I too enjoyed when the conversation got into the weeds about city planning, housing,
the role of corporations, etc. Since many of you seem to be on the same page, I have to recommend an extremely fascinating and insightful book on the topic that just came out. It’s the culmination of more than a decade of insight of a civil engineer and city planner who started to actually run the math on the standard modern American development pattern and realized it was making our cities functionally insolvent. It very clearly lays out how bad the problem is, and identifies a ton of ways we can start to move back in the right direction (hint, not huge bet-the-farm megaprojects). And it does so all without giving you the political buzz-words that allow to peg the author’s politics. I can’t rec this book highly enough for anyone who enjoyed this conversation.
Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Restore American Prosperity by Charles Marhon