Urbanists Are Fighting a Land War. We Should Act Like It.
Ground in the U.S. is up for grabs. We should fight for it.
I spend a lot of time on Loopnet. I love browsing property listings and letting my imagination run wild dreaming on their potential.
It’s both fun and motivating to dream on how these hypothetical developments in my head can become signposts of a better development pattern in their given contexts.
But it can also be discouraging.
As a poorly-bankrolled, still-networking 26-year-old, I know the properties I’m looking at will be purchased, and probably be developed into uninspiring commercial pads, by the time I’ll be able to start bringing these visions into reality.
And watching key parcels of town after town fall victim to our economically unproductive development patterns is like watching territory fall into enemy hands in the heat of war. In this case, a literal land war.
When you’re talking about 50-plus acre parcels in strategic parts of small- to mid-sized towns, “We’ll get ‘em next time” is not a particularly comforting sentiment. The damage, at least for the foreseeable future, has already been done.
Verdunity founder Kevin Shepherd wrote a thread on Twitter last week documenting his own similar angst. (Click the tweet below to see the full thread)
As Kevin writes in the thread, “we need to do more, faster.”
While the movement for better city-building has seen many wins in recent years, it simply is not stacking a sufficient enough number of victories to have any shot of winning the war.
In 1979, the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies created a secret plan to defeat NATO over the span of a week. It was called “Seven Days to River Rhine,” an admittedly awesome name for a not-so-awesome plan to start a global nuclear war.
The plan, while complex in execution, had three basic objectives:
Destroy NATO’s headquarters in Berlin
Demoralize NATO civilians
Eliminate key port cities throughout Germany and Denmark to cut off NATO reinforcements
The Soviet plan emphasized that both nuclear bombing and rapid ground invasions were critical to success. If they could execute on both, it would be nearly impossible for NATO to win the hypothetical World War III.
While (luckily) never put into action, Seven Days to River Rhine provides two tactical insights for how urbanists can win our own land war for the future of American cities:
Ground Wars Reward Bias Toward Action
The takeaway here should not be that the world needs more nuclear weapons. Let’s start there.
That said, NATO was set to lose this hypothetical war because their strategy was largely reactionary. Similarly, the Soviets ultimately lost the Cold War in part because they never executed their masterplan for victory.
So much study and action in the urbanism space is focused on fixing what is broken and retrofitting bad development.
But there are still thousands upon thousands of undeveloped acres for sale in strategic locations in cities across the United States. Urbanists need to organize around acquiring and developing these parcels to transform towns that have not yet been severely crippled by damaging development patterns.
If our plans revolve solely around responding to damage that has already been done, we lose.
Ground Wars Take Organized Manpower
As powerful as nuclear weapons are, the Soviets recognized that even nukes alone would not make their plan successful.
In the same way, urbanists cannot win the land war for America’s future with solely financial might or immense political capital. It will also take organizing developers, planners, entrepreneurs, writers, and advocates around identified strategic targets.
When zoning reform victories are won or strategic parcels are acquired (i.e., “nuked”), the ground invasion needs to be ready to go.
Storytellers need to cast accessible and compelling vision. Advocates need to engage local politicians. Developers and planners need to get things built. Entrepreneurs need to launch corner stores and restaurants that provide a sense of place.
And all groups need to be work together, rather than siloed on islands, or they become easier for opposition to pick off one by one.
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We need to do more, faster. To do it, we need strategy, we need resources, and we need each other’s help.
So this week we’re just going to bump the weekly “One Action to Get You Started” up above the fold.
Your action step this week is to start finding your tribe. And get outside your own profession; any good army has multiple types of soldiers.
We need developers to acquire land and build places that facilitate human flourishing. We need planners who can champion better land use and transportation policies in their local contexts. We need writers and storytellers that can engage the public in a compelling way. We need lenders and bankers who help can finance projects. We need local officials who can ensure zoning boards and city councils aren’t standing in the way of improving our cities.
When you’ve built up this kind of army, you have what it takes to win.
So send out some texts, some emails, and some DMs. Schedule some coffee chats and Zoom calls. I’m happy to be a part of that; my DMs on Twitter are always open: https://twitter.com/MichaelNatelli
Get connected, get organized, and get moving. Let’s win the war.
One Thing to Get Excited About:
Last Thursday, Oregon approved what some are calling “the largest rollback to parking mandates in modern US history”.
The administrative action by the state’s land use commission now makes it possible for Oregon’s eight largest cities to effectively do away with parking minimums, with other smaller municipalities now having more discretion to roll back parking requirements as well.
We’ve already seen cities like San Jose make major parking reforms in recent months, and hopefully Oregon is just the first of many states to do the same.
One Resource to Check Out:
Last Thursday, Brent Toderian solicited keys to better cities that are five words or less.
If you’re looking for bite-sized inspiration, the replies are filled with hundreds of great ideas.