So life got busy there for a minute. But Hope in Cities is back, and I couldn’t be more excited for the new year.
We’re back on our weekly Tuesday cadence, and I think you’re going to enjoy what we have teed up over the next several months.
A Few Things I’ve Been Thinking About
I’m sure I’ll do longer posts on each to these in the coming weeks and months, but here’s a few things I’ve been musing over the last few months:
Stadiums are having a moment. We’re seeing record public investments in new arenas and “sports entertainment districts.” The math on these public investments seldom benefits the cities and states that make them, but that hasn’t seemed to stop the new stadium gold rush. So even as we continue to make the case against these kinds of investments, we should also be imagining how to make the best of them. The degree to which we can turn these stadiums into anchors of thriving neighborhoods is the degree to which we can offset these disastrous investments.
Urbanist messaging often misses the mark, because there should really be two kinds of urbanism: “metropolitan urbanism” and “town urbanism.” There are principles that span across cities and towns of all sizes, but we need better ways of contextualizing those principles to places of different sizes. Otherwise, even though it’s probably not our intent, the reality is that what will be heard by the masses is we want to turn their 9,000-person town into New York City.
I’ve seen a lot of anti-ADU discourse of late. ADUs won’t single-handedly solve the housing crisis, but they’re still a great individual solution, especially as a short- and medium-term solution while transition cities into being more affordable places with a broader range of housing options.
Some Goals I Have, And How You Can Help
I have several goals I’m hoping to accomplish in 2024, but the two most important are to grow this newsletter and to build community around bringing more people into the city building movement.
Growing the Newsletter: It’s pretty simple. This newsletter was created to advance pragmatic, hopeful frameworks and ideas around shaping our built environment toward human flourishing, and I want to get that message to more people. Referrals are worth their weight in gold for newsletters, so I’d be eternally grateful if you could help spread the word!
Growing the City Building Community: Last May, I launched The City Builders Collective to help make it easier for those who’ve stumbled into the urbanism community (like I did) to find their place in the city building movement. We’ll be launching a podcast here in the new year, and have some other things planned as well, but the resource I’m most excited about is the job board.
Every week, I search the internet and curate dozens of “city building” jobs and internships that would be potentially good fits for those without a long resume in planning, real estate, or other adjacent industries. It still needs some tweaks to make searching and sorting easier, but opportunities are live and ready to go.
There’s two ways you can help: First, please help spread the word about the job board! January’s one of the most common times of year for job searching, and being on the hunt is never a fun process. I’d be grateful if you can help me get this free resource into the hands of more job seekers!
Second, if you have an opportunity to pass along/include, you can reply to this email or DM me on Twitter/X!
A Few Of My Favorite Posts from 2023
We’ll be back to your regularly-scheduled programming next week! In the meantime, here’s a few of my favorite posts from 2023:
Watching the stadium issue play out here in DC. You've got a neighborhood that is fairly dependent on stadium traffic in D.C.'s Chinatown and the owners now want to move to a new area across the river where there is essentially a blank slate.
Great stuff, Michael! - I actually saw a job on your job board in which I am interested...