, for scooters or whatever comes next. If you own it, you control it, and a public owner can quickly act on these sorts of public goods.

If the public owns it, it can control the design as well. The garages can be hidden behind other new development in order to maintain a consistent street presence when physically possible, and it can have storefront space on the ground floor. No arm-twisting of reluctant private owners is needed. In Kansas City, we have a long-term, successful example of how this was done on Country Club Plaza. The Plaza provides copious amounts of parking (one might even argue too much parking), and the majority of it is hidden from street view quite elegantly.

When it comes to actual ownership and implementation, it also doesn’t need to necessarily be “the City.” It can be a new quasi-public arm, an existing economic development agency with bonding capacity, or even private owners managed and coordinated by a public agency. There’s no single solution – it can be whatever makes the most sense, given the situation in the place and with the people and resources available. In KC, it might make the most sense for one of the many economic development agencies to take the lead. They can purchase the property, bond for the construction, and contract out the management. TIF revenues, along with parking revenue, can help to repay the debt.

So why bother?

You might think, this sounds like a pretty smart approach, but why bother at all? What’s the value to the public agencies and the developers? Very simply - this is about creating long-term value. Cities are long-term owners and managers of very expensive assets. We call them streets, sewers, water lines and much more. It’s in a city’s best interest to always create and maintain long-term real estate value, since that is what pays the bills. As I’ve noted before, this is essentially what developers of master-planned communities learned and why every detail is planned and closely-managed. Most developers and property owners are in the business of owning for more than a couple of years. It’s also in their interest to ensure a level of quality and intelligence in the investments around them, and in the transportation system that serves development. Yes, it can be difficult at times. No, it’s not always going to work out exactly as I’ve noted. But as the saying goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

It’s exciting to see the interest and demand in urban places. Like many, I’ve been hoping for this for many years, and expecting it to happen. But if there’s not a focus on long-term value and quality in urban design, don’t be surprised if the interest evaporates a decade or two from now. Nothing is guaranteed.

A mostly simple plan for parking

I crave simplicity, and to me this is a much simpler approach than trying to achieve public policy goals on the backs of every privately developed project that comes along. There’s literally nothing stopping most cities from pursuing a strategy like this – it’s often just identifying sites and having the will to do it.

In summary, here’s the approach:

1. Proactively identify sites for new parking, relative to anticipated future demand.

2. Buy, develop and manage shared, public parking through a public agency or authority

3. Lease spaces to private development and the public in the garages, within 1,500 feet or so of a building. That’s about a 5 minute walk.

4. Eliminate all off-street parking requirements within the area

5. Private developers are allowed to add parking on-site for their new project, but no parking can be visible from any street, and no financial assistance will be available

6. That’s it. 5 simple steps. Rinse and repeat as necessary.

In Kansas City, Missouri, this is an approach that could be used in all of the urbanizing areas. Corridors like 39th and 31st Street could greatly benefit from such an approach. Neighborhoods such as Westport, the West Bottoms and East Crossroads could also benefit. Tying it all to the transit system also makes a ton of sense, and would be smart to plan for.

The Bottom Line

I really wish we didn’t have to accommodate a new wave of expensive, urban parking. But my wishes don’t change the physical and market realities of life in 2019. Hopefully, those will change one day. Hopefully, I’ll live to see that. I think we’d have a better chance of getting there by focusing on good design, walking and e-biking instead of the bizarre obsession with autonomous cars. But I digress.

The reality today is most of our cities and their urban markets have been put at a huge disadvantage due to socialism for cars. Our federal, state and local governments have subsidized car-only growth and development for nearly 100 years. For our urban neighborhoods to be their very best, they’ll need to solve the riddle of accommodating the parking needs of people from all over our very spread-out cities, while also not destroying what makes urban neighborhoods so desirable and valuable. One approach is a smart, coordinated plan to deal with the design, construction and financing of new parking. I wish we’d embarked on this path in Kansas City two decades ago, but it’s never too late to get started.

The other night I did a very GenX thing, and went to see a 20th anniversary showing of the movie “Fight Club.”

Setting aside my interest in the book and the movie, it made me think a little about urban development, transportation and today’s discussions about cities. OK – I admit it, I almost can’t stop thinking about those in any context. 

To see this movie, I had to drive about 8 miles north to a small, independent theater in a whole other part of the city. It’s a cool operation – I really like it – but it’s also a 15-20 minute drive from home. That’s not what I’d really prefer to do, as a guy who likes to walk to many places.

My neighborhood actually used to have a small movie theater, through much of the 20th century. The Giles Theater building is just a few blocks from my home, and is the kind of building that today would make a wonderful mom and pop operation. It could even show quirky movies from past decades to a niche audience. Sadly, the building was decapitated at some point, and the attractive art deco front was removed in favor of… you guessed it, five parking spaces.

But here’s the real issue. In a previous era, the neighborhood and this part of the city used to have substantially more residents. Quirky, unique places need to draw from a large population base in order to survive. The more that can walk there, the better. This particular area used to house over 23,000 people in 1950. Many more were connected easily by the city’s excellent streetcar system. Today, it’s under 10,000 in the same area. And, frequent transit is rare even in the middle of the city. It doesn’t take a PhD in Economics to surmise that the area simply can’t support the same number of small businesses as it used to.

Can we ever be complete?

If you talk with neighbors or residents in many places, you often hear people say things like, “I sure wish we had (insert business or service) in our neighborhood.” For my neighborhood, I sure wish we had an affordable produce stand, a small movie theater, a few more restaurants and bars, some more doctor’s offices and a handful of the weekly or daily needs/desires we all aim to fulfill.

The catch is, most places, including mine, simply don’t have the population base to support it all. We used to. We don’t anymore. Despite all the national press regarding urban development, the truth is very, very few places have more people living in them today than in the middle of the 20th century. And most still have household incomes that under-perform their regional averages. One consequence is our businesses have to provide a lot more parking in order to survive. The catchment area for customers has to include a wide area of people driving in from many miles away.  

Of course, even if we could find our way back toward the historic population level, our society presents other challenges to small, local businesses. As citizens, we’ve chosen to make it agonizingly hard to build a new commercial or mixed-use building. A new, small movie theater would likely have to meet with neighbors angry about parking, go through a long public approval process with the city and potentially hire a small army of consultants. Truth is, they won’t do it. Most small businesspeople or entrepreneurs simply don’t have the money.

On the off chance someone has the perseverance to make it through all the obstacles, they’ll have to figure out how to pass along all the additional costs. All the meetings, the consultants, the permitting fees, the green building requirements, the affordability requirements, the infrastructure improvements, the sprinkler systems – all of it costs real money and time. You may say – “hey, that’s just the cost of doing business. Deal with it.” But costs don’t just get absorbed. They get passed along to the end-users.

In this case, what you would get is what we see typically everywhere: either an upscale movie house, with $12 tickets and $8 beers, or very likely: nothing at all. This is not a healthy dynamic. We need to find a way to be more hopeful, to be more welcoming, to accept change more willingly. 

The things you own, end up owning you

This isn’t to say there should be no rules, and anything goes in our neighborhoods. But it is to say we need to recalibrate our minds, our rules and our processes. Making small change, as our forefathers did for generations, shouldn’t require the approval of multiple committees, nosy neighbors and regulatory confusion. Our methods today create substantial barriers to entry, which inevitably harm the young, the future residents of a place and the less fortunate. We do a great disservice to anyone attempting to move up the economic ladder, and we make life a lot less interesting, too.

Virtually no one today seems willing to accept a little less certainty in exchange for more equity, more affordability, and more local authenticity. I get it, but it’s a shame.

I don’t know that a niche movie-house could survive today, even with double the amount of people. The movie business is very tough. It takes someone with a deep passion to even attempt it. But I do know it would have a much better chance with more people and more open-mindedness to change. I do know that people with deep passion need permissiveness to thrive, not prohibition. I do hope we can find our way to truly embrace more diversity, more quirkiness and a more live and let live attitude. I do hope one day we can reclaim those five parking spaces, too.

I’ll always remember a “painfully funny because it’s true,” tweet in 2016 that essentially said, “The presidential debates erred by not asking a question about parking, which is clearly the #1 issue most on the minds of Americans.”

Parking is almost always emotional, confusing and a flash point. It’s also possibly the single most important topic that any of us will deal with professionally or as advocates, and critical to understand if we want our cities to urbanize successfully.

I hope to clear up some confusion with this post, and give some guidance especially to professionals in planning and economic development. I’ve written and read dozens and dozens of posts about parking, as have many of you, so I aim to distill my current thinking to be helpful.

In a nutshell, I’d offer two key points that may seem contradictory at first blush.

1. Regulating off-street parking truly is counter-productive. We would be wise to work toward complete elimination of minimum off-street parking requirements in walkable, urban neighborhoods.

2. The need for parking, though, does not magically disappear. We would also be wise to plan for smart parking solutions, so our cities can incrementally urbanize.

Background

It’s been heartening the last 10 or 15 years to see more understanding of the issue of parking, and some tangible change in many cities. Places as different as Buffalo, Minneapolis, Atlanta and Miami have all made major strides in removing unhelpful parking requirements. More leaders are beginning to recognize the real tradeoffs that happen when off-street parking is required for any development.

But there’s still a lot of confusion around the issue. That confusion is made more difficult because urbanists tend to talk about the 6 or 8 big transit metros a great deal, and the rest of America is still largely driving everywhere for everything. We need a little nuance, especially since unlocking parking from development is a key priority for allowing places to urbanize more successfully, more equitably and more authentically.

The first point I noted above is requiring off-street parking is counter-productive for virtually every city’s goals. Period. It’s a statement of values that says: parking for cars is more important than housing for humans, the economic success of our city, public space, access to economic opportunity for all or climate change. People who advocate for off-street parking requirements are saying, “My personal convenience trumps other issues, or the greater good.” Provision of parking requires land – whether at-grade, above or below – and that land comes at a cost. It means the same land can’t be used for any other human uses, from housing to shops to outdoor space.

This is setting aside the practical, real-world issue that it’s impossible for any of us to truly guess what the demand is for parking, any more than the demand for avocados. It’s dynamic, especially today with an increasing array of mobility options. We need to move beyond these requirements for anywhere that is walkable or trying to be walkable, and it’s exciting to see so many people working in this direction.

But… (and there’s always a but)

But this is not to say there’s no demand for parking or for accommodating parking. It also doesn’t mean that redevelopment will just magically happen if there are no parking rules. That’s not true, either. It’s still important to plan for parking. I’d argue, it’s especially important to enable the kind of messy urbanism I’m often describing on this site. I wish it weren’t the case, but it is. This is how nuance works versus rigid ideology. When ideas or theories meet the real world, you can either a) dig an ideological hole and appear to be virtuous, or b) try to solve actual problems of actual human beings and places.

Part of the reality of American cities is that we are very, very car-dependent. Most of you know this. It’s been written about ad nauseam. But in our current excitement for urbanism, we tend to want to wish that away. I certainly wish it weren’t true. But I’m faced with reality every day, and so are most of you. We can and should continue to strive to make our walkable places more walkable, and to have first-class options for getting around: biking, transit, TNC’s, and scooters. But the other side of the coin is, most of our built environment is designed around cars, and a huge amount of the public is going to drive to your walkable neighborhood. If we ignore that and don’t plan for it we will limit the opportunity for urban places to be successful in 2019, and to attract more residents. If we over-regulate or plan poorly, we run the risk of super-charging affordability problems and creating economic fragility by only making large projects viable.

There’s a delicate balance, of which we need to be mindful.

As one example, here’s how we suggested handling neighborhood change in the Downtown Savannah 2033 Plan. The key proposals were:

• Eliminate or change regulations that don’t allow for the historic pattern to be built today.

• Continue to manage curb parking according to Donald Shoup’s typical suggestions

• Plan for new, shared parking structures in emerging growth areas

• Tie those structures to other mobility options: free transit shuttles and better biking

• Continue to manage the garages as shared, publicly owned and operated facilities

• Design them so that the garages can be easily “pulled out” if parking demand craters in the future, or when they’ve past their useful life. 

The good thing about the Savannah example is the City has been utilizing a similar parking-management strategy for a couple of decades. It’s not a crazy, new idea. It’s how much of the historic downtown has been able to accommodate parking needs, while also accommodating new growth and development. The City built several garages, and leases space to private developments. The parking fund is an enterprise fund, and spins off a profit. Some of that profit is used to fund a free circulator shuttle. So the City already has an effective foundation for moving forward.

Your city might not – many don’t. But it’s not difficult to implement, and there are numerous good examples to model. This is a far better place to begin than trying to solve parking and urban design issues on a project-by-project basis.

How does this help “messy’ cities and Missing Middle buildings?

At the scale of most missing middle housing and residential construction, parking is largely irrelevant. If alleys or lanes are present, there’s an ability to handle some off-street parking quite easily. The rest can be accommodated on the street. If there’s no alley, often it’s still possible to swing a drive around to the back and have a modest amount of off-street parking. 

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Even without any off-street parking, the demand is so low that it’s simply a non-factor for most residential development. Yes, middle-class tenants and owners will likely own cars. But street parking can absorb a great deal of parking demand. There’s definitely amenity value in having garages and off-street spaces, but it’s still highly probable to make the numbers work without it. We typically over-estimate the importance of off-street parking as an amenity for many renters and urban homeowners. It’s nice to have, but often not critical. With improving neighborhoods and more transportation options, it’s getting less and less important over time.

So that is all to say – it’s not necessary for a local government to require off-street parking for urban residential. In fact, it’s counter-productive to require it. The market will sort out what is needed and what isn’t. Just make sure any parking that is provided is not provided in value-destroying front-loaded garages. 

Where we start to see issues that need some planning and foresight are in places that are above the density scale of small apartment buildings, and in walkable commercial corridors. If your neighborhood is predominantly composed of apartment buildings, (typically over 10,000 people per square mile) you’re likely going to need a shared, off-street solution. That is, unless you’re already well-served by frequent public transit and other options. In that case, this might not matter. But in most of the country, my experience is that condition is rare.

On many commercial corridors, the numbers simply don’t work if you have to provide parking for new or existing buildings. Even a very low requirement can kill a deal quickly. But parking is still needed – people do have cars, and will for quite some time. Don’t get over-excited by the AV hype.

To put this into practical terms, let’s look at doing a new building in a walkable corridor. If I want to build a small mixed-use building on the 40’x100’ lot shown here, my tenants still need parking. Whether they are office or residential tenants, they are almost certainly going to have cars and need parking. Even retail tenants are likely to need some customer and employee parking. I repeat: I wish it weren’t the case, but in order to get rents that support new construction or significant renovation, this is the reality in most of America.

One solution? Plan for district parking that can be leased by small developers and properties. Having a nearby structure that allows the option of leasing market-rate spaces turns a project from unlikely to potentially viable. It responds to a real-world need, but not by imposing a requirement on all manner of projects that simply can’t fulfill it. And in this particular case, there’s a large parcel one block away that could be very attractively planned and designed for such a shared facility.

My hypothetical 3-story mixed use building on a small lot is what most planners and urban advocates say we want. It’s locally-owned. It’s urban and walkable. It’s more affordable than the big project down the street. It provides more customers to a walkable area, which ultimately makes other mobility options more viable.

But I can’t get the rents I need if there’s no parking solution. Most of the tenants are still going to have cars. Street parking isn’t the right solution for them in more commercial or mixed-use areas. That space is best reserved for turnover and proper curb management. Being able to offer leased spaces close-by is ideal. It uncouples the parking, making it a choice. But, the choice is a good choice, and safe and desirable as an amenity. For those who actually can rely on transit, biking, etc, they don’t have to pay. But in truth, that’ll be a small percentage for now and for a while in most places in the US. I hope it changes, and believe it will change, but it’s reality today. Let’s accept and work with reality, in order to nudge our communities into a better future.

A parking minimum requirement in this situation is unproductive and prevents improvements. The requirements can never be met on-site, so the most common result is no new development, or a developer assembling multiple lots into one very large project. In a few super-hot markets, people may persist anyway at the small scale. Their path is often a tortured lease arrangement for a remote lot, and constantly managing tenants that fight for limited parking. The rules are bent because they are arbitrary. Residents and business owners alike get frustrated. Progress often stalls, or only happens for very upscale owners that can afford a confusing process.

Cities and their partners can help this real-world issue with some smart, targeted solutions. Eliminate unproductive requirements, but plan for shared, well-managed assets.

Yes, many neighbors will oppose change to loosen or eliminate parking. But we all need to be prepared to explain the tradeoffs. Accommodating the interest for hassle-free parking means less affordability, less sustainability, less customers for local shops and services, and ultimately less choice for residents. I’m not saying this is true of every neighborhood everywhere – but it’s definitely true of basically every American urban neighborhood that existed prior to the Great Depression.

The reality of most American cities and places is the vast majority of people drive from a distance, and need parking. Let’s be welcoming, but smart. Don’t ever, ever prioritize speed of traffic for the cars, but welcome them into slow-speed environments with easily-located parking. Price curb parking for demand, as Donald Shoup advises. Plan to be able to “unplug” garages if demand craters 20 or 30 years from now. That recovered land can be opened up for public space or more development. But let’s not stick our heads in the sand, since doing so will not help in our desire for more incremental improvement and more successful urban neighborhoods.

An expert is someone that lives more than thirty miles away, so it’s said. Since I’ve spent about nine years living much more than thirty miles away from KC, I suppose that’s made me a bona fide expert. In my last piece, I wrote about the excitement and positive changes I’ve noticed in the urban core of KC in that period. It’s important to highlight the good, and celebrate the big and small victories. For lovers of urban communities in our region, the post-WWII era has been mostly a story of decline, battles lost and ideas meant to “save” cities that did as much harm as good. Savoring the positive is important.

But as Paul Harvey used to say, there’s also the rest of the story. Way back in 2003 I wrote a column for the Kansas City Star’s “Midwest Voices” called, “Does Kansas City really want to be a city?” In that article, I laid out some qualities of successful urban communities, and asked sincerely, “do we want this?” Here’s one passage: 

We often think of congestion and parking shortages as dilemmas to overcome. In suburban areas, this is true, as the primary amenity is ease of automobile movement. In urban areas, however, congestion is good. It encourages walking and vibrant sidewalk life, which are the primary amenities of urban living. Most of our biggest mistakes have been in applying suburban solutions to urban areas – ignoring the very reasons people choose to live there in the first place. A watered-down urbanity is less desirable and valuable.

I’ve thought about that old column recently, and wondered if I would change much about it today. The answer is an unqualified: maybe.

As I noted previously, it’s obvious to me the market is embracing urbanity. By that I mean, the purchasing choices of people are revealing a strong interest and demand for a more walkable, urban lifestyle. Notable efforts like the streetcar are changing attitudes and behavior.

It’s also obvious we are in the very early innings of a long game. We still have very large areas that are in decline or nearly abandoned, including locations very close to downtown. Our up-and-coming areas still have numerous gaps, and our streets and public spaces don’t encourage walking any more than is absolutely necessary. None of this should surprise long-time observers. It took decades for the city to decline, and it will take decades for it to fully recover.

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Let me be clear here: I am of the belief that the urban core will continue to see improvement. A sizeable percentage of people want real urban living, and will put up with all manner of nonsense to get a piece of it. The desire and demand is much stronger than the current reality on the ground. We are just barely scratching the surface of what is possible.

But we also need to look that reality square in the face, and own up to our mis-steps and challenges. Only through critical self-evaluation does a person or a group of people improve. Changing long-held mindsets and practices is very hard. It requires some brutal honesty and collective risk taking. 

What would we do if we wanted to accelerate the recent positive change, and begin to achieve our elusive urban potential? Assuming we want to, what ideas would we pursue?

Our potential, by the way, is vast and impressive. I’m reminded of this every time I reacquaint myself with our pre-WWII neighborhoods. Bear in mind that in 1940, Kansas City had 400,000 people living north of 77th Street, south of the river and west of the Blue River. Those 60 square miles are a larger area than how we commonly define the urban core, but not a lot larger. 1940 is also an important benchmark because that was right at the beginning of the era when we decided to destroy the city, and spread it out with taxpayer-subsidized easy, free motoring. Today, we have about 200,000 people in the same geographic area. And, the urban core lags the region by substantial amounts in median household income. Do some math on what that all means.

A goal of returning to that 1940 population of 400,000 in the urban core seems utterly reasonable, and even do-able given the current optimism. But what if we thought bigger? What if we shed our Midwestern cautiousness and planned to add 400,000 more in the urban core? Even at 600,000 total people in the same area, it’s only a density of 10,000 people per square mile. That’s still below the density of Berkeley, California. We’re not talking Paris or New York.

Atlanta, a city of under 500,000 today in roughly 130 square miles, is planning for a million people by 2050. Just that one goal is pushing the private and public sectors to rethink current approaches to economic development, transportation policy, zoning and more. It’s pushing local government to make substantive, long-term changes to how it does business.

What might we reconsider if we had such a goal? How would it impact some of our own long-held beliefs about this place and how we live in it? Given our current population projections, an urban core of 600,000 in 2050 would only be about ¼ of the whole region. That’s not exactly out of the realm of possibilities.

Coming back to KC has left me excited about the recent changes. The ship has turned, and there’s a strong sense of optimism in the air. But as I noted before, the work is far from done. In fact, we have a long, tough mission ahead of us. The mission today is to accelerate our improvement, should we choose to accept it. Your city and its people depend on your success. What could we do to begin to reverse the decline in all parts of the urban core, and accentuate those that are now desirable. 

I’m not writing to say I have all the answers. I don’t. None of us does. But I do hope we can have a deep civic conversation around a set of key challenges. These are broad strokes; over-arching mindsets. The all-important details can be fleshed out later.

First, it’s time to prioritize quality of life over fast commuting by car. The foundation of all planning and design in our city is to make it easy to drive swiftly from long distances at rush hour, and park right at the door of any destination. The results are unsafe and ugly streets that often destroy value instead of creating it, and copious parking virtually everywhere. Let’s resolve to plan and design for the full 168 hours per week, and stop planning for the 10 hours per week of rush hour.

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Second, let’s legalize the historic, built pattern of Kansas City.  KCMO’s urban core was built on the backs of duplexes, four-plexes, small mixed-use buildings and the like. These “missing middle” buildings give the city the kind of Goldilocks density that supports local businesses, makes transit viable, is affordable and builds local wealth. Yet today, common biases about housing coupled with dozens of well-intentioned, but harmful, ordinances make these types of projects functionally illegal. Enabling many small changes accommodates immense demand in a humane and equitable fashion. Let’s find a way forward, as some other cities are already doing, to embrace broad, incremental improvement.

Third, let’s embrace the art of urban design. Urban design, as opposed to planning or policy, looks for coordinated, site-specific solutions that are long-term in nature. We have a fantastic community of creative individuals, and people who work well on “projects.” But we also need that coordinated vision of how to make one plus one equal three. This holds true whether we are discussing specific concerns, such as parking, parks and public space or even scooters and bikes. Urban design tries to avoid one-size-fits-all responses for an entire city, and instead tries to solve problems at the scale of the block or the neighborhood. When the core was struggling or just newly rebounding, this wasn’t much of an issue. But today and going forward, it’s mission critical.

While not in the immediate, transformative checkbox, we should also start a conversation about architecture and beauty. We won’t all agree, and that’s fine. It’d be boring if we did. But in any really great city, beauty in architecture and public space is a prime part of what keeps the humans interested. We used to be really good at this. All you have to do is look around and see the legacy from previous eras. Frankly, it’s amazing. We are truly blessed to inherit what others have left to us. But simply having new buildings isn’t good enough. If we rebuild the city, but fill it with ugliness, this moment in time will fade and the humans will move on to somewhere and something else. As Michael Stern used to say about the KC Symphony, good enough is not good enough.

It’s the accumulation of many, small changes over time that determines whether a city has value or whether it becomes another throw-away place. This is the nature of urban design as a field. It’s a long game. Doing it well creates great places for humans and a fountain of revenue for local government and the services it must provide. 

We are good at dreaming up big, inspiring civic and corporate efforts. That’s a good thing; it shows we have a community that cares and is actively trying to make the future better. But it would be wise for us to challenge ourselves on some current mindsets, while also striving to do a much better job executing the details.

From that 2003 article again:

There’s a thousand reasons why we should embrace urbanity – the most important being the future of our metro. We all know that we lack the natural features that attract people to places like Colorado, California or the Sun Belt. In those places, people will willingly put up with placelessness (at least for a while), as they at least have access to something else that’s compelling.

But in Kansas City, we don’t have the luxury of that margin of error. If we are to not just survive, but thrive, in the 21st Century, we had better learn and apply the rules of great place-making. As we build or renovate each structure in our downtown, we should be asking, “What is the hundred-year plan for downtown?” Does it look like Paris or

London, or Chicago? (why set the bar low?) Or, is it a boring mixture of parking garages, big roads and office towers?

About nine years ago, I made a decision to leave Kansas City and move to Savannah, Georgia. It wasn’t an easy choice. With so many personal and professional connections, I knew I’d be giving up a lot. But, I felt I needed a change of scenery in the depths of “the meltdown” as some of us like to refer to the previous recession. 2009 and 2010 were not the best of times.

“Kansas City” video of Mumford and Sons courtesy of EMI Music

Last month, I came back. This time, it’s not just me, since I’m now a husband and a father. While the timing hasn’t been great (what is up with this miserable winter?), we have been excited to come here and reconnect with family and friends. A lot has changed in nine years. A lot hasn’t changed in nine years.

People ask me frequently, how does it feel to be back? My answer: it’s a little strange. In some ways, I’m a tourist in my own town. In other ways, it’s like putting on a comfortable, old shoe.

I like to occasionally remind people that two seemingly opposing things can be true at the same time; A) cities change very slowly and B), a lot can change in nine or ten years. Cities change slowly because they are made of things called buildings that take time to design and build. 25 years is the blink of an eye when talking about the physical change of most cities. But cities are more importantly made up of humans, and human life changes quickly and frequently. As we come and go, create and destroy, and generally go about doing the messy, unpredictable things humans do, we can cause a lot to be different in a relatively short time.

In just a month or so, I’ve already observed there’s much more positive energy in the city than I ever remember. The civic pride is obvious, and exciting to see. “KC” is everywhere. My wife thinks this is Mural City, USA. This just wasn’t the case even a decade ago. Is it just because the Royals won the World Series while I was gone? I don’t think so. I sense something else bubbling up; a general pride of place and excitement for the future.

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Many more people are experimenting with new ideas and concepts. The entrepreneurship is tangible. While planners and economic development types tend to focus on the big, glamorous projects, we sometimes miss the scores of people starting and growing small businesses. As I’ve driven around, I’ve been impressed by how much more startup and small business activity is physically noticeable.

There’s also a youthful energy that wasn’t present 20 years ago, or even 15. Sure, some of us lived in the city right after college in the 80’s and 90’s, but honestly there weren’t many. Most young people ended up in the suburbs, or as was often the case, left the area entirely. KC’s lack of urban vitality (and cities across the Midwest) was a boost to other cities such as Chicago, Denver and Seattle. The memory of that phenomenon is some of what inspired me to write pieces like this one, which explains that not all housing markets are truly local.

Improvements in the core of downtown have spurred people to activate more peripheral areas. People often tried to make things work beyond the heart of downtown fifteen years ago, but most failed. Put simply, we just didn’t have enough bodies in the urban core to support it all.  Whether it’s the West Bottoms, East Bottoms, Columbus Park, 31st & Troost, North KC, KCK – the list goes on. What’s happening here is a great case study in why a city needs a strong downtown. Without it, the adjoining areas can’t truly thrive, either.  In our case, it’s also what the city used to have, as recently as the 1950’s. It’s not outlandish to think we can at least recreate the urban activity of Kansas City in 1947, especially since the metro population is more than double of that era.  

Kansas City Metropolitan Population in the 5 core counties, according to the US Census Bureau

1950 829,330

2010 1,687,103

Context is always good when thinking about change in cities. Twenty-five years ago, the city was frankly, depressing. Downtown was not a happy place to be. The focus was still largely on suburbanizing the city. “We are going to burn the town to save the town,” that sort of thing. Fortunately, that attitude has changed and is being gradually put to bed. 

How has it all happened? As usual, it’s a combination of efforts. Early risk-takers, especially those in the arts and design communities have made a huge impact. KC’s lavish tax incentives, while controversial, have unquestionably helped. Big, visual, civic efforts like renovating Union Station bolstered civic pride. The streetcar has been an obvious catalyst. And we can’t forget the people who never gave up on the city to begin with. I’ve said in speeches before that the first wave of preservationists in this country are heroes. They fought to save our civilization from itself, when society was in a headlong rush to tear everything down and build the new, modern city. KC benefited from those early preservationists, too, who saw beauty in the city when others didn’t.

In the 90’s and 00’, people around my age (I’m talking about Gen X, in case you were wondering) often brought with them the knowledge and excitement of urban life from other countries and other cities. Many of us had benefited from the experiences of travel, especially overseas travel in college, and were trying to figure out how to recreate what we saw at home. Those of us who truly loved the city saw what it could be. It’s no accident that many of this cohort are now in important positions that guide efforts for development, public transportation, bicycling, and better planning.

Today’s young people are now enjoying the fruits of those previous labors, and pushing everyone else to go farther. As even more of the market discovers urban life, I imagine change will accelerate. Today and tomorrow’s young people won’t be easily satisfied with excuses from older folks like me about why it takes so long to get a bike/scooter/mobility lane, or why they can’t build an ADU or a duplex. They’ll rightfully have far less patience for the inertia of 20th-century ideas.

I attended high school in Marshall, MO, a small town east of KC, and only briefly lived in the metro as a child. Our family moved around frequently all over the Midwest. My Dad’s company moved us from place to place as he moved up the management ladder. But KC was always considered our home, no matter if we lived in Minnesota, Oklahoma or central Missouri. The Klinkenbergs actually have a presence in the area going back to the 1870’s, when my great-great grandparents emigrated from the Friesland region of the Netherlands. As I’ve grown a bit older, I’ve come to appreciate those roots more and more. Wherever I am living at the time, KC will always be home.  

It's also true there’s an awful lot my family and I loved about Savannah. In my not-so-humble-opinion, it’s the most beautiful city in North America (at least the pre-WWII parts of the city anyway.) For an urban design and architecture geek like me, Savannah is a never-ending delight. I wish KC had more of the charm, the timelessness, the walkability and the beauty of Savannah. But I’ll leave that for another day.

The good news is, there seems to be a new attitude here in the Heartland. I can sense much more optimism, more creative spirit and more urban “want-to” than I’ve seen in my lifetime. The naysayers, those who say people in KC or the Midwest don’t want real urbanity, well, they don’t have much of a leg to stand on anymore. People are voting with their feet and dollars. Some of us always felt this would happen, but status quo bias is very hard to change.

For much of my adult life, it was the voices of those content with suburbanizing the city that dominated the conversation. From elected officials through local government staff and deep into the business community, this was the case. As much as anything, I’m delighted that other voices are now being heard that recognize what it takes to build a thriving urban community. The more we learn to trust those who understand the difference between a successful urban neighborhood and a successful suburban neighborhood, the more the city and its people will thrive. 

There’s also still much, much more to do. We are very early in a long game to restore and revive the city. I’ll tackle that next time. I’ll share some thoughts on what’s left to be done and some challenges to those who care to be challenged. For now, let’s all revel in how much good has happened in recent years. For those who’ve made it all happen, and continue to make it happen, take a victory lap. You’ve helped KC take the next, important step. Just don’t get cocky.

The first podcast is with Kevin Shepherd, who has a firm in Texas called Verdunity. Kevin is a civil engineer, and someone I’ve met in the Strong Towns and CNU worlds. His firm is doing great work pushing the envelope to bring new solutions to age-old issues. “Embracing the Messy City”

The second podcast is with Stig Terrebonne who has a relatively new podcast called “Human City.” I’ve not met Stig in person, but enjoyed our conversation and am honored to be in such strong company with his other guests.

I hope you give them both a listen, and support people trying to bring you thoughtful content on the internet and through the airwaves.

As we embark on a new year, I have a long list of upcoming posts that I hope will challenge and inspire you. Please feel free to reach out to me any time with comments, critiques and issues you wish I’d explore.

Kevin