The Troubadour Podcast
"It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind." William Wordsworth The Troubadour Podcast invites you into a world where art is conversation and conversation is art. The conversations on this show will be with some living people and some dead writers of our past. I aim to make both equally entertaining and educational.In 1798 William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, which Wordsworth called an experiment to discover how far the language of everyday conversation is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure. With this publication, he set in motion the formal movement called "Romanticism." 220 years later the experiment is continued on this podcast. This podcast seeks to reach those of us who wish to improve our inner world, increase our stores of happiness, and yet not succumb to the mystical or the subjective.Here, in this place of the imagination, you will find many conversation with those humans creating things that interest the human mind.
The Troubadour Podcast
Austin: City of Tomorrow W/Ryan Puzycki
Ryan Pazicki joins us to reimagine the future of Austin, Texas as a leading urban center. What if Austin could surpass New York and Los Angeles? We explore this ambitious vision, focusing on the influx of Californians and New Yorkers and the sentiment of "Don't California, my Texas." We delve into how fostering human connection, commerce, education, and culture is essential for Austin's growth, highlighting exciting upcoming developments like new universities and cultural institutions.
We shift gears to discuss how Austin can build a more connected and vibrant urban environment. Emphasizing vertical growth over horizontal expansion, we unravel the importance of urban connectivity, robust arts scenes, and cultural activities that cities uniquely offer. We address the balance between personal transportation preferences and broader urban planning needs, advocating for fewer land use restrictions and improved road infrastructure. The potential of the Austin-San Antonio corridor to become a super-connected metroplex with high-speed transportation also takes center stage.
Our conversation ventures into the cultural contrasts between urban and rural values, drawing historical parallels and reflecting on the significance of spontaneous social interactions. We discuss how zoning laws and political ideologies shape urban growth, highlighting successful redevelopment projects like the Mueller Airport. We conclude by emphasizing the role of local activism in fostering thriving communities and the profound impact of architecture on society. This episode is a thought-provoking exploration of how intentional urban development can create diverse, vibrant, and connected cities.
Don't California, my Texas.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:You're not trying to do that because California has done that. No.
Speaker 2:Texas Texans are trying to California.
Speaker 1:Texas. Yes, thank you, have you said that before publicly?
Speaker 2:No, but feel free to yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that's true. I agree with that 100%. As a Californian who doesn't agree with a lot of the policies of California and New York City, I think Texans are becoming more like that on their own. Welcome back to the show, ryan Pazicki. Urbanist writer. That's what we're going to call you for this, and I wanted to talk to you about Austin, about New York City, about Chicago, about San Francisco, about big cities, urban cities, everything in between. To get us started, you and I are both transplants to Texas. We're sitting in my gorgeous palace in Manor, texas, right outside of Austin. I'm from California, I'm from the Bay Area, I've lived in Orange County, lived in Denver and now I live here. You've lived in New York City and you've lived in San Francisco and you've lived here, austin and elsewhere, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But I think those two. But you know, you and I both came here during the flood of Californians and New Yorkers moving.
Speaker 2:Part of the exodus, yeah.
Speaker 1:The exodus to that. So there's a lot of talk in Texas about don't California, my Texas, which I'd like to talk a little bit about because I think that's an interesting. I understand where they're coming from, but I wanted to think bigger. I wanted to dream for a minute to get us started with this. Just kind of think about how can we make Austin the greatest city, like if we had all the. You know, there's a movie, megalopolis, coming out, where I don't know what's going on. Francis Ford Coppola is something, but it's like this idea of like an architect who I guess he has a ruler, he just changes things and he can, he has magical powers. But if we had like complete God-like power and vision I don't think anybody should have this for the record, but just for fun dreaming. What do you think Austin could look like to make it better than New York City, la, in the future, tomorrow?
Speaker 2:What would?
Speaker 1:it be.
Speaker 2:Well, first, thanks for having me back and I'm happy to be here to talk about all this stuff with you. Yeah, I think not giving anybody the magic wand would be the first thing.
Speaker 1:Destroy my dream right at the beginning to save for good.
Speaker 2:Well you know, this is the troubadour show.
Speaker 2:It's about romanticism, so I just want to dream, but I think yeah, to answer the question you kind of have to think about, like, why do cities exist in the first place? And know, the main reason is that they bring people together for commerce, for romance, for knowledge, just for human connection, and that leads to the creation of businesses, leads to the creation of universities, to arts, theater and then all of the attendant things that come with that that people want, like restaurants, places to live, you know, culture. So so if we want to think about like the city, or any city, just in terms of like the basic core function it is a place for bringing people together make Austin the greatest city. What would be the city that provides the most opportunities for people to connect? So, in all of these various spheres that I just mentioned, so, places to work, places to learn, you know, and we have a new university coming in Austin which is hopefully going to be another draw for more people to come here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, two universities Well, we have the big one and then we have a bunch of small ones, and then, just, you know, university yeah that's the sort of whole cloth new thing that's being created here well, I'll say that because we've announced this publicly, but we're building a museum, ariza museum and a university, yeah, so that will add to the cultural yeah come on, plug that you know, to the extent that people want to be here, companies want to be here as well.
Speaker 2:They want a highly educated workforce, which austin provides. Yeah, so like those are kind of the strengths of the city, I would say, you know, it is a place people already want to be. It has a highly educated population and workforce that wants good jobs, that wants culture, and so basically, how do you keep building on that? Literally?
Speaker 1:Yeah, like actually you have to build something. You can't just do it with what you have now.
Speaker 2:And that is sort of the problem with Austin to date is that it has grown laterally, not vertically, so horizontally.
Speaker 1:Well, you see that as a problem.
Speaker 2:Well, I think when you have a kind of spatial relationship with land in which people are very far apart from each other, it actually makes it very difficult for these connections to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I agree with all that. Actually, I mean, I'm all for vertical and all of that, but okay, but just for a couple minutes though. So that's a really good groundwork is like reminding ourselves the purpose of why we care about cities versus being a hermit living out in the middle of nowhere. That is an option.
Speaker 2:And some people do want that. Yeah, some people want that.
Speaker 1:And that's why some people moved to Texas.
Speaker 2:If you want a ranch, this is a great state for that.
Speaker 1:This is a great state for that, exactly and honestly, there's a lot of places in America I mean people constantly underestimate how big America is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's huge.
Speaker 1:And there's just a lot of just areas, you can find that dream home. I mean, I know I was talking to some people the other day who, well, actually a couple months ago, but like he's somebody I was working with and he, you know, built this house outside of like Tennessee, or like outside of a major city in Tennessee. It's like an hour away or something.
Speaker 1:But there's just like there's, so many options. If you want that, you could still have the civilization aspect within reach, and you know. But you could build like a huge house. That's your dream house and I think that's great. That's what's cool about American movies. You have that option. But, yeah, you're right. So, whether it's suburb suburbia, which you've written a lot about lately on your sub stack and I want to talk about that, because I'm from suburbia, I live in suburbia.
Speaker 2:I mean, I grew up in suburbia as well, but outside of a very old town.
Speaker 1:Okay and well, that's interesting. But then, yeah, the purpose of cities is to. You know, there's the vibrancy, there's the connection, there's the Broadway, like arts. It's really hard to have a really robust art scene if there's like a population of 10,000.
Speaker 2:Right, you need millions of people to make that happen, to make a high level the greatest in the world. I mean, you know, smaller towns certainly have, you know, like the community theater and things like that.
Speaker 1:Oh for sure, and there's a lot of I mean. You know, I just joined the board of Austin Shakespeare.
Speaker 2:Right yeah, congratulations and.
Speaker 1:I think that you know. So I wanted to talk about that, about like bringing arts, but that's my kind of. What I want to talk about in terms of vision is, you know, like what? Obviously it's not going to look like what we're saying, right, but just if there were no roadblocks, if we could just build what we wanted to you, me, other people this is part of what it means to be a city is like you're dealing with a multitude of visions for what you like public transit, I like. I want a motorcycle again, I want my, you know I love my car. I want to, you know, be on my schedule when I want, like at my speeds, when I, you know, if I want to go 2am, I don't want to have to worry about going at 2.15. I want to go at 2am, you know, like that kind of thing. So that's the kind of you know, that's what I'm thinking of is like how do you optimize for that? And like what could be a dream big scenario for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I mean, I think, a city, you know it's not a ranch though. So, like you know, if you try to optimize for both, then you kind of get something that looks like you know outer Austin, where it's huge plots of land with you know houses plopped in the middle of it that are only accessible by you know car. That's not really an urban environment.
Speaker 2:So you know, so you know, the the modern, post-war kind of car centric suburb is not really. You know, it's a departure from the historical urban form which was closer knit, connected by transit, recognizably urban, even if it wasn't tall or something.
Speaker 1:So urban doesn't mean tall yeah it doesn't have to, but it does have to mean concentrated.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:San Francisco's not that tall.
Speaker 2:No, it's not. I mean most of it is very low rise. I mean that's part of why it's so expensive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because they don't have enough skyscrapers, because they need to build more. Yeah, they need skyscrapers because they need limited geography or just larger scale housing.
Speaker 2:But nobody wants to bulldoze a Victorian mansion. I'll do it Higher current maybe I'll run. I mean probably many people do want to but it's not allowed in most of the cities, but we don't have restrictions right now.
Speaker 1:You're the character for Megalopolis. What do you want? For you, for Ryan, for Zicky.
Speaker 2:What I would like to do is to remove all of the restrictions that make Austin from really owning that kind of urbanity. Okay, and so the two major issues there are that it's all about land use, really, but with respect to the types of housing that are allowed to be built and the the types of, I guess, road infrastructure that we have here, and so the city is too car oriented, even in All right, all right.
Speaker 1:So so your vision? So fine that your vision is a less car oriented.
Speaker 2:Right, it's. It's not anti-car, by any means.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to give you that point.
Speaker 2:So you want it to have the. We shouldn't be building our neighborhoods around the car In Austin specifically. Well, I think in any city that is trying to be a city.
Speaker 1:So how would you have it start moving Again? You have supreme magical powers. Right. So I just want to see the vision as clearly as possible. Well, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I know what I'm trying to get at here is that there's kind of there's an incrementalism to all of this. Like you know, the magic wand is not a bulldozer, like what it does is erase sort of, I would say, regulations that are getting in the way of the city that we might be are getting in the way of the city that we might be, and so that doesn't mean that okay, well, we've allowed for, we've gotten rid of zoning.
Speaker 2:That doesn't mean that overnight it turns into something that looks like New York. I don't think Austin will ever look like New York, you don't think that's at all possible. Like in the fantasy. Again, new York is an Island, or you know basically a series of islands with a bit on the mainland.
Speaker 1:There's unique aspects.
Speaker 2:There are unique aspects that kind of force things up in and there isn't that real pressure here. You know, unless the Texas legislature were to say we're, you know, casting a green belt around the hill country to prevent growth, you know they probably would. I don't, you know, I don't know that that would be popular. Okay good, but you know that would be the only kind of forcing mechanism. Yeah. Otherwise there's kind of no end to how far out you can go.
Speaker 1:Well like my city in a state like Texas, which is enormous. So huge and my city is a great example. Right Like Maynard, great example you drove in. I have a road now.
Speaker 2:Right, did you see that road?
Speaker 1:It's a nice road. I was like yes.
Speaker 2:It's nicely paved, it's too big. It's too big, okay, well, I think they're expecting a lot of growth in the future and a certain type of growth, the kind of growth that's only accessible by car.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, because that's the reality of what Texas is, I think right now and in the near future.
Speaker 2:But there are choices there, there are policy choices there.
Speaker 1:So you think they could make a choice that would have a tram so they have smaller roads and have some kind of tram from Manor to downtown Austin or something.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's certainly a possibility, but in the state the vast majority of the Department of Transportation quote, unquote, something like 97% I forget the exact figure, but the vast majority of it is spent on building roads, not on any other kind of transportation.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, oh, I see what you're saying. So it's yeah, they're making policy decisions, obviously right away. Right, it's all about cars, because it is all about cars, Right?
Speaker 2:I mean, the marketplace isn't building roads, the government is to be clear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so like they could be building other things like.
Speaker 2:Right, but if you look at, you know, look at Austin, look at a lot of the old towns in Texas and the shape of them, of their downtowns, Manor included, you know there's a little vestige of what Manor was before the car was dominant.
Speaker 1:In the downtown area.
Speaker 2:Right on, I think Parsons and Lexington. Yeah. There's like an old building there right on the corner. It's like one of the last standing, but it comes right up to the road.
Speaker 1:It looks like it's maybe from the late 1800s.
Speaker 2:There used to be probably a little downtown there that served what was, I'm gonna guess, a largely farming community around here and basically kind of farm town model. The farmers would ride their I don't know, maybe horse and buggy and then Model T, you know into downtown you know when they Cars, basically.
Speaker 1:Transportation, but but I mean, don't you think there's a Okay?
Speaker 2:well, there's a difference between the like you know the Model T versus, say, a Ford F-150,. You know, insofar as cars go, so one is gigantic.
Speaker 1:You mean fundamentally no.
Speaker 2:I mean just like size-wise you-wise.
Speaker 1:So yeah, the size of the F-150.
Speaker 2:Right. So if we're designing roads to fit those, it just takes up a tremendous amount of space. Just takes up one more space, yeah, and so if they wanted that big road to go into downtown Manor, well, they would have had to basically bulldoze the whole thing. Start over and expand the road, but that is what we did in the middle of the 20th century in most of our cities in America. We built giant roads into them and made them places that nobody wanted to go anymore.
Speaker 1:Interesting, okay, so.
Speaker 2:Because we built them around the car rather than around the people inside the car.
Speaker 1:Okay, but I'm still trying to get an idea of what you think that would look like, I guess. So like, yeah, I get what you're saying and I want to talk more in detail about what, because you wrote a lot in your sub stack about the history which I found really interesting, like how there were certain policies that favored the car, and I want to talk about that because I have my views on why that happened. I think you have yours. I'd like to dig into it, but I still am just curious about you know, like Austin is an interesting place. So we have all these big tech companies moving here. X is now going to move here, that's Twitter and that's. You know, like obviously, elon Musk has moved a lot of stuff. And just like an hour north of us in Temple, I think right, is it Templexas? What's it called the city that?
Speaker 1:oh, taylor no I think it's like they're building a huge facebook center data center yeah, I forgot, like it's like an hour north, but they're building a whole bunch of stuff in this whole region, I think in san marcos, south of us. I mean, the whole belt from austin to san antonio is massive and that's a huge problem, because that's where I would think I would a hundred percent agree with you. Like I, my vision would be like a super train or, or, like you know, as fast as humanly possible, right, like I want that to be a 10, 15 minute ride. It really shouldn't be that long. It's only 50 miles or something like that. It's at 55 miles, right. It's like just right into downtown Austin and then, if we had this driverless car thing happening, just rent a driverless car. That would help Get wherever you want, right? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Something like that, or I could see that as a really cool like having this super city that San Antonio Austin.
Speaker 2:Sort of like the.
Speaker 1:Metroplex, yeah, exactly, and that it's kind of because that would unite so much of us that we would then, when I'm thinking about, for me, my passion, the arts and theater, well, now we could have a big Austin-San Antonio theater in Metroplex here, that someone in San Antonio could be here in 10, 15 minutes right, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then boom, you have a whole expansion and an ability to raise money, to know you just have a whole market. That's like what do we have in this area now? Four million, five million people in the, this whole metro, six, seven like I mean the austin metro.
Speaker 2:It's about two and a half million, yeah, if you combine those like so that would be.
Speaker 1:My kind of vision is like having all of that connected, and that's where I agree with your the transportation part, yeah, and I would still want the car to be an option.
Speaker 2:No, I mean it has to be. Like you know, roads are, so transit or transportation in general are means of connection, right? Yeah, you don't want to cut one off arbitrarily. Right.
Speaker 1:Like Kirk wants to get there at 3am and the road, everything's shut off at 3 am.
Speaker 2:The benefit of something, cause I gotta get to Ryan and Dorian at 3 am.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Cause I'm going to talk about pop-ins. I read your pop-in article so I'm like, are you sure You're going to be like, instead of Newman, you're going to be like Kirk, I'm going to be your. Newman that that the whole point of that article was.
Speaker 2:That's fine. Who wants to do a pop-in?
Speaker 1:I'm going to do a pop-in.
Speaker 2:Good, I look forward to it Damn it.
Speaker 1:What did I do? Why did I do this?
Speaker 2:Remember, the other side of the pop-in is the pop-out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, you have to know when you're not wanted and how long you're going to stay. Anyway, neither can either. Well, only going to work in limited areas.
Speaker 2:Parts of it, Like transit, requires a certain amount of density to work, and when you've built large single family neighborhoods on you know an acre of land they're just by definition is not going to be enough people there to make transit work. So those places will probably for the foreseeable future remain car only. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But what I was, I guess you know. I didn't mean to stop the conversation at Manor, but, like you know, the street grid of Austin was laid out in, you know, 1839. And for a time when you know there were no cars, there were no cars.
Speaker 1:It was people traveling by foot or by horse or something like that.
Speaker 2:But that's where people lived too. It was a lived-in city in its early years and it wasn't until much later that people sort of decamped from downtown into the surrounding areas and you can sort of see where in Austin the street grids end and turn into these kind of curvaceous roads. Grids and and turn into these kind of curvaceous roads, and but like you know, you know, hyde park follows a street grid, but it was connected to downtown by a street car, so oh, really yeah.
Speaker 1:So hyde park in austin is a street car, suburb remnants of it well, you I mean all the tracks have been like there's no rem, but you know hyde park has just the way it's a fairly, you know, rectilinear street grid. Sure yeah.
Speaker 2:For the most part there are some exceptions, and you see that somewhat to the south of downtown and then where I live in East Austin also follows that Basically until Airport Boulevard and then it kind of starts to look more suburban after that. Okay.
Speaker 2:So where I live it's a single-family neighborhood but's like right next to downtown Austin. It has an urban form. You know you can walk around. The blocks are not large. Yeah, there are places to walk to that are not just other people's homes restaurants, bars, coffee shops, schools, all sorts of things like that. And you know, my vision is not like flying cars and stuff like that, it's not your vision.
Speaker 2:It's not that it's the opposite of the Jetsons. It's being on earth and people being able to walk around everywhere in their neighborhood, to the you know, most of the places they would want to go. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:and then the car becomes a means of accessing other parts of town, rather than the car being required to do everything yeah so, like you know, if I want to go grocery shopping, like in person, instead of having amazon deliver, you know I have to drive to the grocery store. You know it's it's too far to walk and then to oh, I see you know, yeah, if I want to go to the gym.
Speaker 2:Ironically, I have to drive to it because there isn't one close to where I live, you've gone to it Right. But you know if going to the gym takes three hours out of your day, then it becomes impractical to do that.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, I've told you this before. One of the main reasons I bought this house was because in my price range, this is a four-bed bedroom, three bath with a big garage, and I built a gym and that was one of my biggest things. That I wanted to do is have my own gym because that cuts out so much time.
Speaker 1:Now, of course, I miss the gym. Now I miss other people. So that's the flip side of it is I'm like dang, I want to. You know, where are all the people? Where's my motivation to? Like you know get a big pump.
Speaker 2:Well, that is an optimization question and I think, you know, with my series on the suburbs, I started with the cultural reasons behind it, rather than the, you know, the transportation or you know government largesse. That kind of fueled it, like I think there is a cultural question behind all of this stuff that I think is very important and I also think it's deeply embedded and is something that urbanists just need to accept, that like, there is a suburban preference embedded into, you know, american culture in particular that, yeah, favors a certain type of development.
Speaker 3:Right 50s. Well, we've idealized it and valorized it as well.
Speaker 1:When it goes back farther than that. It goes back to romanticism. Actually that's what this show I talk a lot about. But I think romanticism is the first moment when you have modernity really popping up backlash, which is an idealization of nature, yeah, of living out in nature. You know the value of rural, the value of the noble savage, the value of you know rousseau, the value of child without the education, like as sans the civilized quote-unquote things we do to make people into a quote-unquote, proper, civilized person, and all those kinds of ideas pop up in the mid-1700s. So this goes back hundreds of years and there's a lot of literature that's about this kind of idea.
Speaker 2:I know for sure, and it's embedded in the American founding as well, especially the American founding you know Jefferson talks about this. You know kind of rural idol. I mean really in American culture there are these two, or at least as far as you know kind of rural idol. I mean really in American culture there are these two. Or at least as far as you know the American development goes, you have these kind of two antipodes in Jefferson and Hamilton and Hamilton is kind of the urbanist and Jefferson as the agrarian.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I know the Jefferson connection. I guess I didn't think about Hamilton like that, but he is the. That makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, he is, you know the essence of urbanity in that era.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Washington. Interestingly kind of straddles both.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's tall.
Speaker 2:Yes, he can literally straddle both. But what did I want to say there? How?
Speaker 1:far back it goes Right.
Speaker 2:And so I wrote an essay earlier in the summer called the Revolt of the Cities, actually for the Fourth of July, in which, you know, the revolution started in the cities, but then, by necessity, we had to abandon the cities I mean the British, you know, occupied Philadelphia, new York, boston, and so like we had to abandon the cities and take the war into the countryside, basically, and that's where it was mostly fought.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, but there was this kind of moralizing aspect to it where thought leaders you know religious leaders at the time thought that you know this was necessary to forge this new kind of nation, one that would not be city based.
Speaker 1:So, but I mean so. They did it in contrast to like, as a way to almost propaganda right to kind of like this is how we're cities must be. It wasn't america's go ahead yeah, some.
Speaker 2:Some thought like the cities must be sacrificed for the sake of the new nation. Others thought the city should be destroyed because they're the the center of sin, and, and that goes back that goes back and that goes back to the Bible. Genesis is largely a chronicle of how God destroys various cities for their sinfulness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this is a heavy theme in Western civilization. Is Athens and Sparta right? You know this. Athens and sparta right, even pre-christian era. You have, like, the urban greeks and their pole, and you know they're very cosmopolitan, that's where the term literally comes from, right. And then you have the spartans, who are rural. Of course, they're slave owners, right, harsh as hell to their slaves, you know, killing helots and and the people, the people around them, in order to have that structure.
Speaker 2:Well, think Hamilton is an Athenian and Jefferson is perhaps a Spartan. In this, regard?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, in certain senses, but I think it's. I mean, to me the issue is there are these two fundamental deep values and there's going to be a person who's probably more urban or suburban, which is to me related. It's just a different version of urban versus the rural. I think is the unique. Those two are the two fundamentals, not suburban and urban. You know cause suburban is trying to have a little bit of what urban is Trying to split the difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sort of split the difference and have it like I want my own space but I also want the coffee shop next door. That's vibrant and I can see some beautiful people walking around, but that's hard to do because they all want to be downtown Austin and I get that. I understand where it's. You know my Starbucks in Maine are no offense. You're not finding all the kind of diversity of individuals there. You know that's just not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I mean I think you're right, like sub urban, like there always was a connection there, like the earliest suburbs were. I mean they were on the fringes of the city but they were still part of the city. So there was a very tight relationship and that was understood as the suburbs kind of developed in the late 1800s with the advancement of various types of technology, from the horse-drawn omnibus to the streetcar, which was the electric trolley system, and you know they were seen as extensions of the city. I mean, most of Manhattan is technically a suburb of downtown Manhattan. It's obviously grown, you know, tremendously over time, but it was like the Leonardo DiCaprio.
Speaker 2:Right, but the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side were connected by these early forms of transit that enabled people to live in, you know, in the country. You know, you know when. When Hamilton was the secretary of the treasury under the you know Washington's administration, you know the first capital was downtown and all of uptown Manhattan, wasattan, was just countryside.
Speaker 1:It was undeveloped was like that movie, the gangs in new york yeah, we've seen the end of that where like shows the progress over their graves and like it starts, like this little center and then it grows into modern, new york and stuff which is an interesting, like it's nice to see those times, like I like seeing austin pictures from 1930 or something that's really interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really cool to see how it laid out and the kind of vision they had, anyway. But yeah, it's interesting that there's these two deep cultural values. To me, I think there's almost a fundamental human thing that's just built not just into it there's an American version of it but it's also it's built into the West and it's probably built into a lot of other cultures that are not as familiar with them. But the question is what do we do about that?
Speaker 1:in our era. Today, Like I said at the beginning, you and I are from California, New York.
Speaker 1:We're from these other more criticized for various reasons, but they're highly developed, very wealthy, very successful, but also very progressive, and sometimes not in the best ways, always, sometimes in good ways, not always, and so a lot of Texans are worried about that. As we come here and here we are two Californians talking about reshaping all of Austin and Texas, and I'm interested because I think one. I think Austin is interesting because it's a blue dot in a red ocean, so it has this interesting interplay between the I'll call it the rurality of the rest of Texas and the urbanity of Austin. I think Austin definitely wants to be more urban, like it wants that Everyone I talk definitely wants to be more urban, like it wants, that everyone I talk to wants the connection, and I mean the good things about urbanity, obviously. I mean we should probably express this.
Speaker 1:What are the? The negatives that are, I think, genuinely there and you know, I think sometimes are a little ridiculous. They're kind of byproducts of racism, so right. So there's definitely a problem of like being actually isolated in, like the feeling of being isolated despite being surrounded by all these people. I think there's a despair element, like there's the fate, their famous story, which I think is actually misunderstood of the woman in new york city who was being murdered while people were watching from their high their apartments and they just didn't do it. Nobody called. And now what they discovered is they didn't call because everyone else thought someone else was doing it, right, right, so, but that's the kind of problem, right is, we don't take responsibility. Yeah, we don't take any kind of responsibility, for I don't know ryan on the street, but I don't want him to die forgot, so I'm gonna do something about it.
Speaker 1:It's's like no, we're all selfish, we just care about ourselves, we don't care about anybody else, right? So there's, that's one thing that I think is there, that it's a. Well, I think the thing that I disagree with and the way that it's toned is the sinfulness aspect. It is sinful. If you're coming from, you know, a very puritanical Christian perspective, then, yes, it is going to be a hotbed for sex, and this is one of the major sins of like sex outside of marriage, versus. If you're living in a rural town of a thousand, it's highly unlikely that there's that much. I mean probably, but maybe not as much.
Speaker 2:Because there's not as many options. You're at one. It's more isolated and yet up in everybody else's business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, you have no privacy as much.
Speaker 2:That is kind of the irony, though, isn't it? The desire for privacy was an aspect, or at least the idea that privacy existed out in the suburbs was one of the the kind of cultural forces that yeah propelled you know people out right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because there's some truth to that.
Speaker 2:I mean I feel pretty private out here, yeah, no wait for sure, yeah, but it's, I think it's you know of. It's not true that you don't have privacy in the city.
Speaker 1:I mean you know, oh yeah, you know well what about the pop-in and lock your doors just like open the door. I mean that joey, just walking and drinking your mouth I mean to be clear.
Speaker 2:You know, jerry himself did not like the poppin. It's his friends. No, I know used it. No, I know I saw the clip. Yeah, so anyway, I don't like.
Speaker 1:Elaine likes the pop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, kramer's a big poppin yeah, well, I mean, kramer's the worst version of it. Okay, let's talk about this for a second.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Because we're bringing it up, or I'm bringing it up, so the pop in is a great. It's one of your more recent articles, yeah.
Speaker 2:Jerry's apartment.
Speaker 1:It's about Jerry Seinfeld and a lot of sitcoms, which I agree with sitcom. I love that one, how I Met your Mother, a great one. They all kind of center around. For how I Met your Mother is interesting because they have a first and a second base. They call it first and second home. Right there's the apartment and then there's the bar, and the same thing with the Friends. Right, you had Monica's apartment and you had Central Perk, central Perk, and then Jerry Seinfeld, you had Jerry's apartment.
Speaker 2:And then Monks.
Speaker 1:And yeah, and then Monks, yeah, and I haven't really seen that one that show as much as the other ones, yeah.
Speaker 1:But so there is this kind of romanticization of the idea of having one, two, three spots.
Speaker 1:You work, you're home, and then each one of those spots, diversity of individuals come in and out of your life at random points and there's a lot of value to that, including people who gravitate towards you, who you might love or have mixed feelings for, like the Kramers or Newman. Newman comes into your life but he's there, right, you're not going to get rid of him. So if you open your life up and you're in that area, it's not like here, where I don't really have a Newman out here, but I also don't have an Elaine or a Kramer, so you don't have any of that. So it's like an interesting. But that idea of the pop-in you were kind of talking about in that article is the idea of just One of the reasons you thought maybe moving here would do. You said is there's a big community of people you've known for a long time but because of the spatial problem, no one's just you know, I'm not just from 22 minutes takes me 22 minutes to get to your house.
Speaker 1:I'm not just like going next door on my way home.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:That's kind of the idea you were talking about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have friends who live 45 minutes to an hour away and you know you're not gonna take a two-hour detour to hang out. Hang out for 15 minutes, right yeah? So that's the problem, right, so the question. Yeah, in the article it was more raising the question, like you know, since this is such a trope of television you know, for you know shows going back, you know decades cheers even to some. Yeah, you know, I'm sure even some of the original right.
Speaker 1:I love Lucy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean for sure.
Speaker 1:The neighbors popped in all the time.
Speaker 2:It wasn't obvious to me that it's just like a land use issue. Like, clearly, if you're spread out over, you know 300 square miles, which is the size of Austin, excluding its suburbs, and you know, we know people who live up in Leander.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's the size of new york and it's not even that populated, right? No, it's.
Speaker 2:it's a very low density yeah, that's, you know, part of the problem, and and that defines the type of city you have yeah but you know we have. We do know people who live much closer and, you know, nobody's popping in for the most part. So yeah, you know it was like obviously if you live closer it's it would be easier to do. But you know, it was like obviously if you live closer it's it would be easier to do.
Speaker 1:But you know it, was it ever in the culture? Was this just a made for TV thing?
Speaker 2:Well, you said like your childhood, but in childhood, right, and then in college, of course, is like where most people experience it regularly. But even you know, my grandmother would pop in across the street with her neighbors. I remember, you know, when my, my mom's mom would babysit us as kids, you know their neighbors would pop in to say, hi, you know, have a cup of coffee while we do whatever. And so it seems like this was something, that there's something there like people naturally will do it if it's enabled, but but it seems like less so today. And I think you know there's that just social media, you know, is that just social media, you know, obviates the need for that sort of thing where we sort of pop into each other's feeds and you know and feel like, oh well, you know, I caught up with you know, kirk, because I you definitely get the dopamine hit that you you would get if I just saw you.
Speaker 1:Right, I just want to like. I just like that feeling you had as a kid. It's like, right, I just want to see my friend. You don't identify it, but it just, you get a boost of dopamine.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:When you see, if I remember, like walking from really far away and seeing my friend down the street, even as like a nine year old, and you just like to have a big smile on your face Right, right and that's it.
Speaker 2:Just the image of them actually building our relationship like we're not strengthening our relationship, and this was what I was trying to get at with the pop and why it seems like it should be something valuable. It's like a low stakes interaction. You know, normally when we get together it has to be planned in advance and scheduled, and all of this right like to do this. We had to schedule it weeks in advance and then I had to reschedule it. Whose fault?
Speaker 3:is that that was my fault, but okay, you know because of car issues.
Speaker 2:You know, buy two cars right, I don't want to live that kind of life, you know, or have the expense. It's expensive get like a moped or something maybe but I've seen how people drive around here and like that just terrifies me.
Speaker 1:But anyway, I mean I get what you say but continue, because I wanted to say something about the poppet, but I kind of lost my train of thought there. But Well, you're saying like it's not automatic, like it's not as natural, People don't come in randomly because we're all spaced out.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So it's not having that. We don't have that expectation like we used to, and the it's not built into our culture.
Speaker 2:Oh, I was talking about the relationship aspect of it, and so like when everything is so, you know, structured, like, oh well, we'll have dinner in six weeks at this time, you know it just everything then becomes an event and instead of just kind of a relationship having a natural flow and a more, you know there's no regularity there, right, and so you kind of lose just the. You lose something. I don't know exactly what it is, you lose, but the kind of interaction that makes a relationship just stronger.
Speaker 1:I think you lose a lot. No, I agree 100% Like I'm a big relationship guy. I love relationships I mean I think we all do but I've really made it a big part of my life and I want it to be something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you are like a connector here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I try really hard and I understand how challenging it is, and not just because of the geographical thing, but because of the cultural, but one of the things I think you mentioned in that article that I think is really important for all of us to remember and maybe this is just a byproduct of us coming out of a social media, and by out of I don't mean not using it, but just like we've now used it for 20 years heavily, or 15 years. We learned some lessons. What can we do now? It's like there's a kind of we have this false expectation of the ease of things, and that's completely wrong.
Speaker 1:We do not think of work as something like that. We know if Kirk wants to be the president of some company, he's going to work and he's got to work his way up for year after year after year to get there. But to be a friend with you, it's like if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. It's like no, it's the same thing.
Speaker 1:Like you got to work for it. You got to figure out how to you know in this case, I want to offer my alternative for the pop-in and how to make that happen in Austin. But you do have to do something. I think the problem with the pop-in and these fantasies is that it is way too reliant on just who happens to be around who happens.
Speaker 1:So what I like about the Austin and what we have the opportunity to do is that we could be way more intentional, like we have the power to be way more intentional. That we could be way more intentional, yeah, like we have the power to be way more intentional. That means, like you're saying, it's true that there is a value in the kind of randomness of it and there's something romantic about that. But the other side of that is that you know if they make the Newman thing funny but you don't want Newman in your life, you don't want those.
Speaker 1:You really don't want those people in your life and you know, and they kind of make it a humorous thing and it's like, oh, that's fun, but no, you just don't want those people in your life and that's fine. And so I think that's to me the value of building. Part of what I try to do is build a bigger tent community for all the people who have certain things, and then we have our own little communities and things like that. But my alternative to the pop-in and I've been I thought about this just today. I think I'm just going to do it and I hope you'll participate, but I think I'm just going to have a. You know I'm going to steal your word like intentional pop-in monthly. So we have third thursday and I'll just. But what I'm going to do?
Speaker 1:I think because the one of the issues you and I have discussed is with the pop-in. You know it happens randomly and you pop into that other person's house. So if Joey comes and drinks your milk, you know well, you just deal with it. But like when you have like 5, 10, 15, 20 people possibly doing that, there's a big burden on the host and unless you're like a mega millionaire, you can't just be hosting everybody all the time. You're like a mega millionaire, you can't just be hosting everybody all the time like. So I think the the thing I'm gonna start is like you know, bring a scone, pop it, or something like like just to bring, like I might do this every sunday at like one o'clock or something just come over, bring, but you, if you don't bring it, you don't need it right, yeah like just bring it and enjoy it, and then I'll provide the grill and that's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everybody just like the same time my house and we could do one at your house on a different time, say like once a month, someone else's house once a month, and then people have options and then we could just like go now. The problem is you're gonna deal with the newmans a little bit. You're gonna have a newman. It's gonna be really hard. I think, like you could do it, but it's harder and harder, I think, to to have Everybody watching is one way or the other.
Speaker 1:Well, I won't say who, but I heard from a friend of ours who has a cool place he's going to do something like that. I think they're going to have a separate house. I'll say they have a separate house from their main house and they'll just have a biweekly hangout at this place and I think the more we could do that regularly.
Speaker 1:if you do it in East Austin like I, would go to yours all the time because it's very easy drive for me actually, but the ones up in Leander I probably won't do that as much because it's like a 40 minute drive right.
Speaker 2:Right but. I'll do it occasionally because I want to see them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if it's worth it. So to me that's the popping of the, is the intentional, which I know is kind of what you're trying to get away from to some degree. Yeah, valuing the attention out. The randomness is what you were valued.
Speaker 2:I think it was more about, like, lowering the stakes to enable greater frequency.
Speaker 1:So frequency is a yeah.
Speaker 2:And so, like I think that the opposite of this is what I was talking about before, the like, the highly planned in advance, you know yeah, thursday yeah, and I do but but there is, you know, I, I think just you know the nature of modern life. Like nobody really wants people randomly showing up, you know, at their house most people.
Speaker 2:I want to do it I mean it's but like again, like the expectation is, like it's a brief visit, it it's more just, you know, develop that friendship muscle or relationship muscle. But the intentionality, like I mean this is like in the shows you were mentioning, like they do have these third places outside of their houses where they they go and like it's a routine in their friendships. There's the bar in how I Met your Mother. There's Central Park, where somebody's always going to be there. Or at Cheers, literally, where everybody knows your name.
Speaker 1:Which I think is a good name for a bar.
Speaker 2:Cheers, or where everybody knows your name, yeah.
Speaker 1:Wecken. Right, just call it Wecken. Everybody knows your name, but I was thinking.
Speaker 2:I don't think I included this in the article because this is this other species, I guess, of what we're talking about Just having the regularity in your relationship, but slightly more planned, in the sense that you're saying every week or every two weeks I'm going to be here. At this time, like when I first moved to New York, a bunch of friends from college and I all ended up roughly in Brooklyn, and like every Tuesday we would meet for dinner at this like burger place in Williamsburg back when it was affordable and you know we'd get a big table and like everybody would you know whoever was around would come and that kind of provided an early sense of like not everybody was like as good friends with each other as they were.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, no, just like you know, there were. It was like people who knew people, that kind of thing and so. But it allowed some of us to become closer friends and certainly provided that kind of relationships. In you from place, you know it was a weekly thing, so we were, you know, keeping up with each other's lives and obviously of course that works in that situation because everybody was single and childless. But still what you're saying, hey, Sunday night or evenings, bring over the kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for me it would be open to kids for sure. I think you have to be. I mean, I'm almost 40. It's like I don't have that many friends who are not. Yeah, I'm, like you know, one of the holdouts.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean, I think it's important and, to your point, like it does take effort, I think you know we've gotten used to this idea that everything should be you same day delivery, like yeah, you know and yes and relationships are not like the relationships are not like that real life is not like that, any.
Speaker 2:You know the risk reward trade-off there is, like you know well, if you put in no effort, if you take no risk, you are likely to not get any sort of reward yeah, if you want strong relationships you gotta work for it that you know add value to your life. You have you got to work for it that you know add value to your life. You have to do more than just nothing.
Speaker 1:And the thing that I always try to help people understand is sometimes, I mean, there's two things. I've noticed this with a lot of. You know I have friends who are very somewhat you know, I don't want to say antisocial exactly, but a little bit antisocial I guess. But there's a sense where you know you can really, you know you can have some positive inclination, some kind of I like this person a little bit. There's going to be, but it's like there seems to be a threshold. A lot of us have in relationships where it's like if it's not a what's the term F, yes, then I'm not going to do it, but it's like that's not proper. You know, like one, to get to the F, yes, you have to kind of really like it takes intimacy takes time.
Speaker 1:Right and it's, you know, intimacy, not in terms of sex, but I mean just in terms of closeness, like the way I. The analogy I always use is most people treat relationships like a man standing in front of a fireplace saying I'll give you wood when you give me fire, and it's like it doesn't work that way. You have to put the wood in, you have to put the kerosene, and that takes time and sometimes it's not. Again, it's not an obvious thing Like you have to just take. I have some small positive thought about this person. Let's pursue it.
Speaker 1:Now, there's people that you just hate, right, there's the Newmans, and I think that's a great example, just like I don't know, even know what it is. But just Newman, right, and that's that, and okay, fine, just don't focus on them. But anybody, you have any kind of positive thing, you know, go to dinner with them, try to do things, go get coffee, like just. We have to be intentional and I think that's the message I always want to send to people about relationships and that's why I do third thursday, you know, I hope every it's.
Speaker 2:It's kind of big tense, but I I can't, it can't be everything no, you have to do your own thing as well, and you know but it's an opportunity to meet new people and see if you connect, you know, with yeah, with new people or people who you've seen before but it's only once a month, sure, like what you're.
Speaker 1:The frequency thing, I think is a big deal for sure right, I mean, I think especially since we all work from home absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean, we have even fewer opportunities to leave the house and actually go out into the world. Now, yeah, we, you know the pandemic has made a lot of us, I think, anti-social by default that's a good way of putting it, you. And so I don't know if we have to like relearn what it means to be human you know, oh yeah, but like I do think you know, we are a social species.
Speaker 2:We like being around other humans, which is one of the reasons cities come into existence at all is because Even rural like you're still in an area where you're defensible.
Speaker 1:Sure is because even rural like you still are in an area where you're defensible sure right like that you have. That's part of the fundamental aspect of yeah, I mean rural.
Speaker 2:Rural is not a synonym for sociopath right you know there are, you know farm communities still have central points where you know the, the general store where you come in, and those were a lot of those general stores have porches. What is a porch? For it's forization? Right. That might be the only socialization that the rancher might get.
Speaker 1:And the rancher would house a whole bunch of people.
Speaker 2:Sure Like big family.
Speaker 1:There'd be, workers there'd be, you know all around. So you have your community right there. It's a business, like a ranch is a business, so it's not as though so you might have like 30, 40, 50 people there. It's not as though so you might have like 30, 40, 50 people there. That's not. If I had 30, 40, 50 people around my house, I'd be happy with that.
Speaker 2:Like that's not bad but that's maybe you've been thinking about this all wrong. You shouldn't have bought a house in mania. You should have bought a house like way out in the hill country yeah, just brought 50 people and like built a compound or something there's there's some land available up in waco I'm to leave that alone.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's my long-term play. It's like be the Waco dude.
Speaker 2:But for me that's what the city is, right yeah exactly Because you have that all around you, and the benefit of living around a bunch of strangers is that they provide all sorts of things that me and my friends ourselves cannot provide.
Speaker 1:Exactly Like the arts.
Speaker 2:The arts, the restaurants.
Speaker 1:The restaurants, bars, coffee shops I miss a good coffee shop, for sure, it's one of my big things. The gym. And then just like the value of just like seeing beautiful people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's some people watching.
Speaker 1:Yeah, people watching. That's why I like to go to Sherwood see people dressing up. Yeah, that's one thing about Mainers. Nothing wrong with Mainers, I don't mean to crud on it or whatever but yeah, there's just the value of seeing vibrancy, people moving around doing fun things or exciting things. So, yeah, the question is and I want to kind of move into this you talked about in some of your articles about this big tent philosophy and shaping diverse and inclusive, like a kind of how to get this with all these different visions Californians, new Yorkers, texans, austinites, republicans, democrats, all these people. But when it comes to making the vision a reality a vision, like you were kind of resistant to making it a Jetsons, like a specific, I want it to be this your vision is really taking away roadblocks that get you know, to use an inapt term for you.
Speaker 2:In some cases, yeah, literally. The obstacles that are in the way of making something that like making better reality, or removing policy that is prescriptive for a particular type of lifestyle, rather than giving developers and people who want to then live in real estate the choice of what types of places they might like to live in. So in Austin recently we reduced minimum lot sizes required for single family homes, so it was 5750. And you've worked for that. I worked on this, yes, and we reduced it to 1,800 square feet.
Speaker 1:So what does that?
Speaker 2:mean exactly. So basically, what it meant was that if you wanted to build a single-family home, you would need at least 5,750 square feet of land.
Speaker 1:Okay, this is 6,000, over 6,000.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's a pretty standard suburban size lot, but when lots downtown or close to downtown are, you know, the price of land is very high, and so that means the only type of house that will be built on a lot that size will be initially 5,750 square feet. Okay, there were some. No, no, I'm sorry, but how did you? Where did you get it to 1,750 square?
Speaker 1:feet. Okay, there were some. No, no, I'm sorry, but how did you? Where did you get it to?
Speaker 2:1,800 square feet.
Speaker 1:From 5,000?
Speaker 2:750, yeah, so basically cut it by a third.
Speaker 1:Wait, I'm sorry, I'm hearing something incorrectly. I apologize to you, wait, wait. So what was it before and what did you get it to?
Speaker 2:So the minimum lot size in Austin was 5,750 square feet. Okay, we have reduced it to 1,800 square feet.
Speaker 1:So 4,000 square feet almost.
Speaker 2:Removed. Yeah, something like that Wow.
Speaker 1:So that's like four on here right, Like you could fit like three houses essentially on my lot Right.
Speaker 2:So we've basically and we also did another reform- earlier, that would yeah no, it's great. So that would that will allow for a more, you know, for smaller houses or houses that are closer together that don't require as much land. Yeah, you know which? Yeah, so it'll be like what condos or a townhouse or something like that, and you know that is a form that people want to live in, you know, especially if you're I looked for something yeah, I looked for something you know.
Speaker 1:I'll just say I was looking in the 350 400 range. Yeah, it's not a bad range for a person's first house, I think no, but there's nothing.
Speaker 2:There's nothing, in austin there's nothing, not even a like.
Speaker 1:The condos were a crap yeah or it was basically renting. You weren't even really properly owning it. I was like I want to, do't want to do that, like it was crazy. So I just went to Mainer. I was like, forget it, I'll go to Mainer, and I know a lot of people did that. I mean.
Speaker 2:That's why Mainer is booming.
Speaker 1:Mainer has doubled in size from 10 to 20,000 in 10 years. Because they're being pushed out. Right, they're priced out, they're priced out it's so that would be cool. Where was I? I was just there the other day, but yeah, it was like a cool little area. There's like an Alamo Draft House and like an Irish pub.
Speaker 2:Mueller yeah, thank you, mueller. I was just going to say this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was like oh yeah, that's such a cool and there's a gym right there. So it's like that. I would have definitely. If there was a $400,000 condo available, I would have bought. I would have even gone to $450,000.
Speaker 2:So the city redeveloped what was the Mueller Airport, so they had this huge tract of land that was municipal property and that gave them an opportunity to kind of do something different than in the rest of the city.
Speaker 1:That is a zone.
Speaker 2:And they created this kind of dense, largely walkable. But there's parks, there's mixed use you know, there's like a little sort of downtown. Like my doctor is there in the Alamo draft house. That's where we go to the movies and it's nice you know, and get a drink afterwards at the pub. You know, it's not too far from where we live, maybe like a 10 minute Uber ride.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Don't drink and drive so yeah, but it's nice and uh and it started pretty affordable, but it's high in demand.
Speaker 2:People like to live there. So the you know the the signal there is that maybe we should build more like this yeah it's fairly close to downtown, people like it it's. It's definitely an urban form more than a suburban form yeah, but it's still single-family homes.
Speaker 1:And then, you know, in the downtown area there are apartment buildings and condos well, my sense is that there, if we didn't have a lot of these obstacles, you know, uh, laws that get in the way, we don't know what exactly would be developed. It could be something really unique that we couldn't imagine. Sure, you know, and that's one of the, you know who it's could be some mixed thing, maybe it's some super. I'm just going to bring this up. I always liked the way that Ayn Rand brought up like Mononoke Valley. We have a really thoughtful architect who sees an area and is like this is what I want to turn To me. That's the vision. It's like I want to see. I think Frank Lloyd Wright said something about architect is the master art or something like that.
Speaker 1:And I think that's true in a sense, because it's. But architects are unfortunately so stymied in a way that, like Hollywood producers and directors, they're stymied to some degree because they have such a huge budget they have to deal with huge budget they have to deal with.
Speaker 1:But if you're a writer of fiction, you're not right, you're just you and the page. If you're a painter and now, in terms of being popular, that's different, but in terms of the art itself, you can do whatever you want. A painter, the same thing. You can paint whatever you want, but even a sculptor, depending on what you're sculpting in. But an architect has so many laws that we have no idea what could be in the vision of what they could, the beauty of what they could.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, listen, you know a developer, can you know an architect can come up with a plan for a community. A developer can build it. And if people don't want to live there, you know people won't. And then they will lose money on that and go out of business perhaps, and nobody will. So there is that kind of context with reality in the same way that there is with if you write a bad novel, people won't read it, you know unless it's so bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I didn't think about it that way. It's not like just because I envision it right. Some crazy weird thing.
Speaker 2:But if you're only allowed to build in a certain way, if you're only allowed to build houses on 5,750 square foot lots, then you're by definition saying you can only build housing to for people who can afford that. Yeah, and so there are a lot of people who got priced out to places like Maynard and Georgetown and Leander and further afield here who would have gladly opted for a house in Mueller if it were available, but it was not allowed. And so I'm not saying like I I think there, you know, if you removed all of these restrictions, there are certainly developers who would cater to a need that some people do have for a large house on a large lot. There will still be neighborhoods built like that, you know. But it wouldn't be mandated as the starting point. It would. It would be something that would.
Speaker 1:I think it would definitely happen, no matter what, because people value it. People want a big house with the for their kids.
Speaker 2:Some people do but then yeah, there's enough, I think there's probably enough people who value it the other big house with it for their kids, some people do, but then well, yeah, there's enough. I think there's probably enough people who value it the other side of this, so which is interesting and talking about sorry, go ahead yeah and we've been talking about the big tent here, like.
Speaker 2:So you know, some people get large houses when they raise kids a lot of the time, but then when they retire, they don't want that anymore, right, yeah, empty nester but they want to stay in their community and there's been nothing built or allowed to be built that makes sense for that phase of life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there are communities.
Speaker 2:There are.
Speaker 1:But I'm saying if you want to stay in your own community where you raise your kids, oftentimes there is not an option to downsize, in a way, because the townhouse wasn't able to be built.
Speaker 2:You're saying move somewhere nearby that's a smaller place Right Sell the house you raise your kids in and downsize oftentimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you had an article about what was it called, the one about Jaws, the downtown in Jaws.
Speaker 2:Wet Hot American Sorcerers Wet.
Speaker 1:Hot American Sorcerers. Great article, great titles. But the idea would be that someone in their 30 years old starting a family, they would buy maybe a bigger house a little bit farther away from the downtown but then as they retire they might buy something a little closer. I'm just saying as an idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, I'm just trying to play off of your story. So there's, like you know, we basically, you know the starter home has been made illegal in a lot of places, so like. But the starter home could also be like the end of you know last phase of life home too, you know, something smaller like not necessarily big enough to raise kids, but the type of thing that a senior citizen would also like. You know many people don't want to be doing yard work, work, you know, when they're old or just don't need that much space I need to get into. It is a chore for a lot of people I need to get into it.
Speaker 1:But yeah, you're right, like it's, it's a, it's a hobby, it's something.
Speaker 2:So I pay somebody. But, like you know, if it's not allowed to be built, it just it doesn't exist it doesn't exist yeah, so, yeah. So you know I'm not saying what people should live in I, it's not my business but I'm saying we should, the law should not dictate. Should the law should not dictate it and the law currently does in most places the types of housing that exists even in Texas, which is even in Texas Right. I want to say like let's do the full-on Texas thing and let people decide for themselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so going back to the don't California, my Texas.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:You're not trying to do that because California has done that.
Speaker 2:No, texas Texans are trying to California.
Speaker 1:Texas. Yes, thank you, have you said that before publicly?
Speaker 2:No, but feel free to yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that's true. I think I agree with that 100%. As a Californian who doesn't agree with a lot of the policies of California and New York City, I think Texans are becoming more like that on their own. It's not the Californians, I think it's the Texans who want more restrictions, whereas the goal should be to remove those to have more freedom. There's a claim of freedom.
Speaker 2:All of these Texas cities. I have to bring this up.
Speaker 1:Did you watch the DNC at?
Speaker 2:all I watched Kamala's acceptance.
Speaker 1:I mean because you saw the term they're using. So they smartly, I think, are using freedom as their calling cry. I had some friends at the Einar Institute who did a really good episode on this, dr Ben Bayer and.
Speaker 1:Nikos, and they were kind of analyzing the 99-page whole thing and they were pointing out some stuff. And it's really interesting and I think you've talked about this in other areas, about how they're in the article, I think, where you mentioned Yimbyism as a movement and urbanism and how that looks is that hopefully there is a place for something new. And now I think my problem right now is I'm not advocating for either side, because I can see nothing good in my view on either side, really, or very little. But it's really interesting that the left is taking this freedom cry. Now what they're saying is freedom is like some freedom and some way, not freedom, like it's not freedom stuff at all. But you know so in this. So we're trying to figure out. Okay, so that's national politics. Who, the hell knows, right, can't do anything about that. You've been always about this local politics. And what can we do in Austin and Texas, right? Or?
Speaker 2:Manor.
Speaker 1:I want to come to Austin. I would like to sell the house in Mundoz. That's the goal. I never wanted to live here forever. That's never been the goal, even though I like my house, anyway. So you have this 10th, this Yimbyism. You have this 10th, this Yimbyism. You have this new the right seems to have absconded from free market capitalism, 100%. Look it up. If you don't believe me, read their platform. They are not about free markets, they are not about capitalism. They are not even really about individual freedoms. Fundamentally, they're about social things, and the left, I think, is using the vernacular. I don't think they're actually about freedom. Maybe they can be, they have some freedoms, but what can we do locally, given where the things are? To me it seems like it's still nebulous. Who knows where these things are going to land? It's interesting that I've never heard Democrats cry freedom like that, like that.
Speaker 2:I've never seen that. I do think we should welcome that, you know.
Speaker 1:If it's real freedom, yes, but my worry is that they're latching on to like it's. They learned the wrong-.
Speaker 2:Positive freedoms versus negative.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they learned the wrong things from. So what Trump? I think essentially I'm gonna get way in down the leads, but I think like one of the things he probably very negatively affected was this has always been in politics, but he's just so just say anything to attach yourself because he's a lifelong democrat that's become you're saying he's a republican but he's basically just been putting republican or democrat ideals, the negative ones, with fear and horrible fear mongering and just marketing it in this thing to like reach to the worst of people.
Speaker 1:Now I did see some positive things about the democratic national convention in terms of they're trying to, they're trying to reach to that positive center of america which is I want to be free, and I think that's good. I'm worried about what they're trying to slip in to, that like I don't know that it's real. I know that a lot of it's not freedom. Anyway, sorry, I get to a question for you about how do we navigate this to build something you know great here, using Yimbyism that's yes, in my backyard urbanism, but in the sense of freedom. Right, because I like that they're using the term. I do like that they're using the term freedom. We just have to correct them on what it really means Sure.
Speaker 2:I mean, I do think particularly in the YIMBY movement, which spans people across the political spectrum, people understand that largely that what is getting in the way of solving a nationwide housing shortage is largely regulation. So you know, people understand that there's a supply and demand issue here. Not enough supply quite able to meet demand is because many cities have, or jurisdictions in general, municipalities have made it difficult to build new housing. So, like in Austin, all of the growth is happening in the far-flung suburbs where there were not a lot of restrictions. It was very easy to build, to build. These were small towns for decades, almost two centuries in some cases, and never had to build up any kind of state apparatus to deal with. They didn't need a massive building department or anything like that. So it's just easier to build.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile, austin, on the other hand, went in a different direction and built up a massive bureaucracy to control what people could do with land everywhere. And every city did this and every suburb has done this of the modern type. And part of this is this idea that, well, you know not in my backyard, but whose backyard we're not really talking about your backyard, backyard, we're always talking about your neighbor's backyard and it's this desire, like in all of this stuff, is it's the desire to control what other people can do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how they can live that's not freedom.
Speaker 2:so the yimby movement is, at root, an attack on that notion that you have a right to decide how other people get to live. Yeah, specifically in the area of land use, you know we're trying to remove the restrictions on land use that prevent different types of housing from being built, whether it's small scale apartment buildings or duplexes or things like that. So I mean, what was notable is that you know Obama mentioned it in his speech at the DNC, you know it can be.
Speaker 2:I, he, you know I don't remember the exact quote but said we need to reduce the regulations that are preventing us from building housing. Like that's great, like you know, and especially his prominence in the democratic party, you know he's, you know that's. That's important, that's signaling, because most of the places where the housing shortage is happening are in blue cities and there are a lot of leaders in blue cities who are very resistant to this, or a lot of people who consider themselves progressives but think that we can just not build our way out of this problem. Way out of this problem or something. So I do think that kind of messaging is really important to you know, even if it you know, there's in this area of like negative polarization. You know Obama could say that and then that some Republicans will just be like, well, I guess I'm anti. You know, housing now which?
Speaker 1:is well, that's true that that happens, but that's not a particular well. You mentioned this in your one of your articles. Is that's true that that happens, but that's not a particularly Well? You mentioned this in one of your articles. That's true of like the center the core of the Republican Party, the constituency, the core of the Democratic Party, but there's a huge swath of people that don't feel that like myself, who don't feel like we have a political home at all.
Speaker 1:I just don't feel anywhere like a not even when I was younger it was I could at least pretend with libertarianism.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Right, and and and. But now, whenever I see Freedom Fest and I'll sorry, but I was there last time and I'm like what are they like? I have no, there's a bunch, there are a bunch of anarchists. They don't stand. Like what do they stand?
Speaker 2:for A bunch of pro-Putin anarchists.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pro-.
Speaker 2:Anarchists, so authoritarian anarchism.
Speaker 1:At the Freedom Fest last year. I was like the keynote speaker. I'm like how is that libertarian? What are you?
Speaker 2:talking about. Maybe it's a penchant for animal corpses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was just so like so I don't even know what to do with. I mean, they've always been in my view Like I don't know.
Speaker 2:Well, it's always been. I mean Libertarian Party has always been a big tent. I mean the democratic party has been big tent. You know, it's like these are political parties are coalitions of people who align.
Speaker 1:You know, the venn diagram overlaps enough that they can call themselves like a democrat or a republican or a libertarian, but and that's the job of the politician yeah and right and so, but, but like what the emphasis is?
Speaker 2:you know changes over time and you know we seem to be moving into an era, at least, where the Democrats are trying to reoccupy the center, which is good. I mean, I wish the Republicans would try to reoccupy the center too, and this is where the bipartisan or the nonpartisan aspect of this I hope is it's like Americans should, be like a strong national defense and for building housing like these should be non-controversial things, you know yeah, like what?
Speaker 1:getting to the what, the essence of what?
Speaker 2:it should be right to be an american right, there should be a broad base of things that I think we agree on enough people right, and then there's always gonna be sure, and we can. You know it's a but. The politics can then be about the specifics. Perhaps.
Speaker 2:Or maybe there are we're going to disagree on that Right, 100%, I mean, I think, with something like abortion, which is not really my brand talking about that, but you have two parties with very different views of that, and even now you see Trump trying to tack to the center because something like 66% of Americans think that some form of yeah, he cannot go Right, he cannot go-.
Speaker 1:I think that some form of it's going to be a state issue do what you want. But he's obviously trying to play to both sides to try to win the center. But obviously Republicans are moving more and more away from abortion rights. So to me that's the core issue actually, and I might move to whoever has that issue right now, which I would never think of before. Yeah. Whoever has the correct issue, which is pro-abortion rights, for the record, yeah, like complete pro-abortion rights.
Speaker 2:So I should say like I like, but yeah, so that's a completely different thing than this is Texans now saying like look at these.
Speaker 1:Californians. They are trying to. I'm going to cut this out. I'm not going to cut this out.
Speaker 2:No, I'm not going to cut this out. No, it's going to stay there, but it's true. But it is good. I think it is good for let's talk about the alternative. Not embracing freedom would be bad. So, even if they don't quite have it exactly right, the fact that there is an effort being made, Well, okay, hold on.
Speaker 1:So this is my pushback to that. So this to me, just knowing a little bit about history, this to me is like what Augustus and Caesar, when they were saying, like we got to hearken back. How many times a day do you think about Rome? Um, but but what? But seriously, though, like I mean, you saw this in in, uh, you know England, when they, when they rebuilt the oh my God, parliament, you know they rebuilt that in the middle of the 1800s, right, and they built it to design it like medieval structure. It's a new structure. It's a new, yeah, neogothic.
Speaker 1:And the argument that the guy I can't remember his name the architect made, yeah, I, I gothic. And the argument that the guy I can't remember his name, the architect, made, yeah, I, the argument that he made was that he wanted to hearken back to a better time and this was a, this was a medieval chivalric time of in england, right, so the heights of england, english values. But what I'm my argument, what I'm saying I see this with rome is like there's this idea of using the rhetoric of the national values of that country to build something that is very antipodal, antithetical to the country, and so I'm very fearful of people using, like pulling my heartstrings for freedom in order to have a more robust policy. People are going to hate me for this, like public education system, which I don't think we should have in the way that it is today. Obviously, I want everyone to be educated.
Speaker 1:That's not what I'm saying, but I'm saying the way that it's. The system I think is very irrational and problematic and I don't want to, but that's what they say in their platform. Their platform is like we want more of and it's like that's not freedom. It's a freedom to take more of our money to make systems that are clearly defunct in a lot of ways as an education model. So that's not freedom. But they're pulling my heartstrings to get that to happen. Or more welfare. I don't think more welfare is the answer and to me, that's the problem is what I see of that kind of rhetoric.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, we'll see what they actually mean if they win, and you know, build, and We'll see what's in the bill when we pass it. Well, if, if they, you know what their policy platform will be if they get that far. So, yeah, you know, I think.
Speaker 1:Well, they say they're Paul, they have. But yeah, I mean that's what we have to go off of.
Speaker 2:I do think that, visually, there is something more compelling about holding up a sign that says USA rather than mass deportation.
Speaker 1:Now, one of those things is more American than the other in my view, but yeah, I agree with that and, like you said, there is something to uniting everybody under a certain banner, Like what? What is it that unites every American on some level? We have, and I so to that degree. You know if, if this is an opportunity to move the Democrats into a better place of understanding it, maybe they're just starting the process because they see it as a tactically an open gap.
Speaker 1:Then I think that's an opportunity. Like I said, I'm not opposed. For the record, I'm not opposed to voting Democrat for the first time in my life.
Speaker 2:essentially, I'm definitely not opposed. The first time for everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I haven't even been voting the last couple times because I'm so depressed, like I could not vote in 2016 for either of those candidates. I just could not vote. Now, locally, I'm voting more because basically I'm listening to you Well.
Speaker 2:I'm voting more because basically I'm listening to you and helping you.
Speaker 1:I mean cause I, I, I'm, you know, for the record, I'm ignorant about a lot of practical politics, Like I think I have a philosophical cultural perspective, but so I'm not advocating for anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I I definitely operate more where the you know, in the practice of politics too, and trying to understand what it is that can get done and how do we, how to actually do something, how to get stuff, good stuff, done, and so you know, with a lot of these issues, you know we're a nation of 330 million people. Everybody has the things that they care about the most. You know, I care about cities and I care about what makes them thrive, and I've focused on housing that's your deep value, yeah because I a city that can't house people as a city that just can't thrive.
Speaker 1:No, I know we need to get behind that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but there's, you know, plenty of other issues that I have opinions about and that I do care about. But you know, in order to be effective on any one issue, you kind of have to focus. At least for now say as an activist right, and not as a politician, you know as a policy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to have views on everything right, and so, like I'm not trying to run for office, I'm, I don't think anyone will vote for me after this podcast I'm just kidding, but you know trying to be an effective advocate for, you know, land use reform and so you know I.
Speaker 2:You know I was appointed to the zoning commission and you know we're trying to make good things happen there. So yeah and but anyway, I think you know my general advice to people, you know, is pay less attention to national politics. I think if you want better national politics, you have to get better local politics first. Um, you will not believe that we can have positive change at the national level unless you see it with your own eyes at the local level. And that means you know I. I don't think people have to get involved in politics per se, but, like, find something in your community that you care about, try to meet other people, make a difference in whatever way it is.
Speaker 2:It could be like a neighborhood park cleanup or something like that. But like find a connection to the place in which you live and like, do something. Well, something like that.
Speaker 1:But like find a connection to the place in which you live and like, do something well, that's why I because of you, I think that was one of the tipping points for me to really push to join the board of osage yeah, right, so you love the art I love the arts, I love theater and I want to see more of it yeah so I want to help with the building of and making it bigger yeah, and I think education has a connection about so yeah I, this stuff doesn't happen automatically, Like all of the stuff that we enjoy.
Speaker 1:Someone has to do it, somebody has to do it, and so somebody has to step up.
Speaker 2:You know it's like if you enjoy this thing, you know support it in some way. Sometimes you know I get it. You're busy with a job raising kids, whatever. You know no-transcript. You know, not necessarily, but these things were.
Speaker 1:No, I agree, I'm agreeing with you, I'm just being honest, yeah.
Speaker 2:But these were places where, where people came together outside of work and met people across different socioeconomic lines, different careers, Small business alliances yeah but there were ways for people to get involved and those organizations. Always they'd march in the 4th of July parade, but then they'd be the Kiwanis Clubs annual fundraiser. For some cause, my dad was a part of all that stuff.
Speaker 1:I think that was way more a part of life. I think we rely too much on social media, like we were saying earlier for all that right that that hit and we forget that social media is just a tool. It's not life itself it's not a replacement for life. So I like social media. I think it's a great thing, but, yeah, we have to like start being adults, right, our millennials that start getting into the world and encourage other people to do this irl.
Speaker 2:You know, in real life. You know that's and everything. You know that I'm interested in what I write about the advocacy work that I do. It's trying to make cities places that people want to be in real life. And yeah, again, yeah I think it already is like that a little bit it is to actually do it, but it could be better when you create places that people want to be in, people go there, like up in Mueller, like Mueller's downtown, it's always busy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just go to Mueller downtown and read a book and meet someone.
Speaker 2:But Austin downtown at night people come out. I was in New York City for nine days and people were everywhere. People like cities, people want to be there. It wasn't just tourists, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, there's, there's a whole vibrancy to Austin as it is now. This is what I why I'm bullish on Austin is. I think it's a great place where you can build what you want if you're intentional, but if you're just sitting at home in your room, it's not going to happen. So I hope you know part of the message here is like the what you have done and what you've inspired me to do in terms of getting involved is build the values you want, build the community you want. You know my criticism of I'll just end with this, I guess, and we can.
Speaker 1:I want to ask you some quotes to some rapid fire quotes, but one of my and if you have any other thoughts too, but one of my you know things about New York and California is that especially New York is, in a sense, it's so vibrant, it's so beautiful. I love it, but there is a sense of like it's really difficult, even if it were more free to build stuff there because it's so popular. Yeah, so like all this stuff is already done. It's almost like going to visit, you know, an old european gothic, like it's this is oh, wow, this is really now I want to build my own thing, like go, and you know what's the Westerner poem. Like live new rock and you know, like build and live Like.
Speaker 1:that's what Austin is. To me, Austin is an ability where we can get together with Texans and Californians and New Yorkers just Austinites come together and build something that Ryan likes, that I like, that everybody you know likes in their own little areas, and there's plenty of opportunities to be able to do that here, if we, if we work at it and there's air conditioning so let's quit talking about the heat and water, and there's plenty of water and air conditioning.
Speaker 2:We wear our shorts, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's an Austin thing to do, versus.
Speaker 2:Austin tuxedo, right here, this is suiting up with barney stinson.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hey, ladies, how you doing? Okay, you ready for you. Have any last thoughts before we go into some quotes?
Speaker 2:no, I mean, I think you know, I think that's right. Um, new york is an old city, it's almost 400 years old. A lot of the problems with the new york are rebuilding it for the modern era. You know it's. It's got the subway turns 120 years old this year, so you know, and a lot of the problems with New York are rebuilding it for the modern era. You know it's got the subway turns 120 years old this year. So you know a lot of its infrastructure is 120 years old.
Speaker 2:So, like part of it is, you know, the difficulty in building new is that you have to maintain and rebuild the old too, and so Austin, being a relatively I mean you know it's almost 200 years old, but the modern version it was so small for so long. So, really, we're really at the cusp of building a modern Austin and there's, you know, so that's an exciting time to be here as it grows into, I think, what could be a modern, greater city.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you haven't heard about it, go to the Ayn Rand Institute and check out the museum we're building. I'm actually very excited about being a part of building an actual building.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, here in this area that will really be on the landscape, yeah so, okay, ready for some quotes.
Speaker 1:Sure, some just kind of rapid fire on top of your head and I might comment with you. Okay, so you brought, you brought thomas jefferson. So I think you kind of already mentioned this one, but I thought this is an interesting one. I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man yeah, so what do you think?
Speaker 2:100 disagree. I, you know, I I think I quoted that in my article revolt of the cities yeah, one of them. But you know my comment on that. And listen, you know the the words that jefferson wrote. Often he failed to live the the words that Jefferson wrote. Often he failed to live up to the words that he wrote. And I would just say, well, if that's his view, you know, of cities, well, he should, you know, peek out the window of Monticello and tell me.
Speaker 1:In 1700. In 1700.
Speaker 2:What do you see there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I think it's I've. So he says I view great cities as pestilential to the morals of the health. So I agree with you 100%. I will say that I do think there's some challenges with the liberties part in big cities that seems to have always lent itself over time to eventually encroaching on the liberties, like this happens in Athens. This happened in Rome.
Speaker 1:There seems to be a tipping point of size where maybe there's so many diversity of voices that there's such a power that overcomes everything that it just I don't know if it has to happen that way, but it seems to have happened every single time there's a size thing where it's like there's something that goes wrong, like there's that that line.
Speaker 1:you know, weak men create hard times hard men create that hard, hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, something like that. But I think the the idea behind it, and that's from a famous historian what's his name? Hang on, I'm forgetting the name anyway, but that. But the sentiment I think is simply that there seems to be something along the lines of we get to this size ease, that we let everything crumble, because nature and human nature and existence requires constant growth and progress and building, and we're not. We get to a point like so New York City is like, at a point like that maybe, where it's just it's hard to see how it would really restructure into something new.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess I I don't know, I don't see it hard.
Speaker 2:You know that was the sort of theme of my piece yesterday. Pretend it's a city. Is that? You know you, you can see what it needs to do. You know London is a 2000 year old city that you know is still a highly desirable one of the. You know the global. You know cities, it's, it's an amazing place. So I don't think necessarily they always break. You know, new York is 400 years old and at the point now where it has a lot of old stuff, it has made it harder for it to adapt by covering huge portions of the city and historic districts, so that natural evolution that is necessary to a city has not been able to happen. So again, it's like land use restrictions here If you don't let a city evolve, it won't evolve. So that's essential.
Speaker 2:So again, it's like land use restrictions here If you don't let a city evolve, it won't evolve. Yeah, so you know. So that's essential, like in order. When we impose these sort of arbitrary limits on on how things can happen or what you can do, you kill a certain aspect of what makes a city vital.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, and I, like I said, I'm just trying to play devil's advocate and kind of think through what he was yeah I think it's just an interesting observation about what happens and, again, the story of the woman getting murdered is always an example that's an anecdote, right, you know, like people just well, I mean, but it's an anecdote of a callousness about the people around sure, and how many times does this happen?
Speaker 2:on the highway too, though, where people just assume that the guy behind them called 9-1-1?
Speaker 1:yeah, you know, so it happens everywhere.
Speaker 2:Right, you can, you can, you know nut pick anything? Yeah, if you pick instead of nitpick.
Speaker 1:You know you pick like the crazy example, to try to you know, make a broader point, but I don't know yeah, I get it, you know, I think you know, no, you're, it happens everywhere right.
Speaker 2:But there's a reason. People, you know people, go to cities because they are in a certain sense, a certain social sense, much freer than somewhat small town suburban environments. Like all of the music from the 80s is about how all these, you know, people were being stifled by, about how all these people were being stifled by suburban conformity, you know so like that is a trope too in film, especially, you know, like Revolutionary Road, or, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh well, like you use the term like laced curtain prisons for women.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's like your place is in the house, you stay there. I mean, what kind of a hell is that?
Speaker 2:If you want that shirt, it's domestic bliss right.
Speaker 1:Yes, but it's like I think there's a reason why there was so much drinking and they depict that well, like in Queen's Gambit. You see that a lot and I thought that was a good, but because people are miserable and they're not actually madmen has that kind of view.
Speaker 2:You know the fentanyl crisis isn't something that's only happening in cities. You know it's also happening out in our suburbs and in our rural areas too.
Speaker 1:So anyway, I agree with. That.
Speaker 2:Yeah so, but you know, if you really want to be yourself, you know, go to a place where there's a million other people trying to be themselves, because nobody cares about your particular version of it.
Speaker 1:If you're minding your own business, you know for sure your own business, you know For sure. Yeah, okay, real quick. So, frank Lloyd Wright, I mentioned this earlier. I'm going to read the whole quote and see just your thoughts. The mother art is architecture Without an architecture of our own.
Speaker 2:We have no soul of our own civilization. Yeah, I like that. You know, I do think that architecture, I mean one, just has the power to inspire. It is itself a physical manifestation of the values of any place in time. You know, when we choose to build beautiful, that says something. I think about who we are and what we want, or what we think people want as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay, last one, yeah, this one, actually two more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wanted to say that the built environment, though, is directly related, and the architects designed the built environment, so how we interact with each other. These nodes of connection and whatnot are in some sense shaped and defined by how it is designed and built. So if you create a place that is alienating, people will be alienated from each other. If you create places where people is alienating, people will be alienated from each other. If you create places you know where people can gather and come together, people will gather and come together yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well then, that's great for my next quote. I'll do two more real quick. It was winston churchill we shape our buildings. Thereafter they shape us.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of what you're just saying yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that's that's right. You were just saying yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that's that's right. You know, the physical form has an impact on how we live. You know, if we build a room with no windows, we will be forever in the dark.
Speaker 1:You know is that a Ryanism? I think so.
Speaker 2:I like it but you know, just if we build, you know, I think about some buildings downtown that have no street level interaction. The building itself has turned away from the street. It's saying don't come in here, and it's sort of hostile. You don't also want to walk around. I'm thinking of the hobby building which is now falling apart and, you know, slated to be demolished and turned into something hopefully more engaged with the city around it. Yeah, I mean, a building can either enhance the city that it's in or detract from it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay, I agree. You don't have to agree.
Speaker 2:What's?
Speaker 1:that you don't have to agree. Okay, I don't agree, I agree. I think we're on the same page on a lot of things, except for cars and public transportation. I want my motorcycle man, just me, and the open road.
Speaker 2:I'm all about that, I love it, but wouldn't it be better for your motorcycle if you weren't hemmed in on four sides by giant vehicles that couldn't see you Like? I actually think the motorcycle is a good or. You see this a lot in Asian countries where it's like the moped is a pretty common thing and, like mopeds are great for human-sized streets, you know, streets that are not given over entirely to the cars. They're more nimble, you can get around, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean in California they have lane splitting as legal Sure.
Speaker 2:But all of California was built for the car.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. No-transcript transcontinental trip right jj hill was a great example of he would build a road or build a rail, then he built a city out there to little town at the end and build and that's, you know, that's how it would grow.
Speaker 1:it would have taken longer because they didn't just aggregate and take everyone's money and put it into this whether they used it or not. All these people were paying for it. Who didn't use it, but I, so I think it would have happened eventually, just would have taken a lot. So I suspect we would have been a more car culture anyway. Maybe it would have looked a lot different, I agree.
Speaker 2:Cause maybe it would have had more little towns along the way for motorcycles going or whatever, but you know the who knows the freeways didn't have to go through the downtown of every city, you know they could have stopped and turned into smaller roads instead of you know like somebody made a choice and often that choice was driven by, you know, racism to bulldoze huge sections of cities right and and we did that we destroyed communities.
Speaker 2:And then the areas next to the highways became blighted because cars are noisy, and so the pattern of urban highway development was to destroy land value, to destroy communities and then to destroy adjacent land value, and that made the cities less desirable, and it was a road to get out as much as a road to get in. And so the we took all of our vibrant cities in America, many of our vibrant cities did this. We built roads into their centers and turned them into places where people only worked and not where people lived, and sort of drained them of their life. You know, people stopped shopping there.
Speaker 1:Eventually, too, all the stores moved out to the suburbs department stores right and that was the pattern with many midwestern cities with yeah, I mean I think you and I are the 100 same page where I don't see it. I mean, one of the problems with having a government-led procedure right, these kinds of big-scale projects or even small-scale projects, is that it's going to be based on the presumed values of that era.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And so we think of ourselves as necessarily enlightened and better. Now I don't know that that's always true. I wouldn't trust anybody left, right, center, libertarian to rewrite the constitution right now. If they put a caucus together or whatever group to do that, it would be an utter disaster and it would be the worst. But what I'm saying is so you're right the fact that there were these things, they had these values, there were these racist, sexist ideologies that were dominant in the culture. It was a predominantly you know euros, you know white centric viewpoint. They just did it. We want cars, we all love cars. Who doesn't love cars? Get rid of this neighborhood because it's not as valuable as I agree, and I think that would happen in a different way. It wouldn't look like that it looks if we did that today.
Speaker 2:I mean, the technology of the car is incredibly appealing. It obviously, you know, allowed for people to move around the earth in a different way, but you know we didn't have to then say that the purpose of government is to pay for this vehicle to then go everywhere it wants to go yeah, exactly this vehicle to then go everywhere it wants to go.
Speaker 2:But I do think the other aspect of it, well you know, to your point, you know, reflecting the values of the time, well, one of the values was that eminent domain which is basically theft right it's an abuse of property rights was considered and still is, a, you know, essential tool of government and and it was used to build the highways in the name of progress.
Speaker 2:And so you know, I, I resist. You know, when people talk about the great technology of the car, it's like, yes, but eminent domain abuse, property rights abuse, does not. You know that that's, that's a regression in a certain sense 100.
Speaker 2:So but you know, that's not what I'm arguing no, I know, I know, but I think this is often dropped because there are people in the progress community who will, you know, say, oh, you're being anti-progress here and I'm like, well, I don't like. The history of progress is an expansion of individual rights, not going back. It should be that Right.
Speaker 1:Well, that goes back to what I was saying about pulling the heartstrings by using a rhetoric but actually slipping in really anti-regressive ideas. I agree, that's what I'm worried about.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I mean in terms of certain things for sure.
Speaker 1:So, but I cause I a hundred percent agree, like I don't want. I want us as individuals to figure it out and to build stuff. Try things fail. Try again, you know. Get people to like it, don't like it.
Speaker 2:Come to third Thursday, things like that, like I want people to try, stuff like yeah, but yeah, so right, but without that power, you know the roads would look, would have been built in a different way. The highways would have been built in a different.
Speaker 1:It would be completely different.
Speaker 2:It'd probably be better yeah, well, we wouldn't have destroyed the, you know, the livelihoods and wealth of, you know, whole hundreds of thousands of black and immigrant communities that lived in cities depriving them of the ability to build wealth you know we wouldn't have created the inner city as a concept of, you know, decadence and decay.
Speaker 1:And we'd have something else, but probably better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we would. We would have stronger cities, cities that you know. I think. Yes, for sure, people still would have opted into a more modern suburban style of living if they could. But there would be more options for families in cities too. Who didn't want that?
Speaker 1:Just real quick, we'll end on this. I started watching this show and if you haven't seen it, then this is a bunk question. I apologize. We can cut it For All Mankind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, have you seen that yeah, we love All Mankind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I it. We can cut it for all mankind. Yeah, yeah, have you seen that? Yeah, we love them. Yeah, I love it. I so like I thought the way they approached the idea of progress in technological terms as pushing the way to social progress was wonderful yeah, and I you know, like, because the premise is what if the soviets landed on the moon first?
Speaker 1:and the cold war was essentially not a cold war of weapons building an arms race, but a technological race into space, I thought that I mean, I'm really in love with this show. I think it's so amazing because it, like it puts this idea of like, well, now we're competing with them for these things. That aren't about blowing people up, it's about, like, who can get to Mars faster? Who could put the woman on the moon faster?
Speaker 2:There's a Mars colony in the 90s on the show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wait, I haven't gotten there.
Speaker 2:Oh, nevermind In the 80s Spoiler alert, but I figured it'd be one by now. There's a moon base no-transcript.
Speaker 1:Epic go to Mars and colonize the world. The universe that inevitably has to like it forces you to not be sexist because you want, you have like.
Speaker 2:If you're in a race, you have to have the best people, and it's not just white men who chain smoke, like there's some of the best, but they're not the only interesting tension in the show where the soviets basically try to one-up the united states on its you know, quote-unquote progressive values and so the soviets, you know, put a woman into space first, and so that forces this kind of reckoning with you. Know what they're actually, american ideals, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, and that I like that tension in the show of like, is that? Anyway, I just thought that was interesting about the roads, like if there is something about like let's have austin be that progressive place, and not the about like let's have austin be that progressive place and not the calm down, texans, I just mean building something pro progress, pro progress, pro building. Let's make the best city the planet's ever known, and I'm doing that. Maybe we'll all be a little better here here cool yeah any last words well, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:This has been a fun conversation as usual.
Speaker 3:All right, I'm ready for my pop-in. All right, that's too all right, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thanks, kirk.