Upzoned

Would you welcome a massive data center to your town if the developer promised your household $1,000 every year? That's the offer facing residents of De Soto, Kansas, in Isabella Ledonne's article, “De Soto Data Center Plans to Offer $1,000 to Households, but Neighbors Say They're Not So Sure.” Norm Van Eeden Petersman examines the deal with Greg Miller of the Center for Land Economics and Strong Towns Chief Technical Advisor Edward Erfurt. The project could bring enormous new property value, but much of the resulting tax revenue may be tied up financing infrastructure for the development itself. The developer is offering residents a cut of the profits, but how much could the community be leaving on the table? ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) Greg Miller (LinkedIn) Edward Erfurt (LinkedIn) Articles mentioned and Downzone: Don’t Reject Data Centers. Negotiate Harder. (Article) You Can See Everything (Movie) The Blackthorn Key by Kevin Sands (Book Series) Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.   This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

“Build it and they will come” sounds confident until the project is finished and nobody comes. The Neighborhood Playbook, a placemaking guide built around testing what people actually respond to before making larger investments, turns 10 this year. Carlee Alm-LaBar revisits it with coauthor Joe Nickol of Yard & Company and Max Musicant of The Musicant Group, asking what a decade of use says about planning places through action instead of prediction. The tension between planning and doing remains: how much should a place decide up front, and how much should it discover through action? ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES "Activating Spaces and Developing Places with "The Neighborhood Playbook"" by John Pattison, Strongtowns.org  Downzone: Strong Towns National Gathering in Sacramento, California June 4-7 2027 (Site) More Than True: The Wisdom of Fairy Tales by Robert Bly (Book) Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Updated and Expanded by David Graeber (Book) Daily Dad (Site) Hell on Wheels (Site) Carlee Alm-LaBar (LinkedIn) Joe Nickol (LinkedIn), Yard & Co. (Site) Max Musicant (LinkedIn), The Musicant Group (Site). Practice of Place (Substack) Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.   This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

Edmonton changed its zoning to allow more homes in existing neighborhoods, and Alberta has now given the city three months to undo those reforms. The fight, reported by Global News in “Edmonton Mayor Pushes Back as Alberta Orders Reversal of Infill Housing Rules,” targets changes that expanded housing options and removed parking mandates. Norm Van Eeden Petersman is joined by Dear Winnipeg author Michel Durand-Wood and Strong Towns chief technical advisor Edward Erfurt to examine why those reforms triggered such a fierce backlash and whether the sudden jump in larger infill means the rules went too far or simply exposed demand that had been bottled up. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) Dear Winnipeg (Site), You'll Pay For This! (Book) Edward Erfurt (LinkedIn) Articles mentioned and Downzone: He Ain’t NIMBY, He’s My Brother (Article) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a New Section: On Robustness and Fragility by Nassim Taleb (Book) The Little Book of Springerle by L. Heart (Book) Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.   This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

A reliable bus is a big improvement, but Mobile is also looking at how appearance, comfort and the experience around the trip can make transit more appealing to people who have other options. The idea comes from “A Streetcar Named Spiro: Mobile Mayor Pushes Trolley-Filled Future,” published by AL.com and Mass Transit. Norm Van Eeden Petersman talks with Levette Fuller, Strong Towns board member, and Wanda Cochran, an attorney in Mobile, Alabama, about what happens after the basics start working. The trolley idea gets at the gap between a transit system that technically works and one that people actually want to use, especially in a city where most residents are accustomed to driving. Better service helps close that gap, but so does making the ride feel more inviting and making the experience around the bus stop more comfortable and practical. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES "A Streetcar Named Spiro: Mobile mayor pushes trolley-filled future" by John Sharp, Masstransitmag.com (September 2026) Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) Levette Fuller (LinkedIn) Wanda Cochran (LinkedIn) Articles mentioned and Downzone: Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence by Jens Ludwig (Book) Richard Scarry (Site) Ian McGilchrist (Site) Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.   This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

States are legalizing ADUs, cutting parking mandates, and changing zoning, but it's still difficult to estimate how much housing each of those reforms will actually produce. Carlee Alm-LaBar talks with Arnold Ventures housing director Stephanie Kestelman, The Turnout’s Grace Gordon, and Strong Towns executive director John Reuter about the Housing Data and Technology Innovation Challenge, a nine-week competition asking teams to build open-source tools that estimate the effects of housing reforms using public data and transparent assumptions. Plenty of housing reforms have arrived with big promises about what they’ll produce and then fallen short; building these tools could give people a better way to challenge the assumptions behind those promises and be clearer about what the available data can actually support. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES Housing Data and Technology Innovation Challenge by The Turnout and Arnold Ventures Downzone: The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt A Paradise of Small Houses: The Evolution, Devolution, and Potential Rebirth of Urban Housing by Max Podemski The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer Carlee Alm-LaBar (LinkedIn) Dr. Stephanie Kestelman (LinkedIn) Grace Gordon (LinkedIn) John Reuter (LinkedIn) Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.   This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.