This is Part II of a series on how the Homelessness & Incremental Housing Toolkit put together by Kronberg Urbanists and Architects could be used for faith-based housing.

Part I explored floor plans that are ideal for a faith-based housing development.

As I’ve learned my way around the infill development world, I’ve been consistently shocked by how much housing can fit onto relatively small lots.

I regularly look at sites and assume that they can only fit one or two homes—maybe a duplex, or maybe a single family home and a backyard cottage. My boss usually politely chuckles and tells me he could fit 4, maybe 5 small houses while quickly sketching out a site plan that makes the most of every inch of the lot.

You might assume that squeezing small units onto small lots might end up feeling claustrophobic, but a few simple design principles can actually lead to housing that is welcoming, comforting, and feels spacious. Best of all, a smaller house is more affordable, and land costs are spread amongst more units, creating greater affordability without subsidy.

Last month, I wrote about some house plans that work well for faith-based housing. All relatively compact studio, 1, and 2 bedrooms that can house a variety of demographics on a range of sites.

Yet arranging those unit types efficiently to make the most out of a limited amount of land is an absolute must, especially for congregations with oddly-shaped lots and a need for a well-designed space that will last.

But how do you make the most out of your land?

I’ve selected a few examples from the Homelessness & Incremental Housing Toolkit to illustrate.

Single Lot Site Study

This single lot has a surprising amount to offer. Here, Kronberg Urbanists and Architects managed to fit 5 units of housing onto this 50’ by 135’ lot. That’s not very big—it’s only .15 acres.

Most houses of worship have more property than this, but much of it can be taken up by the sanctuary, parking, or other existing buildings. These five units, though, could still fit onto the side or back of a lot on an unused field or excess parking.

Though the amount of green space on this site might not be ideal, it really is a tiny piece of land. When fit onto a larger site, it is possible that more common space could be created.

Even a little more land offers a great deal more flexibility with open space, as shown by the next site.

Double Lot Site Study

Doubling the lot opens up a lot more opportunity. There’s now a central green space in the middle of the site which acts as a common area while also opening up the site and making it feel roomier.

Though the units in this example are still relatively small, the bigger lot would afford greater flexibility to include larger houses like the 1 and 2 bedrooms I talked about last week.

This lot is still pretty small, only .31 acres, and yet it can fit 11 units. The added width really opens it up a lot—especially with a larger passageway between the two street-facing houses that beckons you into the central courtyard.

How Does this Work on Faith-Owned Land?

Houses of worship have special considerations when building housing on their land. The examples above were designed as an affordable infill housing solution for those experiencing homelessness. A congregation’s mission might align with those priorities, but they could also desire a more permanent population such as older folks or families.

All these needs are valid and must be designed for.

Some of these changes would be simple, like making the duplexes into larger houses appropriate for families. If the church has more land, it might want to spread the houses out a bit more to create more courtyard space, or integrate the houses differently with existing buildings.

The most important element is beauty.

Congregations that strive to build housing on their land should aim to create beautiful places designed to last. This is not only important for the church—it makes their place more inspiring and meaningful—but also to the residents who will feel at home and have a reason to care about where they live.

Designing for beauty isn’t difficult—sometimes it’s as simple as planting two trees. Imagine what the cottage court above will look like once those two trees in the middle mature and offer shade to residents relaxing below.

All of this, and more, is possible on faith-owned land. It doesn’t take a huge tract of unused land to create something beautiful, nor does it require reworking your entire site.

It just requires a little bit of creativity, and recognition that you might have more land than you think.

Eli Smith is the Director of Southern Urbanism’s Faith-Based Housing Initiative. He is a recent graduate of Dartmouth College, where he studied Religion with a focus on the faith-based housing movement.

Written by Will McCollum

The room filled with the murmur of nervous conversations and new friendships forming. Seventeen students, strangers only minutes before, gathered for our first Summer Studio. To begin, we asked each student to stand along a line across the room marking where they grew up, from “rural community” to “major city.” We then asked students to rearrange and stand where they most wanted to live now. Though most originated in the suburbs, none chose to remain there. Instead, they gravitated towards the poles, drawn to the strong character of thriving cities or small rural towns. Already, bonds formed as our students realized a shared desire to build more uplifting places—all taking the next step on their path to becoming citymakers.

My own steps into citymaking began years earlier as a project manager for Lew Oliver. In this role, while working on designs for Trilith, I witnessed the transformation of a fallow wheat field into a thriving community. There is a unique joy in laboring to craft a new town, forming its shape and watching local culture take root. Even so, in my architectural training at respected institutions, urbanism was simply not taught. I needed to fill in the gaps. I dove into the work of CNU, traveled to beloved urban places, and devoured every resource I could find. After more than a decade, I pieced together a working framework for understanding why certain places draw us in while others leave us feeling cold. This process was scattered and inefficient, though, and I began to wonder how many others were navigating this same fragmented path.

That question took on new urgency in 2023, when I attended the Let’s Build a Beautiful City program, one of INTBAU’s international summer schools. This program radiated joy, gathering individuals craving more beauty in their cities. Invigorated by their model, I returned home resolved to create something similar here in the United States. We lacked a place where people of all backgrounds could build a common foundation in beauty, resilience, and human-centered design within the American context.

Together with a few like-minded colleagues, I founded Citymakers Collective in December 2023. We had a clear purpose: to teach aspiring citymakers the holistic design principles of resilient, beautiful, and prosperous places. In the following months, we assembled a team of advisors and built a curriculum serving students across all citymaking professions. Collaborating with INTBAU USA, we designed a program bridging past and present, drawing from traditions that have guided citymakers for centuries. Charleston, South Carolina, became our classroom: a city beloved worldwide and facing grave challenges in the 21st Century.

Our inaugural cohort reflected a remarkable diversity: pastors, planning officials, architecture students, national policy consultants, software engineers, interior designers, and more. Ages ranged from teens to late-career professionals. Some students drove in while others flew across oceans. Half had no background in design; all shared a passion for citymaking. Over two weeks, they attended lectures, toured historic and newly-built neighborhoods, and channeled this knowledge into a final design proposal. Each group was assigned a site adjacent to Charleston’s historic core and tasked with envisioning its future in ways that honored tradition while addressing current needs.

The work that followed was rigorous. In the heat of the Lowcountry summer, with long days and a relentless pace, students roamed the historic fabric of the city and produced hand-drawn proposals for a new extension of Charleston. Students trained in design worked alongside students trained with other expertise, all working to craft meaningful urban space. One of the more memorable moments came from a student working in public health. This student detailed a park at the intersection of a new multi-use trail and a vehicular street, anchored by a remnant of a historic structure. Weaving together fitness, heritage, greenspace, and community life, a wonderful space emerged. This concept sprang from a perspective of public health first and foremost yet resulted in subtle and powerful urban design. The artificial barriers of profession slipped away: urban design is public health, and public health is urban design. This proved true with each student. Their unique backgrounds, bolstered by a solid foundation in traditional urban design principles, resulted in a rich collection of ideas. This is the beauty of design: when we work towards a common goal and apply our own expertise, the resulting ideas can morph in completely unexpected ways.

We could not have been more encouraged by the success of this first Summer Studio. Just as our students discovered their place within a long tradition of urbanism, we also have built this program from the examples of others. For decades, organizations such as CNU, INTBAU, ICAA, and the Incremental Development Alliance have advanced citymaking education beyond academia. From the beginning, we actively designed our program not to compete with this ongoing work, but to complement it. By focusing on broad principles, we could give students a foundation from which to pursue more specialized paths through these allied organizations. In this way, we hope to serve as connectors within a larger movement.

This first studio was only the beginning. In the coming year, as we refine our curriculum and expand our reach, we are eager to build a network of professionals, students, and volunteers who share a belief that knowledge of effective urban design should be accessible to all. One of our students captured this spirit beautifully:

“Citymakers Collective Summer Studio will educate and inspire you to make the world a more beautiful place. The staff and like minds that find themselves in the heat of Charleston will give you life and ambition to demand and design a better built environment.”

We are so grateful to see students walk away with renewed energy and skills for the work ahead. If this vision resonates with you, as a potential volunteer, donor, or curious colleague, we invite you to join us. You can explore ways to get involved here.

This article originally appeared in CNU’s Public Square and is republished here with permission.

Architect and urbanist Will McCollum is the founder of Citymakers Collective, an educational nonprofit based in Cambridge, MA, that equips the next generation of designers and developers to build more human-centric places.

I’ve spent most of my formative years in two small towns—one in the South, one in New England. It pains me to say it, but New England has the edge. Almost every small town in the region is incredibly walkable, with a cute central “green” surrounded by civic buildings and local businesses. One of those civic buildings is almost always a church.

The white Congregationalist steeples are a hallmark of the region, appearing in tourism ads and postcards. A quick Google search for “Vermont” reveals that every other image has a church. The same is not true for Southern states. Evidently, these churches have successfully associated themselves with the expectation of a quaint small town. Yet the formula to their success is simple: they are located in welcoming, walkable areas.

By embracing density and maximizing their small footprints, New England churches have become iconic symbols of their communities.

In contrast, houses of worship in the rest of the country (especially in the South) are too often disconnected from their communities by large parking lots or unused land. Faith-based housing presents an opportunity for these religious institutions to reimagine their relationship to their surroundings, becoming as renowned as New England churches by surrounding themselves with beautiful, lovable places.

Let’s compare a New England town with a Southern one to see how their houses of worship use land differently.

Example: Woodstock, Vermont

Woodstock is regularly listed as one of New England’s best small towns. It’s got everything you could ever want from a Vermont town: historic buildings, a nice town green, even covered bridges that are in town. It’s also home to a number of beautiful churches whose steeples regularly make it onto postcards. Let’s take a look at the four churches in Woodstock’s downtown.

The church properties here are boxed in red, with the actual physical churches being boxed in orange. As you might notice, two of the churches occupy the entire plot of land that they sit on. They do not have any dedicated parking (though they are both quite close to a larger lot), nor do they have large unused tracts of land. The two that do have parking have it tucked either behind or beside the main building.

Example: Asheboro, North Carolina

Now let’s compare to my mother’s hometown of Asheboro, North Carolina. Asheboro is a town whose historic center was hollowed out by deindustrialization, then by the expansion of a large stroad on the edge of town. Though it has been revitalizing in recent years, the downtown is still characterized by empty lots and excess parking.

Another thing that Asheboro has? Churches.

Most of these sites are over half parking. Similar to Woodstock, though, the parking lots are tucked behind or beside the main buildings. However, they are often so large that they take up the entire side of the block. These are large lots that sit empty most of the week, providing little more than convenience on Sunday morning.

These aren’t churches on the periphery- they’re all within walking distance of restaurants, shops, and parks. Faith-based housing projects on these lots would add walkable density, making the town and its churches more welcoming to pedestrians. In a city that has incredible historic buildings begging to be restored and a downtown that is trending toward a comeback, these churches are perfectly positioned to show the rest of the city what Asheboro could be.

It should also be mentioned that Lydia’s Place is a great example of a church converted into housing in North Asheboro, just up the street from these sites. The potential for expanding this model into downtown is tremendous, and the success of Lydia’s Place should serve as encouragement for future faith-based housing projects in the area.

Of course, there are many more boxes that would have to be checked for any of these Asheboro churches to build. For starters, Asheboro’s stringent parking minimums would be tough to get around, and that’s without even getting into financing. But the example still holds: American churches, particularly in the South, have long placed a large concrete barrier between themselves and their communities.

New England churches haven’t, and its allowed them to stay more connected with their surroundings. Despite being the least religious states, New England steeples remain a calling card for their small town way of life, inseparably serving as unifying institutions. Their buildings regularly serve as multi-use gathering spaces for town meetings, cultural events, and some of the best concerts I’ve been to.

Yet Southern churches also have an advantage—they have an empty canvas to create a better version of their town. Faith-based housing allows houses of worship to rethink their physical presence, surrounding themselves with more than just a sea of parking. In a small town, transforming just one block transforms the entire town.

If institutions of faith are willing to engage in that kind of transformation, they may find that they become just as iconic as their New England counterparts.

Eli Smith is a senior at Dartmouth College studying Religion and Public Policy. He is the Faith-Based Housing Initiative’s Research Fellow.

Written By Fernando Pagés Ruiz

The Villages, Florida, is the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States. That fact alone should prompt attention from planners. But there’s a deeper reason New Urbanists should study it: The Villages has managed to create what New Urbanism has long aspired to but rarely achieved—authentic, joyful, daily community life.

Let’s start with a few inconvenient facts. The Villages is not walkable in the traditional sense. You won’t find corner stores every 500 feet or narrow streets framed by architecturally significant buildings. You’ll see golf carts, cul-de-sacs, and miles of looping roads. But what you’ll also see—what hits you square in the chest—is life. People moving, talking, laughing, dancing, exercising, and socializing. Public space is used here not because it’s beautiful, but because people have the time and desire to use it. And because it was designed with the end use—not the form—in mind.

I spent four days there on a Lifestyle Preview. My villa came with two bikes and a golf cart. There wasn’t much to walk to on foot—just more houses. But within three minutes by cart or bike, I reached a recreation center and the town square. In The Villages, the five-minute city doesn’t exist at 3 mph—it exists at 20. And that shift in thinking changes everything.

Every day in The Villages is filled with accessible activities. You might start with a bike ride, hit the gym, park your cart, and walk to lunch at the square, swim laps at the pool, then dress up for an evening of live music and dancing. This isn’t hypothetical—it’s the norm. Social connection isn’t aspirational here. It’s a given.

The environment fosters it. Strangers smile, wave, start conversations with a simple “Where are you from?” and then talk for half an hour. Why? Two reasons. One, people are happy. The environment makes it so. Even the most dedicated New Urbanist cannot help but feel it. Two, people have time. And that’s the secret sauce New Urbanism often overlooks: design doesn’t drive behavior alone. It enables it when paired with lifestyle patterns that support sociability.

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Researchers are starting to catch up with what residents already know. A 2024 study by Su-I Hou and Khristen Holmes found that older adults in Florida “village” communities reported high levels of physical activity, strong social relationships, and increased life satisfaction. They averaged 4.2 days per week of 30-minute physical activity. More importantly, high scores in physical fitness and friendship were both strongly linked to high social engagement. And engagement matters. It extends lifespan and health span. In the study, older adults who volunteered or maintained friendships had better outcomes across the board.

That might help explain a strange phenomenon we experienced. After four days of this lifestyle, arriving at the airport was jarring. No one smiled. No one waved. The world had returned to normal. But The Villages felt more real. Humane, easygoing, full of small joys.

This is where New Urbanists might stop and reflect. We’ve placed great faith in physical form—block structures, setbacks, terminated vistas, “eyes on the street.” These are good ideas. But they do not, on their own, produce neighborliness. Nor do they spark joy. The Villages gets to something more profound. It provides seniors (and visiting young people) a place to feel good in their bodies and unafraid in their skin. They dance. They flirt. They talk. Not because of excellent planning. Because the environment invites it.

And what about beauty? The architecture of The Villages is forgettable at best. It mimics a kind of Main Street nostalgia with a Disney gloss. But people love it. The town squares aren’t masterpieces of civic design. They’re themed spaces filled with music, bars, restaurants, and movement. They succeed not as form, but as function. They’re fun.

Affordability is another point worth noting. While many New Urbanist developments have become enclaves for the affluent, The Villages offers new homes starting at $200,000. Not subsidized. Just affordable by design. That’s another lesson.

We stayed in Eastport, the latest expansion. Within a six-minute car ride, we reached four recreation centers, a driving range, five golf courses, a health center, a hotel, courts for every sport, eleven lakes, and the town square. Add to that a multi-modal trail system that connects all properties. That’s not urbanism. However, it is access, and access to inviting events (as opposed to beautiful buildings) fosters activity.

New Urbanism’s original promise was to design places where people would know their neighbors, gather often, and live more connected lives. The Villages has achieved that—not through form, but through lifestyle. It’s not a beautiful place, but it’s full of beauty in use. It’s not urban, but it functions socially better than many cities. It doesn’t have great architecture, but it has great evenings.

We should study it, not to replicate its aesthetics, but to understand what makes it work. We’ve spent decades perfecting the block. Maybe it’s time to focus on the block party.

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This article originally appeared in CNU’s Public Square and is republished here with permission.

Homebuilder, developer, and author Fernando Pagés Ruiz has built affordable housing in California, the Midwest, and the Mountain States. His projects have many awards, and he is the author of two books on affordable housing.

Written By Fernando Pagés Ruiz

Starting with Herbert and Katherine Jacobs’s $5,000 home built in 1937, designed to show he could create affordable housing, Frank Lloyd Wright initiated his Usonian design line. “Unimpeded by a foundation, front porch, protruding chimney, or distracting shrubbery,” Wright sought to create well-crafted houses for the everyday person. Yet not even Wright could hold off the impulse toward high design and lost his way with increasingly elaborate architectural flourishes. Soon, the moderate Usonian homes gave way to the pricier Prairie styles he became famous for.

Maybe architects should not be called to design in the simple, clean proportions and ordinary materials required for affordability any more than Michelin Star chefs should be asked to create cafeteria menus. Great poets don’t write greeting cards. And only builders keenly aware of construction costs can guide designs toward affordability. I am a big fan of several architects, including Wright. I worked with his student, Geoffrey Childs, designing a very affordable complex of twelve infill houses. However, most of my experience with academically trained architects is that they resist the compromises required to achieve low cost.

For example, an excellent architect and close friend and I got into an argument. He accused me of “evil” for insisting roof pitches between 4/12 and 6/12 were ideal for lowering costs and improving structural performance. I even had the wind tunnel tests to support the structural assertion and went to the trouble to have a truss manufacturer weigh in by pricing two similar roofs of varying pitch. But my friend’s love for steeper roofs ran deeper than logic. I have lived through the same type of argument enough times to know that design supersedes cost considerations for many architects and that they have deep insecurity about being associated with buildings that would not meet their peer group’s approval. Affordable housing is not always the prettiest, but it can be elegant in its efficiency.

Architects I know will characterize the most affordable housing with words like bleak, dismal, and deplorable, or the descriptor I hear most often: “hideous,” expressing absolute contempt. This is unfortunate, because architects should strive to provide unsubsidized design for every rung of the housing ladder, from homeless on up.

Throughout Lincoln, Nebraska, you find many simple, low-cost ranch homes built by Ervin Peterson, founder of Peterson Construction Company. His son, the late Bob Peterson, was my adviser in designing and building affordable homes—he always knew how to resolve a problem or do a pricey thing cheaply. His dad’s homes required just $25 down and an agreement to do some work, such as laying floor tile and painting. This made buying a house a snap, and many people did so. Peterson constructed about 2,500 of these homes across the city.

The homes included clever design elements, such as a sealed crawl space that served as a giant plenum for the heating system. The Petersons used two layers of drywall with wood spacers instead of framing studs to create room for electrical wiring between demising bedroom walls. They bought materials in bulk. And they knew how many studs and nails went into each model. They were masters of affordable housing. While designers regard these homes as “hideous,” I find them beautiful, and even today, 2,500 homeowners still love them dearly. A hideous house is better than no house, and when affordability is even more critical than global warming, architects will do well to remember this.

The acclaimed Miami architect and planner Andrés Duany is one of the few I have worked with who will submit to the stringent restraint required for the most affordable manufactured housing.  Despite his openness to value engineering, we have argued about simplifying façades because “otherwise, everyone will hate it,” as he told me on one project. Everyone except, of course, the people who finally find a home within their means. They will love it. Fortunately, Duany is devoted to design solutions and talented enough to achieve the tenuous balance required for low-cost housing to succeed aesthetically.

You may not have the opportunity to work with a designer of the caliber of Duany or Wright, willing to spend a year resolving the challenges of a $500 commission—the sum Jacobs paid Wright for the design of his $5,000 house. So, you will have to get deeply involved in the design process, analyzing every ornament, window trim flourish, and aspect of the roof pitch to control the outcome. Architects can be imposing, but don’t back down. You must start with a budget; if the design exceeds your cost limitations, even if it’s a nice-looking house, don’t sign off. Insist on meeting your pricing criteria.

Fernando Pagés Ruiz builds non-subsidized affordable homes for a largely immigrant community. He collaborates with DPZ CoDesign on cost reduction, chairs CNU Latino, and writes for Fine Homebuilding and the Green Building Advisor. He is busy researching and writing the second edition of his bestseller Building an Affordable House with The Taunton Press.

In a recent X post, David underscored these values through photos of Pontoise, a new town outside of Paris:

“This is Pontoise, France. A blueprint for new towns. This is a new piece of town built around a train station. [It] used to be surface parking, but [is] now homes, businesses, and shops. Most residential parking is underground, and with its excellent location, not as many people choose to have vehicles.”

In other words, out of nothing, Pontoise created something.

According to the International New Town Institute, Cergy-Pontoise is one of five New Towns of Paris built from the 1960s onwards, and is considered the most successful. With 399 homes across 4.2 acres, it pencils out to a remarkable 100 homes per acre. By comparison, most Southern US cities average around 4 homes per acre.

There are “plenty of businesses, too,” Milner adds.

With this density and ubiquity of retail services, Pontoise is precisely what urbanists love and seek to build more of.

Despite being designed at a neighborhood scale with buildings capped at five stories, Pontoise achieves a density comparable to Barcelona’s Eixample, which, at 100,000 people per square mile, is the densest area in the Western world.

But more than any data point can discern, it’s undeniably lovely. It’s lovely, and it’s new, which is so damn frustratingly rare. The reason Pointoise is lovely is that it follows the principles of traditionalism. In my view, this is the common denominator of great places.

THE TRADITIONALIST’S THEORY OF EVERYTHING

Traditionalism shows up in new towns in three ways: 1) land planning, 2) architecture, and 3) development strategies. We can see all three types present in Pontoise.

The architecture evokes traditional Paris, and the land planning makes it look like an idyllic French town. There is no mistaking where Pontoise is. This sense of place is an underappreciated criterion of great architecture.

And the way Pontoise was built out—incrementally, sans monolith—is the traditional form of townbuilding which is all but lost in the modern world. The result is that the new town has meaning because it has context. And it has context because it is built by and for a place. All of these are criteria for traditional design.

COMPARING IDEOLOGIES

The juxtaposition of traditional architecture as inferior (and modern as superior) is debated ad nauseam within the intellectual zeitgeist. It’s worth comparing the ideologies, which I have done here:

Commitment to tradition weaves a common thread through Pointoise. Its land planning and architecture are clearly rooted in history and place. While its development process obviously faced different pressures than Hausmannian Paris, its ownership is diverse. This is unheard of in comparable modern developments, which are increasingly owned by billion-dollar development companies, REITS, and life insurance companies.

Traditional design values are evident in these new towns. Notably, they are present in old towns as well. But none are present in the typical development of modern suburban America. And that’s the problem.

IF MODERN DEVELOPMENT SUCKS, WHY DO WE KEEP DOING IT?

Modern development, despite its baggage and repeated failures, isn’t just surviving—it’s thriving. Why? Because it remains the dominant force shaping our built environment, even as dissatisfaction grows. So why do we keep building places no one loves, instead of getting so much of what we loathe?

As a fundamental fight of our time, this topic is worthy of more than a list of bullets, but here are three key reasons that explain this failure:

1. DIFFICULTY of EXECUTION. Modern development has a high ROBD (Return on Brain Damage), meaning it is easier to squeeze out more profit with less pain. Modern development aligns with modern zoning and entitlement processes, which encourage uniformity and conformity at every step. Traditionalism, on the other hand, has a low ROBD; it’s riskier, harder to get approved, and with fewer underwriting sources, it's more expensive to finance. In American land use, those proposing anything “different” or “ambitious” are regularly punished by neighbors, politicians, planners, journalists, and bankers, which brings us to #2.

2. PREDOMINANCE of INSTITUTIONAL FINANCE. The institutionalization of development finance has accelerated the destruction of localism. And localism only comes through traditionalism. In the past thirty years, development finance has shifted to Wall Street. Wall Street is good at squeezing every bit of waste out of a process to maximize profits. While that creates obvious shareholder value, the problem is that these skills are wholly incompatible with placemaking. To the distal investor, a house is just a data point, not a place to raise a family, let alone build a community.

   Moreover, traditional places are invariably built by local developers, while sprawl is built by regional or national ones (typically Wall Street-backed). Wall Street can borrow at 4-5%, whereas local developers must pay 7-12%. On a tilted playing field with rising interest rates, it’s hard to compete. The institutionalization of finance has been ruinous for traditional placemaking.

3. TOXIC HOUSING POLITICS. The politicization of land use encourages undesirable development because housing politics wastes volumes of time and money. And it takes time and money to build a beautiful development. Every dollar wasted on unproductive pre-construction engagement and/or years of political permission-seeking is a dollar not spent on architecture, civic monuments, or amenities.

   As the development’s purpose is diluted (or lost) to years (sometimes decades) of entitlement, it follows that placemaking can no longer be a primary purpose. The politicization of housing absolutely puts downward pressure on the quality of place. They inversely correlate.

SOLUTION

How do we build more Pontoise? The solutions are simple, but they are not easy.

The right to build great places must be re-established as inalienable, and if state legislatures are needed to (re)-enshrine these rights, then so be it. Functionally, that means restoring the right to build the kinds of places all of humanity has loved for, well, all of humanity: dense, walkable, and mixed-use.

There are ways to build traditionally while also keeping toxic Wall Street at bay. This is a growth industry for researchers and zoning reformers. For decades now, government planners have used complex codes that have served the interests of the most well-capitalized and most connected —i.e., institutional investors.

After all, complexity favors the connected. And who is more connected than Wall Street?

Wall Street loves limited competition. Sclerotic American zoning is the most fertile ground for creating and perpetuating controlled, non-competitive markets. American planning is precisely why Wall Street is buying housing in the most overplanned American cities.

Though they are harder to find, there are also ways to discourage institutional dollars and tilt the field back in favor of the locals. Maximum (not minimum) lot sizes discourage institutional investment. Below a certain scale, Blackrock can’t play. They don’t want anything to do with a maximum parcel of 1/4 acre. It’s too small, and that matters. Durham effectively implemented a maximum lot size code for commercial districts in 2023, and I think other cities will eventually follow suit.

Theoretically, you could plan an entire urban area (or district or city) to be 100% lots no larger than 1/4 acre, which should be kryptonite to institutional capital.

Other cities, such as Lake Wales, FL, are working on plans to allow walkable mixed-use development by right. Flipping the script, they are forcing peddlers of modern planning (sprawl) to go through the gauntlet of the public process while showing traditional developers the fast lane.

What else can be done to build more traditional places like Pointoise?

What else have cities tried?

What do you think needs to be done to bring back traditional towns and place-based development?

Thanks for reading.

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This post originally appeared on onHousing, a blog by Southern Urbanism founder Aaron Lubeck.

Washington Square Park, 1961. It was here that Jane Jacobs came to brawl with Robert Moses, the larger-than-life planner of housing and transportation for a rapidly modernizing postwar New York City, and effectively ended the era of authoritarian planning.

Their specific conflict was over two of Moses’s many master plans: The first proposed to raze sections of Jacobs’s chaotic, vibrant, and old Greenwich Village to construct Corbusian “towers in the park,” a Bauhaus-inspired modernist style in vogue with the planners of the time. The second plan promised construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway (LOMEX), intended to connect the West Side of Manhattan to Brooklyn, also by taking out entire blocks of historic Village fabric.

Washington Square Village was ultimately built under the rationale of “slum clearance” and displaced thousands of small businesses. But for Moses, the victory would prove pyrrhic. Thanks to Jacobs’s relentless pen as well as her grassroots organizing, she ultimately stopped the freeway and saved the park. The scale of this fight established long-overdue boundaries for Moses’s unprecedented, ever-expanding powers. As a result, she forced a major turning point in the fields of urbanism and urban planning.

That fight served as an inflection point because Moses’s power grew to where he was no longer accountable to anyone—a critical characteristic of the leviathan-like scale he, and only he, operated at. The planning movement that he led had turned into the most pervasive and damaging tentacle of the early twentieth century’s Progressive Movement was effectively ended by Jacobs’s work. What came next is of mixed consequence.

“People make cities, and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans.”

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Maybe it’s because I came into the trades while working on a degree in music that I see my role in homebuilding as a performer: a performer of architecture. I know this is an unusual approach, but it has engaged me with a passion that I could not find focusing solely on the business or even on the craft of construction. Ask any musician, classical or jazz, or even a good rock ‘n’ roller, and they will answer knowledgeably about the history of the songs they perform, the greatest hits of that style, and the geniuses that wrote best-loved scores. As an architectural performer, I feel responsible for becoming a connoisseur of my art: learning not only how to build but also the story of the architecture and its meaning.

From artist to artisan

At the California Institute of the Arts in the early 1990s, I built theater sets in the shop, and I had access to tools. On weekends, I borrowed those tools and made a few bucks helping teachers remodel—I worked cheap. At night, I played the clarinet. I was paid to play, but never as much as I earned remodeling. Life proceeded, kids came along, and gradually I put down the horn and picked up a hammer full time. I felt defeated, my teenage dreams cut short—until I began to look at homebuilding as a sort of symphony. One with a composer: the architect. A conductor: the contractor. And performers: me and all the other tradespeople. When you tilt your head just so, and if you know how to listen, even whining saws and percussive nail hammers can sound like a rock opera.

Yet on this construction stage, where I began my career performing architecture, I noticed unique conflicts that I never encountered in an orchestra. Performers (tradespeople) routinely changed the score (blueprints) and often argued with the composer (architect). In other words, builders didn’t and don’t always follow the plans and sometimes even criticize the architect with comments like, “...well, you can draw anything, but it’s quite another thing to construct it.”

Building for a living becomes much more interesting when you understand the architectural dialect and appreciate its expression.

I had a different view. For me, not following the plans felt analogous to playing the wrong notes. Correcting the architect signaled something worse than arrogance—it was ignorance. Architects spend years learning composition. They know exactly where the windows should go and how the horizontal and vertical lines of the siding best accent the structure. They understand the hierarchy of forms and the proportions that make a façade balanced and harmonious. They know the story behind each detail. Architectural ornaments speak to the trained eye. If you learn the history of architecture, the elements of style will talk to you too. Building for a living becomes much more interesting when you understand the architectural dialect and appreciate its expression.

For example, did you know that the rosette you place at the corner of door and window casings represents an ancient Greek patera, a vessel for drinking sacrificial wine? Have you heard that crown molding represents an ancient rain gutter? It should never go beneath the soffit as a trim. Similarly, the frieze board should appear wider than the fascia because it represents the rafter ends of a stone temple. Do you appreciate the differences between the Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders of architecture? For the old-timers, this was basic carpentry knowledge. If you doubt me, read an early American pattern book to see just how deep an understanding of classical forms our homebuilding forefathers had before 1930.

There was a time when builders respected architecture, and the homes of that era show it. I know a famous architect who will give you $100 to find an ugly home built before 1930. After this date—when homebuilders became businessmen and houses became a commodity—ugly homes built by architecturally illiterate developers abound.

The language of architecture

To interpret architecture, which is what you’re doing when you build, it’s essential to learn the language and history of design. You may not appreciate this yet, but architecture has a grammar—a pattern language with conventions of syntax handed down over centuries of tradition. When you ignore and violate the customs, you change the meaning. You may not have a great grasp of grammar, but you know a good sermon when you hear it: It’s inspiring. Buildings work the same way. Some well-designed structures speak clearly, even eloquently. Others rise to the level of poetry. When you look at good architecture, you know it. People travel across the ocean to walk around neighborhoods with great architecture. Think of Rome, Barcelona, and Florence. Closer to home, Newport, Rhode Island; Charleston, South Carolina; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Palm Springs, California. Does anyone travel even across town to admire the architecture of a suburban housing tract near you? Likely not.

“A builder worries about the roof not leaking. An architect worries about how the roof looks.” — Andrés Duany

I’ve long felt this way about the relationship between building and architecture, but even after all these years in the field, my recent work with storied architect Andrés Duany of New Urbanism fame has cemented my opinion that the best builders will understand how architecture works. Recently, I helped organize and install two homes at the International Builders’ Show for Duany. One of the building elements included a portico along the front of the building. The carpenter and I laid out the rafter hangers, and everything looked good to my eye. Just then, Duany arrived, appearing alarmed. He told us the rafter hangers were not laid out correctly. I argued they were precisely at the 32-inch centers specified, but he shook his head and said no. We removed all the hangers, leaving behind a marred, stainless-steel sheet that covered the header, now riddled with nail holes. Duany measured and laid out the supports in slightly different locations. He told me, “I will never get this into any architectural magazines if the rafters aren’t right.” Looking at the photographs, I can now see it clearly. But as a builder, I sweated the marred stainless steel—I would have let the layout error stand to preserve the costly covering. This didn’t bother Duany. He cared about the alignment of building elements—in this case, the rafters over the glass panes below.

“A builder worries about the roof not leaking. An architect worries about how the roof looks,” Duany told me during a recent conversation. “But before 1930, this dichotomy did not exist. Builders came from a tradition of classical design handed down over centuries and understood building proportions and alignment intuitively—they had an eye,” Duany said. “Today’s builders were reared on the equivalent of visual junk food.”

What design is for

The post-World-War-II building boom that ushered in the McDonaldization of homes brought two detrimental consequences: First, it created a competitive component-manufacturing industry that brought ample choice in windows, siding, doors, and trim, but much of it was devised by factory technicians and not architectural designers. And, second, it led to the evolution of an empowered, uneducated business class. “In the old days, only the educated were wealthy enough to affect the built environment,” Duany told me, implying that today, rich enough to afford a mansion does not signify good taste. It almost assures vulgarity.

So, while the quality of homes has grown and continues to benefit from our industry’s keen interest in building science and environmental stewardship, builders still suspect and misunderstand the architect’s specific expertise, as if good style and informed aesthetics were inconsequential.

Now, to spring to the builder’s defense, you may have seen poorly detailed blueprints. I’ve encountered architects’ plan sets that are a scant six pages long and lack much information beyond schematics, leaving the builder to figure a lot out on site. Most builders hate this, but I do not. If the architect comes up with a clever motif, I can usually figure out how to build it. I need the architect for designing more than construction details.

While not all architects are geniuses, all architects have invested years in learning design conventions handed down over centuries. Most can create at least competent buildings. Gifted architects can play off the protocols to design works of art. As a homebuilder, I can design homes, and I have. Yet I prefer to work with well-educated designers with a refined eye for much better results.

When you build or remodel homes as an architectural performer and not merely as a contractor—or, worse, a businessperson—you enter a collaborative production akin to a symphonic opus. The word opus is simply a fancy way of saying “work.” As in—a work of art. Just think of how you experience your life’s opus when you leave the house in the morning feeling, “I’m going to work, again...,” versus, “Today, I perform a work of art.” Or at least perform with architectural intent.

A higher goal

When I work with architects, I get to know their worldview—their intent. I find hidden in the architect’s plan not only aesthetic considerations but also social themes, a concern for health and climate, and even psychological motives. For example, in Wyoming, with the award-winning scholastic architect Prakash Nair, I assembled a learning community where the homes helped young people feel inspired to concentrate on school- work and other learning activities. Yes, it can be done, just as a cathedral inspires awe and a nightclub the urge to dance. The environment affects us.

Andrés Duany’s most recent designs hearken back to the modernism of the 1920s—an era like ours, recovering from a pandemic flu. His designs are transparent, including ample light (which kills virus), ventilation (which dilutes airborne contaminants), and even a decontamination foyer when you enter to take off shoes and outer clothing, wash up, and store packages for opening later. The room includes UV lighting that comes on after you exit to purify the items left inside. He offers a segregated recovery bedroom for anyone in the family needing it. All the while, these features do not intrude on otherwise very livable condominiums going up in Alys Beach, Florida.

Working at this level of thought, I feel my life enriched, and my “job” as a homebuilder is becoming more than a means to a good living.

Architect Korkut Onaran is working on designs for future climates, geared toward a heating planet. With architect Geoffrey Childs, I built a community in Lincoln, Nebraska, that considered the psychological needs of refugees, providing a haven at home for those quite suddenly relocated to an alien culture. These architectural considerations go well beyond the sticks-and-bricks aspect of construction and become involved with buildings that do more than keep out the cold. Working at this level of thought, I feel my life enriched, and my “job” as a homebuilder is becoming more than a means to a good living.

The ancient Roman architectural polymath Marcus Vitruvius Pollio wrote: “May the Architect be high-minded, not arrogant, but faithful.” To which I would humbly append: May the builder faithfully perform high-minded architecture, not arrogantly, but competently. This attitude toward the full range of architecture, its purpose as well as its performance on the jobsite, would go a long way toward creating a better world. One we build not just for profit but for the enrichment of humanity.

Fernando Pagés Ruiz builds non-subsidized affordable homes for a largely immigrant community. He collaborates with DPZ CoDesign on cost reduction, chairs CNU Latino, and writes for Fine Homebuilding and the Green Building Advisor. He is busy researching and writing the second edition of his bestseller Building an Affordable House with The Taunton Press.

All images provided by the author.

Ciudad Cayalá is the newest neighborhood in a congested and gritty Guatemala City. It represents a modern, New Urbanist community designed as a self-contained, walkable borough that integrates residential areas, retail, offices, and recreational facilities within a single, harmonious setting. The neighborhood features a neoclassical architectural style, with buildings and structures that project a sense of order, symmetry, and traditional beauty, with the slightest, subtle nod to Guatemala's Mayan heritage. Despite its beauty and the quality of life it promotes, Cayalá, which means Paradise in Cakchiquel, the language of Guatemala’s Maya highlands, has faced criticism and controversy. Some view it as an enclave of exclusivity and privilege in a country that struggles with significant inequality and poverty.

Exclusivity vs. Authenticity

At the Paseo Cayalá shopping district, cars enter through one entrance and go straight to an underground parking lot. The pedestrian marketplace above resembles in scale the grand Maya plazas called Naab, which means lagoon, since the Maya plazas also doubled as rainwater catchments. However, in ancient times, the large open spaces in Guatemala were surrounded by temples and palaces and served as the epicenter of civilization, large enough to hold the entire population, hosting rituals, festivals, and a central market.

The splendid, white-walled boutiques and restaurants surrounding the square at Paseo Cayalá are not a central market for bargain shoppers. Brands like Ferrari, Porsche, Arturo Calle, and Antony Morato are just some of the 30 stores within the development. The development also offers a park, two hotels, a bowling alley, batting cages, tennis courts, a zip line, a surf park, and 650 gated residences.

Cayalá is a marvel of modern, classical architecture. The development appears to have been established during the Spanish colonial era and then impeccably preserved. Its stone pavement, red-tiled roofs, and white stucco walls, ornamented with intricate carvings, tile work, and wrought iron details, reflect the finest regional craftsmanship. A Greek-style temple serves as a community center. A nod to Mayan culture, the building is set on a platform atop a giant stairway. The structure is characterized by stately columns, each crowned with capitals that, rather than the acanthus leaves of the Corinthian order, bear the motif of maize—a nod to the local flora and a symbol of fertility and prosperity.

The Mayans used wide stairways at plazas as stages for religious events, presentations, and dances. Customers leave the underground parking at Calyalá, ascending on luxurious escalators designed after the art nouveau Parisian Metro stations. The development was promoted as a welcoming place, open to all citizens. Still, unlike the rest of Guatemala City, crowded and vibrant, only a few tourists were milling about when we visited. Security guards in suits and small earpieces quietly monitored the area. Despite developer aspirations to welcome all Guatemalans, the reality paints a different picture: retail spaces mirror those found in upscale American malls, replete with international labels. The rent for a modest apartment in this area, standing at $1,300, starkly overshadows the average monthly income in Guatemala, which hovers around $579. Critics rightly argue that while Cayalá offers a sustainable and well-planned urban development model, it is a sterile place inaccessible to most of Guatemala's population.

Cayalá stands as a beacon of controlled design. It inadvertently sets the stage for a profound contrast with the rich historical tapestry and vibrant life found elsewhere in Guatemala. The difference becomes particularly striking when one turns their attention to the storied streets of Antigua, Guatemala. This transition from the polished, exclusive corridors of Cayalá to the lively, spontaneous environment of Antigua marks a journey not just between places but between contrasting philosophies of urban living and community.

At the same time, houses in Antigua are more expensive than those in Cayalá, costing millions of dollars, yet the picturesque, historical city faces no social criticism. As a city that developed organically over time and was reconstructed on the whims of many generations, Antigua does not feel like a perfect imposition on Guatemala but rather its finest expression. Antigua has the advantage of authenticity.

The Streets of Antigua Guatemala

Urban authenticity stems from a place's genuine raison d'être, evolving naturally over time. It's a quality nearly impossible to replicate in new developments, even with the involvement of renowned designers like León Krier and his acclaimed Estudio Urbano. Striving for design perfection renders a place complete, crippling its gradual evolution—a process shaped by its residents over time rather than dictated by external experts.

To wit, not all of Antigua is beautiful. The streets are jammed with traffic. Walking its sidewalks requires constant attention to trip hazards. Some buildings are rundown. Yet Antigua is the kind of place you can spend a lifetime. Where life can unfold at its own pace—a place not solely sought after for its sophistication or the status it symbolizes despite its exclusivity. It embraces the visitor with a sense of belonging rather than awe. It's a city where the essence of humanity is palpable, where the marketplaces become melting pots of diversity, bridging the gap between the affluent and the less fortunate without a hint of distrust or fear.

The city's charm is encapsulated in its low-rise silhouettes, the rustic allure of its cobbled pathways, and the majestic beauty of its churches, standing as silent witnesses to centuries of history. Founded in the early 16th century as Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala, Antigua was the heart of a Kingdom spanning much of Central America. Its rich past is preserved in the Spanish colonial architecture that paints the streetscape, while some majestic and haunting ruins narrate the story of earthquakes and generations of reconstruction.

Antigua is not merely a backdrop to history; it is a living, breathing testament to the Guatemalan people. It offers a window into the past and an invitation to be part of a continuing story. Vibrant cultural celebrations draw Guatemalans from all over the country to visit, especially during Holy Week or Semana Santa. During this period, the city transforms, eschewing vehicles to make way for religious processions, stunning flower carpets, and a festive atmosphere that engulfs the city. Although international tourism forms the economic backbone of Antigua, it's noteworthy that most of its visitors are from within Guatemala. This fact underscores Antigua's role as a cultural epicenter for the Guatemalan people, cherished for its profound cultural significance rather than merely architectural marvels. The city is an authentic gem, akin to a natural diamond compared to cubic zirconia, radiating cultural richness rather than architectural virtuosity. The high cost of living that might preclude many Guatemalans from residing in Antigua does not detract from its genuineness. Instead, it underscores the city's unique allure and deep-rooted cultural significance, making it a cherished landmark that transcends mere aesthetics. Singular, modern design objectives did not guide the city. The humanity of its population guided it.

Cayalá hasn't become the bustling hub envisioned, particularly for an entertainment landmark in South America, where energetic crowds are a staple. In contrast to the lively atmospheres of even modest shopping centers in Guatemala City, Cayalá presents a reserved, perhaps even sterile, ambiance. Cayalá's aspirations to redefine urban living with haut design and a nod at inclusivity may fall short. Striving for perfect architectural harmony may be the defect. Antigua's organic evolution, enriched by the lives and stories of those who have walked its streets, contrasts with the more curated experience Cayalá offers, underscoring the difficulty of creating new urban spaces that aim to use aesthetic refinement to achieve sociability. These hyper-refined developments appeal to architects, not necessarily to the public.

Antigua, Guatemala is a testament to the beauty and depth that can emerge from the organic, often chaotic process of historical evolution. Its cobblestoned streets, baroque architecture, and vibrant, genuinely public squares do not conform to a singular vision of perfection but rather embrace the layers of history, culture, and human endeavor that have shaped them. This embrace of imperfection, of the authentic and the lived-in, lends Antigua a strength and vitality that a meticulously planned environment like Cayalá may never obtain.

Redefining Southern Urbanism: Lessons from the Far South Cayalá and Antigua

This contrast between Cayalá and Antigua is a powerful illustration of the principles that should guide the creation of new communities, particularly in the Southern United States, a region celebrated for its hospitality and rich history of ethnic and economic diversity. As developers and urban planners, the contrasts between Cayalá and Antigua are a cautionary tale when we create new places within this vibrant context, underscoring the paramount importance of designing communities that do not only prioritize aesthetics and exclusivity but earnestly embrace the rugged inclusivity and chaotic vitality that are hallmarks of beloved, traditional urban centers. Cities must provide affordable housing, lightly regulate street vendors, and allow just enough disorder to make streets feel real.

With its famed ethos of warmth and charm, the South presents a unique opportunity to redefine modern communities. The challenge lies in ensuring these new developments are integrated spaces that celebrate the diverse cultures, histories, and economic backgrounds of their inhabitants. To ignore this is to risk creating spaces that, while beautiful, lack the soul and vibrant communal life intrinsic to the Southern way of living.

In crafting the future of Southern urban development, Cayalá and Antigua remind us that true community is nurtured through spaces that foster a shared sense of belonging. The hospitality and élan associated with Southern living are not just products of place but of people coming together in those places.

By weaving Southern hospitality into the fabric of our neighborhoods, we create vibrant testaments to an inclusive and welcoming spirit, a hallmark of this cherished region.

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Fernando Pagés Ruiz builds nonsubsidized affordable homes for a largely immigrant community. He collaborates with DPZ CoDesign on cost reduction, chairs CNU Latino, and writes for Fine Homebuilding and the Green Building Advisor. The second edition of his bestseller, “Building an Affordable House,” with The Taunton Press, is now available

Last summer I spent a couple weeks in Segovia, Spain, studying historic masonry structures with some of the top experts in the world. One of those professors I met, Philippe Block, a pioneering structural engineer and inventor, has shifted my perspective about concrete — one of the most widely used materials on planet earth — and how to think about it.

Years ago, I’d already moved away from the purist idea that everything should be “a traditional brick wall,” and shifted my language from saying “load bearing brick masonry” to “masonry-based construction systems” in terms of what we, at Building Culture, advocate for.

That is, using masonry, brick or stone, as the structure of a building as it has been used for thousands of years, and not just a siding held up by a wood or steel structure behind it, as is the case for the past 100 years.

I can promise you this: if the Roman aqueduct had been built with a wood or steel structure behind it, or even reinforced concrete with a stone veneer, it would have been destroyed within a few centuries of building it, probably less. Instead, they just stacked solid stones—that’s it—and it has persisted for 2,000 years.

But within that initial paradigm shift of me being open to various forms of structural masonry and not just “the traditional triple wythe brick wall”, I hadn’t fully come around to concrete, as so much of the concrete used today is destructive and used poorly.

We use what’s called “reinforced concrete”: loads of steel rebar encased in concrete. It’s extraordinarily strong — you can drive heavy vehicles across it. The problem? Concrete is porous and steel rusts. When steel rusts, it expands up to TEN times its original size — which destroys the concrete.

It’s a strong, but vulnerable system.

I say this often: failing infrastructure in America isn’t failing concrete, it’s failing steel.

Even though we now use epoxy coated rebar in big infrastructure projects, I’m still not big on embedding a ticking time bomb into our infrastructure that we could be building to last multiple centuries instead. We should be solving for long-term resilience over pure strength. But hey, it increases GDP when it crumbles and we have to rebuild ….

Also, remember that horrible condo building collapse in Florida in 2021? Failing rebar.

But concrete, like stone or brick, doesn’t have tensile strength – it works in compression. You can theoretically stack brick thousands of feet high before failing in compression (starts to crush itself under its own weight), but cantilever a single brick 4” from a wall, put weight on it, and the brick will break off easily. It wants to work with gravity.

So that’s exactly why people put steel in concrete! To add tensile strength and span large distances. You can’t embed rebar into stone or brick in the same way because it’s solid, but with concrete you can form it up, lay down grids of steel rebar, and pour the wet concrete in. This is what it looks like to rely on steel and tensile strength to span horizontal distances:

You might be wondering: so if brick and stone work in compression, how can they span large horizontal distances? The arch! You don’t need any steel or tensile strength when you use the right geometry.

The humble arch has been around for millennia. And while I won’t get too technical here, the incredible thing about the arch is that it keeps everything in compression. Remember when I said you could stack brick thousands of feet high before failing in compression? Meaning a brick arch, entirely in compression, is incredibly strong. Or efficient is probably a better word.

Here is the single sentence Philippe Block uttered that fundamentally changed how I thought about concrete: Concrete is just artificial stone.

While I suspected this was how to think about it, I’ve never seen concrete used in this way in the context of traditional building systems. Modern engineers only use reinforced concrete, and traditionalists generally despise concrete altogether. Every expert I’ve met has been on one side or the other.

Until Philippe. But the moment he said this, it all clicked into place.

If concrete is really interchangeable with stone or brick, then it follows that the natural form of concrete to span openings is also the arch. There is no needfor steel. You just need the right form.

The implications of this are shocking. Rather than 2 feet of this for a floor system:

You can just add a little curvature to it, get rid of 70% of the concrete and 90% of the steel (except for some external tie bars to resist thrust – depending on set up), and do this instead:

Why is this a big deal? Well, a lot of reasons that I’m interested in, but I’ll give you one of Philippe’s examples: floor systems in commercial buildings are a huge part of the material, labor, cost, weight, and carbon emissions of the entire building.

On a 25-story mid-rise, if you swap out conventional reinforced concrete floor systems with one of the unreinforced systems Philippe has pioneered, it saves 1200 concrete trucks and 20km of steel in the floor system alone. That’s before accounting for the reduced weight and implications on the piers and foundation. This is unbelievable.

Also, conventional concrete floor systems are extraordinarily heavy, and often kill people in earthquakes or fires. The twin towers collapsed straight down in a pancaking process as the floor system failed, up high, and began falling on each other in succession.

Would one of Phillipe’s floor systems have prevented a total collapse? I have no idea. But I’m pointing out that they are 80%+ lighter, and it certainly seems possible that a collapse of a few of those floor systems may not have led to a collapse of the whole building, as the lower floor systems could have supported the 80% lighter falling debris. Just a theory from a non-engineer.

Philippe also introduced me to Graphic Statics and the concept of strength through geometry – the ability to design hyper-efficient structures by only putting the material where you need it, enabled by understanding the flow of forces through a structure.

Remarkably, this isn’t new technology, though Phillipe is certainly innovating and building off of this millennia-old knowledge. Check out the King’s College fan vault (500+ years old) compared to Philippe’s floor system.

Versus this. See the resemblance?

Pretty cool, right?

Or take the Pantheon, a 2,000 year old, unreinforced concrete dome that’s still standing.

There is a ton more to say, but here is how I’ve updated my thinking:

1. Unreinforced concrete is a viable, discrete masonry unit interchangeable with stone or brick—but can be formed into all kinds of unique shapes due to coming in liquid form and hardening through hydration. This opens up all kinds of possibilities, and has immediate implications at Building Culture.

2. The next evolution of “mass wall masonry” may very well be to reduce the mass for lighter and more efficient structures – which also happens to bring down costs, materials and carbon. Mastery of something is very often tied to increased efficiency – that is, doing away with everything that isn’t necessary. The fastest runners, for example, learn to limit any extra movement so that everything is in service of running faster. They only make movements that are necessary. The same can be applied to “mastery of masonry,” I think. This is a whole new world for us to explore at Building Culture, and I’m stoked.

Austin Tunnell is the Founder of Building Culture and a real estate developer. His mission is to create a more beautiful, resilient, and thriving world through the built environment.

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Last year, I attended Reconvene in Santa Monica – a real estate private equity “un-conference,” as they describe it. It was a great experience. The venues were stunning – like dinner-on-the-beach-stunning – the food and drink were top-notch, but most importantly, the people were really impressive.

“Combustible Collisions”

The guest list was curated, mainly consisting of developers (GPs) and investors (LPs), but also a smattering of architects, brokers, and other industry professionals. While everyone there had put together at least one deal, there was a wide range of experience, from people early in their real estate career to people who have been doing it for forty years and have billions in AUM (assets under management).

For me, it was an amazing opportunity to learn and network. I’ve been running a design + build company for eight years, but I’m still relatively new to the GP and syndication game. Spending a few days with people who are further down the path is one of the best ways to grow. If you want to get better at something, hang out with people who are already doing it.

Reconvene is called an “un-conference” because the formal talks are minimal and optional. Instead, most of the value comes from organic conversations. With over 220 people in attendance, Moses (the host) takes the time to curate the guest list and even arranges small group meals based on questionnaires to foster the right connections. It’s thoughtful — and it works.

Groups like this have a high probability of combustible collisions – actionable relationships that can lead to all kinds of exciting things.

How Twitter Changed My Business

Here’s the crazy part. This all started on Twitter. Yes, Twitter. I only created my personal account on Twitter in October 2023, literally one year ago, and stumbled upon what’s known as “ReTwit,” a community of top real estate investors and operators who share insights, deals, and sometimes even raise money on the platform. It also happens to be the origins of Reconvene.

It’s an incredible network of knowledge and people.

This is where I first came across Moses. I stumbled upon his account, and his pinned investment philosophy immediately caught my attention:

Our strategy is simply to do what smart families have always done:

1. Acquire great assets in supply-constrained markets

2. Leverage them conservatively

3. Steward them well

4. Refinance them opportunistically to return capital tax-efficiently

5. Hold them indefinitely

Simple, but powerful.

Fast Money = Fast Architecture

In today’s world, there’s a rush to chase high IRRs (Internal Rate of Return) and quick exits. But something about Moses’s approach feels….timeless. It’s not about flipping properties or quick profits – it’s about long-term stewardship. And that really struck a chord with me.

Internal Rate of Return (IRR) didn’t rise to prominence as an investment metric until the 1950’s with the rise of corporate finance. Isn’t that right around the time everything in the built environment started going to hell?

I’m no academic or historian, so please take this with a grain of salt, but I absolutely think there is a correlation here. Of course, many other factors contributed to the decline of our cities since the 1950’s as well – such as authoritarian zoning practices and government-sanctioned segregation and destruction of inner cities through Urban Renewal. More on that another time.

But finance, no doubt, plays a large role.

Form Follows Finance

R. John Anderson, a leader in the New Urbanism movement, often says of architecture and development, “form follows finance”. I couldn’t agree more.

Our financial systems and incentives dictate much of what gets built today. I’ll be writing more on this topic in the future, but if you want to dig deeper now, I highly recommend the book Escaping the Housing Trap by Chuck Marohn and Daniel Herriges. It’s an eye-opening look at how financialization has transformed our built environment – much of it government mandated.

You Can’t Build Timeless Architecture Without Timeless Financial Principles

At Building Culture, we’re all about timeless principles – whether it’s in design, construction or investment. We believe in blending the best of the old with the best of the new.

When I saw Moses’s investment philosophy, it struck me as a timeless truth. There may be other ways to invest. There may be other ways to make (and lose) money faster. But they’re often much higher risk and extractive. Yet people have been using Moses’s strategy for hundreds of years to build real wealth, not just for themselves, but for society.

Moses is doing this with value-add multi-family in California. Why not apply the same thinking to ground-up, mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods here in Oklahoma?

That’s exactly what we are going to do.

Pivoting to a Long-Term Hold Strategy

As many of you know I’ve been raising money for Townsend, a ground-up, mixed-use infill neighborhood. Originally, the plan was to sell everything within five years – a typical time frame in today’s market.

But a couple of months ago, I went back to our investors with a new idea: let’s pivot to a long-term hold. We’ll sell the residential units, but keep the commercial spaces long-term. We meet all of Moses’ requirements for investment:

1. Quality real estate? You bet. We are developing, designing and building it ourselves, and you all know our product.

2. Supply constrained market? Absolutely – urban infill is tough, difficult to replicate, and inherently constrained.

3. Steward it Well? We plan to manage it ourselves to curate the right tenants over time, and move our Building Culture offices into one of the spaces so we can participate in the community.

4. Conservative Leverage? That’s what we baked into the pro forma.

5. Refinance opportunistically? Rather than sell, we can capture rent appreciation and pull out equity via refinancing, providing tax-free returns to our investors – in addition to normal cash flow and pass-through depreciation/interest deductions.

6. Hold indefinitely? While nothing is truly forever, downtown Edmond, where our project is located, is only going to improve over time. We believe in the success of Edmond long-term, are adding to its value with Townsend, and get to be stewards in the community of some of the premier real estate in downtown.

Looking Ahead

This is by no means a thorough analysis of our investment strategy or the financialization of the building industry. I’ll be writing more about all of this in the coming year – so stay tuned!

Austin Tunnell is the Founder of Building Culture and a real estate developer. His mission is to create a more beautiful, resilient, and thriving world through the built environment.

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This past May, I chatted with Bobby Fijan, a developer and the founder of Form, a data technology company that focuses on optimizing the efficiency and practicality of apartment floorplans. Fijan spends a lot of his time thinking about how floorplans can better accommodate families, and in turn, help cities accommodate children and young parents. We spoke about what got him interested in floorplans, how his ideas play out in the current real estate market, and how family-friendly apartments can become the norm in cities throughout the United States.

Adeleine Geitner: Do you mind starting with an introduction? What do you do now and how did you get there?

Bobby Fijan: Sure. I was homeschooled K-12, and I moved around the country. My dad was a professor and then a consultant, so I've lived in a few different college towns.

I first went to school out in LA, and I studied history and film. The deal I came up with with my mom was that if I studied history, I needed to either go to law school or have a secondary focus, so I ended up doing all my electives in math. When it turned out that I didn't want to work in Hollywood, I transferred to the University of Pennsylvania and I studied economics and statistics. I worked on a consulting team for a bit, and then I went back to graduate school to do applied math—moms are always right.

I ended up dropping out of the grad program to start a real estate development company with a few other people. I didn’t do it out of any interest in real estate, really, but because I liked the other guys—one of them had been a roommate of mine in college—and I think I was intrigued by the idea of being an entrepreneur.

The first project that we were all in on was this old hotel that had been converted into a seminary, and these guys were trying to convert them into apartments. I liked the idea, and it was neat to just try. I remember thinking: “Okay, cool. If I try this and waste my time and lose all my money over two years, I’ll go back to business school and I’ll have a cool story.”

That was 2011. I'd say the advantage of getting started at that time, and in a very small company—we had no money—was that you had to learn to do everything right.

My background is in math, so I could think about, say, how something looked in Excel. But you also need to lease apartments. You need to go through applications. Since we didn't have enough money to hire other people, we ended up doing a lot of that ourselves. We didn't even hire lawyers. Instead, I had to be very judicious when we called our zoning attorney. We learned to do a lot of things on our own.

If you go to Wall Street—or something like that—and you work on the investment side of real estate, you're going to understand the Excel side, but you may not understand what it really means. The example I always use is the way that every pro forma looks: you'll have a constant number of units leased, maybe ninety-five percent. Every month, 10 units move out and 10 units move in. That doesn't really click until you realize what it is like to find out at 5 o'clock that someone moved out, there’s a new lease starting tomorrow, and “Oh my gosh! This person's destroyed the carpet.” So you learn a lot of different stuff. That first experience was awesome.

We did a few historic conversion projects, and some infill projects, and we ended up with a lot of units with very odd floor plans. Given my background on the math side, I thought a lot about ‘how should these units be designed?’ and ‘how should they be priced according to that design?’ As we were going through the design process, I realized that units were being designed based on a function of my personal preference, but why did that matter? I'm not renting these apartments.

And I also thought, “You're not going to live here based on how large the kitchen or the closet is, right? That shouldn't be the thing that matters.” But it is. And it ends up that the developers, and maybe a few architects, are the people making these decisions.

So that was, I think, the genesis of my thinking about floor plans.

Then on the personal side, my wife and I met at school and ended up staying in Philadelphia. We had a church downtown, so we wanted to live as close to there as possible, which meant living in an apartment. We sort of fell into figuring out what it was like to have a family with kids in that setting. Even if we did have the perfect floor plan, we also knew how hard it is when you don't know anyone else in the area. My wife started a preschool at our church because there just weren't any in the area.

So as a kid, as a parent, and as a professional, I’ve seen how these things matter.

AG: You’ve written about a chicken or egg problem, in which banks perpetuate similar development patterns when deciding which apartments to finance by favoring previously successful models. Could you explain this dilemma?

BF: In a market-rate housing environment, a lot of the reasons people build for a very specific demographic—early twenties to maybe early thirties, predominantly single—is because that's what everyone else has done. This trend means it's very easy to show that people can rent to that specific cohort, that safe demographic. So without good data to show that people want something else, we just keep building the same thing. It ends up being forced demographic turnover.

There are many worse problems in the world; I don’t need to worry that a 27-year-old software engineer from Google has to move from, say, San Francisco out to Walnut Creek [a San Fransisco suburb] to be able to start a family. And yet, I'd say there is a loss to the city when there's a constant churn of people. Every time a 27-year-old from downtown becomes a 32-year-old, gets married, has a child, and moves out—I think that's a loss.

Where I've ended up focusing professionally is on that particular cohort, and realizing the things I can affect and the things I can't. There are way bigger problems than anything any real estate developer or organization could do, but I believe in floor plans. I believe in families and cities. Still, schools are the biggest thing. Anything that people can do to fix schools is really going to be the decisive factor between families being in the city long term and families leaving.

AG: Given the many factors that affect new parents’ decision to leave the center city, where do you see family-oriented floor plans having an influence?

BF: For the couple having their first kid, up to the age of 12 months, every little kid just sleeps all the time. They don't go to school. If these young families already live in the city, there is nothing in these early stages of starting a family forcing them out other than design—the apartment unit’s interior layout. With a good product design and good product marketing, we can increase the likelihood, I think, that people will stay downtown in an apartment with their first kid. They already love their neighborhood. They probably don't want to have to change churches or find a new grocery store. It's incredibly annoying to navigate new grocery aisles, right? Even when you go on vacation.

So that’s my general idea. I hope that by using what I’ve learned as a developer, I can give people that option to stay. I want people to feel like they aren’t forced to choose between “I love my neighborhood” and “I want to have a kid.”

AG: Jane Jacobs popularized her idea of the sidewalk ballet, and children are the central pieces of the analogy—in a well-designed place, you should be able to raise a child and let them move on the street with neighbors and shopkeepers there to watch them. I saw a conversation you contributed to on X about raising children in a city in which a user commented that the deficit of children in the city is a childcare problem, and likewise a money problem. You said it is not necessarily a money problem but a community problem. Can you expand on that?

BF: Well, it is the Internet, and on one hand, it forces you to be…unnuanced, or slightly contrarian. So childcare is, of course, a money problem, partially. Things don't just happen without money or people caring about it.

But I would say that I think childcare is not just a money problem. I don’t think I would have lived downtown had it not been for our church—particularly given that our church has a lot of people from, I'd say, a breadth of demographics. So we could go and talk to people who had raised their kids in the city. They weren’t anywhere near our age, but we could say ‘Hey, Frank and Barbara, you've lived here for forty years. How did you do it?’ And they were able to tell us.

There were parents who said their children had different educational needs so they had to make certain accommodations and other people who sent their kids to public schools. It was fantastic.

But the main thing, the first cultural thing that is important, is that you need other people to have raised families in the city before you, and you need to be around those people. They can tell you it's possible. That to me is one of the biggest reasons why people have fewer children: when you just don't see people around you. If all you know is ‘the people I know move out of the city when they have kids,’ you’ll think that’s what you have to do.

I guess the point that I was trying to make in that Twitter exchange is that first, raising a child in the city is hard without a culture shift. I don't think you can say, “If we just push more money at it, then it must happen.” And I think there does need to be frankly, a common responsibility element, and an acknowledgment that it is difficult to raise kids anywhere.

The advocacy and the cohesion needed to make cities for children require both investment and a cultural shift. It isn't something that just happens. If we do leave things to just happen, then cities are going to keep going in the direction they are, which is primarily one that caters to high-income people who don’t have children—whether it’s before they have kids or once they’re empty nesters—because those groups have the most money and need the fewest services.

It's unfortunate that cities with dwindling numbers of children are looking at expenditures on schools and saying, “Man, that seems like a lot like, can we just cut services?” These things occur kind of naturally.

AG: That's great, and I appreciate that point because nuance does get lost on the Internet. In building places for children or families, what consideration have you given—if any—to building spaces where people can age in place or places for multi-generational families? Has that been something you thought about, either in general or specifically with floorplans?

BF: it's something I've thought about, but it isn't something that I've been able to think about actionably. I've talked to some senior housing developers, and I'd maybe say I'm not quite the person to do it. I think the reason why I am good at the stuff for little kids and for families is because I've been through that both professionally and personally.

There is a problem in that a bunch of older folks live in these single-family homes and there isn't a new product for people to move in. There's a lack of starter homes, et cetera. Where that is related to what I do building apartments for families is in the lack of apartments in the United States that are being built with what I'd call a ‘product-oriented design.’ I'd say the design philosophy for ninety-nine percent of apartments in the United States is to say, “How can I build something that offends as few people as possible,” right? You build so that people don't hate it rather than building to delight.

That can be evidently seen from the fact that every floor plan is the same. I could do an experiment for four hundred consecutive days, showing two floor plans side-by-side on Twitter and saying, “Is this in New York City or Amarillo, Texas?” and no one would have any idea. The layout is identical. To me, that's a perfect example that there is no product differentiation and there should be, because New York is not similar to Amarillo.

In that same way, a lot of people say, “Why don't families want to rent two-bedroom apartments?” And I always say, “Look at the floorplan.” It is built with equal-size bedrooms, where each bedroom has an en suite bathroom, and each bedroom has a large walk-in closet. There is no family on earth, especially a large family, who thinks that should be the way this space is laid out. It doesn't mean they hate two-bedrooms, or they hate urban infill apartments. It means that they hate that layout, right? The same is true for any product.

I would say the same thing is also true among senior housing. If you want older folks to move out of single-family homes, build great stuff for them. It's going to be risky to build, but there are projects that could do it. That, to me, is the only way you could do it. You couldn't just say, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you’ve lived in this home for a while, you don't have a mortgage anymore, your home has appreciated a lot in value. Sell your home and move somewhere else.” Still, there are not many people who are building to delight a 62-year-old couple looking to downsize but still need some space to host Thanksgiving.

AG: You’ve written about the tradeoff between an apartment’s shared amenities and each individual unit’s floor plans. Each requires an added investment, but different investments attract different people. You also describe how single-stair buildings may allow for better floor plans. Can you expand on this?

BF: I'd say that single-stair allows for better floor plans in a certain type of building, particularly in very small infill projects. I would also say that its application in the United States is going to be muted, even if legislation to expand it passes. It doesn’t build at the density that apartment developers look to build. Those are very small infill projects, and one of the reasons why not many apartment buildings go on small lots is because it is very difficult to build an apartment building large enough to afford the mandates—like a second staircase—on projects that are small.

In terms of how that affects the amenities, real estate is very hard to price. So, when people ask why one building got higher rents than another, there should be a reason, aside from location. The problem is, we can pretty easily track the finishes inside the unit, and the building’s amenities. And so when a certain amenity seems to do well in one building, it becomes a trend across other buildings.

For example, a few years ago in New York City, buildings getting the highest rents had underground basketball gyms. I don't think there's a huge swell of people looking for apartments with underground basketball gyms. But people end up saying “This building has an underground basketball court, so that means we must need that, too.” You sort of put yourself into an amenities arms race.

The problem lies in our inability to properly quantify what may actually be better for people. There was a guy who worked at the front desk at our building, and one day he found a tricycle near the trash, and he fixed it up and gave it to my 3-year-old kid. How much is that worth, right? An incredible amount. Because he knew our kids and we felt incredibly safe and taken care of. There is no chance we would have moved from that to another place, and yet you could never capture that in an Excel sheet. That level of service and care and true community trumps any movie theater room.

AG: I was reading a Vox article that you were quoted in, and the author began by describing young people’s preferences to move to big cities for the urban amenities—public transportation, good bike paths and coffee shops, et cetera. I wanted to ask you what you think about the role these family-oriented apartments play in more Southern cities, ones that may not have all the amenities the author described but are receiving a lot of growth.

BF: One of the reasons I focus on floor plans and compare units that are basically the same size is to show that if we built the exact same thing, but with a slight change, it makes the unit incrementally more family-friendly. That's also why I continue to focus on the 28 to 32-year-old rather than the 24 to 28-year-old, because even a developer would rather have people live in their unit a little bit longer. And I don't know anyone who finds out they’re pregnant and thinks “I'm psyched to move,” right? Having a baby and moving combines two of the most stressful things. Yet, our apartments aren’t designed to solve that.

So I think the topic I focus on is narrow enough to apply to both big northeastern cities and sprawling cities in the southeast. If you see a lot of units I post about on X, I say “Here's the typical one-bedroom floor plan. It's 750 square feet and has a walk-in closet. All we're changing is the walk-in closet to, maybe a home office or a nursery, and that's it. It doesn't change anything about cost. It allows someone who finds out that they're pregnant to have the baby, and worry about moving later.”

That is applicable everywhere in the South, everywhere. Family-friendly floor plans enable someone to move to an area—the Research Triangle, maybe—get a job, and they don't have to buy a house when they decide to have a kid. They can continue to live close to downtown because they already love that area. That, I think, is broadly applicable to all places.

A step beyond a newborn requires more. It helps to maybe have family nearby, or other childcare up to age four. Then you may need a preschool or more advanced childcare, then affordable—public—elementary schools, et cetera. But the very specific thing that I look at—floorplans—are applicable in projects anywhere.

Designing cities for families will need to go far beyond floorplans. It will require street design—bike lanes, et cetera—and that is incredibly hard. And there are so many things beyond floorplans that matter once your children are a little bit older. But starting out, a 3-month-old spends a lot of time, you know, sleeping.

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Adeleine Geitner is a senior at Duke University studying public policy and economics. She is the Duke Urban Studies Initiative Fellow on Sprawl Repair and Nodal Development.

by Robert Steuteville

Public Square is highlighting top articles from 2024. Cottage courts, also called pocket neighborhoods, are small single houses built around a green space. This “missing middle” type is a highly social way to build housing. Residents share a common outdoor living room, which allows residents to get to know and support one another. The cottage court also enables higher density, groups parking together out of the way, and is adaptable to many kinds of urban and suburban locations. Here's a great example in Edmond, Oklahoma:

Pocket neighborhoods designed around mid-block cottage courts are a notable trend in New Urbanism. They have several advantages, especially on infill sites. The houses are sited on small lots, taking advantage of a high-quality open space serving all residents. They achieve decent density, due to the lot size and efficient parking, which is typically grouped together.

Pocket neighborhoods also create a strong sense of community, offering a “missing middle” living choice often lacking in the larger neighborhood. The mid-block design allows for a cozy urbanism that avoids street design problems that frequently plague existing city blocks.

The Ember, breaking ground in Edmond, Oklahoma, offers a case study in current pocket neighborhood design. The Ember replaces a nondescript single-family house on two acres with 23 living spaces—mostly cottages, along with five accessory dwellings. About a third of the site, adjacent to a busy street on the east side, is preserved as trees. The housing is walkable to the city’s main street, Broadway, and about a half mile from the center of town.

The Ember is one of two Edmond pocket neighborhoods under development by Matthew Myers of Switchgrass Capital. Union Studio of Providence, Rhode Island, designed it. A video podcast, embedded at the bottom of this article, features Myers and Donald Powers, founder of Union Studio, discussing The Ember in detail.

Myers described The Ember's mission in three concepts:

1. Promoting healthy community and friendships.

2. Designing cozy and well-appointed homes, and spaces within them.

3. Creating a place where people would feel warm, welcome, and connected.

The Ember underwent several design iterations. The final design was chosen so that every resident would feel connected to a central gathering space at the heart of the project, reinforcing social bonds. The cottage court at the center is large enough for children to play but also includes adult features like a large outdoor fireplace. Cottages face the court or a perpendicular pathway leading into the court. Steps lead from the court down to another small gathering space, which has a small pond and swimming pool, by the woody area.

Living spaces are mostly oriented to the interior court. Still, cottages on the edges are also designed so that the block's perimeter is well-defined with welcoming frontages for the surrounding community.

“No design can create community, but a design can help or hinder people to act,” Powers explains to Myers. “So, we are just trying to stack the odds in favor of having a casual conversation. By putting the mailboxes all in one place, you create a moment to sit on a park bench and go through the junk mail. That person might have a conversation with a neighbor doing the same thing. There are all sorts of things you can do in a design to encourage the kind of mission you [Myers] talked about.”

Edmond is a city of 94,000 people just north of Oklahoma City. A report in the Journal Record newspaper notes that “Oklahoma City and Edmond are updating zoning codes to allow for more walkable and mixed-use development that focuses on people and how they want to live.”

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Robert Steuteville, F-CNU, is editor of Public Square: A CNU Journal and senior communications adviser for the Congress for the New Urbanism.

republished via Public Square | Follow | Attend CNU 33 Providence June 11-14, 2025

Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogota, Columbia, has described children as “a kind of indicator species” for building good cities. “If we can build a successful city for children,” he says, “we will have a successful city for all people.” The Instagram post by Strong Towns illustrates this concept well:

Thinking about good city-building in these terms sheds light on why many Americans today trust each other, and the institutions they count on, less.  Many parents do not feel safe letting their children play around the corner from their home or walk to the park with their friends. When the neighborhood feels unsafe for children, it feels unsafe, period.

The news, with its necessary obsession with crime, plays a role in parents' feelings of uneasiness. But if parents could look out the window and see a street designed for their children—clearly defined crosswalks that deter cars from slipping the corners at high speeds, buffered bike lanes, doorsteps, and porches that hover close to the sidewalk and keep watch over the street—the rhetoric of the news would lose its grip.  

Because to put it darkly, our streets are not designed for safety. Even if crime is not nearly as prevalent as it feels given the time devoted to it on the news, many streets can look or feel high-risk. The very atmosphere of many neighborhoods in the United States, once one leaves the comfort of their lawn, is hostility.  

In the very first chapter of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs chooses not to focus on the hot topics of affordable housing or urban renewal, but “The Uses of Sidewalks: Safety.” This simple determinant of security has been documented in clear prose for sixty years, yet cities continue to orient themselves in opposition to this advice.

The underlying consequence of building cities in a way that is not hospitable to society’s most vulnerable population is a lack of trust.  Trust is the foundation of all institutions and relationships in this country, and when things begin to go awry, a weakening of social trust is sure to be felt. 

When our roads feel dangerous and unpredictable, we constrain our mental boundaries of what feels safe for our children, and likewise, what is safe, generally.  And when we limit the scope of what we call safe, we spend less time interacting with our neighbors down the road and listening to folks who differ slightly. Issues well-documented on the radio today around the fate of democracy and the division of parties are rooted in a common resistance to listen to differing viewpoints and make an effort to understand—agreement not necessary—our neighbors.

Trust is something that must be consciously maintained, hence the English tendency to discuss it in terms of “building trust.” This tendency serves a literal meaning in addition to its figurative one.  Trust is ingrained in the way our cities are built. 

For parents to trust their children will be safe riding their bikes down the street, that road must be built to accommodate children riding their bikes down it. Homes should be situated such that neighbors pass each other on their way to and from work, and shops should abut the sidewalk to provide the securing watch of storekeepers and customers on the goings on outside. 

The latter ideas rely on more fundamental changes to the way our cities are designed and laid out. But street-level changes may be in reach on any street. More and more local organizations are leading street pop-ups, using paint and the occasional planter to enhance curb extensions and brighten crosswalks. Not only do these streets encourage slower driving, but they also look like streets made for children. With bright colors and fun designs, popups like these can make a street that once felt unsafe for children more inviting.

Trust is a desirable good. Going forward, the way we consciously design our cities will build or break it. Trust is also a tool. In decisions both big and small, building to promote trust will have ripple effects. Neighbors who feel safe congregating in the street, at the park, and on the sidewalk will build relationships. Neighbors who know each other can count on each other for help and will look out for their neighbors in turn. So when the paint on the corner starts to wear off, neighbors will maintain it, and continue to brainstorm other ways to improve their community. Neighborhoods built to promote trust will breed more trust. In turn, neighbors will use their mutual trust to build better places.

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Adeleine Geitner is a rising senior at Duke University studying public policy and economics. She is the Duke Urban Studies Initiative Fellow on Sprawl Repair and Nodal Development.

In April, I had the great privilege of hearing 8 80 Cities founder Gil Penalosa speak about his organization and what he has in mind for the future of cities.  8 80 Cities is a non-profit that consults cities across the globe—over 350 in the past ten years—on their efforts to build more people-centered places.  People-centered, under their philosophy, refers to all people.  As their name suggests, a city built for people under eight years-old and over eighty is a city anyone can access, work within, and contribute to.  

Penalosa exhibits the energy of a man who spends his ideating moments appealing to the playful sensitivities of children. His lecture filled an hour and a half with what could have been a semester’s worth of content, clicking calmly but rapidly through an eight-hundred-plus slide deck that paired a picture with nearly every word.  

Penalosa is passionate about his work but like any great ideasman, is also openly critical of past wrongs.  A community member asked if he had tips for organizing an open streets biking event like the “Ciclovia” he initiated while the commissioner of parks and recreation for the city of Bogotá.  “Don’t put ‘bike’ in the name,” he said.  Folks will still bring bikes and enjoy the opportunity to ride their bikes freely, he explained, but focusing on biking may dissuade possible attendees.  A true open-street event should be just that: open to all uses, all ages, and all people.

Penalosa’s plan for cities is compelling because of its universal appeal.  An urban policy agenda that focuses on naturally supporting the most vulnerable—and likewise serving everyone else—is a position the right and left, citizens and developers, small and big cities can get behind.  In May, fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author Timothy Carney published a new book, Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Harder Than It Needs to Be, in which he advocates for a similar mission while taking a pro-family stance.  

Carney isn’t the only scholar currently questioning the state of American parenting.  On the left, Ezra Klein recently interviewed Caitlyn Collins, sociologist and author of “Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving,” to talk about how the birthrate in America is falling, and how the current culture around parenting has contributed to this phenomenon for better and worse. Increased female autonomy accounts for much of the fall, and likewise, discussions of lowering birth rates can seem outdated: isn’t this progress? Why worry if fewer women are starting families and instead starting careers? Why are we talking about birth rates, again?

The problem that Carney identifies is not just that fewer adults are starting families, but that fewer adults feel it is possible to both raise a family and live a happy life. The mental image of the hurried parent shuttling their child from piano lessons to their friend’s house to soccer practice is not an inviting one. And the problem, he describes, is not just cultural. It is also a matter of our built environment.

When home prices weren’t inflated by constricted supply, when small lot starter homes were legal to build and abundant, when schools were around the corner, not zoned to the edge of cities where traffic wouldn’t bother anyone, and when sending children down the street to play when a parent needed to tend to other tasks was the norm, parenting was that much simpler.  

In other words, pro-family urbanism is having a moment. The term, like pro-family policy, may put folks on both sides of the aisle, worried about government intervention in matters like marriage and child-rearing, on edge.  To give it a definition, pro-family urbanism is a method of city-building that supports the raising of a person, and in doing so lessens, rather than worsens, the burdens of raising a family.  Essentially, it is the 8 80 city.  It is building a city in which both the child and the grandparent can grow and thrive and experience life-giving independence.

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Adeleine Geitner is a rising senior at Duke University studying public policy and economics. She is the Duke Urban Studies Initiative Fellow on Sprawl Repair and Nodal Development.

After exploring case studies across the South, it is clear that many planners want a little more GOD in their cities. No, not religion - I’m talking about greenway-oriented development, a fresh approach to urban growth that completely changes how a community might interact with its greenspaces. From Atlanta's BeltLine to the Razorback Greenway in Northwest Arkansas, concentrating housing, retail, and offices around greenways has many benefits. As more municipalities explore greenway-oriented development (GOD), here are some things to consider as your city plans its next greenway-oriented project. 

Pave the Way with Planning and Regulations

One of the biggest hurdles is that traditional zoning codes often aren't designed to accommodate GOD. In various cities, planners and developers struggled to conform to the zoning codes while also creating properties that interacted with the greenway effectively. Permitting processes, parking minimums, density limits, and setback requirements frequently push development outward rather than oriented toward recreational amenities. Updating land use regulations to incentivize trail-oriented buildings and districts will make an enormous difference as these developments crop up.

Strategies might include designating greenway-oriented development overlay zones, reducing parking requirements in trail-adjacent areas, allowing higher densities and reduced setbacks for projects fronting greenways, and revising permitted uses to enable the right mix of residential/commercial activations. It is integral to do this for both residential and commercial properties, as this type of development relies on both to be successful.

Balance Density with Environmental Protection  

While increased density can bring investment and vibrancy, concentrating too much development directly adjacent to sensitive trail corridors risks degrading the outdoor experiences meant to be showcased. Rather than turning the greenway into a sidewalk, it is more effective to preserve generous greenbelts and vegetative buffering. This will not only keep the greenway green, but it will also mitigate impacts like noise, light pollution, and overcrowding.  

Environmental performance standards, low-impact stormwater controls, dark sky lighting requirements, and landscape guidelines can further this balance. Acquiring surrounding land for conservation prevents overdevelopment from encroaching on the natural side of greenways.

Activate Destinations through Programming

Merely placing buildings along trails isn't enough - envisioning trails as activated "park-once" districts strengthens the urban/nature connection. Designing lively public plazas, integrating public art, allowing outdoor dining, and hosting community events like markets or fitness meetups creates dynamic anchors to bring new visitors to the greenway. Oftentimes, properties around greenways will activate it themselves, but municipalities can help develop these event calendars to ensure success.

Multimodal Connectivity is Key

While every city's mobility needs differ, municipalities should ensure robust pedestrian and cycling infrastructure linking neighborhoods to greenways. It is integral to prioritize safe street crossings, protected bike lanes, and seamless transitions between the urban streetscape and recreational trails. If it is possible to integrate these districts into public transportation offerings, that would make it even stronger. 

Engage the Private Sector

While there is plenty of public enthusiasm for increased trail and park accessibility, private capital is necessary to create the types of spaces envisioned by many planners. In Atlanta, there has been strong evidence of increased property value when developing adjacent to the BeltLine, however, more data quantifying this "GOD premium" could spur greater buy-in. Public-private partnerships, developer education, and strategic land acquisition can further align interests.

As more municipalities explore greenways as frameworks for resilient urban growth, projects across the South are showcasing how interweaving our built and natural environments can fuel opportunities for development. By implementing this type of growth, cities can harness the full potential of greenway-oriented development to shape healthier, more sustainable communities for the future.

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Sonia Birla is a student at UNC Charlotte majoring in Finance, Geography, and International Studies. She is the James Hardie Fellow for Urban Development Spring 2024.

This past May, student fellows at Southern Urbanism attended the thirty-second national gathering of the Congress of New Urbanism (CNU) in downtown Cincinnati. While there, the fellows caught up with urbanists from all over the United States and beyond to chat about their work. Each interviewee was asked three questions about what they do and the goals that their work advances. The conversations have been edited for length and clarity.

Andrew Clum is the co-founder of Overhead Studios, an architecture and urban design firm based in Miami, Florida. He received his masters in Architecture from Yale University and his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Miami School of Architecture, where he returns regularly as a guest lecturer.

AG: Could you describe what your firm does? What is your mission and what brought y’all to it?

AC: I guess the mission kind of came out of my education. We’re still involved in education and really interested in lifelong learning. So the firm, we have a super diverse set of things that we do for just being two people. We’ve done everything from furniture design and interior design all the way up to master planning and TOD planning on the regional scale.

AG: Southern Urbanism focuses specifically, as the name suggests, on practitioners working in the South and the problems or opportunities you run into specifically being in a Southern atmosphere. You’re in Miami, you said, can you speak to any of those challenges or perks?

AC: Yeah. You know, I feel like Miami is one of the few places where I would say you have to drive north to get to the South. There’s a lot of, especially financially with developers, a lot of connections with the Northeast. But generally, my experience growing up and living in Florida has been that there’s a really interesting way that the kind of rural-to-urban cultural divide, you might say, plays out. 

I feel like Florida is kind of a microcosm for the United States because so many of the same issues that happen across the country happen in Florida. The financial booms and bust, Florida has been described in the past as predicting cycles. So, you know, the 2008 financial crisis started to be predicted by 2006 craziness happening in the Florida financial markets. Same thing happened in the 1920s. So yeah, I feel like it's a good microcosm for a lot of social issues and economic issues too.

AG: What were you doing before this role and what advice do you have for someone who decides to start a firm? What does that look like, making the decision that that’s how you’re going to be an urbanist, by starting a firm?

AC: Before, I had worked for a couple different firms, and I was really lucky. I was able to find a lot of mentors to kind of facilitate the kind of entrepreneurial, kind of learning spirit within me, and they supported me going off on my own. And then, in terms of timing, I had gone to graduate school for two years, so when I graduated a year ago, it was just good timing: like “Okay, now let’s get started.”

It’s really scary and emotionally taxing [to start a firm], so do what you can to—I’ve heard the advice before, “If you’re starting a company, make sure you have something like ten to twelve months of savings for expenses.” You can also live with your parents. That’s what I did for a period of time. There are going to be moments where you question yourself and question what you’re doing. The other thing is that it can be very lonely. So finding either a business partner or just surrounding yourself with friends, family, mentors that will support you when things are scary and there’s a lot of uncertainty—that’s what I would do. Just kind of gird yourself up. You’re never going to be fully prepared, but I think other people around you will help you get through any kind of storm.

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Adeleine Geitner is a rising senior at Duke University studying public policy and economics. She is the Duke Urban Studies Initiative Fellow on Sprawl Repair and Nodal Development.

From Atlanta's BeltLine to the Razorback Greenway in Northwest Arkansas to the Urban District Market in Charlotte, cities around the country are leveraging greenways to unlock a new model of sustainable, amenity-rich urban growth. While this greenway-oriented development, or GOD, has sparked concerns, the potential upsides are proving transformative.

By concentrating new housing, offices, retail, and amenities along multi-use trail networks, greenway-oriented projects create a transit-adjacent, location-efficient pattern of development that reduces reliance on cars. This facilitates walkable, bikeable, energized urban districts where mobility and recreation are seamlessly intertwined-- emphasizing daily activity and sustainable transportation options.

High-quality trails and park spaces act as the spinal cord for GOD, centering mixed-use communities, green amenities, food options, and placemaking features to create a cohesive experience for the visitor. Placing housing directly alongside safe, connected routes for walking, running, and cycling creates built-in recreational opportunities and incentives for active living right outside one's front door. Plus, having these accessible destinations will only further increase use.

Perhaps the biggest pro for greenway-oriented districts is the built-in base of residents, workers, and visitors regularly interfacing with and benefitting from the trail networks. This expanded awareness and usage helps spur maintenance, programming, and community stewardship of these public amenities.

Of course, concerns about overcrowding, privatization, and loss of serenity along popular greenways are valid. Concentrating too much development directly adjacent to sensitive trail corridors risks degrading the very outdoor experiences and natural character that greenways are meant to protect and showcase.

This is why greenway-oriented districts must strike a careful balance through physical and regulatory buffering. Strategies like setting buildings and infrastructure back from trail corridors, preserving generous greenbelts, and implementing environmental performance standards are crucial to mitigate impacts while still activating urban connections to nature.

Another difficulty faced by many planners is the rigidity of zoning codes. Traditional development regulations make it very difficult to integrate greenways into the core design of buildings and communities. Requirements around setbacks, parking, density, and permitted uses often don't accommodate this new type of urban form.

Furthermore, despite the public enthusiasm for parks and greenways, private real estate capital has been slow to appreciate the potential premium that can be captured by developing directly oriented towards high-quality greenspace. It’s a newer method to be sure, and one that has yet to be universally proven.

As cities continue exploring greenway networks as frameworks for more sustainable patterns of urban growth, projects like the BeltLine, Razorback Greenway, and GOD in planning across the South, are demonstrating how bringing the built and natural environments into closer alignment can truly unlock the best of both worlds - resilient economic opportunities balanced with outdoor accessibility for all.

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Sonia Birla is a student at UNC Charlotte majoring in Finance, Geography, and International Studies. She is the James Hardie Fellow for Urban Development Spring 2024.

This past May, student fellows at Southern Urbanism attended the thirty-second national gathering of the Congress of New Urbanism (CNU) in downtown Cincinnati. While there, the fellows caught up with urbanists from all over the United States and beyond to chat about their work. Each interviewee was asked three questions about what they do and the goals that their work advances. The conversations have been edited for length and clarity.

Sara Joy Proppe is a real estate development and placemaking consultant committed to cultivating places that promote human flourishing.Her business, Proximity Project, consults churches in their efforts to be more community-focused through placemaking and creating partnerships with developers. She co-hosts The Embedded Church podcast and has co-authored two placemaking toolkits: Redemptive Placemaking: A Toolkit for Discerning Your Church's Mission in the Built Environment and Placemaking Your Main Street: Connecting Community & Commerce.

AG: First, would you mind giving your name and a bit about what you do?

SJP: Sure. My name is Sara Joy Proppe—I have two names because I’m from the South. I run a business called Proximity Project, which seeks to educate and activate churches to be stewards of their properties for the common good of their neighbirhoods. That takes a lot of shapes, from advising churches on placemaking, to doing full-scale affordable housing redevelopment projects on their properties. 

AG: For starters, Durham, North Carolina just passed a faith-based housing amendment in their zoning code. In an environment where the zoning already says, more or less, that such projects are a-go, what are your first steps advising churches to take advantage of such initiatives?

SJP: One of the things that I always start out with with churches [when considering an affordable housing project] is to explain to them the ‘art’ of development—what are the things that are really important to them as a church? What are their negotiables and their non-negotiables? That might be in terms of, you know, are they looking to make a revenue with the property? Are they looking to really meet a mission with the property? What is that mission? Do they want to have an ownership stake in the property or are they going to divest of the property to a developer to do this affordable housing? 

There are a lot of questions like that that I help them assess and work through. That way, as they begin those conversations with a potential developer, they understand how they might be able to frame the partnership, and whether or not it will be good for the church and good for the developer. Having those early conversations to really get them solid on who they are and what they're looking to accomplish through this work is really important so that they can be ready to be a good partner for a developer. 

AG: I can see how, from a city-building perspective, it makes sense for neighborhoods to want civic institutions or religious institutions to be more involved. Can you talk a bit about what the church’s perspective is, and why they may want to be a part of creating that community? 

SJP: Most Protestant churches are coming from the perspective of, you know, being called to love their neighbors, that we see in the Bible. I think for me, that's a lot of what I do when I work with churches—helping them understand that part of loving your neighbor is loving your neighborhood.

We think about how the way that space is built and the way that the environment is designed really has implications for people's quality of life—for example, whether or not they're able to thrive in connection with other people in the neighborhood, whether or not they're able to access affordable housing, or good jobs, or transportation to be able to get to where they need to go. Those are all really important things that make up part of who we are and whether or not we thrive as human beings. 

I think that, for churches historically, caring about and loving their neighbors is obviously really important, but they haven't necessarily thought about the actual built environment and how that's a contributor to that. So that's a lot of the work that I do with them, helping them understand that and helping them see their place in the neighborhood and how that has an implication for the livelihood of their actual neighbors. 

AG: Many churches today are dealing with dwindling attedance. Have you seen these projects work in churches that are—maybe not trying to increase their numbers—but wishing to attract more people to their church? Or do you have examples of projects that have had that effect? 

SJP: I always say that the work that I do isn't necessarily going to translate to new members. But what it will do, hopefully, is build trust with the community and build some of that goodwill. As a church thinks about programming and different ways that they can be involved in their community, the goal is to have the community’s trust, a willingness to come and participate in what they’re doing and who they are as a church. 

Sometimes that does actually translate to more church membership, or more willingness to give to the church and participate in their programming. It's hard to say you're going to get, you know, millions of dollars in donations and 500 new members.  But at the same time—being faithful with the little that you have—I do think that the Bible says that God blesses us when we bless others. We think about it not as this zero sum game, but as: when we give to the community, we flourish as well. 

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Adeleine Geitner is a rising senior at Duke University studying public policy and economics. She is the Duke Urban Studies Initiative Fellow on Sprawl Repair and Nodal Development.

Under photos of the Atlanta BeltLine on X are remarks like, ‘Why is your city not doing this?’ or ‘The beltline will make you believe in GOD.’ This 33-mile loop of multi-use trails and parks has sparked over $7 billion in private redevelopment investment along its path, transforming underutilized corridors into thriving properties connected by greenspace. 

This type of greenway-oriented development (GOD) makes ripples causing economic growth. Across the world, riverfronts and waterfronts have long catalyzed development. The most expensive properties are often developed around these natural, scenic gems. In other cities such as Charlotte, North Carolina, a public transit line can have the same effect. However, in a landlocked city like Atlanta, planners decided to reorient density inwards. 

The Atlanta BeltLine is a lot more than a long greenway. Not only does it offer mobility options for residents, but it has also been activated in all the right ways. From artist exhibitions to lantern festivals, something brings people back to the BeltLine over and over again.

The sheer ambition required tackling substantial legal and zoning hurdles-- not to mention garnering public buy-in for a massive $4 billion investment. Critics raised concerns about overcrowding popular trails and clashing with nature lovers. Over a decade later, that careful balance has paid dividends. Public demand for walkable, trail-connected communities is palpable with over 2 million visitors hiking and biking the BeltLine in 2018 alone. And with new segments continuing to take shape, the project is catalyzing billions more in private investment as developers race to capitalize on trail-oriented growth.

Until recently, most cities lacked the expansive greenway networks needed to anchor major real estate development. Atlanta's BeltLine is one of the first examples of a city developing a long-vacant rail corridor into a successful multi-use trail loop around the urban core. Eric Kronberg of Kronberg Urbanists and Architects commented, “There have been billions of dollars of investment provided, and it really feels like developers just needed some basic guidance on how to prioritize locations.  I’m not sure many ‘believe’ in the Beltline in terms of mobility alternatives, but they definitely believe people are willing to pay a premium to be near it.”

While every city's needs differ, the BeltLine represents a pioneering model for smart urban redevelopment in the 21st century. By leveraging pre-existing corridors as an extra boost for development, cities can inject new economic vitality while expanding access to nature - rather than trampling it. For trail advocates and mixed-use developers alike, it's an inspiring vision for blazing more sustainable growth.

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Sonia Birla is a student at UNC Charlotte majoring in Finance, Geography, and International Studies. She is the James Hardie Fellow for Urban Development Spring 2024.