is to ask her incredibly knowledgeable panelists. So we're trying to keep this. Try keep this moving, including starting 30 seconds early without even one of our panelists back, but let's go ahead and start with introductions. So I will. My name is Peyton Chung. I am here largely because I am a board member for both southern urbanism quarterly, which Aaron will tell you more about and greater greater Washington and greater greater Washington comments I apparently really love really despise having free time. So Dan Reed will and Kristen Jeffers will talk more about Greater Greater Washington and its role in in the greater Washington area. And so that's how they sort of convened all these. All these folks together. The filter with the introduction for Kristen Jeffers. She they is no stranger to CNU you excited to be back for her first congress and panel session five years after being involved off and on with CMU since 2011 min. 11 She doesn't want him sorry.
That's it feels like a long time feels like
a long time. She could not miss out on the first congress in her her home state of North Carolina just traveled down where they recited southern DC. She has been doing newsletters since long before as popular. If you go to the black urbanist.com You can subscribe to that newsletter. They're also contributing editor graver to Washington by City Lab. Next city risks here magazine helps beautiful other local and national regional publications, any communications or PR or public outreach roles for over a decade and is working on a second draft of a forthcoming book a black urbanists journey to an accessible here feminist future. And yes, hope to bring back some kind of podcasting and more research on urbanism. From a black queer feminist accessible lens you can find Kristen on Twitter and Instagram at at FLETC urbanist but it's preferable East Kreps newsletter which is on subset LinkedIn media on Patreon Dan Reed Rachel arcp they them pronouns is greater greater Washington regional policy director focused on housing and landings policy of Maryland and Northern Virginia. For ticket prior Dan Dan was a transportation planner working with communities all over North America to make streets safer, enjoyable and equitable. Their writing has appeared in publications putting Washingtonian magazine city lead shelter course, as well as just up the pipe which is a neighborhood blog that they founded in 2006. Dan was master of City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania a Bachelor of Science in architecture and that delivers English from University of Maryland's lives in Silver Spring Maryland with Brizzy who is a rescued pickled and we are also joined by Aaron Lubeck, an award winning restoration contractor specializing in historic risk, restoration and infill design in Durham, North Carolina. He is the host of national tumblers Association town builders podcast. Faculty at the incremental development Alliance and author of a children's book on at use, entitled Heather has two dwellings. Most recently, Aaron founded southern urbanism quarterly which is a Durham based nonprofit media company committed to building better cities in the south. Last, Andy van food is a storyteller for hire, who is he simplifies complex material while delivering optimism and hope. He's the independent writer, filmmaker and mobility consultant. His specialty is helping clients deliver on their missions to plan and design helping infrastructure. Andy's work is published at urbanism speakeasy.com. Okay, so that was a lot of intro, let me find the questions that I have for you all. Okay. Let's start with a big one. Which is media platforms have evolved a lot over recent years, from print to blogs, to aggregators, to tweet storms, to podcasts, to YouTube explainers to tick tock to whatever is next. Which platforms have which platforms. Are you currently active on Publish publishing on? Where do you build a following? What kinds of stories about urbanism lend themselves to what client to what sorts of formats?
That's a good question. Yeah. I'm recording.
Alright, you will because I have the microphone except I don't believe this is on it was on. Do you guys hear me coming out of microphone? No. So now we've got the on switch. All right, my for our response to that question. So I, that's, it's a good and common question. There's, there are a ton of choices, where do you even begin? And I go back to thinking about getting the right message in the right form to the right audience. And so that's going to be different for all of us. And it's going to be different, just as an individual, it's going to be different for Kristin for with one client versus another with me one client versus another. But if you come, if you come back to that starting point of who am I trying to reach? How am I trying to reach them? What am I trying to say that will help you with the different platforms? Another reason I started there is, for example, Tiktok, some people just are never going to download Tiktok as a tracking app, right? Like you some people won't, some people are fine with it. And so they're, I don't like to give, do this don't do that with platforms. I encourage people to think about what is the particular platform for and what is that platform reward, because you're not going to change that platform. Just like we can't change human nature. So we we go with human nature, like we've designed super skinny streets, because it calms people down. So go with it, you're not going to change people's behavior and in other ways, so like, nudge them according to the platform's UI, you asked Where do we what's our hand places with Python, where's your
happy place?
With a microphone. So my my favorite to walk through three to two plus substack, which is where you can kind of have everything, I wouldn't call it social media. But everything I migrated purposefully, everything on my personal blog to urbanism, speakeasy.com, because it's easier to, for people to go there, it's easier to interact with civil community, through email, social media comes and goes, emails are forever, basically. So that that is a key thing. For me, though, on social media, Twitter, and LinkedIn are my favorites for different reasons. You behave very differently on each of those, or you should. If you if you act like I just use the same phrases, and the same approach to each, you'll be very frustrated on one or the other. So what I like to tell people is find the thing that seems to fit your personality, if you're not, if you're kind of just figuring out wow, which one do I want to try out, or push harder, and just go with whatever your personality lends you to. So I think
Kristen has something to add, Oh, of course, as the person who bought and put onto the internet, black urbanus.com in 2010, and has also bought their, their name.com. And really, I just want to talk about ownership, especially when you're creating creating something unique, especially not to say that we aren't all unique individuals, but you can probably see there's a lot of uniqueness in my own embodiment, in a lot of ways. And basically, it's all these platforms are ever changing. All these platforms have all these different rules. Many of us started on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, when it was open, a little bit more open source, it was okay to like, you know, post something, and people would find you and the hashtag won't work. And I found people using the hashtag smart growth. I noticed some of those people were tweeting about a place called seeing you as Peyton to come and be on a panel with me in 2011. And I kept tweeting and and was TRB. And it was APA it was all the different conferences and then fast forward. And you can go on YouTube and folks have liked today have put speeches up of mine. So people see me on a speech. And that's still a social media outlet. But like Andy has said substack has been a good home, especially for getting started. It does a lot of the legwork for you now, those of us who have been in the trenches for a decade or more, those features are built in but you still want to have your own place your own space and you still want to have access to your emails and your addresses. Because legally right now you still own those lists. Like if you have a collection of emails and mailing addresses and you have permission from those people to send them then you can still use those and do that. So that is why I kind of over the last year especially so you kind of slow down for obviously Reasons. I started using newsletters, I started putting my stuff on all the different newsletter platforms, trading it a little bit like a social media outlet. It's not really a social media outlet in that sense. Yes. All these other ones tick tock, and all those things are there. I am just one person. And I've gotten used to writing and I love writing and I love speaking and then yes, all right, little shortform I'm still adjusting to video, I'm not exactly going to be the person. Yes, you'll see me dancing at a party. But then somebody tells me all I need to dance for a challenge. And then point to New Urbanism or point to yendi, or point to whatever word that's not necessarily me. But that is so many of you in the room, and so many people that you will see online, and I want to honor that all these platforms have a reason our words could still convey. But what matters at the end of the day is that people have better places to live and not the places that we live work for everybody. And that's the key message. However, whatever medium or media we use, that's what we use. And if it's, you know, needing to make sure people know that as you wouldn't world that yeah, make sure that you know where you are and what you're using and what you're doing. Right. So that's kind of my perspective on the platform's.
Thank you. First of all, I want to thank everybody for being here. I was also really warmed, enthused by strong Townes session on media because it was filled. And one of the reasons I start one of the many reasons I started this magazine was a frustration that I've generally think that the values of the CNU are pretty impeachment, unimpeachable. But they're not getting out there. That's just fundamentally a media problem. And for all the good things this organization has done, media has not been a strength, I mean, that it doesn't have an ongoing podcast or, or even a substack that gets out there and poems to where it's great. But if all of us are are actually getting the word out, it's really as a proselytizing. We have to go to the margins and pitch these ideas. It's the only way that New Urbanism goes from a movement to the movement. So I think everybody's enthusiasm for this is a great, I would say Twitter has been remarkably effective. At guard railing crazy. That's its primary tool. And it's weird. I mean, that's actually probably the primary tool where the frontlines have been moved. For those of us who work in zoning reform. It's remarkable. We all own a publishing platform. Now, every single one of us. And we're present at the planning meetings that frankly, journalists weren't covering when they were funded 30 years ago, but they're not covered now. And the craziness that goes on in listservs. And next door and Planning Commission's is now covered. And so I'll leave you with this. Alan Durning and sightlines describe it that in our lifetimes, almost 50 years old cities particularly progressive cities have been run on a NIMBY Trotskyite alliance is quoted as in The Economist, and it's basically a white wealthy homeowner cartel that is highly educated and older and profiteering from the house combined and partnered with an underclass that is more likely to be of color, more likely to be renter less educated. And for 40 years, the only thing they agreed upon is that the builders were the problem. And the Envy movement is basically a fragment of the underclass were the people who were not as wealthy and didn't own anything, say, you know, what, we've been partner for 40 years, and we still don't have a home. So we're gonna go ahead and deal with these guys now. And I would say that the cycle runs in 30 years, from Jane Jacobs in 1962, the creation of CNU in 1992, whatever the hell we're going through now, which we did today, but probably the Indian movement, maybe it's different things. But 30 year cycle, something's happening now. And the micro media that we're all doing is a big part of it. Hi,
I'll talk about myself, as I talked about the organization that worked for me personally, I've probably been most active on Twitter, I don't work for 15 years. But it is, I think, the place where I met the most people where I made the most friends, I think I met you on there, Christian. Yes. And even with all of the new ownership and the past couple of months, I still am able to find some joy and use out of it. While also dramatically cutting back my social media died in the past couple of years. The other place I'm probably most active is Instagram, but that's mostly pictures of my dog. And I find that to be a much healthier and more nutritious place. I loads LinkedIn and I joined it under great duress. As from the organization, you know, greater greater Washington started as a blog in 2008. And at the time, there were a number of local neighborhood bloggers in the DC area. I was one of them who were on Blogger and other outlets like that. And in the over the past several years as it's shifted to more both publishing and advocacy organization. You know, there's a Twitter presence is kind of weak. There's a Facebook presence kind of weak a lot But it's just sort of pushing things from the site out into there. And we've had these sort of ongoing conversations about like, what is the website's presence on social media? Because a lot of the conversations that for many years happened in our comments section, which no longer exists, have shifted to social media. And it there's been a sort of ongoing like identity crisis like, Well, what do we do when the people who are a part of our community are having the conversations we were leading somewhere else. And on top of that, you know, the youth are on YouTube and Tiktok. Now making like, all of this stuff that I had, like struggle and like deeply message boards to find out about urbanism 15 years ago, are on Tik Tok and YouTube, you don't have a presence there at all, really? And do not, I'm not sure if we figured out how to be there. My dream personally, is to find an intern who will make tic TOCs for us.
And I also want to piggyback because I'm in I'm in the gate for Monday through Friday, making sure that our information is accurate on the site. And of course, I came to it when I kind of moved to DC because of course, when I started the black Urbanus, I was still here in North Carolina as I tried to build our media landscape and contributing. And yeah, I would love to be supervising a nice little answer, not just for Gigi Walsh, but also from our own site that just does this naturally. Because a lot of the stuff the fact that we were on Twitter was our thing, because 15 years ago, we were those young folks. Now there are other young folks. And I have to remember that I had to count backwards sometimes and have to count forwards. But yeah, there is there is a generational element to all of this. And I, I want to be able to capture that. But everybody has different gifts. And that's the one thing I want everybody to leave with here today, especially since Yeah, you do have the access, that the cost, the barrier of entry is lower. But there's still a measure of making sure that we're telling the truth about what we're doing. I know what some other questions are going to touch on that. But I just wanted to say, piggyback on two of us on this table, kind of passing the ball.
Yeah, let's do another question here. And there's a translation of information sources between the global like the New York Times, and you've seen a lot of shifts in terms of the global coverage of urbanism, even in the past couple of years, some really big, really great editorials in the New York Times, for instance, and say your local next door. Where do you think I? Where do you think the conversations that matter about urbanism and and the cues that people pick up about? What are what are positions that they should have about urbanist topics in their in their neighborhoods? Where do you think people get those? And which ones matter in terms of changing the places that we that we want to see.
What's the start? I can start a little bit yeah, I mean, I think it's it's a matter of traditional media is overwhelmingly carrying NIMBY water. The daily papers of the op ed sections almost everywhere from LA Times Seattle Times Raleigh, News and Observer have published absolute garbage nonsense that that people who don't want development want to publish a good example was an environmentalist lawyer does who hates anything that gets built, published a completely false statement that apartments were fire hazards, because one went up in flames with before it had fire breaks before it had sprinklers. And the whole thing was written to give the impression that these are unsafe, and fire hazards. And it was they published it, they could have asked anybody who's built anything and got a real story. And so I think the what's happening for folks like Eric Cronenberg and I, who were really involved with zoning reform, we'd love to talk about this and like war terms. But I think these publications kind of fall one by one. And I think this is the leader of the questions. But did you guys see Mother Jones articles about a month ago, my Mother Jones, which is identifies pretty openly as one of the most leftist magazines out there. The Editor in Chief had a whole publication on the value of nimbyism, and that we need more housing and this period and we can't quit dicking around with obstructing this. BILL MCKIBBEN came out on climate grounds for the need for more housing. And I love this because it was the same effect that AARP had when AARP came out advocating for more housing. AARP represents the old, like the elderly, people who are protesting or housing every single public meeting. So they got hit from their flank. Right. And so the, you know, I live in I work in Durham, which is kind of the Berkeley of the East Coast, you know, we're out for better and for worse, and so we definitely have a left NIMBY problem there. And when Mother Jones comes out for these values, they hit their hit from their flying. And so all of these magazines, I think are coming to their senses. They just need the knowledge that's often found at these conferences. And we're seeing it reason is coming around because we're Right.
And just bringing nuance nuance around race, gender, whatever things that we term under the equity banner for this? Absolutely. We need to all be house. Absolutely. I'm 100% housing as a human right. And I think when we have a working press, with people that know how to edit, and I love editing, I love helping people tell their stories, you know, fact checking the research and getting away from the clickbait because that's something we tried to do to survive, do those first errors of, oh, new media is telling us we need to do XY and Z, you know, a lot of media outlets, and I've done a lot of research around media outlets, owning one and figuring out where I sit and thinking, thinking about us trying to be objective when we're all individuals. But yes, there are certain things that absolutely do work. And sometimes those things that do work, because the messenger is not the right person, or the there's not enough money, or the money's behind a certain issue, or the lobby is a bit hot, the money's behind a certain lobby, and the ads are taken out. And you know, that's where things kind of get muddy sometimes. And so it is helpful to write write out, help people write down, help people keep things, working on making sure that we're not erasing voices. And we're adding that nuance to these conversations. And we're working on making sure that we make we know why there's a push back. And it's not the same push back. It's not the push back that we've been dealing with for years, or the things that we think we know to push back. But it's a valid pushback, well, we never got a chance to sit at the table. Things like redlining and justification are going to rankled me at night, because it affects my ability to have a shelter. Yeah, I'm supposed to be this media person, as opposed to be this objective voice. I've been literally in a version of this room now for over a decade. Some change. It can be difficult. It can be, you know, yes, the word triggering is very real, because I read those words. And as we mentioned, some more language, these things do happen. So I think just is good that the mainstream folks, quote unquote, mainstream, we also have to think about, okay, well, how do we make the mainstream in the first place? What makes their work better than ours, especially if we're the ones on the ground, we're building the communities of each other. We're teaching people how to build advocate, help each other find the resources that we need for these great places, these homes, these transportation systems, the climate, all these things we've got going on. Kristin,
I want to hear from Dan about next door. Yes.
It's a bad place that I don't participate in. I was I'm once in the future vice president of my neighborhood association, and I have been advocating for the past few years to shut down our listserv, because it is not a productive environment. It's a place where neighbors are very mean to each other about a small group of things. And they're very similar to other things. What I did get is we rewrote our constitution to prevent us from taking a position on land use issues, which is I got six blocks from a neighborhood rezone, and no one knew anything about it. Because we couldn't talk about it. But, you know, I want to as we're talking about, you know, how to, how to talk about these things and how new media can be used. I think it's also a record worth recognizing the limits on it, right? There are some times when we actually there's some venues that we shouldn't be having a conversation, I actually questioned the value of engaging people who are openly hostile to the things that we care about. Instead of you trying to find common ground on other things, we don't have to talk to everyone about everything. We don't owe anyone our intention. There was a reason we got rid of comments on our website. Yes, but I would encourage folks to be deliberate about the spaces in which they do talk about these issues, based on where the most sympathetic audiences are, and to use our limited energy wisely, and not focusing on people who were perceived as having a lot of power, but will not be moved in it.
So I think your first question about where do these rheumatism questions or conversations happen? It's wherever humans are, which it can be on any of these platforms, or it can be in real life, it can be at an event like this. And so I think another question related to that would be, why should anybody care about what it is you're saying? So regardless of the platform or the watercooler, so if you You can focus your energy on honing your message. And what's your hook? And what is it that you're trying to persuade? What's the point of in any particular conversation? Like maybe it's just networking, maybe you're not trying to sell something or persuade somebody, but for those times when you are parking reform, zoning, reform, whatever, work on your message, and then figure out alright, who needs to hear this message? And where are they hanging out? And how do I talk with them? And then you can get to like what span subscribing, find shared interests with those people find common ground with those people, it may or may not be using the internet.
Okay, I've got another one for you. And then then for Kristin, some characteristics social media agency, influencer, or a creator economy where audiences follow individuals instead, who built brands around themselves, what value do publications like? What value does do publications teams of people who have a brand ad, versus having just being an individual creative?
So I have often heard this over the years presented as an either or which is better. But in organizations organization or an individual, I think it's not either or I think it's both and, and again, I mean, I put an asterisk next to everything like it depends. But one of the values in having individuals in that and not everybody has to have like, be an independent publisher. But one of the values of independent publishing in the internet age is since we all have a version of the printing press, we can create or join a community, however large or small it is, and build trust and expectations and things like that. So even if it's just this very niche thing of, oh, that's the duplex person, or that's the such and such person, that's fine. Or it's the that person has opinions on everything. That's fine, too. But I think that sort of independent trust and interest in particular personalities is, it's getting stronger and stronger. I'm sure I know, you and I both have seen this. As you'll see over the years, polls saying people just don't trust legacy corporate media anymore, which is not a new thing. I mean, that's over. It's been over 100 years since journalism fueled the Spanish American War. It's been going on ever since just in various forms. So were these happen? And I think that's, again, down to the individual. But I would encourage anybody, whether you decide to publish to the world, or just treat it like a journal, write, publish, repeat just Yes. and hone those messages so that people will care about the things that you're saying.
I'm ready for my question. Okay, all right. So this is yeah, so some would think of, yeah. There's, it's a weird thing sometimes, because being in the body that I live in, people just think I'm an influencer, that that I wouldn't possibly want to talk to you about something so academic and serious as new urbanism, and zoning and GMB or, you know, all those intersections that I bring to the forefront, all these identities and such, how is that mixing in and that's the thing, people still live in the world. And people do come up to me people do message me, people are like, I'm glad you're here. You know, you definitely made it, you are a possibility model. You made me realize that that had a place in this room, and I had something to say, and I don't have to give up. You taught me something about our legacy. You taught me a place to go. And so honestly, like we've always I think sometimes this like demonization of influence or content creator, is more of a demonization of the corporate things that try to flatten voices, and limit voices and you know, dehumanize people completely, versus what we actually do. I consider myself an artist, I consider myself a content creator, I do journalism, I do sometimes edit to a style guide. Other times I'm like, Yeah, I'm writing my personal story. I am writing my thoughts and feelings. I am taking a position I am leading into who I am as a person. And I know that's what you all will do. And then you will come to this work to life to writing to creating from various aspects and so yeah, I am. I don't think that that takes away from anything, if anything, like visibility is important. The image is a message sometimes and sometimes it's seeing that image and then going down that pathway. And sometimes the other thing is different people have different communication styles because of ability. Some folks can't read big blocks of text, but they can see an image. And that image starts them down the pathway. For some people, they can't see the image at all. For some people, they need the block of text, or they need the captions, or they need the replay, or they needed a video. So having different modalities of the work that we do in the media, different media sources, or actually media, because that is the plural. That is not so much I think one is better than the other or it's diminishing to be on video versus writing a long essay. There is definitely something for everyone. And there is a reason that we have multiple platforms. And I want us to think about it in terms of accessibility, and bringing more folks to the table and embodied and empowering people to build what is tables or not case houses because we need more houses. So let's definitely do that. What's your
so I think this is reflective of one of the challenges that I sort of alluded to a few minutes ago, right? Is recently as 2013 to 20. Lately, we started, we were a platform that people who wanted to write about urbanism in the DC area could go to write like you could start your own blog, and we had a bigger stake. And now you don't necessarily need that. There are so many creators on YouTube and Tiktok, in particular making content about cities about urbanism. And they can have their own platform and get perhaps bigger audience than we have. And so there people have different choices now. Right. And I think that is something that I don't have, I won't call like a legacy organization, but like increasingly kind of, you know, have to figure out right, what is our offer to people who can just go make their own platform produce something, right. And there are other similar urbanism blogs around the country that I think are in a similar position, right? When I think of the people, in particular in the Gympie movement who are doing things. I often think of people I know from Twitter, I think that people who are sort of their own sort of hang their shingle out commentator, or advocate or whatever, and then there are organizations, right, and sometimes they are both. I might have been maybe in that first category before charges you watch. I think there's room for both. But I think there is this weird sort of talk about there like sort of different generations of media happening here beyond just like the newspaper and Tik Tok.
Yeah, totally agree with that. Some of you guys been around the block, you're familiar with Monty Anderson talking about find your farm for that. And I think the same thing applies to media. Everybody in this room can actually decide what they're they know more than anybody on earth about. And it's just a matter of you can't find that keeps shrinking. It might it might be that you know more about biking in North Miami, might be very narrow. It might be you know more about tiny homes in Atlanta or whatever. And each each one has a story to curate. And what happens with each of these is really a curator brand issue, whether it's an individual or a team, you know, strong towns is a great example. And you develop trust doesn't necessarily take a long time. But you create that aura where people go, I wonder what Chuck thinks. Or I wonder what Christian things people go to just hear you don't agree with them. But you trust you're curious, and you're better off are following us a little bit what we're hoping to do with the magazine, I hope this shows up. You guys get it once every three months. There's 10 articles in it, and you disagree with three of them. reading all of them. So I think that curation of stuff, and I think young people can fix the unused media shortcoming and frankly need to. There was a young woman who approached me from Miami earlier, she said she's trying to curate she's curious about finding her role in this movement. I was blessed to be invited to do the ntbs podcast with extraordinary talent that that in that group of founders doing this work in the first five people I interviewed have done more than a billion dollars of work. And even though I engaged with them at CMU is never what I've been able to do a one on one conversation for an hour with these people if I didn't do a podcast and it's work, but that that relationship that you can build personally and selfishly, for your careers, through media is very real, and on a altruistic level is needed by this movement.
Next one, I want to start with Aaron, which is is it better to chase many eyeballs, a few influential people or something else?
That's a great question. I think it can be both and there's there's different purposes. I know as I am running into the burning dumpster fire, that is print journalism, while everybody else is running out of it. You know, this is an expensive lift the substack is free running. You know, a podcast can be free as well print journalism certainly isn't that and what we're trying to do is kind of curating the practitioners who want to make this work. And we're trying to cut through the filter of theory that kind of engulfs all of our planning conversations and talk about why do people make decisions bad or good. And first and foremost, curate people who are making those decisions, which is a very small subset of this movement. And with a with a tertiary secondary benefit of policymakers and people that are interested in urbanism. So in that sense, we're very narrow, we're talking about higher quality, less quantity. And that's our model of partially filling a void because nobody was doing it. I don't think it's right or wrong. It's just we know, in the south, actually, our model is very much like sightlines Institute in Seattle. They are the voice behind all major good policy reform in the Pacific Northwest. And they cover about 15 million people in the Pacific Northwest. The Southeast is now the most populated region of the country. Nobody wants to believe that. Yeah, 40 million people. Yes, it's time to debate that, but to cover that region, there's nothing there's nothing in that swamp where you can go to learn about better city building. And so we're just trying to cover that void. And there's not a right or wrong way. But those are our choices.
And I'm happy to see this because now I don't have to be all things for all people when that is not the case. And I don't have to try to make myself something else when I'm who I am. And my voice gets to be out here in the world. And it gets to be elevated. And we but we have all these like kind of foundational places to go we have these collectives, like I really enjoy working in the collective with that as GG wash. When I started my site, I was like, Okay, well, there's needs to be kind of a more heavier black voice on this. Because at the time, diversity was not a maybe a stronghold. We have obviously changed that. At GG wash. We are working with a team, a very diverse team. There's other I'm one of many feminine presenting folks that work there. A queer office like obviously myself and Dan as representing like, people of color like though that is to me that he have we, anybody could be anything you can create your own platform. It's it's really a matter of reach. Mani, preferred way of processing information. And I'm really excited because yeah, this is my home region. This is my home state, Charlotte to be in a position to host something like this and to be an example. Now, of course, I'm hoping that Greensboro and Raleigh and Durham Asheville, Fayetteville, Wilmington, gosh, I think it keeps listing cities that are growing, that are becoming attractive. And now they have southern urbanism quarterly that help them grow up and grow with all the various folks that are here, that they don't have to run away from trees, we can have tall buildings, we can have mid sized buildings, we can have trees, we can have barbecue, we can have whatever, whatever it is, that makes the sale for you can also come with some light rail, it can come with the diversity that's always been here as far as people and who we are what we're about.
Let's hear from Andy about Manny versus view
the eyeballs versus influenced the old? Yeah, the eternal question. I think it goes back to know your why. Which I don't I don't want to repeat the opening of the session. But basically, what's your purpose, both in your particular message and then also the place that you're having that message? So for example, years ago, somebody who was a celebrity journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, he was paid to do campaigns. So he, there are lots of other things around him as developing a personal brand. But there are types of journalists who were paid to for an assignment. And so they needed eyeballs. For something like a maybe a PR company is working behind the scenes for a zoning campaign or zoning reform campaign. They don't need to be visible. In fact, they should probably be invisible. They're ghost writing for other people. So their Point is absolutely. It might be for people truly that they need to reach not 100,000 people so I think that goes back to know your why.
Dan reminded somehow of the ads in the metro that are selling things like high speed rail or littoral combat systems or whatever. They're using mass media to influence just a couple of
people. That's the funnest part about the DC area is that you see an ad on the subway for fighter jets mayor or you they don't people. Speaking of which, the council president and the county where I live in Montgomery County, Maryland is a former CNN journalist and he told me something that's always stuck with me is it's not how many People read you as the Peter, people that matter read you, those people will do to him now and I hope he does what I tell them to do.
And then let's, uh, just for a closer here, how can our audience contribute to telling better stories about making better places?
Simple dumb words I gave, you know, as as a training planner, before that an architect there is, I think, an impulse to use a lot of jargon to show that you know what you're talking about. And it doesn't have to be, I think things should be simple and dumb and clear. Because that's how you get in front of the most people, sometimes it means it is not as precise as it could be. But I think we are in an environment where people have a very limited attention span, I know I can't sit through a feature like movie anymore. So if, if we're going to get so called normies, excited about the summit, increasingly, they are, you know, normies love this stuff. Now, without realizing it, we have to meet them where they are.
Yeah, we try to think of on a scale of one to 10, we want to talk about content, and of seven, but like totally at a three. So it brings people along again, all of this is in a growth mindset, trying to bring people along trying to sell people the gospel and so forth. I talked briefly at Duke on green building and building science. And literally the clot in the class that I taught master's level environmental school, I could have talked to my kids in elementary school, I mean, none of the content was different. It's not necessarily a high level, I mean, it's how a house works, or what happens when you turn on a light switch doesn't need to be complex. And in fact, the simpler you can make it is the beauty of journalism, the beauty of conveyance, The simpler you can make it the more you can prove your point or move, move the needle.
Honestly, I'm gonna say that as much like we like supporting things that we love, like we will literally go out and buy them. And so when you see these fundraising campaigns from publications you love including greater greater Washington, who was a 501, c three nonprofit and a 501. C four for reasons we need to be. And likewise, for people like myself, who are independent, black, queer, feminist journalists, who oftentimes get banned off a certain shadow banned off of certain networks, because people just can't take that on myself. And there are people like me in the world that have I have a farm too. So not when we when you see those campaigns, when you see Mother Jones, or even, even when you see, say, The Washington Post, or the New York Times where they say, yes, we need to pay for journalism, even if it's like getting your company to do that. And if you have a business, that's a write off, I write off a lot of my subscriptions, because I want to learn from everybody else. And that helps me grow as a company. The trade trade publications, like for years, many of you who've run like planning firms, or working in city government, you've gotten things like the print version of governing the print version of that city, like those investing in information. And yes, we do live in a world where we have fighter jet ads, but you're also walking around Charlotte today, you're seeing all kinds of ads, people believe in the power of the message. And instead of like the staining the billboards, and all these advertising ads, and the person dancing on tick tock, think about how that can be you. And also think about investing and putting your support financially or even just word of mouth or buying a bunch for people and giving them out in the publications and in the people that you believe in the most. Especially if you're very concerned, like myself, have certain voices and certain identities be in a race, thankfully my own but we're gonna we're gonna be positive here today. It's been a beautiful day here in Charlotte. Thank you all for coming.
While you guys were talking, I took Dan's advice, and I wrote down some dumb words. So I think about this in terms of what happens when you simplify. So like the, the tagline for urbanism, speakeasy is simple truths about city planning for for these kinds of purposes, like Simplify, simplify, and what happens when you simplify it? So the two examples that I've done for planners and designers, so one, if you are a planner, and you're talking about land use regulations, and it's very easy to say a lot of very true things and lose sight of what am I trying to say? And so it might be something like, we outlawed townhouses. And if you just sit on that for a second, is that right? And then you have to take a double take and look at your own policy. And then you go, Oh, yeah, actually, we outlawed townhouses. That's kind of weird. I don't think most people understand that so much of the country, outlaws townhouses. So that's an example of what happens when you simplify. For engineering. You if you as an engineer, you have the power to encourage more reckless driving. So just sit on that, like 100 Americans die every day in traffic crashes. And a lot of it is through the design that encourages dumb behavior like it's, it's feels fine to drive with your knees while eating a burger. If you think on these things I've been told. These are examples of what happens when you simplify, which I think is really powerful. Just sit on a thing. What does this really mean? Yes.
That's some time for audience questions. Not that guy. anybody other than the guy behind? You mentioned.
So obviously, senior has been around for decades, the message has been tough to land and stick. Last night, we were having a conversation about, you know, the ideals but then the implementation in real life. From a from a messaging standpoint, you know, one could argue that the 15 Minute city has never been more popular, and more so because of the Cavanaugh factor and to get over surfing it misguiding what it actually stands for? Why hasn't the message been able to stick in it in a stronger way? You talked about the mainstream media being either against or anti but why I mean, for example, the NBA The NBA is things like that is pro development, pro developer, pro money, throat. So there are reasons why it should land. Why hasn't it land,
some of its on this organization, and it hasn't been good at recruiting young people necessarily or growing? I think there should be 20,000 people this conference, and it was done, right? The values are right. It's just people in Durham, one of the more progressive cities in the south, most of them never heard of new urbanism, not even enough to know and they don't like it. So that's our problem, we're going to hopefully run our Fall issue on rebooting the urbanist movement, I think the term isn't dead, it doesn't need to go to 15 cities, urbanism is a little state static and mushy, and outside of our Nerd world, like doesn't land. But I believe in our lifetime, a politician will run on a pro city platform, and probably starting with red coal, like somebody's gonna do that somebody's gonna run for president on that. Because the values of urbanism which do include change and opportunity, and entrepreneurship, and equity and inclusion, and all these things, it is possible to run on that it's shocking, nobody has, but the American political system reward stasis, punishes people who advocate for change. And that's the fundamental thing we need to change.
I totally agree that you're going to start to see candidates running on what I refer to as Pro stuff platforms, I don't think the word urbanism is going to come into it at all. And in fact, I don't use it in my day to day life in my anything, I think what I actually when I talk to folks who are remotely aware of this stuff, what they think of new urbanism, they think of the new urbanist memes for transit oriented teens Facebook group, which was 700,000 members, and it's completely divorced from mission, right. The reason why the message doesn't get through is because someone has created a bigger donor message and it got there first, like the q&a on stuff, right? The government wants you to not leave your house that is way simpler than 15 minutes cities That's terrifying. NIMBYs are pro developer incorrect. But that is what got their first user pro housing, not pro developer. I don't care about developers and what I want to houses. That doesn't hasn't gotten through first.
Who's going to pro stuff Cincinnati 2020?
Eric here, yeah, I'm just trying to have fun at this. But you know, talking about messaging and getting word out and selling. And I keep thinking of how cities are trying to change like the plan departments and zoning reforms with like, any guidance for cities and messaging, how important the marketing is of what you're trying to do. Right. And I feel like some of you're trying to be like, nonbiased. So let's just talk about what zoning could be, is that no, no, we need to be directional as a city. How city was what should planning staff officials? What's the takeaway from y'all? And like, how do they do this better than somebody else should?
I think we need to not be afraid of when we hear these various voices. When we're combating when we're, oh, well, we're afraid to spend the money on plastering the world with flyers because people don't use flyers and we don't have the money. No, spend the money on all the media that you need so that people actually get the information that they need. Like, we're in this room today. We managed to make it on the other side of this. Now, of course, it looks like I'm not on the other side. But there's reasons for that, but that's the thing. We need people to have the information we need. And cities don't need to be afraid of, oh, I'm not going to tweet because you know this under public records and it's going to be in public record forever. Well, we're all like, there's still information that needs to be shared. So, find the right people. There are absolutely firms like, I'm happy to talk to you individually. And you can write me an invoice as a city, who was interested in branding themselves, because I've been embedded like, you know, finding the places that I can find and make tell this message, figuring out what's appropriate, figuring out when to use certain slang words, and when it's appropriate, like those things are good to know. And yes, you can still put a message out and you can put in you can sound like yourself, whatever that is. You want to
get a quick one, I've got two thoughts on that one is one of my favorite and overlooked parts of the AICPA Code of Ethics has to do with advocacy. So if you're a professional planner, it's that it's not something you're supposed to shy away from, you are expected to be an advocate. So that doesn't, that doesn't mean all right, here are now the 11 things that you are literally supposed to advocate for. But that's a common thing that planners say, Well, I can't I can't be an advocate. The other thing is, I would say, always look for that Venn Diagram of stated positions and shared interests, because people will say a thing, like, I hate bike lanes, I'm opposed to bike lanes. But what they really mean is, I want a place to park my car nearby, or there's a lot of trash out here, what they they'll, there's something else going on. So when you find the other thing, then you accidentally build the team, you've got shared interests. And even with the 15 Minute cities, this is a perfect recent example of this kind of thing. I wrote about that from a position of if you're an area where your council people are planning commission is saying, yeah, we'll never have these things that have the words walkability or something like that, because 15 minutes city, it will shut us down. You have zoning right now, that is 15 minutes cities with all that without all the extra fuss of the European politics, like you have rules that outlaw walkable, design, things like that, right now, you just it's coming under different terms. So that's a way to get shared interests, you want to get people fired up about abundant housing, more housing and more options for people to get around, find shared interests, rather than saying, champion this phrase, that phrase,
damn. You know, I think it is all about, you know, especially for minutes supple planners or consultants, I was a consultant for 10 years understanding the politics of the place. And using the language of that place. I wrote most of a Bike Ped plan for the city of Virginia Beach a couple of years ago, you can do a city has terrible flooding problems, you could do a CTRL F and that plan, you will not find the words climate change anywhere, what you will find is that flooding is bad for economic development. And by investing in pedestrian bike infrastructure, we will support the economy and reduce flooding. And if passed, so
others go ahead,
the black shirt.
I'm so happy to be in a room at CMU, where I'm probably the oldest guy. And it's great, because a lot of times, it's sort of the other way around. Great that you put a group together, that is early enough in the process that they can actually accomplish a lot. There's one thing I find about this panel that feels a little naive. And that is that you're all coming from a cause. standpoint, you care deeply about the cause you want the rest of the world to care. But in the world of communication, that's not what drives communication, it's money. The trick is figure out who's gonna make money off New Urbanism and enlist their support, whether it's economic development in your town, building a tax base, whether it's a company, you know, we see companies exhibiting here that are selling polymer parts for houses, whatever I mean, that's, in my mind, that's the way I would approach it. Because you're not nobody's going to have the sustained energy to do anything unless somebody's paying them to do it.
So the right and then you see most blogs, which I think are amazing, and could do incredible service, but personally to the people doing and who reads them all die eventually, because they're exhausting. I mean, they're, it's a traumatic process to do that much work. Content Creation is really difficult. And I think, particularly in these nonprofit models, particularly in the micro media, the cost, the cost of content has gone to zero, and so is what people are willing to pay for it. So this this hits this problem. We're all mediums trying to get paid somehow to make it sustainable. Otherwise, it's the Tom Sawyer problem, where you're getting people to paint the fence for you because of the Civic good, like, right. And so I think you're totally right, you need to figure out who benefits from this. And certainly, it's the builders, developers, architects that sort of drive this movement, but there's a wider group of, you know, and everything from you know, And I mean, all sorts of people benefit from in the city. And we need a longer list of those. It's always been amazing. I mean, obviously, you were going around seeing uses beginning that this organ, I mean, the organization I don't know who's ever had much more than a million dollar budget, which is our problem for raising fundraising goes back to the same Rob, that CMU, there is a message and something to sell here. And we haven't been as good at selling it across the movement, and we need to be better. So I think it's a larger brainstorm in my view.
Yeah, absolutely. I would not be sitting here if I wasn't funded, because I, you see what the rents are. And of course, many of you in this room want the rents to go up because you want to make the revenue. Same thing with us. And yeah, we I do run ads. And I'm gonna speak for black urbanists and Kristen Jeffers Media, I'm not speaking for GG wash, they can maybe speak to that a little bit more insight on how we do revenue there. As a C three, there is there is a movement in the journalism world that I've been active in, there are people that are putting money in foundations. The Baltimore banner is a good example. They raised all this money, they thought they were going to purchase the Baltimore Sun from a private equity, they ended up making their own like entity and it has the weight of being. So now effectively, Baltimore has two newspapers. Again, one of them is just digitized. But the articles the way they're reporting, the verticals, all of that, and they are a C three, they're probably one C three, there's things like news match. You, as you've seen that city, increase their fundraising, they've been able to benefit from that the solutions journalism network, they help the our kinds of publications, our publications that are explaining like building types and science and all these things that were not helped us meet mainstream the money is there, then I just have, you know, I've used patron, I have the paid version of substack. There are people that are willing to treat messaging and newsletters that they really like and that speak directly to them as an expense. Like instead of buying a cup of coffee, and later there is a site called buy me a coffee, where people they they make their living now depends on where you live for how much that living and how fast it goes. But absolutely, that is what's sustaining. And then we are Did you watch this a million dollar nonprofit, right? You want to comment on that because
disclose our budget, but
you didn't legally go find another source of income for pizzas,
started in the FIBA World started as an LLC originally, and transition to a nonprofit model about seven years ago, in part because of funding from philanthropies and family foundations. There's that and there's also some member support. Now it's adding a 501 C three to fund publication side because there's a totally separate pool of money for like new media that once 501 C three. All right, so there's a whole structural circus going on the page and overlay more about United. But if it was not for philanthropy funding, in particular, Colombia is very interested in housing, and that supports other cohousing efforts around the country. We couldn't do this work. So thankfully, somebody, somebody who found out how to make money off of something else. This case, Facebook, decided that our housing crisis was a really big issue nationally, as well put their money where their mouth is, and I hope they can do so for as long as possible, because I would like to make this my career.
We up to the last question, what
do we have? Okay. Yep.
Talked about social media and new voices into discussion. And obviously, like, one of the big ones a question I had was, and it was a problem nationally around self described NIMBY voices maybe sometimes, especially in social media, like over talk or drown out traditional residence or interest in the strongest placement. And I know it's a national issue, but I've seen some localities make more progress in coming together there. And just any advice you have on what have you seen that actually, whether it's online or offline, can help bring those kinds of voices and perspectives together. So it's not so the abuse don't get it doesn't appear that you're just talking over existing residents. So it's counterproductive a lot of our shared goals
target tobacco talking about young bees talking over and me he's talking over me like
it is the people who are so pro development. So pro zoning reform, telling existing residents, they're wrong. And they said, I'm worried about getting priced out of my house or I'm worried about
developers taking over. I want to hear from Dan first actually.
I think this is an a phenomenon that is not just the NIMBY movement, but having worked in transit advocacy, and also in urban or new urbanist. I think white dudes tend to over talk peoples of general life goal. And this is a problem in lots of spaces. And you're totally right in these, particularly that subset of yummies do engage in these, like really not productive conversations on social media. And I think it does sort of represent the entire it ends up picturing the entire thing. But honestly, I think you could find that we're minutes you can find a lot different spaces.
The way of understanding the question is about sort of NIMBY disinformation, and how do we have a counter?
Okay, which is, where have you seen progress on that? Like, what did you see represents progress on originated with it, whether it's online or offline?
Yeah, um, I came to terms if you can't always bridge the divide. You can find common ground and other things. Well, I'm trying and I have a dog and I'm trying to relate to my nippy neighbors with the dog. It is not working. He has been really cute. I think you can use these platforms to fun I have. I have friends who believe that arguing on next door or Twitter or what have you with newbies, helps to signal to people who are afraid to speak up that it is safe to do so that there are people who agree with you. I find that to be incredibly draining use of my time and energy. I strongly think that the social aspect of it is meaningful. You know, as an organization, we organize lots of meetups and happy hours of webinars and stuff. Because, you know, in the words of my colleague, Alex Baca, we're trying to give people a life right now just advocate for everything, but there's this fine mesh of social connections that we built over the past 15 years. We have GG wash babies, did you wash weddings, do you wash, you know, cohabitation? Long standing duty watch friendships, people who go ride Amtrak across the country together from this blog, right? And that is the stuff that actually sustains the commute that's what people want to come to us is because even if they're just a little bit interested in these issues, they just want to make friends right? You know, when I was in college and I wanted to meet people that were kind of interested in the same stuff as me I went to the basement of a tea ism restaurant in downtown DC for happy hour like six other dudes, some of whom were wild. And, and that was a sense of community. Right? And here I am 15 years later. So I think actually to close it out, right, like we actually take the stuff offline. We want to be successful. Wrap it up. Yeah.
