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Upzoned: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Strong Towns
Sometimes, a hot new story will cross our desks that we need to talk about right away. That's where Upzoned comes in. Join Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn, Carlee Alm-LaBar, Norm Van Eeden Petersman, and other guests to talk in depth about one big story from the week in the Strong Towns conversation.
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- 2 weeks ago55 min
$1,000 a Year to Welcome a Data Center?
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.
- 3 weeks ago56 min
Is “Build It and They Will Come” Backward?
“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) Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom. This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.
- 4 weeks ago52 min
Can You Overrule a City’s Zoning?
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.
- Oct 7, 202648 min
Can a Trolley Make People Want Transit?
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.
- Sep 30, 202656 min
Can We Predict Which Housing Reforms Will Work?
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.
- Sep 23, 202649 min
The Street Redesign No One Can Agree On
Seven years of planning have not produced a version of Boston’s Blue Hill Avenue redesign that everyone can live with. In the Boston Globe article “More Parking, Fewer Bike Lanes: City of Boston and MBTA Release New Blue Hill Avenue Redesign,” the latest proposal restores parking and traffic space while reducing parts of the planned bike network. Norm Van Eeden Petersman talks with transportation historian Peter Norton and Ann Arbor transportation manager Malisa McCreedy about what happens when a street is expected to satisfy every demand, even when those priorities conflict. As each revision absorbs another concern, the challenge is whether the city can keep its focus on what will actually work best there instead of reopening the same choices again and again. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES "More parking, fewer bike lanes: City of Boston, T release new Blue Hill Avenue redesign" by Diti Kohli, Bostonglobe.com (Without paywall here, from September 2026) Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) Peter Norton (LinkedIn) Malisa McCreedy (LinkedIn) Downzone: Ballot Babes (Podcast) The Ark (Site) Andy Boenau (X) The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson (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.
- Sep 16, 202643 min
When Fixing Property Taxes Just Adds Another Tax
A New York condo sold for $238 million, but the city assessed it at just $15.5 million. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has framed his new pied-à-terre tax as a way to “tax the rich,” but a recent article by Ken Girardin, “The Sheer Absurdity of New York’s Pied-à-Terre Tax,” argues that the bigger problem sits underneath it. Chuck Marohn talks with Urban Three founder Joe Minicozzi and land economist Lars Doucet about how classifications, assessment caps, and decades of special rules can shift the tax burden away from high-value property. If the system is already distorted, does adding another tax make it fairer or just harder to fix? ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES "The Absurdity of New York City’s Pied-à-Terre Tax" by Ken Girardin, Theatlantic.com (September 2026) Chuck Marohn (LinkedIn) Joe Minicozzi (LinkedIn), URBAN3 (Site) Lars Doucet (LinkedIn), Center for Land Economics (Site) Articles Mentioned an Downzone: DALT: Depreciation-Assisted Land Value Tax (Substack) Moneygpt: AI and the Threat to the Global Economy by James Rickards (Site) Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less by Leidy Klotz (Site) Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (Site) Book Review: The Natural Dividend (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.
- Sep 9, 202645 min
What Happens When Malls Start Charging for Parking?
What happens when something people have always treated as free suddenly gets a price tag? A USA Today article, “Shopping Malls Are Charging for Prime Parking. It’s Not Going Well,” looks at what happens when a long-standing free amenity suddenly has a visible cost. Carlee Alm-LaBar talks with Parking Reform Network founder Tony Jordan and developer Monte Anderson of Neighborhood Evolution about what changes when shoppers are asked to pay directly for that convenience. For owners, “free” parking has never actually been free: the lot still has to be paved, repaired, cleaned, secured, and eventually rebuilt, even when much of it sits empty. If the land is expensive to maintain, could it be doing something more useful? ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES "Shopping malls are charging for prime parking. It's not going well" by Jessica Guynn, Usatoday.com (August 2026) Downzone: The Urban Climate Solution (Site) Civic Leader Summit (Site) Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (Site) Carlee Alm-LaBar (LinkedIn) Tony Jordan (LinkedIn), Parking Reform Network (Site) Monte Anderson (LinkedIn), Options Real Estate (Site) Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom. This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.
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About Upzoned
Sometimes, a hot new story will cross our desks that we need to talk about right away. That's where Upzoned comes in. Join Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn, Carlee Alm-LaBar, Norm Van Eeden Petersman, and other guests to talk in depth about one big story from the week in the Strong Towns conversation.
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