Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited
00:00:00:01 - 00:00:23:09
Coby Lefkowitz
We need people to feel a closer connection to the places where they live. For I mean, for any number of reasons, it will immeasurably improve their quality of life. There's this sort of anonymity that is felt and depersonalization. I think that a lot of people have in today's built environment because they don't have any connection to the world around them.
00:00:23:12 - 00:00:32:14
Coby Lefkowitz
And if you have even one small building that they can feel that tie to, it is amazing. The level of community that is emergent from that.
00:00:32:16 - 00:00:59:06
John Simmerman
Hey everyone, welcome to the Active Towns channel. My name is John Simmerman and that is Coby Lefkowitz, author of the new book, Building Optimism. Why Our World Looks the Way That It Does and How We Can make It Better. It is a fascinating interview, and, I'm really looking forward to sharing this with you. But before we jump into it, I did want to say, hey, if you're enjoying this content here on the Active Towns Channel, please consider supporting my efforts by becoming an Active Towns Ambassador.
00:00:59:07 - 00:01:23:25
John Simmerman
Super easy to do. Just navigate over to Active towns.org. Click on the support tab at the top of the page and there's several different options, including becoming a Patreon supporter. Patrons do get early and ad free access to all the video content that I produce here on the channel. Okay, well that's it. Commercial over. Let's get right to it with Kobe.
00:01:23:28 - 00:01:27:08
John Simmerman
Cobe. Thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.
00:01:27:10 - 00:01:31:03
Coby Lefkowitz
John. It's such a pleasure to join you. Thank you so much for having me on today.
00:01:31:06 - 00:01:37:20
John Simmerman
Hey Kobe, I love giving my guest just an opportunity to introduce themselves briefly. So who the heck is Kobe?
00:01:37:23 - 00:01:55:05
Coby Lefkowitz
I am a trained urban planner practicing as a real estate developer with projects in New York and California. I do quite a bit of writing on the built environment, how we should marry, good development practices and design practices in the pursuit of building a better world.
00:01:55:07 - 00:02:01:16
John Simmerman
I love it. And yeah, you have this split life between the west coast of the East Coast. Where are you at right now?
00:02:01:16 - 00:02:04:29
Coby Lefkowitz
Today I'm on the East Coast. I'm in Brooklyn right now.
00:02:05:02 - 00:02:22:16
John Simmerman
Fantastic. That's great. We are going to be talking a little bit about your book. Building optimism was pull that, upright here. This just recently came out in the last few months, I think it was in the, the latter end of the fourth quarter of 2024. Is that correct?
00:02:22:18 - 00:02:24:09
Coby Lefkowitz
That's right. Yeah. In November.
00:02:24:10 - 00:02:46:14
John Simmerman
Fantastic. Yeah. November. December. Yeah. That time frame. And, and I saw a post, from my good friends, Chris and Melissa Brundtland. You know, holding your book up and going, building optimism. And I'm like, that's like a cool book. I need to get that. And, I'm really glad I did. It is a cool book, and I enjoyed, diving into it.
00:02:46:16 - 00:02:51:22
John Simmerman
What the heck prompted you and inspired you to write a book?
00:02:51:25 - 00:03:08:23
Coby Lefkowitz
Well, first, I'm glad that it found its way to you. It's been really fun over the last couple of months to get to have these sorts of conversations with people who are thinking really deeply about the built environment, and how we can make it better in a number of different parameters that we I think we all care about.
00:03:08:25 - 00:03:31:04
Coby Lefkowitz
And that's sort of the genesis for this book. I'm a real estate developer, like I mentioned by trade. By training. I went to architecture school. And it often these disciplines are not in dialog with each other. And sometimes they can be in conflict with each other, which I always thought was a pretty big problem because they're so interdependent.
00:03:31:06 - 00:03:58:19
Coby Lefkowitz
Cities require buildings and they require investment. And developers require the helping hand of, you know, let's say planners and of course, architects and different consultants and, it's professionals that you might have on any given project, but they operate in silos. And what I wanted to do here was sort of give a comprehensive explainer of why our world looks where it does over the last 100 years.
00:03:58:22 - 00:04:28:15
Coby Lefkowitz
So a discrete set of policy choices, design decisions, imperatives from capital sources that drive development, and how those have all interacted to give us our built environment today in places that look as disparate as a new infill project here in Brooklyn versus a subdivision outside of Phoenix, for example. It is a story that can be as complex or as simple, you know, simple.
00:04:28:15 - 00:04:52:14
Coby Lefkowitz
As we passed some zoning codes and some building codes and, then a lot of money got involved and America sort of looks the same for one reason or the other. And it's obviously more complex than that. You can dive into it. But but the hope for this book was really explain people explain to people why the world looks way it does, and that we don't need to be cynical about the present reality.
00:04:52:16 - 00:05:04:00
Coby Lefkowitz
We can take hope, take optimism, and create a better world tomorrow. But if we don't have that foundational value, we really won't have any way of creating that world.
00:05:04:03 - 00:05:27:27
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And this is on your website here. And I think this is part of of what the book is really all about is, you know, a call to build a better world, a more beautiful world. And again, this is this is, you know, out here on your, your main website, your own personal website, which is where you have a lot of your writing, or at least as a platform to getting to a lot of your writing.
00:05:27:27 - 00:06:02:03
John Simmerman
And, you know, some of the themes in the book or or just like this, why everywhere looks the same. And so you kind of like peel back several of the layers. Proverbs or onion, you know, of, of like trying to understand why places look the way they do now and and, you know, really inspiring, you know, from the, the, the title of the book, how we can start building more optimism, be more optimistic about building more optimism into the communities.
00:06:02:05 - 00:06:23:27
John Simmerman
Talk a little bit more about that name building optimism. What why did it come up? You know, why did that really become the the name and the theme that you, honed in on? And I suspect it was probably wasn't like an overnight thing. Looking at some of your readings and writings, you've been, like talking about optimism for some time.
00:06:24:00 - 00:06:53:02
Coby Lefkowitz
That's right. I think it was an organic process to come to that specific name for the book, but it causes have been there for some years. And it's drawn from, I think, this prevailing pessimism about the quality of our cities and towns today and this belief that we can't do anything good anymore. Sure, we might have been able to build some beautiful structures in the 1920s or in the 17th 18th centuries, but our best days are behind us.
00:06:53:04 - 00:07:28:18
Coby Lefkowitz
And when you study the canon of works that have been delivered in the past decade or two, that's simply not true. But the unsexy three story walk up in Saint Louis, for example, is going to be unheralded. It won't make the, even though it's a foundationally good piece of urbanism and could be a really handsome structure. You're never going to see that on a blog post or a New York Times article, or get broader media traction.
00:07:28:20 - 00:08:00:29
Coby Lefkowitz
Even in its own neighborhood, it might not find its way into the local real estate press, but these are the sorts of structures that America is premised on, and it's built on. And unfortunately, a lot of the highest profile projects or on one side, I would say ideologically driven. And this is a departure in architecture that we can get into where buildings are more about what they represent than how they make people feel, or the experience or their esthetic value.
00:08:01:01 - 00:08:27:12
Coby Lefkowitz
So we can put that to one side and then on the other, it's about a dollar amount. We built this brand new structure for $3 billion. We invested $15 billion into transit. And that leads to a level of, I think, anonymization of the built environment on on the transactional side, which is about dollars. And then this sort of esoteric closed off.
00:08:27:15 - 00:08:51:24
Coby Lefkowitz
A friend of mine who's written a lot about this is named Samuel Hughes. He writes, and works in progress, which are all of his articles, as far as I'm concerned, are indispensable about easy to understand and more difficult to understand architecture where 1st May well like Boston City Hall, the famous brutal structure, or the FBI quarters in DC.
00:08:51:27 - 00:09:20:24
Coby Lefkowitz
But it requires a certain level of education to understand all the influences and motifs and references that are being made into the structures, versus walking by a queen and townhouse. One doesn't need to understand that it's beautiful. It simply is. And there's this tendency in architecture to over intellectualize and over refer to structures. I mean, for, for a number of reasons.
00:09:20:26 - 00:09:54:17
Coby Lefkowitz
And so I think that's sidelined a lot of people in America, in North America, more broadly from feelings that they have any agency in the built environment feeling as though they can't do anything positive and that it will be done unto them and it won't be good. So the thrust of the book is to say, you know, you can start with a tree on your block, or you can paint the side of a building, and maybe you can work your way up to a one story structure, a three story, this sort of incrementalism, and take hope that good things are possible.
00:09:54:17 - 00:10:05:14
Coby Lefkowitz
Because the only way that we built good things in the past was from the spirit of the people who built them, and they had a passion that sort of furthered them along this, this path.
00:10:05:16 - 00:10:35:29
John Simmerman
Right, right. You know, you had mentioned infill development and, you know, the project that you have, projects that you have going on in San Diego. Appear to be very much a part in that theme of looking for opportunities to do, add some, some density, you know, create more housing, in a location that is, you know, in a severe need for housing, like many other places around the world and in, across the United States.
00:10:36:01 - 00:11:05:14
John Simmerman
And, and, and really leaning into the fact that, you know, from an active talents perspective, if we have denser housing, if we have more housing availability within meaningful destination to, you know, places, you know, meaningful distances, you know, very walkable, bikeable distances to meaningful destinations, we're able to have, you know, we're able to create those desirable, walkable places that, you know, really, people want.
00:11:05:16 - 00:11:13:12
Coby Lefkowitz
That's right. So these projects on the side I definitely should update, these are from a couple of years ago when we first starting out the. Yeah, this, this.
00:11:13:15 - 00:11:16:25
John Simmerman
2021. Yes. When you first, founded. Yeah.
00:11:16:27 - 00:11:59:19
Coby Lefkowitz
And which it was it's a great exploration for us to go from smaller projects to a little bit larger and figure out where what works, what doesn't, what we enjoy, what we don't. And when you have a fledgling firm, these are it's all part of the discovery. But from the day that we started the firm to the present, we have sought to build projects that are in close proximity to restaurants or cultural lobbies or a library or a coffee shop, because walkability, bike ability, this more permeable and fine grained way of working through cities is what we care about.
00:11:59:21 - 00:12:21:29
Coby Lefkowitz
I, I often draw this distinction and this comes from my background as a planner. I know some people would disagree with this, but I think it's nonetheless true. And this is a great example of this sort of urbanism. It's a beautiful new residential college in New Haven at Yale. But it fundamentally gets a relationship with the street.
00:12:21:29 - 00:12:48:20
Coby Lefkowitz
Right. And it is in close proximity to the rest of the campus. It's it's on the northern edge of campus. So it's a little bit further away from downtown, but nonetheless, it is a place that you can easily walk to, to other places to play. So you could easily bike. There are people who have cars, but there needs to be many different modes in any given city for various number of reasons.
00:12:48:22 - 00:13:12:01
Coby Lefkowitz
And our projects seek to add to whatever good is already in a neighborhood and further it such that another building block two years from now, or three years from now, or ten years from now can build on the work of today, which in and of itself is built on the work of the past and I think part of the reason why people feel.
00:13:12:03 - 00:13:43:20
Coby Lefkowitz
Disenchanted with development patterns today is so much of it is greenfield. And as Chuck Malone and the folks who strong Towns write much about, build to a finished state. So there is no living heritage and there's very little opportunities for organic walkability. If you live in a subdivision ten miles outside of town where you walk into, if you even had sidewalks to walk to a commercial development, which likely you don't have either in that location.
00:13:43:23 - 00:14:00:07
Coby Lefkowitz
So we were much more focused on building in cities with established street networks that can go from one level of density to another, and to allow for more people to enjoy, the benefits of opportunity.
00:14:00:09 - 00:14:30:27
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And you do a good job, too, in the book to of, you know, like bringing up examples of regions and how they navigated their own, contexts, their own situations in Charleston, South Carolina. You, you profiled, Portland, Oregon, you profiled Santa Barbara. You know, these are all places that, you know, they look very, very different each and every one of them, has has its own sort of, you know, feel to it.
00:14:30:29 - 00:14:47:10
John Simmerman
Talk a little bit about that decision to, like, kind of lean in towards, you know, profiling some of these, you know, cities and what you were looking to, to tease out for your audience, for the readers.
00:14:47:12 - 00:15:14:22
Coby Lefkowitz
To give a model of what good development looks like can be a tricky thing. So you might say, look at this beautiful 17th century Italian village, and it may well be beautiful, and you may well want to build that somewhere in the US. But the contexts and conditions that gave rise to that village are so foreign to our present moment that it really can't be relied upon as any form of precedent.
00:15:14:24 - 00:15:53:19
Coby Lefkowitz
And the same may be said for a contemporary project in Vietnam. It could be a wonderful townhouse or cafe. But the financial dynamics, the regulatory environment, that is present in somewhere like Vietnam makes it, it's not analogous for our context here. And so in profiling work like this that we see in Santa Barbara, this is a project from Jeff Shelton, who I believe is one of the best practicing architects in America today for the whimsy and beauty of his designs, shows people that these are places that we can actually create today.
00:15:53:21 - 00:16:22:01
Coby Lefkowitz
It's not some reference from 4 or 500 years ago. It's not some country halfway around the world. These are towns that might be an hour away from where you live. For some people listening, it may be where you live. And I use the three cities that you mentioned as cases at various points along the spectrum. So we have Charleston, which is a historic city, founded in the 17th century, and it has this wonderful built heritage.
00:16:22:04 - 00:16:33:24
Coby Lefkowitz
Funnily enough, that heritage has been preserved because in the mid-century period, it wasn't wealthy enough to, tear itself down with urban renewal. And, urban areas. And so. Yeah, but.
00:16:33:29 - 00:17:03:16
John Simmerman
Isn't isn't that funny, though? The so much of like the good urbanism that we have that still exists or oftentimes from cities that were too poor to actually tear down their cities, they may have like spread outward. But, you know, when you look at some of the places that have some of the best bones, you know, you think of places like Buffalo and Pittsburgh and a few others where they're just, oh, yeah, there's such an incredible stock still existing of beautiful old buildings.
00:17:03:16 - 00:17:09:09
John Simmerman
Oftentimes it was even Detroit. Oftentimes it was just because they were too poor to tear everything down.
00:17:09:11 - 00:17:42:09
Coby Lefkowitz
That's right. It's this very strange condition where in order to be successful for the 21st century, from an urbanist perspective, I think the ideal trajectory is very wealthy in the 19th century or some 18th century heritage, but not many American cities have that, down on your luck, let's say, in the mid-century period. And now seeing some sort of renaissance in the 21st century because of institutions or innate charm that a city might have.
00:17:42:11 - 00:18:06:06
Coby Lefkowitz
So Charleston, has, their universities and it is a, a port city. And there are and there's a number of beaches that will always bring people back to the region. And I think that's important. Here, you know, is an example of projects in Fort Green, which is is a historic neighborhood, 19th century suburban neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York City.
00:18:06:09 - 00:18:40:10
Coby Lefkowitz
And it's analogous to Charleston, where you can take this historic fabric and create projects that are contextual to, what was built 100, 150 years ago and use that as a building block. Some may view this as pastiche. I don't really perceive it as such because these places are in such strong demand. It's the market telling us that, hey, people really want to live in a federal style townhouse or brownstone or neo neo graff, etc. whatever the style might be.
00:18:40:13 - 00:19:09:11
Coby Lefkowitz
So this is one body of cities, and most of them are going to be in the northeast, in some smaller cities in the south, and maybe a handful cities in Boom Bust, where you take the lessons from history, you use those development patterns as a foundation, and new projects can riff on that in some way. But you don't really need too much from those established traditions.
00:19:09:13 - 00:19:33:17
Coby Lefkowitz
That that will work for some cities for other cities like Santa Barbara, you may not have an established tradition of brownstone Brooklyn, let's say. And so you have to create your own. And this is one of the most fascinating stories I found in the research of the book, is this notion that Santa Barbara is a Spanish Revival colonial city, or Spanish Revival is entirely contrived.
00:19:33:19 - 00:20:10:00
Coby Lefkowitz
It was not a Spanish thing. It was something that has become socialized over the last century. But it was just like this were the direct result of a couple really passionate and thoughtful and motivated civic boosters who wanted to establish a new vernacular for their region, and for a number of reasons that are really interesting. There was this marriage of figures who decided that Andalusian were southern Spain.
00:20:10:03 - 00:20:36:22
Coby Lefkowitz
Architecture was well suited for Southern California because the climates were similar, and there was the peoples and cultures were sort of similar. And the very quick story here, which I think is instructive, is a couple of civic boosters, Bernard Hoffman and Pearl Chase championed the style. There was the Panama Exposition in San Diego, I think in 1916.
00:20:36:29 - 00:21:04:29
Coby Lefkowitz
I don't have the exact name for that, but it celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal. It was World's Fair of sorts. And the if you go to Bonaparte today in San Diego, you'll see these trees in Spanish Revival structures that are just exquisite. And so you have these references that are being built out in the early 20th century, architects for new, interesting reasons, are designing these buildings here.
00:21:05:02 - 00:21:34:06
Coby Lefkowitz
The most interesting reason is that, with the outbreak of World War One, architects could no longer travel throughout Europe and one of the few regions that could go to Spain. And so they brought back those styles out of pure happenstance. And so it's complete convenience. And it leads to this result where a couple of structures are built in Santa Barbara in the style in the late 19 tens, early 1920s.
00:21:34:08 - 00:21:47:13
Coby Lefkowitz
There's a devastating earthquake in 1925 that flattened most of Santa Barbara and the few structures that are remaining after the earthquake or Spanish Revival. Because of the durability and robustness of the construction methods.
00:21:47:21 - 00:22:18:00
John Simmerman
I found that that story is so interesting and so endearing. As as a fourth generation, Angeleno. You know, I have deep roots in the Southern California area, dating back to the 1800s. And I had no clue on the storyline of this. And so to be able to understand that direct sort of line, the dotted line, you know, back to that, you know, almost world fair type event down in Balboa Park, down in San Diego.
00:22:18:08 - 00:22:41:09
John Simmerman
And then, like I said, this vernacular, this style that now is pervasive across all of Southern California, you know, you see it in Los Angeles. We see an Orange County, San Diego, as well as Santa Barbara. But like you said, you know, the the individuals who really leaned into it, in Santa Barbara, make Santa Barbara what it looks like today.
00:22:41:12 - 00:23:12:15
John Simmerman
And I just found that so fascinating. And I actually do spend quite a bit of time in San Diego or Santa Barbara. I've got family there. And so, I go back frequently and in fact have had produced some, some, Active Towns videos on their emerging bike network that the city is actually working on to make it more walkable and bikeable, to go hand in hand with some of this amazing and beautiful architecture that has been, I think, become synonymous with what Santa Barbara is.
00:23:12:18 - 00:23:47:04
Coby Lefkowitz
Absolutely. And there's what we have to say. Not every place will be as plus as Santa Barbara with the weather, the natural advantages and, the culture that that exists. But, it has a relatively simple gridded street network that is felicitous to bike ability, and they have relatively decent sidewalk network. There are some core elements that make this a place that could or that had prosperity and could reinvest into the built environment.
00:23:47:06 - 00:24:20:29
Coby Lefkowitz
But on the whole, it was the decision that a few key civic boosters made to drive the city towards a more positive and optimistic will say direction. And I think, where I don't think I know that if there was a 21st century analog that wanted to chart a course, there's no reason they couldn't do that. So pick a city anywhere in the country in any architectural style or mode that they prefer.
00:24:21:01 - 00:24:51:10
Coby Lefkowitz
They could fashion themselves after Santa Barbara. Now, of course, they don't have the California coast. They may not have the local prosperity, but they don't need to. You can start at a pretty small level and compound over time. If you concentrate those efforts within a couple of blocks and you go out from there, as opposed to this sort of hop, skip and a jump development pattern of we're going to build a $100 million subdivision five miles this way, and then a $200 million 110 miles that way.
00:24:51:12 - 00:25:28:18
Coby Lefkowitz
You do lose the quality of your impacts. But if a city were to say, we're going to take this determined and assiduous approach to reinvest into a core area, and we're going to inhibit growth outside of that, I think the results would be utterly remarkable, and it would very quickly instill a belief not just in the people of that region, but more broadly at what the impact of concentrated efforts can be if enough of the most important stakeholders are rowing in the right direction for the same direction.
00:25:28:21 - 00:25:53:13
John Simmerman
One of the things that comes to mind using Santa Barbara as a is a good example is the balance, that the city is trying to come with, come to with regards to the car and cars and the fact that, you know, if we allow cars to take over our public realm, our streets, they, they, they diminish that.
00:25:53:14 - 00:26:19:15
John Simmerman
They start to demean the quality of that experience of the beautiful architecture that you even have. And State Street is a great example. Of course, during the pandemic, they they pedestrianized State Street as a means to try to save a lot of the restaurants, similar to many other cities around the globe. And but then they mid back and forth and hemming and hawing as to, okay, how do we deal with State Street?
00:26:19:15 - 00:26:44:23
John Simmerman
Do we partially open it up? Do we allow it to continue to be, biking and pedestrian realm? And, you know, there there probably going to be some sort of a quasi balance? I think that has literally happened within the last, you few weeks or months of, you know, reopening it to cars to some level, but trying to traffic, calm things down, address that from your perspective.
00:26:44:23 - 00:27:06:13
John Simmerman
You know, from the perspective of, yeah, we we can have beautiful places and beautiful buildings and beautiful, you know, networks. But if we turn the public realm over to fast moving traffic and lots of them, it really undermines that quality experience and the beauty, I think.
00:27:06:16 - 00:27:41:22
Coby Lefkowitz
This is where my background as an urban planner comes in. And I'd be very curious to tease this out with you. I, I think at pace, anyone who studies cities from planning perspective knows that there is not, even if you were to give equal consideration to different modes of transport because of the, shall we say, ferocity, or of or relative, ferocity of different modes of transportation.
00:27:41:24 - 00:28:30:12
Coby Lefkowitz
There can't be, an equal consideration. If we allow people and bikes and busses and trams and cars and trucks to share the same roadway, cars and trucks are just going to dominate all the other modes of transportation, because these are much more impactful forces. So it is not the case that we can simply have proportionate allocations, to each mode of transportation, where I differ a little bit from some urbanists and some planners, is that I think there is a place for cars in our cities, and I don't know that pedestrian izing downtown core is entirely makes sense only because we have some historic precedent, specifically in the 70s, where there was
00:28:30:12 - 00:28:59:05
Coby Lefkowitz
this wave of pedestrianization and pedestrian plazas in response to these very conditions where the excesses of the 50s and 60s were being pushed back on and certainly said, how do we take control back from cars? And the answer that was turned to was to close down through traffic to, to cars on Main Street. And of those hundreds of plazas that were developed in the 70s, three remain.
00:28:59:05 - 00:29:26:16
Coby Lefkowitz
Today. It's Burlington, Vermont. Boulder, Colorado, and Charlottesville, Virginia. What do all of the cities have in common? They are college towns, and the main streets are in close proximity to the campuses, and there is enough density of people to support the uses downtown. That's something that I sort of to get back to this holistic conversation of how do we create more optimistic cities.
00:29:26:19 - 00:29:52:10
Coby Lefkowitz
It's it it doesn't make sense in a vacuum to pedestrianize a core. If you don't have the density of housing or commercial services around it, or else you're going to get sort of a barren streetscape. But at the same time, you need to cede that ground or so that people can find comfort in going downtown and then say, oh, yeah, maybe I'll consider living here.
00:29:52:13 - 00:30:23:00
Coby Lefkowitz
Previously there wasn't anything, and now there's benches and trees and a new shop that opened up. And so it has to be this complimentary process. And I think if one outpaces the other, then we won't get to that comprehensively. Good. Core. It is obviously the case that car privacy and car dependency has so far outpaced the other considerations of city building that that needs to be reined in to a considerable extent.
00:30:23:03 - 00:30:43:11
Coby Lefkowitz
But I think we need to be cautious in these conversations to say, let us, let us totally pedestrianize or make this totally bikeable. Because a lot of cities don't have the other elements to be able to support that. Santa Barbara does, DC does, New York does fairly does, but most places probably do not.
00:30:43:14 - 00:31:21:20
John Simmerman
Yeah. And what we have on screen here is an image where we see a, what I would consider a, a pedestrian first sort of, environment in in the sense that, for drivers entering in this space, it sends a clear message that this is not a place for speed. And that is probably the most important aspect that I see in terms of the degradation of the public environment that cars give to our cities is that, they have been ceded over a fairly large swath of real estate.
00:31:21:22 - 00:31:46:07
John Simmerman
And, and they're encouraged to be there. So you have volumes of, of cars, and the drivers are encouraged to drive fast. And so then you have a hostile environment as well. This message, this this scenario here sends a much different message to the drivers. It's no no no no. This is shared space. This is a different realm. You need to slow down.
00:31:46:09 - 00:32:18:06
John Simmerman
You're invited to park here. And when you're traveling through here, you're you're driving at a much more reasonable human pace, which is exactly what the Dutch have done so incredibly well with most of their, dense urban environments, their residential streets, they're, they're, vulnerable. And all of that is their shared space. And there is architecture and street design that reinforces that this is a slow speed environment.
00:32:18:09 - 00:32:41:13
Coby Lefkowitz
Absolutely. So this, I'm, I'm in complete agreement with you here. And this for anybody watching is Chevy Chase lakes, just outside of DC in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It is a transit oriented development on the Purple Line, and there is some provision for parking, but it is a people for space. And having spent time here, it is wonderful.
00:32:41:15 - 00:33:01:21
Coby Lefkowitz
It is off of a fairly busy road. I believe it's Connecticut Avenue. And the further you get from DC this is just on the border, the more car dependent it becomes. But this is a good example, I think, of that concentrating of efforts that we were just talking about, where it is close to the city's core and it's really high density.
00:33:01:26 - 00:33:24:17
Coby Lefkowitz
And it can it allows for this level of human privacy, because you're not so diffuse in a way that you are elsewhere. So I think it's a really it's a really good example for that reason. It's also fantastically beautiful. For, for mid-rise, we're so used to seeing these five or ones that are, dispiriting maybe at best.
00:33:24:19 - 00:34:01:21
Coby Lefkowitz
And these are thoughtful and characterful buildings. I was just in Amsterdam two weekends ago doing research for a project that we're working on in upstate New York, gathering precedents. And I went to Utrecht and Leiden and Haarlem and a number of small towns. What struck me first was how easy it was to get between each of these cities, from Amsterdam to Utrecht, from my hotel room to, let's say, the first cafe I walked in, it took 35 minutes or 40 minutes, and I didn't even look at the train schedule.
00:34:01:24 - 00:34:34:24
Coby Lefkowitz
I just walked into the station. I looked up at the schedule there or the platform lists and said, okay, four minutes heading to Utrecht. It was it was incredible that in New York, the subways don't come that frequent and they have intercity, right? Which is fantastic. But but also when you walk around those cities, they have these historic medieval course, cars are allowed, but to your point, they are made to feel as visitors, not as though they have domain to or the exclusive domain.
00:34:34:26 - 00:34:56:07
Coby Lefkowitz
And, you know, this is something that you've talked about on the podcast before and I think is is now become accepted in the world of planning, if not transportation planning, but certainly city planning is that people are going to drive the speeds that they feel comfortable, that they don't care what the speed limits are. So how do you make people drive slower?
00:34:56:10 - 00:35:15:21
Coby Lefkowitz
You introduce the moonroof, the kink out in the road to make it a shared street. You introduce trees instead of clearing all the trees and then setting back all the buildings 20ft on the other side to right away becomes, you know, 60 or 70 or 100ft wide in a quiet residential area so that people feel comfortable going 60 miles an hour.
00:35:15:23 - 00:35:39:09
Coby Lefkowitz
Now you have to be a little bit more cautious. You can't drive that fast. If a kid might walk out into the road, or if a little bit of a bump may force you to hit the tree just next to you. Right. And so I think the Dutch have done an excellent job, at least in their course of accommodating different modes of transportation and making people exactly.
00:35:39:09 - 00:35:43:09
Coby Lefkowitz
Making people and bikes feel more comfortable.
00:35:43:11 - 00:36:11:21
John Simmerman
Yeah, this is actually, some video just, you know, from me riding from the Utrecht, central Station to, the apartment, where I was staying at for about three weeks, this past summer. And the image, you know, the visualization that we see here that just really shocks us from a North American perspective is just how much mobility, how many mobility options people have.
00:36:11:21 - 00:36:38:04
John Simmerman
You mentioned the train service, you know, intercity being able to get from Amsterdam to track in a matter of about 20 minutes or so, you see the tram running, here on the street, that gets you down one of the busiest, cycle streets as well as transit streets, which is this one right here. And but then you also see that you have this vast network of, of, you know, ability to ride a bike.
00:36:38:06 - 00:37:00:14
John Simmerman
But then you'll also see in just a moment here that, yeah, it's still possible to get around by car. And so we don't have to just assume that, oh, in North America, the only way to get anywhere is by car. Or therefore we need to just give up. You know, that's the cynicism that you're trying to counter in this book and say, you know, of course everybody's going to drive.
00:37:00:20 - 00:37:10:07
John Simmerman
Well, the way we've been doing it. Yeah, of course everyone is going to be because it's the only real option in most cities in North America. We've given people.
00:37:10:09 - 00:37:49:15
Coby Lefkowitz
What I love about this video is that if this were in Houston or Orlando, from building face, the building face, that would probably be eight lanes and it would be and there wouldn't be sidewalks. But here you have protected bike lanes on either side of this roadway. You have central medians, you have plantings, on either side. And it does go to show that if again, not disproportionate provision, but I think, considered provision for each mobility choice is given that there is a way to accommodate all these people in one space.
00:37:49:17 - 00:38:17:09
Coby Lefkowitz
What what? I was amazed, utterly amazed. In Utrecht is you come into the central station and of course, there's a new bike garage that has been delivered there in the largest world. Right? I think it's 12,000 spaces or something. Approaching that. And every every space is completely full. And you walk outside of the station and there are still thousands of more bikes that are chained up on the blocks surrounding the station.
00:38:17:12 - 00:38:42:13
Coby Lefkowitz
And I was asking the people I was with or in cafes, how is it possible that in a city of three, 300,000 people on it, the slightly larger region, it's a part of the answer. But so it's not a huge city. You see 15, 20,000 bikes in one place. You don't see that New York anywhere close to that.
00:38:42:13 - 00:39:11:01
Coby Lefkowitz
You know, you might see corrals of 30 bikes in New York. And that's only because, you have delivery drivers who are hanging out, grabbing coffee together before they go back out on the runs. And so I Amsterdam is widely regarded in Copenhagen as cycling capitals by people, I think, who are not necessarily as entrenched in the planning movement, but if you go to a city like Utrecht, it is even more stark.
00:39:11:03 - 00:39:36:16
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. This is some video that I shot during a lunchtime of, Dutch workers just taking a break during lunch to go for a walk. I was assuming that they they're all heading to cafes down there, but, the Dutch reminded me that the majority of these folks probably, are already, maybe had their bite to eat or whatever, and they're just out stretching their legs, and it's tremendous.
00:39:36:16 - 00:40:00:12
John Simmerman
How many of them are making the the trek from the cameras going to pan and look towards some of these high rises in the distance up. They're kind of covered by the trees. But behind there are several headquarter buildings for a variety of different companies there. And yeah, they just come out in the hundreds every day to, to to walk in and get it, get some fresh air in.
00:40:00:15 - 00:40:23:29
John Simmerman
And so a lot of times people just kind of poopoo the, the Dutch cities, the Amsterdam's and the blue tracks and whatever and say, oh, it's just all about bikes and all they do is bike, etc.. No, I mean, it's it really is a balance of pedestrian activity. People getting around, you know, pragmatically because it's a practical, pragmatic way to get around is to get on a bike and get to your meaningful destination.
00:40:24:06 - 00:40:40:03
John Simmerman
But then they also use the trams. They also use, their, their personal automobiles. They, they own automobiles that pretty high percentages as well. They just aren't addicted to them. They don't feel forced that that's the only thing that they can use to be able to get around.
00:40:40:06 - 00:41:20:12
Coby Lefkowitz
I think that's a really important point that American urbanists and planners have to take more seriously. There is this almost approaching fundamentalism for antique cars in the US in certain cities, and I understand the sentiment traffic fatalities are an unacceptable reality, of living in many cities around the country today. This is an entirely solvable issue. You know, maybe there is some non-zero amount of, of fatalities that are going to occur, you know, terrifyingly so.
00:41:20:12 - 00:41:43:29
Coby Lefkowitz
But it is, is nonetheless maybe there's some about it's not 40,000 people a year. And, and I think as we look to models and this is a courtyard in, in Harlem, which is serving as a direct precedent for one of our projects, if we want to think about moving towards a world that looks like this, it's going to require constituencies that feel as though they're a part of this vision.
00:41:44:02 - 00:42:09:05
Coby Lefkowitz
And if we tell 90, 95% of the electorate, if you don't, who own cars or who move about in cars, if we're not willing to have a conversation with you about how we can accommodate you in this broader vision, we're not going to be able to build these coalitions. And so I think it's important when you even look at these wonderful medieval cities, there are roads, cars go through these cities.
00:42:09:05 - 00:42:33:03
Coby Lefkowitz
It's the underground parking garages. It's it's not like Houston, where 50 to 60% of downtown is reserved for parking lots, parking structures, roadways, etc., which is, an unforgivable, I think, proportion of land to be wasted in such a robust economic center. But, yeah.
00:42:33:06 - 00:42:56:12
John Simmerman
Yeah. And as you said, this is these are some inspirational, photos. You know, president, you had mentioned that you traveled over there to, do some research for a project. And. Yeah, as I was mentioning earlier, the context and the texture of the materials that the Dutch use. You look at this street here, you see that it's paved and clinkers clinkers is what they refer to as their red bullet bricks.
00:42:56:17 - 00:43:37:12
John Simmerman
But yeah, to your point, if we zoom in on this photo and kind of scan over, we see, yep, there is the cars there. There are motor vehicles here. It's not that it's anti-caa it's not. It's just that they, for lack of a better term, they've been sort of tamed. They're not they've not been allowed to be wild beasts that completely dominate the space and take over, as you'd mentioned, like we might see in in a place like Lake Houston, where it not only is the percentage of the space huge, but they've also been allowed to take over just because of the, the level of violence and speed in which, you know, the
00:43:37:15 - 00:43:40:20
John Simmerman
vehicles are encouraged to go.
00:43:40:23 - 00:44:06:01
Coby Lefkowitz
That's right. It's rather jarring to to walk around these cities and see how simple it could be, you know, and it's it's about a series of policy decisions to, to make it work and, and I think building the sorts of projects that hopefully we can make good on. I like this this project still being shown on on screen to incrementally.
00:44:06:01 - 00:44:31:07
Coby Lefkowitz
And this is on a parking lot, mind you, in the heart of a historic city in upstate New York and Kingston, New York, to fill in those patches and to make the city bit by bit more felicitous to urbanism. And it is a long process, but it's one that's eminently possible. It just requires, you know, you're a little bit of optimism to to get that start.
00:44:31:09 - 00:44:54:02
Coby Lefkowitz
I think that's, that's what I'm trying to show in practice is to not just write about or show certain projects, but to really put my money where my mouth is to try to. You know, we have these lofty goals and we'll see if we're able to meet them. I hope that we will. We're going to work really hard to try to get there, but I think the prevailing.
00:44:54:04 - 00:45:33:15
Coby Lefkowitz
Methodology of of development, or at least that maybe, maybe the sentiment has been one of indifference for, for much of the last several decades. It is sort of been this entropy of just spreading out and, in these chaotic and planned and unplanned ways, but not comprehensively. And if we have even a little bit more attention or consideration paid to the quality of the projects that we're building, I do think people will be shocked at what the tapestry of those projects wants shown together can result in.
00:45:33:17 - 00:45:43:18
John Simmerman
You know, one of your latter chapters, talks about stewardship. Expand upon that a little bit more.
00:45:43:21 - 00:46:05:23
Coby Lefkowitz
It's an unsexy concept, but is nonetheless as important as anything else in the book. One can have the grandest vision for a city, and it may well be the most beautiful place on earth. But if there's no one to take care of the day to day operating realities and the maintenance, it will all be for naught. These are things that we don't often think about.
00:46:05:25 - 00:46:26:24
Coby Lefkowitz
Are the sewer lines clear? Is the water going to be pumped into the city? Who's picking up the trash on the streets? Are we maintaining building facades so that bricks aren't falling on people's heads when they walk? That, is there a network of street lights at night so that people can move between blocks without feeling unsafe being in the dark?
00:46:26:27 - 00:47:14:00
Coby Lefkowitz
A number of examples like that. And I in the book, I specifically point to the maintenance of a buildings and not just streets or parks as a part of that stewardship. Any structure that we Revere from the past has only made it here because, it has been loved caring for generations. And we need to create, I think, places that are not only capable of capturing the affections of today's residents, but of posterity as well, or else the environmental consequences of this fast casual, you know, cycling through of development are going to be rather profound.
00:47:14:03 - 00:47:37:11
Coby Lefkowitz
We need people to feel a closer connection to the places where they live for, I mean, for any number of reasons. It will immeasurably improve their quality of life. There's this sort of anonymity that is felt and depersonalization. I think that a lot of people have in today's built environment because they don't have any connection to the world around them.
00:47:37:14 - 00:47:47:08
Coby Lefkowitz
And if you have even one small building that they can feel that tie to, it is amazing. The level of community that is emergent. From that.
00:47:47:11 - 00:48:05:26
John Simmerman
Your final chapter is really a call to action. And you know, in the spirit of what you just said, you know, you say basically everyone reading this has the capacity to be a built environment advocate, and it really is. It is a call to action for folks. Expand on that.
00:48:05:29 - 00:48:29:13
Coby Lefkowitz
I wanted to instill some level of agency in people who read this, because it can be dispiriting to especially follow a lot of the discourse in city building today about how large the numbers are and how big the projects are, and how difficult it is to even. You can look at Los Angeles or San Francisco to build a bus stop.
00:48:29:15 - 00:48:56:25
Coby Lefkowitz
You know, a bus shelter could take seven years of reviews, and then you see the final result. You go, this cost $4 million. It doesn't make any sense. Right? And so it is very easy to succumb to that cynicism and feel a total loss of agency. But I think it's important to remind ourselves that the only reason anything around us exists is because there was a group of people in the past who created it such that we can enjoy it today.
00:48:56:28 - 00:49:19:08
Coby Lefkowitz
That is true of the bad, but it is even more true of the good, especially when we have stewardship that gets wrapped up into it. And so I want people to take that away at a high level, but then more specifically to see themselves as those actors, there is no reason why you can't become a developer or an architect or a planner.
00:49:19:10 - 00:49:36:09
Coby Lefkowitz
These are just skills that you can pick up. And honestly, for development, yes, there are financial barriers, but you can start very small and work your way up there. There is really no specialized skill you have to learn on the job. Yes you can. I'm teaching a class right now on real estate development, so you can absolutely go to school.
00:49:36:12 - 00:50:01:25
Coby Lefkowitz
You can learn it and that's great. But I think a lot of the experience comes from running your own projects and on the ground. And that's not something that, has any level of privilege to it. The this line I've taken to saying recently is that a lot of I think a lot of the pessimism around our built environment is that people don't think we deserve much better.
00:50:01:27 - 00:50:29:20
Coby Lefkowitz
We are a consumerist, hyper capitalist society. This is naturally what you get, and I firmly reject that. I think you only get what you reach for. And so if you don't seek for anything better, you won't get it. If you don't view certain structures or virtues as worth aspiring towards or embodying in the built environment, you won't have them.
00:50:29:27 - 00:50:54:03
Coby Lefkowitz
And the only thing that differentiates a resident of, let's say, Topeka, Kansas, who doesn't have a structure like the Duomo in Italy, or the, let's say Notre Dame, the, in Paris is the fact that there yes, there's a money and a resources consideration, but there's no reason they couldn't have a smaller version. That is a cultural prison that we put ourselves into.
00:50:54:05 - 00:51:13:06
Coby Lefkowitz
And this is true of anywhere in the world. So you really can start that process today. It's just about gathering the people and more than anything, the will to do that. And I think that that comes from primarily believing that it's possible. So that's the thrust of of the book.
00:51:13:08 - 00:51:43:06
John Simmerman
Yeah. Also in the very last chapter, you also channel the fact that, yeah, we've really destroyed the fabric of many of our city is running, interstate highways through it and, and, and really, you know, creating massive, massive problems. It looked like we were heading in the direction of being able to have some good resources in terms of finances and especially coming down from the federal, perspective, to address some of those challenges.
00:51:43:08 - 00:52:05:16
John Simmerman
And then a new administration comes along and it's very doubtful that there will be any kind of of federal funds available for anything about repairing some of the damages to, to our cities. That's one of the challenges with writing a book. Is that you you know, you're writing it based on the context that you're in now without having the crystal ball of imagining what could be happening.
00:52:05:16 - 00:52:39:08
John Simmerman
And no one could imagine what the reality that we're in. Now. To close this out, talk a little bit about how we can remain optimistic in these dire times. And if you have, you know, any, any wisdom from your, your young career here because you haven't been doing this for all that long. What what ideas or assumptions and or, this might just be intuition on your part is to what we need to do.
00:52:39:10 - 00:53:02:18
Coby Lefkowitz
I talk with a lot of developers, planners, architects, built environment professionals generally around the country, and sometimes there is this throwing up at the hands to say, oh, we can't do that. And I challenge them on that. Understanding the models as I do. We've run our own firm for about four years, but I've been working, developing for the better part of a decade now.
00:53:02:21 - 00:53:31:20
Coby Lefkowitz
And, previous firms that I work for, my own firm now, it is there are certain undeniable realities of putting together a development project or to build a structure, but it doesn't mean that every structure has to be the lowest common denominator. There are ways that we can get creative, and indeed there are many hundreds of people around the country who are getting extraordinarily creative to deliver projects that are wonderful.
00:53:31:23 - 00:54:03:29
Coby Lefkowitz
So some some of the projects that you've showed on screen today are very expensive, and they are designed for people who are wealthier or at different stages of their life. And that can feel unattainable. But in the book, as you know, online, I've profiled many hundreds of projects that are other affordable but you lowercase, affordable, uppercase, say affordable or just general middle class housing or commercial structures that aren't designed for the top white shoe firms that you might find in New York as one example, or a large hedge fund.
00:54:04:00 - 00:54:43:27
Coby Lefkowitz
They're just neighborhood structures, and they're being completed with an increasing frequency, so that every year we're seeing higher amount or higher proportion of good projects. One, that's a market signal. So I'd rather live in a more beautiful building, or I'd rather work in a more beautiful building. We know from the academic literature that hospital, for example, that are designed more in accordance with biophilic principles or more humanist principles, lead to better health outcomes from the folks who are being treated there from patients.
00:54:44:00 - 00:55:13:28
Coby Lefkowitz
So there there is an empirical backing to this as well. It's not just an esthetic argument, to, to develop better cities. And it's not just a financial argument to say that you're going to get better rent. It is this holistic perspective. And I do believe that we are seeing this groundswell. It's not a post-Covid phenomena. This started in the early 80s, and we're we're 40, 45 years into this reinvestment into cities.
00:55:14:01 - 00:55:37:01
Coby Lefkowitz
And I think it's really important for people to keep in mind, one, to take hope that we've been doing this for a while, but that the seeds you see flowering today were planted very long time ago. Doing anything the built environment does take quite a bit of time. So it's. That, that can, I guess, be a little bit dispiriting.
00:55:37:03 - 00:56:08:07
Coby Lefkowitz
But there's something that's been finding its way in the milia of let's say, the tech world, and certainly some level of entrepreneurial ism that says a project might take 3 or 5 years to build, but those years are going to pass anyway. So would you rather have started the project? And then three years, you can look back and say, look at all we've accomplished, or would you have been mired in this internal prism that you put yourself in and say, oh, it's going to take too long, we can't do it.
00:56:08:10 - 00:56:26:07
Coby Lefkowitz
So, yes, it's a long process. That time's going to pass anyway. I think. Let's charge forward forcefully, optimistically that we can build that more perfect or that better not even perfect future because it's been done over the last several decades.
00:56:26:09 - 00:56:47:02
John Simmerman
Yeah. And leaning in towards, you know, some of the themes that we had talked about earlier of infill development and reuse, you know, you referenced the fact that the Kingston project is like a former parking lot. It's like reimagining. I mean, let's let's not think about these huge, massive greenfield developments way outside in the in the hinterlands. It's like, what do we have that we can move quickly on?
00:56:47:02 - 00:57:11:14
John Simmerman
Can we start, some simple changes to, you know, within our own cities to be able to make it easier to, to do some infill, to do some thickening as as Chuck Marone likes to say of the housing stock, you know, ADUs and everything else that needs to happen because we need housing quickly, not something that's going to necessarily always take a ten year horizon to to come to fruition.
00:57:11:16 - 00:57:37:21
Coby Lefkowitz
I totally agree. Our first project for to use, they would have been far quicker to build if we were in in Southern California, where it's very difficult for much of anything. But in Texas, you can get a permit in a couple of weeks and you can build one of those structures in four months. That's very quick, and I am firmly on the Adu maximalism end of the spectrum that they can deliver extraordinary benefits.
00:57:37:24 - 00:58:07:25
Coby Lefkowitz
They're small, but if you if you take a city like San Diego that has alleyways and just say there's 300 unit, 300,000 units of housing, 70% of that is single family homes and some material percentage at 20 due to their back yard, but say 20% or 30%. You know, now we're talking upwards of 50,000 housing units that can be delivered in a city of a million people.
00:58:07:27 - 00:58:37:20
Coby Lefkowitz
I mean, that is a really significant amount of housing to to be delivered that can be accomplished quickly. There. It's not as simple as that. Quick math. If we but I firmly believe that there's a great impact that can be delivered there. And there are places that need higher density and so, so much more so. But it is simply true that it's easier to build a three story structure than a 20 story structure.
00:58:37:23 - 00:58:59:24
Coby Lefkowitz
And it doesn't make sense to build, in some cases, three story structures, in some cases 20 story structures. So we have to again, in this Chuck Marone sense, like incrementally progress forward, what a neighborhood wants to grow up to be. It doesn't make sense to go from two stories. Think I was just in Toronto where much of the city is low rise, and then you have these major corridors where you have 50 and 60 story towers.
00:58:59:26 - 00:59:28:18
Coby Lefkowitz
It's very strange. It leads to a very curious development pattern. And I really like Toronto, but the city would be much better suited, in my opinion, if they went to a uniform density of up to five stories. In most poor neighborhoods, they could actually support a tram and a transit system, which they can't really right now. I mean, it it works in some respects, but I'm staying on a pretty busy street, and I had a bike 50 minutes away to go to a subway stop.
00:59:28:25 - 00:59:47:12
Coby Lefkowitz
It just it didn't make any sense. And so, yeah, there are there are ways that we can do this if we really want to get into the numbers more or less realistically. But I think it's about widening the aperture of what we perceive as possible.
00:59:47:14 - 01:00:11:24
John Simmerman
Yeah. Real quickly to close this out, you mentioned, you know, the ADUs and and them being small but a small to you from but from a developer's perspective, what from a square footage perspective, I mean and not not in the Manhattan mindset but you know, across North America, what what would you consider being small for these livable kind of places?
01:00:11:26 - 01:00:14:04
John Simmerman
Just curious.
01:00:14:06 - 01:00:43:29
Coby Lefkowitz
I'm going to I'll provide a spectrum, but I'll get. Without personal bias, in cities around the world, there are micro. There's typologies of micro units that are cherished for the affordability they confer, the proximity they allow for. So in Paris you have some of the wall which are the top floor of the house, but apartment buildings and these are 150ft².
01:00:44:02 - 01:01:05:16
Coby Lefkowitz
I mean, they're tiny. In Tokyo. You have a similar condition where in the heart of, you know, a ten minute walk from Shinjuku, you might have a 100 square foot, very, very, very efficient studio that cost only a couple hundred dollars a month. And there are people who are willing to make that tradeoff. So there is an economy, argument there.
01:01:05:18 - 01:01:30:04
Coby Lefkowitz
But everyone is going to have a different level of minimum housing that they would require. So for some people, 1000ft² might be too small if they have several kids running around. And for others that might be too big to manage. So I want to be careful not to impart my own biases and say that it's. So in San Diego, those ADUs were actually a little bit bigger.
01:01:30:04 - 01:01:56:14
Coby Lefkowitz
They were 900ft² and 1100 square feet, the first one in our second project there, we built, it was legislatively an Adu, but it was functionally a duplex. So we built 550ft² in 800ft². But we're now working on a project where there are studios that are 375ft² and one bedrooms that are less than, you know, 450ft². So it is a spectrum.
01:01:56:16 - 01:02:16:18
John Simmerman
Yeah. Well, and the reason why I wanted to hone in on that is because I live in a 1946 cottage that, you know, is less than 750ft². I mean, back in the day, this is, you know, it's a two bedroom, one bath home. I mean, we didn't call them tiny houses. They were just houses. They were starter houses.
01:02:16:20 - 01:02:40:00
Coby Lefkowitz
It's so funny you say that because our first project, the 35th Street Project, has a beautiful bungalow, but a craftsman home that is a two bed, one bath, 750ft². It's fantastic, you know, in and it was relatively easy to rent up because it had a yard and it was beautiful and it was enough space for a couple to start their life.
01:02:40:00 - 01:02:58:01
Coby Lefkowitz
And so, it, I think there does need to be a reframing of what we think density looks like. And we probably I'm guilty of the certainly need to move away from the abstract notion of density and square footages to the more qualitative considerations of what sort of life can you build here.
01:02:58:04 - 01:03:22:29
John Simmerman
Yeah, I mean, the whole reason why this works for us is we are in a, a downtown adjacent neighborhood where everything is walkable and bikeable. It's all about proximity. So, yes, it's a single family home, but it's on a relatively small lot. It's a relatively small place. Thankfully, the city has actually, opened up the ability for us to add two additional, more dwellings onto this lot.
01:03:23:04 - 01:03:40:06
John Simmerman
So that's fantastic. You know, if we so choose, we can certainly do that. And that would add even more density, you know, to our neighborhood. But the fact that we can get on the bike, the downtown in like five, ten minutes and, you know, walk, you know, to all these meaningful destinations is what really makes it all work.
01:03:40:08 - 01:04:07:07
John Simmerman
And it really makes what I talk about, you know, that relevance between the housing discussions that we're having and the densities that we're talking about and the ability to create walkable, bikeable places because there's meaningful destinations within easy walking and biking distances, active towns. Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Me this has been so much fun. Thank you so much and congratulations on your first book, folks.
01:04:07:07 - 01:04:18:29
John Simmerman
Pick up your own copy of Building Optimism. We'll include a link. Down below in the show notes. If folks want to follow along with your work, where is the best way for them to, track you down?
01:04:19:01 - 01:04:37:18
Coby Lefkowitz
I'm on Twitter at Kobe Lafco. And, building optimism.com or Substack building Optimus as well. John, it's such a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I really do appreciate the opportunity to talk and to nerd out on all things cities, planning, transportation. It's really been a lot of fun.
01:04:37:20 - 01:04:54:23
John Simmerman
Hey, thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Kobe Lefkowitz. And if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, be honored to have you subscribe to the channel. Just click on the subscription button down below, and be sure to ring that notification bell to turn on all notifications.
01:04:54:23 - 01:05:20:06
John Simmerman
And once again, if you're enjoying this content here on the Active Towns Channel, please consider supporting my efforts by becoming an Active Towns Ambassador. Super easy to do. Again, just navigate over to Active towns.org. Click on the support tab at the top of the page and there's several different options. You can become a Patreon supporter again. Patrons do get early and ad free access to all my video content, but you can also buy me a coffee as well as make a contribution to the nonprofit.
01:05:20:11 - 01:05:40:29
John Simmerman
Again, every little bit helps and is very much appreciated. Okay, that's it for now. So until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers and a huge shout out to all my Active Towns ambassadors supporting the channel via YouTube. Super! Thanks! Buy me a coffee! Patreon. As well as making contributions to the nonprofit.
01:05:40:29 - 01:05:44:22
John Simmerman
I could not do this without you. Thank you all so very much.