The Messy City Podcast

Nothing is more enjoyable to me than talking with people who actually get s*it done. Policy and philosophical talk is all well and good, but it gets boring really quickly when it can’t connect to the real world.

Bob Mayer and Caleb Buland are two of the partners at Exact Architects in Kansas City, MO. Sure, they’re right down the street from me. But they’ve also had an impressive run in recent years in being successful with historic rehab projects particularly in the Kansas City market.

Bob and Caleb attack the proble...

For a lot of years, I’ve been a bit loathe to dive deep into the land value tax topic. I’m not entirely sure why that is - it might be that the proponents have a sort of religious zeal for it. LVT seems to be a possible cure-all for all that ails our cities and towns, and I suppose it reminds me of the expansive view of New Urbanism in the early years. As my friend John Anderson used to say, New Urbanism won’t solve tooth decay - it’s just a better way to design and buil...

I first came across Chris Arnade with the rollout of his book, “Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America.” It’s a terrific book, and explores community, human struggle and American cities and towns in ways that most books do not. He sort of became “the McDonald’s guy” after that book, but it’s really so much more.

Over the last few years, Chris has been writing a Substack called “Chris Arnade Walks the World.” I might effusively compliment Chris too much in this episode, but I truly mean it. His writing and approach to writing is truly unique, o...

For most of my career, people in the urban planning, architecture and development world have almost completely avoided the discussion on crime and order in cities. We seem to like to pretend it’s either not important, or we have nothing to say about it beyond CPTED (Crime Prevention through Environmental Design) techniques. In many cases, I just have people hand-wave the issue away, as if it doesn’t really matter - “crime will happen no matter what, I’m not an expert,” blah blah blah. Let’s talk about zoning standards and street design instead.

Today I discuss wh...

You might wonder how a podcast on urban planning, design and development could get interested in the arcane subject of property taxes. Except that, it’s all over the news lately, and its another fundamental issue than actual normies care about. People in my city have left it because of outrageous tax re-assessments. Developers and investors won’t invest in my County because of the same. And, frankly, we are a fairly no-drama, modest cost part of the world compared to many places.

So I turned to Jaime Izurieta to start this conversation. Over at his Substack, The...

Returning champion Aaron Lubeck joins me to discuss his exceptional piece called, “Revisiting Euclid v. Ambler at 100,” which he posted on his Substack “On Housing.” Aaron also posts and helps curate “Southern Urbanism” - an excellent publication I highly recommend.

While a lot of ink has been spilled and words shared about the impact of the Euclid v Ambler case, Aaron’s column adds some new wrinkles and information to it that even surprised me. We talk in some detail about the case itself, the arguments made, and the people you might be surprised that were considered the “out” grou...

Architect, Author, Photographer and New Urbanist Steve Mouzon joins me to tell his story about the emergence of New Urbanism in a location that many would consider unlikely. Huntsville, Alabama might be known for Space Camp, but it’s not widely known as a place to find great urban design and architecture. And that’s a shame, because there’s more lessons to learn here for most cities than by flying to a big, coastal market.

Steve talks about the emergence of the Village of Providence in the early 2000s, its unique characteristics, and how that project also i...

We bring back my brother Dean on this episode, to talk about how we often let our fears overrun our lives, and how to get beyond them. Dean is not just one of my favorite humans on the planet, he’s also a clinical psychologist, author of a number of books on the Mississippi River, and a world traveler. His newest book, “Better Safe than Sorry: Slow Boats, Chicken Buses, and the Radical Choice to Trust the World” is coming out in late August.

For people who care about their communities and often wrestle with the fear of cha...

It’s very easy for all of us to get caught up in status quo bias. We live the way we do, it must be fine, right? The way things are surely is the way they’ve been for a very long time, and probably got this way for good reasons. Or so we think, if we think about it at all.

I think about this a lot when I think about how we finance, design and build infrastructure. Sitting here in 2026, we have so many assumptions about the way things have always been, and that what we’v...

I get personal in this episode, in order to ask questions about the nature of what is called the “housing crisis.” Are we all just doom-pilling way too much?

As a case study, I talk through the life and history of my parents, and discuss whether or not their life and lifestyle is still available today. I discuss house sizes, mortgage rates, lifestyle choices, lifestyle inflation, and more.

Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.

Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a C...

Eric Kronberg is back again, to dive deeper into the topics of housing choice, scale and essentially - what works and what doesn’t. Eric’s firm, Kronberg Urbanists & Architects, produces some of the routinely best graphic content to explain these complex issues. In this episode, in particular we discuss his updated Housing Choice Catalog, which is a tour de force of a document for anyone remotely interested in these issues.

We discuss how to implement change, what some of the more important changes, are, and how to do this in real American towns and places. We also...

Stand by for a very Kansas City-focused episode. For this one, Abby Newsham and I were invited to record a live podcast during KC Design Week, at the Kansas City Art Institute. Abby now hosts the Unconventional Urbanism podcast.

While there’s some inside baseball in here for Kansas City people, we also cover issues that are germane to cities all over, including:

* development / redevelopment issues in urban core communities

* elimination of minimum parking regulations

* creating high-value pedestrian amenities

* catalytic large projects

* why it’s important to have...

The tale of Route 66 might seem like just a tale of freedom on the road, the great American desire for exploration, and our love affair with the car. And it is all that. But it’s also much more. It’s about the cities, towns and unique places all along the route and their stories.

Chris Elisara and John Paget are sharing those stories, in a 100th anniversary documentary about Route 66. I happened to catch up with them in Springfield, Missouri, which is where Route 66 was in some part given birth.

Chris and John own Firs...

Sometimes a local story is just that - a local story. And sometimes it transcends. Yes, Mike Zeller is very much rooted in Kansas City, and this is a very local story about how to take advantage of our long-overlooked river assets.

But this story is really so much more than all that. This is about finding value in what other people might not see; about perseverance; about not giving up when so many others would on a “crazy” idea.

More than anything, this is about not giving up on yourself. The Rock Island Bridge in K...

Every so often, an idea comes along that makes so much sense it makes you wonder - why haven’t we been talking more about this? In that vein comes today’s guest, Eli Smith, who is pioneering something called the Faith-Based Housing Initiative.

Eli describes it well, but there’s a fascinating juncture here of issues related to churches and faith institutions of all kinds; the societal issues around loneliness; and the lack of housing - especially meaningful, community-based housing.

Eli and his partners help cohorts of faith-based institutions in certain markets to identify how th...

Zach Molzer is 25, and he wants you to know that’s an advantage. His team is young, energetic, and optimistic. His story of quickly becoming a developer with impact in Kansas City shows us that you don’t need to have decades of experience. You just need to want to do it badly, and get others excited about your vision.

In just a couple of short years, Zach has created a company, undertaken two very complex redevelopment projects, created a huge presence on social media, built a bus stop out of an actual bus, connected with local elec...

Bobby Fijan doesn’t want you to give up on families living in cities. One thing he said in this episode that really stuck out with me, “People tolerate disorder less when kids are around.” I think that’s right on, and that we too easily acquiesce to the notion that cities are just for the young, or the retired.

Bobby, like many of my guests, isn’t content to just talk about the issues. He’s become relentless in his pursuit of the best family-friendly floor plans for urban living, and has now taken that to the creation...

Social media is an unlikely place to find truly positive and optimistic people. But occasionally you find one. Today’s example: the charming and determined Coby Lefkowitz, whose relentless optimism can only rub off on you.

Coby is a developer in New York state, and a prolific writer, poster and speaker on the value of beauty in the built environment. He’s written a book called “Building Optimism” and has a Substack by the same name. In his Substack, you can read more about his forthcoming project in Kingston, NY, and what all he’s trying to accomplish...

We take a break from our routine conversations today to have some fun, and talk about the wonders of travel hacking with my sister, Cindy Weir. Cindy epitomizes how to really leverage having a system for travel hacking, as she made the most of her small business to rack up points. It’s paid off incredibly for her, as she’s traveled to 22 countries in just the last five years, in addition to doing so in style.

We go over how she got there, some of the many little tips and tricks we’ve learned over the years...

Longtime friend-of-the-pod Abby Newsham returns, on her hiatus from the popular Upzoned podcast. Abby is a practicing planner in Kansas City with Olsson Associates. Abby is very active working with communities leading planning charrettes, and we talk at length about what a charrette actually is, the value of it, and why doing charrettes can actually give you hope that people can solve problems together.

Then we talk about Billy Cooney’s article that was republished in Southern Urbanism, called, “Zoning Won’t Save Us,” which is basically on piece on why we over-rely on technocratic solutions to problems...

One of the perils of being in a profession or field for many years is how you see beyond simple dualities. By that I mean, you hear people argue confidently and vehemently about X vs Y, but you know there’s actually a Z they’re not even thinking about. Sometimes people talk about this as a “third way” solution. I confess that my whole life and career I’ve mostly been interested in those “third” ways, since I find they tend to have much more wisdom and insight than the other two.

This came to mind recently when...

One of the great trends in housing from recent decades has been the revived interest in micro-communities, especially those organized around shared courtyards. I first started to learn about this in the late 1990s, and am delighted to say it’s really picked up steam since then.

Ross Chapin has been at the forefront of all this, and taught many of us how to do it well. In this episode, Ross talks about how in some sense he accidentally got into doing this kind of work, how it changed his practice, and then importantly we explore key ap...

Jason Segedy returns for his third appearance on the show, as Jason now works in North Canton, Ohio as the Deputy Director of Administration. Jason has also gotten more active on LinkedIn in recent months, with his usual provocative and insightful thoughts on a variety of topics. I highly suggest you look him up!

We hit on why a huge supply of older homes may not be an advantage, especially in a weak housing market, the challenges of population decline (and why people shouldn’t be so blase about it), and what it might take to actually re...

After three years of podcasting, I share some thoughts on why I do this, and what I hope to achieve and share. Maybe you like it, maybe you don’t - either is fine, really. But my focus is and will continue to be on people who take concrete action, not on obsessive policy wonkery. It’s not that policy wonkery doesn’t matter - it’s just that too many people waste too much time focusing on it, when life has so many more productive ways to pass the day or the years.

Similarly, my focus is on th...

For a guy that never intended to be a developer, Steve Nygren is having a remarkable impact on development and so much more. Steve led the development of Serenbe, which is a “biophilic” community southwest of Atlanta. This story is nothing short of remarkable. Even if nothing more had happened than getting 500+ property owners that control about 60 square miles of land to agree on a framework for future development, that alone would be incredible.

But when you start to learn more and experience the town of Serenbe itself, it becomes quickly apparent this is a model worth emul...

One of the mantras of small or incremental development workshops for years has been, “no one is coming to save you.” The solution to your neighborhood’s or community’s problem isn’t some outside force. It’s you.

A similar mantra has been, “Brooklyn doesn’t need your butt.” Make it more colorful at your own leisure. We are often attracted by the allure of the sexy place, but it’s the not-sexy places that really need time, attention and effort from people who care.

This episode gave me a chance to talk with someone who feels bo...

One of the most shocking pieces of information I’ve seen in the last year is how high the average age of all homebuyers has become. Depending on the source, I’ve seen between 59 and 62 years old. This is the *average* age.

We’ve never seen a housing market quite like this, so I turned to Charlie Bilello, the Chief Market Strategist for the firm Creative Planning to help me understand it better. While I talk at length about the regulatory, design and policy aspects of housing on the podcast, Charlie is an expert in the financial side.<...

About forty years ago, the New Urbanism came on the scene with bold and creative ideas for building entirely new towns. The founders of the movement intended to prove that we could really build beautiful, walkable new places in America, much like some of our historic norms. Those early communities captured incredible attention, far beyond their actual size. And they’ve influenced a couple generations of people in the planning and development world.

But it’s also true that most of the new places built were fairly modest in scale. Seaside, Florida, the famous community on the Flor...

Andrew Burleson asks us to think about, “what is the system that creates space for people to live?” Systems thinking may seem terribly wonky, and in reality, it is. But systems thinking gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and a whole host of ideas that underpin western civilization. Systems thinking was behind the movement that created administrative city planning and zoning in the 19-teens and 20s. YOU might not be thinking about systems, but someone else is. So the question is, what kind of systems do we want and need, that produce the best outcomes for huma...

Right off the top, I must say I always enjoy talking with Seth Zeren. Seth fits the mold of most of my favorite people, in that he’s a deep thinker AND a do-er. His ruminations are baked in the reality of trying to actually build things every day of the week, and he operates from a deep set of principles for placemaking. In other words, he really tries to get things done and done well - not just talk about them. Oh how I wish more people in the world of “advocacy” could be like Seth and also get th...

A few months ago, we lost Leon Krier, one of the all-time greats in the world of architecture and urban design. I’m joined by Dan Parolek of Opticos Design to reflect on Krier’s work and influence, and his personal experiences working with him on multiple projects.

Krier’s work and his many drawings have been foundational for so many of us that came through the world of New Urbanism. His simple, elegant way of dissecting what’s wrong with modern cities angered a lot of people in the architecture and planning establishment, but appealed to so many...

Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns joins me in the studio to dive deeply into the world of housing finance and housing policy, fresh on the heels of his book, Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis. For an architect and engineer to dive into this world might seem anathema to economists, but we go there anyway.

The topics range from the thirty year mortgage and its distortions on the housing market to yield curve control to how social trust impacts the whole conversation. And we ask “do we actually have enough housing?”

I’ve been an avid podcast listener since the early days of podcasting. It’s probably one area where I was a bit of an early adopter for technology. My guess is this is in part due to the fact that I grew up listening to a lot of radio, especially radio shows in the car when my parents were driving. So I suppose you can say I’ve always been interested in the audio side of conversations and entertainment.

Back a few years ago, my brother finally nudged me into trying to do a podcast, after he’d g...

One thing that’s really obvious when you talk with Johnny Youssef is that he’s just a very positive and happy guy. And, frankly, it’s amazing what he’s accomplished at a still-young age. Johnny started his journey in Egypt, and eventually landed in Kansas City as a small developer and rental property owner. We talk about how he focused on the not-sexy parts of our region, and quickly built an income portfolio that has served him well.

Johnny is the closest thing to a social media star that I’ve had on the show. In fact, a...

Kevin’s note: Apologies on the audio quality. Riverside did something funky to this episode, and I did my best to correct it.

We all love to study success, and learn how to emulate it. Allan Branch likes to study failure. He studied it for his businesses, and for his city. Remarkably, it’s helped lead Allan to a lot of success in all his endeavors.

Allan traces his roots from art school and family entrepreneurship to software and building businesses, to literally building buildings in his hometown. Of course, that’s not enough, so Allan...

Nolan Gray is the author of the very successful book, “Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It.” If you’re in the planning and zoning world, you’ve likely heard of it or read it. If you haven’t, run right out and do it.

Most of this episode focuses on the unique nature of Houston, Texas, and its approach to land use regulation. Often-scorned by planners because the city doesn’t have zoning, it actually provides a fascinating alternative to a process we know by now doesn’t work very well. And we d...

A developer colleague recently said to me, “I’ve only lived and worked in an era where cities are getting better. Now, I’m not so sure that’s the case anymore.” His comment along with a whole lot of other inputs got me to thinking - what if he’s right?

Today, I consider a potentially dark path for big American cities. Are we in the midest of a new era of decline and retreat from urban areas? Will this continue? Is the “vibe shift” going to be a good thing or bad thing for people that love and ca...

Mike Hathorne has been around the New Urbanism movement for over twenty years. That means he has that rare combination of idealism, practicality, and persistence. Nowadays, you can find Mike with Visionary Homes in Utah.

While the principles of New Urbanism have guided his work for years, Mike has also been on the front lines trying to figure out how to get it all built. Like all of us, he’s had successes and failures. But that desire to connect to truly human values and needs continues to drive him forward.

Mike and I talk ab...

If you’re fortunate and diligent, you’ll encounter people in your field that are just supremely knowledgable about the details, and willing to talk about them. Audrey Navarro, the Managing Partner of Clemons Real Estate in Kansas City, is one of those people. I’ve found Audrey to be incredibly nice and pleasant to talk with, but also very ruthless (in a good way) with the numbers and the realities of real estate and development.

In this episode, we trace her path that started from a simple duplex house hack, to now running a company with hundre...

You’re not going to find too many movies with developers as the hero. For most of the public, their opinion of developers is somewhere below Congress. And that’s saying something.

I find that all unfortunate, since developers are the ones who build virtually everything in our world - our homes, our offices, our shops, our entertainment. And there’s a group of developers who have been undertaking honestly heroic efforts for two or three decases - those trying to build “new urbanist” or walkable projects. Some of these are small, and some quite large, but they’re al...