Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:03 - 00:00:23:14
Joe Minicozzi
I hadn't slept because I was traveling. And then I show up at the hospital where all the other speakers are and chorus Rod, who's from Halifax. He's like, Let's just let's just ride to the lecture. So I put my computer in my briefcase in this bicycle. They had bicycles. There's the others. And the two of us are just riding, and we're actually riding side by side and having a full conversation.

00:00:23:14 - 00:00:39:09
Joe Minicozzi
And I just thought, you know, I've got to capture this. And so this is the two of us. And we rode to the lecture that way. This is actually this is a phenomenal video here of us riding through the middle of rush hour. So this is what rush hour looks like in Amsterdam, folks. And we're on the bike.

00:00:39:16 - 00:00:58:25
Joe Minicozzi
It's absolute chaos. But notice, no one gets hit by that moped and there's people crossing the path. It's not all grades separated and all that stuff, which this one guy come out not not this right before he gets on the next bike trail or bike ramp. There is somebody that comes from the right of the screen and just like cut them off.

00:00:58:28 - 00:01:13:15
Joe Minicozzi
Yeah, yeah, right there them. But but because, you know, it's because you're human and you're like, you can see these people coming in, you know, it's just not a big deal. Like, there's no there's no road rage going on here.

00:01:13:15 - 00:01:49:19
John Simmerman
Everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. My name is John Silverman, and that is Joe in a cozy with urban three out of Asheville, North Carolina. And welcome to the first episode of season seven of the Active Towns podcast. So wonderful to have you along for the ride and much appreciated. Joe and I are going to be talking about the financial modeling that his firm does, that really kind of brings home what it means to help have a healthy, vibrant economy, both like physically public health wise and, you know, activity wise as well as financially.

00:01:49:26 - 00:01:57:11
John Simmerman
So let's get right to it. Joe, Minute, Jersey.

00:01:57:14 - 00:02:01:23
John Simmerman
Joe Merkozy, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.

00:02:01:25 - 00:02:05:15
Joe Minicozzi
Thanks, John. I'm looking forward to this. It's going to be fun.

00:02:05:18 - 00:02:08:18
John Simmerman
First and foremost, I have to apologize.

00:02:08:21 - 00:02:09:22
Joe Minicozzi
What?

00:02:09:25 - 00:02:13:04
John Simmerman
It's taken me so long to get you on the podcast.

00:02:13:06 - 00:02:13:14
Joe Minicozzi
To do.

00:02:13:14 - 00:02:15:01
John Simmerman
This for a couple of years.

00:02:15:03 - 00:02:17:23
Joe Minicozzi
And now you have all this cool equipment.

00:02:17:25 - 00:02:27:00
John Simmerman
I do. We were just talking about that before we hit record. It's a slippery slope. Next thing you know, you've got an entire studio set up.

00:02:27:02 - 00:02:37:11
Joe Minicozzi
I'm very jealous. Yeah. And for those at home, it's. It's a whole nother world when you get into this. That's all the lighting and everything else. It's you can. You can geek out pretty hard on this stuff.

00:02:37:13 - 00:02:55:02
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah, It truly is a slippery slope. Hey, many of the folks who are tuning in listening to this, as well as watching this know who you are. But I guarantee you there's a few of my fans that are like Joe and Cozy. Who's Joe Miller? Cosey. So Joe, who is Joe?

00:02:55:02 - 00:03:28:02
Joe Minicozzi
Minute Cozy. How do I say it? What's the elevator pitch? Well, I mean, God, our work is explaining the financial side of cities and the economics of how cities flow. That's what we're known for. That and crazy computer graphics showing the financial flow of cities. But how I got into this, I'm actually trained as an architect and went to University of Miami back in the eighties, and that's where 20 players are recruited, kind of doing a lot of their early work that would now be called New Urbanism.

00:03:28:04 - 00:03:45:29
Joe Minicozzi
And for me, coming from the Rust Belt and going to South Florida and seeing Rapid City growth was kind of mind blowing to me. And they were just trying to alter that course of how do you just design better cities as they're growing? But for me, it was an economic question. My town was designed well, but it's dead as a doornail.

00:03:46:02 - 00:04:04:12
Joe Minicozzi
So what are the choices that were made there that made that happen? Ended up going into real estate, finance and then real estate development. I worked in a city government for a little bit and got to see all the different pieces of city making. But all of them had a common economic strain. They were just looking at it from different angles each way.

00:04:04:13 - 00:04:24:17
Joe Minicozzi
So for a city you want to grow your tax base. For a developer, you've got to pay for stuff for the financial world. You're investing in certain types of buildings to give you a return on investment. But we're not looking at it as a common economic marriage, if you will. So our work kind of puts it all on a paper like that, and that's kind of how we explain it.

00:04:24:19 - 00:04:25:20
Joe Minicozzi
That makes sense.

00:04:25:22 - 00:04:38:01
John Simmerman
Yeah, it does. And in fact, Urban three, of course, is the name of your organization that you were just referencing and we could see, Yeah, go ahead people.

00:04:38:01 - 00:04:58:24
Joe Minicozzi
Sometimes. Why the three? And I'm like, well, it's it's because it was supposed to be urban cubed because the urban environment is a three dimensional space. Think of a public comment or a public square. It's like basically an outside room. It's got walls. But I had a really hard time convincing getting my IRS paperwork done to have a Superscript three.

00:04:58:27 - 00:05:00:27
Joe Minicozzi
So just second, whatever. Screw it. It's just three.

00:05:00:27 - 00:05:05:12
John Simmerman
Even three it will get we get into.

00:05:05:14 - 00:05:06:21
Joe Minicozzi
Went to so many wars.

00:05:06:24 - 00:05:32:12
John Simmerman
Exactly. Exactly. And we're going to get into the three dimensional aspect of it in just a little bit. But I did want to point out that, you know, behind you and if I solo you out here, we're able to see strong towns as the strong towns book there from Chuck is prominently located there. And that's how you and I know each other is from seeing you and from your relationship with Chuck around with strong towns and the two of you.

00:05:32:14 - 00:06:02:00
John Simmerman
A tag team on a lot of different projects in have tag teamed on a lot of different really impactful presentations throughout the years. Talk a little bit about that. You know, I don't want to call it a marriage, but I mean, that that that partnership that you all have had over the years because it's a great one to punch to to listen to the original presentation, the curbside chat, and then your presentation that drives home this three dimensional modeling.

00:06:02:02 - 00:06:26:27
Joe Minicozzi
Yeah. There's some, you know, in working kind of going back to like 2009, I was still working with public interest projects here in Asheville. We're actually actually still sitting in their office right now that one of the things I seen the director of Public Interest projects, his name is Pat Whalen. He was doing this amazing presentation on the it was it was sort of like the quintessential pace, the economic and environmental case for urbanism.

00:06:27:03 - 00:06:50:16
Joe Minicozzi
It was a brilliant PowerPoint. It was super dense. I mean, this thing is like this would crush you, and it is in there winning an argument. So the urban compact cities are way more economically productive, but they're also ridiculously environmentally productive. It's counterintuitive for a lot of folks that we tend to think, well, well, hey, Joe, there's a lot of buildings and not a lot of open spaces like we have.

00:06:50:18 - 00:07:11:04
Joe Minicozzi
If you can save the open space and not have a road, go further out and compact in and just do your trip with a walk. Okay? What's your sacrifice? You don't have a yard, okay? It's not going to kill you to not have a yard. I mean, there's lots of your viewers within European cities or densities where you're able to walk.

00:07:11:04 - 00:07:36:22
Joe Minicozzi
And it's like, yes, it is a downside to not have a yard. I have a yard in my back yard. But on the flip side, when you get there's a community benefit out of it. So Pat was doing this presentation in 2009. I went to the Smart Growth Conference in Seattle and did a whole PowerPoint presentation. I think the first slide was a quote from Mark Twain that said, A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read, right?

00:07:36:22 - 00:07:57:22
Joe Minicozzi
So just think about that for a second. A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. So I have all these books back here, but if I choose not to read them, I'm functionally illiterate. So I had my hand in the air and I asked all of our peers, peers that are interested in smart growth, folks that are interested in active transportation, walkability, affordable housing.

00:07:57:24 - 00:08:12:16
Joe Minicozzi
I had my hand in the air and I said, okay, so who's read your local tax code to see how your property tax system works? And John, you know, we hang out with a bunch of nerds. I was expecting like a couple of people to raise their hands. I'm a guy that likes to look at pictures I don't like to read.

00:08:12:20 - 00:08:31:20
Joe Minicozzi
And I'm just you know, I'm an architect and not a single person raised their hand. I was like, what the hell? Like, no one's reading. The tax system is basically the world that's out there is created because what's the path of least resistance? We're essentially subsidizing sprawl, right? So I was kind of blown away and I was talking with Peter Kass.

00:08:31:20 - 00:08:47:25
Joe Minicozzi
He's like, You should go to a seenu. And I was like, Well, the scene, you are sort of like, It's it's my tribe. It's your tribe. It's like we get it. Like, I'm going to go preach this stuff to the people and get it. And he's like, No, but you're entertaining. Just do it. So I got stuck on a panel with Chuck, and I didn't know Chuck.

00:08:47:25 - 00:09:09:20
Joe Minicozzi
I'd never met Chuck, but I saw that little cartoon that he did with the little rabbit talking about that transportation engineer thing. And it's brilliant. If nobody's ever seen it, please watch that. Just watch. The short version is 4 minutes, and it's hilarious if you've ever had a conversation with a transportation engineer. Yeah. And so I walk up to Chuck and he actually had a little little voice recorder thing.

00:09:09:20 - 00:09:24:23
Joe Minicozzi
He goes, Do you mind if I record this? And I'm like, No, that's fine. I just want a copy of it so I can hear how I present. And he does his presentation and it just blew my mind. It was a whole the growth Ponzi scheme thing and it was all about the cost was the cost of roads.

00:09:24:26 - 00:09:45:20
Joe Minicozzi
Things are paying for their costs more of the than the negative side of things. I was more of the positive side of where's the money come from? If you're downtown, maybe you should work on your downtown. And, you know, as I jokingly call it, when chocolate meets peanut butter, it was sort of like he was talking about one side of the argument.

00:09:45:20 - 00:10:12:21
Joe Minicozzi
I was talking about the other, but together it made sense. And from then, wow, that was 2010. Madison, Wisconsin. Can you we started doing a lot of road shows together, and I called it the Shock and Awe campaign, where Chuck would roll out with his presentation and just, I mean, literally destroy the audience. You watch people's brains explode when Chuck presents because he pulls the curtain back in an unvarnished way.

00:10:12:21 - 00:10:34:22
Joe Minicozzi
So you could see the reality of how screwed up things are. And my side was more I mean, we have high tech images, a lot of fancy graphics. It's very inspiring, but it's helping people see their community in new ways and see the positive reinforcement of doing a downtown. So that's a long story, but that's kind of, yeah, you found it awesome.

00:10:34:24 - 00:10:35:02
Joe Minicozzi
Yeah.

00:10:35:02 - 00:10:59:00
John Simmerman
This is so so I'm glad you mentioned this. This is from 13 years ago, literally so 13 years ago. And for those of you who have never watched this, it's tremendous. This is the short version. This is the four minute version that you referenced. There's also an eight minute version. And that's the other book is Conversations of a Recovering transportation Engineer.

00:10:59:02 - 00:11:26:03
John Simmerman
I have an entire interview with Chuck introducing that book. And so also include that link in the show notes for this episode and also this video. I want to play just a few seconds of this so that you can get a sense as to what we're talking about here in Untucked Laughs, because it's just like it's he just put it together really, really quickly and it just came naturally because he's he was this guy.

00:11:26:03 - 00:11:36:21
John Simmerman
He was the engineer having this conversation with, you know, a homeowner, somebody in the community for the road to be safe, all obstacles must be removed from the clear zone.

00:11:36:27 - 00:11:40:09
Conversations w/ An Engineer Audio
Do you understand that my children play in this clear zone?

00:11:40:16 - 00:11:44:04
John Simmerman
I would not recommend that it would not be safe, but.

00:11:44:04 - 00:11:52:19
Conversations w/ An Engineer Audio
It is safe today. I thought you were doing this project to improve safety. How is the street more safe if my children can't go outside.

00:11:52:25 - 00:11:57:20
John Simmerman
Building the street, it goes on and on and on like that.

00:11:57:22 - 00:12:19:03
Joe Minicozzi
I mean, there's it's hard to describe the brilliance of that video. I mean, you really have to watch it. And there's several things going on. One is the comedy of the lack of communication. And, you know, and Chuck goes through it at length in this book. And if anybody is trying to fix the street or deal with changing your environment, you're going to run into this problem.

00:12:19:03 - 00:12:42:03
Joe Minicozzi
You're going to run into an engineer just like this. Now, here's the thing, though. Read that book because it's not just the engineer. You're going to run into it. This is my world. I run into it with assessors where we show assessors how their their math is not it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And they are so trapped by the silo of their trade, of their systems that that's that's systemic bias.

00:12:42:06 - 00:13:03:14
Joe Minicozzi
You're going to see this with your planning director. You're going to see this with your finance officer. People develop biases. And when you put information in their face or question it, you're going to get a fight. And this has been the whole history of the New Urbanism. I think back to the early nineties, just talking about architects doing zoning codes of planners, flipped their lids.

00:13:03:16 - 00:13:17:19
Joe Minicozzi
They're like, You're not planners, you can't do this well here. Now, 35 years later, we have formed base codes in cities because it makes sense. But yeah, systemic bias is the biggest problem for any of us doing anything in our communities.

00:13:17:22 - 00:13:42:10
John Simmerman
Yeah, and you know, there was there was recently a post, I think it was by Stefan Baer, who is an American who is living in the Netherlands now. He actually works for the city of of Harlem, and he put a post out on LinkedIn earlier this week talking about this very thing of how in the Netherlands, the professional engineers, they have no degrees.

00:13:42:10 - 00:14:15:24
John Simmerman
They have no, you know, initials behind their name. There's no licensing and there's none of this in in. And he talks about how that's liberating because in in the United States and many other countries, these experts are like they have these fiefdoms and they're very, very protective of that. And that's that's kind of sort of like what you're talking about is they they consider themselves experts to the point where they have nothing to learn by having a conversation with a community member like in this cartoon.

00:14:15:27 - 00:14:38:12
Joe Minicozzi
Yeah. And I'd say I mean, I've seen I've seen the downside of that. The assessors don't have the same background that I have. They don't go through a planning program. Right. But this is this is a screenshot of the assessor training. Right. And they're being trained in the same four colors. So if I can get this right, the same four colors as red lights, you know, they don't.

00:14:38:18 - 00:15:03:18
Joe Minicozzi
Here we are in 2022, redlining was deemed illegal in 1968 and they don't understand that that's a bad thing, that they're practicing redlining today. So it's like I think there's a curiosity, there's a community, there's a shared community values, and then everyone's about we're all in it together that we don't have in our country, that the American myth of we're all independent on our own freedom.

00:15:03:18 - 00:15:11:27
Joe Minicozzi
And it's like, okay, that inspires a lot of entrepreneurial spirit here. When you have to live in a city, you can't really pull that off with this independent thinking that way.

00:15:12:00 - 00:15:34:04
John Simmerman
Yeah, there's there's actually a Dutch term for that as well. And Stephane does refer to that in his post. I will be sure to include that post from LinkedIn in the show notes for this episode and also the video below. I do have the Congress for New Urbanism, a website up just real quickly since we've been talking so much about it.

00:15:34:07 - 00:16:02:13
John Simmerman
For those of you who are watching this or listening to this, if you're not already aware of the Congress for New Urbanism, see, a newt.org is the the website. We will be coming together once again for the annual gathering. This year. For 2024, it will be in Cincinnati. And again, it's it is sort of a coming together of individuals that are coming in from diverse backgrounds and diverse fields.

00:16:02:15 - 00:16:39:02
John Simmerman
You know, I'm one of the few public health guys that is there year after year, after year, consistently. It's not like I'm the only public health guy ever to attend. You know, Dr. Dick Jackson has been there a few times, but I'm one of the consistent public health dudes that are there that are constantly talking about how the built environment has a profound impact on our health and well-being and encouraging what I'm passionate about, which is active living, which is something we're going to be talking about today, is that this all this stuff that we're talking about, when we look at what the work that you all are doing and looking at a prosperous community

00:16:39:02 - 00:16:49:19
John Simmerman
and a healthy community financially, I look at this and say, yeah, this is consistent with what I talk about in terms of building a healthy community for public health, too.

00:16:49:21 - 00:17:02:29
Joe Minicozzi
Yeah, and also Chuck's going to have he had it last year. He'll have it again in Cincinnati. There's if you want to come a day early. He has sort of like the activist bootcamp with the Strong towns gathering beforehand.

00:17:03:01 - 00:17:26:04
John Simmerman
Yeah, it'll be the Strong Towns National gathering and you're absolutely right, it's going to be the couple of days beforehand. It was it was super fun. I sat on a panel along with Mike Pasternack, who we were just referencing earlier before we hit the play button on a panel of content creators and, you know, podcasters and YouTube channel content creators.

00:17:26:04 - 00:17:30:06
John Simmerman
And so that was really fun to be a part of. The Strong Towns National Gathering.

00:17:30:08 - 00:17:53:10
Joe Minicozzi
What what I like about what both groups are great is that they pair well together like a great cheese and wine. But the Congress for New Urbanism is sort of for me. It's been around them since since the early nineties. A lot of my architecture professors were founders of the movement. I get it. You know, I see what it's about.

00:17:53:11 - 00:18:16:26
Joe Minicozzi
It's but when I talk to people about, I'm like, it's sort of like the island of misfit toys. Like you find these people that wander in from all these varied and you nailed it like all these diverse fields where they're all seeing there's problems with cities and they're all trying to unpack it, you know. And I think what's what's what's fun about it is as a conference is is is very active.

00:18:16:26 - 00:18:46:02
Joe Minicozzi
I mean, there's people there's gaps between sessions of like a full half hour with people arguing in the hallway. I mean, it's just people come in and try to figure out how they can hone their arguments or learn new aspects. So you'll find that all of this cross-pollination that, you know from for us helping designers talk through the economic side of it and the value of urbanism, to help you explain that, yes, you're not just trying to get people on bicycles 24 seven.

00:18:46:05 - 00:19:11:18
Joe Minicozzi
You're trying to get people to understand the cost and consequences of the other modalities of transportation that we're subsidizing. So it's like, did we really choose I mean, seriously, anybody listening to this podcast go back in the history of your city and find that city council meeting where they did a vote to spend billions of dollars in automobile infrastructure, You know, So that's that's what we bought into.

00:19:11:18 - 00:19:33:11
Joe Minicozzi
I think that people make decisions based off emotional choice, like I want to be more can be. I want to have more convenience. I should be able to park anywhere. Okay. Well, did anybody tell those people that it's going to cost billions of dollars? Would you rather have billion dollars go to cars or would you rather billions of dollars go to, I don't know, teach every child how to be a road scholar?

00:19:33:11 - 00:19:40:19
Joe Minicozzi
You know, it's like you could you could make these choices and active living art. That's choices. Right? So.

00:19:40:22 - 00:20:13:23
John Simmerman
Well and it's interesting, too. It's interesting, too, because, you know, Chuck talks a lot about in in that first book he he I'm going to soli you out so we can have that first in frame. They're strong towns. In the first book he really talks about the fact that that really the suburban experiment was just this I mean a lot of the people, you know, that were really the movers and drivers and the people making the decision, because you're pointing out nobody asked the community members, is this really what you want?

00:20:13:25 - 00:20:33:27
John Simmerman
Some of the community members, you know, ended up making it a market choice. But that choice was really not a fair choice because as time went by, it was like the only thing available that was really to them. So they had one choice and that choice was suburban sprawl. Yeah, or so.

00:20:33:29 - 00:20:51:06
Joe Minicozzi
I mean, okay, Sorry to everybody in the audience on this one, but let me pull out another book here just second. Yeah, this is depressing. This is a book from the 1970s. And what does that say?

00:20:51:09 - 00:20:53:20
John Simmerman
Yeah, the costs of sprawl right there.

00:20:53:24 - 00:21:04:18
Joe Minicozzi
Boom. This is. This is from HUD, the EPA. Yeah. And Sequoia, which is the environmental quality or whatever.

00:21:04:21 - 00:21:08:20
John Simmerman
Yeah. And so that's literally like that's, that's a government.

00:21:08:22 - 00:21:28:20
Joe Minicozzi
Book from the U.S., from the federal government, from the Nixon administration. This is from 1973. And it's all anybody wants to nerd out. It's all data on and on. The cost and consequences of this choice. So let that wash over you for a second. So you and I remember the the the gas crisis of the early seventies, right.

00:21:28:21 - 00:21:48:15
Joe Minicozzi
And how we had all come up with, like based on your license plate and whether or not you could get gas. I remember that in. So yeah, with the federal government stepping in and going, Hey, hey kids, you made bad choices, right? You know, so our our federal government is trying to explain to us and even when we got the data, we chose to keep on doing the same stupid behavior.

00:21:48:17 - 00:22:11:12
Joe Minicozzi
So back to human back to human health. Yeah, I like eating pizza. I really do. I'm sure you like eating pizza. We can't eat pizza every single day of our lives. We would have heart attacks, especially if we're not exercising. So there are choices and consequences. And what you see, what the American city is, has been pizza for 80 years.

00:22:11:14 - 00:22:14:08
Joe Minicozzi
Yeah. And in our costs of that. So.

00:22:14:11 - 00:22:40:13
John Simmerman
But humans is humans now you have been you know like Chuck you have been in demand. People want to hear your message because A, it really forces them to to look at things in a different way. You sent this photo over and and I'm like, yes, I can tell just by the angle of this, you're on a bike.

00:22:40:14 - 00:22:43:18
John Simmerman
What's the story behind this photo?

00:22:43:21 - 00:23:11:05
Joe Minicozzi
There's actually a lot of stories. This is this is just after the Louisville clue. I was asked to speak in Amsterdam and anyway, it's like there's a lot going on here. For one, my bag gets lost. I got delayed in Newark. I show up in Amsterdam without a suitcase. And here's what's kind of cool in the air. In the train terminal in downtown Amsterdam, I bought a suit so that to European clothes, I've even had to buy a new underwear.

00:23:11:05 - 00:23:36:26
Joe Minicozzi
Like a whole thing. Like all that. I hadn't slept because I was traveling. And then I show up at the hostel where all the other speakers are and chorus Rod, who's from Halifax, he's like, Let's just let's just ride to the lecture. So I put my computer in my briefcase in this bicycle. They had bicycles. There's, there's there, there's creche, and the two of us are just riding and we're actually riding side by side and having a full conversation.

00:23:36:26 - 00:23:55:09
Joe Minicozzi
And I just thought, you know, I got to capture this. And so this is the two of us. I had a guy get behind him and he's he's commenting and we rode to the lecture that way. This is actually this is a phenomenal video here of us riding through. There's my briefcase riding through the middle of rush hour.

00:23:55:12 - 00:24:14:21
Joe Minicozzi
So this is what rush hour looks like in Amsterdam, folks. And we're on the bike trail. It's absolute chaos. But notice no one gets hit by that moped and there's people crossing the path. It's not all a grade separated and all that stuff. Watch this one guy come out, not met this right before he gets on the next bike trail or bike ramp there.

00:24:14:23 - 00:24:34:08
Joe Minicozzi
There's somebody that comes from the right of the screen and just like cut them off and right there them. But but because, you know, it's because you're human and you're like all you can see these people coming in. It's just not a big deal. Like there's no there's no road rage going on. Yeah.

00:24:34:11 - 00:24:41:03
John Simmerman
And and he's actually he's actually, you know, pointing to and talking about.

00:24:41:05 - 00:24:42:28
Joe Minicozzi
Yeah, the bike parking and all their bikes.

00:24:42:28 - 00:24:53:11
John Simmerman
I'm going to turn the volume up so we can hear what he says. We can talk about this.

00:24:53:13 - 00:25:00:01
Joe Minicozzi
Parking lot lights and I think crazy.

00:25:00:03 - 00:25:03:10
John Simmerman
It is, it is crazy and it's a crazy to think about.

00:25:03:13 - 00:25:06:28
Joe Minicozzi
Yeah, that'd be like two two football fields worth of parking easily.

00:25:07:00 - 00:25:36:00
John Simmerman
Yeah. And the update to that particular facility is that they now have underground parking for in upwards of 1000 bikes. And this is a little video that a friend of mine shot of the first segment. This is the first 7000 bikes. You know in the underground underwater because this is this one here, I think is is the one that's underwater in the harbor there.

00:25:36:02 - 00:25:49:04
John Simmerman
Again, imagine if we were trying to provide parking at the train, the central train station, and we were trying to provide parking for for automobiles. It just doesn't pencil out.

00:25:49:06 - 00:26:12:16
Joe Minicozzi
Well, the thing about that is, okay, each of those bikes and they're stacked. It's not all that hard to stack a bike. You know, you don't need you don't need massive elevator equipment and all that. You don't need pneumatic machines. But a car is typically to take about 350 square feet. Yep. You know, I remember earlier in my profession, it kind of dawned on me.

00:26:12:18 - 00:26:36:03
Joe Minicozzi
I was sitting in a cubicle in an office and I was like, Well, how much space is dedicated to me for 8 hours? And I'm sitting in my office and it ain't 350 square feet. So my car has more space dedicated to it than than I do. Again, these are choices and consequences. So is it what's in that benefit for those the thousands of bikes underwater?

00:26:36:06 - 00:26:42:02
Joe Minicozzi
And it's going to be expensive. I mean, I'm not going to say that's a cheaper solution. Yeah, I just saw that just random and it's just part of their culture.

00:26:42:02 - 00:27:05:12
John Simmerman
They just well, I would even I would even go so far as to say that it's not just that it's it's quote unquote, part of their culture, because a lot of times that's used as an excuse to not do things. Is that because they're built environment is now such that it supports that behavior and really promotes and encourages it?

00:27:05:15 - 00:27:27:23
John Simmerman
It it does sort of reinforce that there is that natural inclination. So there's a whole stratification of different things. And it's something that I talk about a lot in terms of, hey, we can have this too. We can create a culture of activity, we can create a culture of active mobility, but not unless we build that into our cities.

00:27:27:27 - 00:27:46:29
John Simmerman
In other words, those meaningful destinations need to be within walking and biking distance. We need to have an overlap of mobility networks, including the ability to walk, bike, use, transit, as well as drive to be able to to really make this thing the way that they have certainly.

00:27:46:29 - 00:28:16:26
Joe Minicozzi
And also they started to be fair, they started in the seventies doing this stuff. So this doesn't happen overnight. We didn't get into this problem in two years. So it's it's it's taken decades to build this inequity system and it's going to it shouldn't take decades to get out of it. But we do need to understand how to get there so that in our work, we're just we just it's kind of like visually showing somebody a balance sheet and saying, here's where you're going broke.

00:28:16:29 - 00:28:36:28
Joe Minicozzi
That's if you if you want to keep doing that and doing the wrong thing, we're not going to stop you, but we want to make sure that everybody sees it so that for the folks just listening to this is a podcast. I mean, there's a lot of visuals that we have. I'm going to I want to show you a couple in this and maybe how we tell the story.

00:28:37:01 - 00:29:01:22
Joe Minicozzi
But, you know, John, you come from a medical world. I don't. So I'm actually like a novice back the human study here, I don't know what you call it, like observational that, but mostly it's trying to empathize with the audience and realize that nobody's ever explain this to us before. So like even that Richard Nixon documents, it's unbelievably boring.

00:29:01:29 - 00:29:25:03
Joe Minicozzi
It's awful to try to work your way through so this is for everybody back to back to the the engineer thing. I can't tell you how many professionals of mine and seriously listen to yourself any advocate this listening to this, listen to yourself and talk to a regular person. And if they don't understand what you're talking about, they're not going to say, I'm stupid.

00:29:25:05 - 00:29:44:11
Joe Minicozzi
They're just going to think that you're some nerd that's like way too passionate and they're going to tune you out. So how do you communicate to a regular person? How do you let someone in on what you've learned? And a lot of that takes some humility of understanding the audience. I think that's. Chuck, Success isn't just plain speaking.

00:29:44:11 - 00:30:04:23
Joe Minicozzi
It is not political. It's just here's the information and it's understandable. I think that the curbside chat is the is the quintessential way of handling it, is just let's just meet at the curb and chat about this. Right. That conversation requires active listening and engagement. I just hope that you're.

00:30:04:25 - 00:30:36:11
John Simmerman
And basically we're looking at this particular image on screen right now and we'll describe it for those just listening in to this. And the the title of it is Communities are Leaking Money, and there's a bucket that has a bunch of holes on it and water is squirting out of it. And the image that comes to mind is going back to the curbside chat, you know, of Chuck's original presentation is him getting that epiphany that as as that suburban model and the horizontal expansion went further and further out.

00:30:36:18 - 00:31:05:23
John Simmerman
He was realizing, especially as you start doing what you were talking about, which is start looking at the tax rules and you're like, holy moly, we are actually going broke as cities because you're not able to tax enough to be able to sustain the infrastructure of being able to support the horizontal expansion that has taken place. And visually, that's the beauty of of what your work and what you guys do.

00:31:05:23 - 00:31:16:29
John Simmerman
And that's where this image here where you see the spiking is in in you know, when we look at this, these numbers are related to money that comes in.

00:31:17:04 - 00:31:18:00
Joe Minicozzi
Yeah.

00:31:18:03 - 00:31:23:12
John Simmerman
So let me turn it over to you and let you talk a little bit more and try to describe that.

00:31:23:15 - 00:31:41:09
Joe Minicozzi
Yeah. I think one of the things I mean, back to that bucket metaphor, what you find is that people want to throw more, more water in the bucket. So we need to get more revenues. We need to and they don't think through is that water that comes in at one? Is it going to stay in the bucket or is it even going to be positive?

00:31:41:09 - 00:31:49:26
Joe Minicozzi
So in a lot of communities what they'll do is they just start annexing more land and getting more housing, which means more tax base, which is great, but what does it cost to service those?

00:31:49:28 - 00:32:08:17
John Simmerman
Well, which is what we did for decades, and that's why cities became amoebas. That's why, you know, I'm living in Austin, Texas. Austin, you know, is currently 326 square miles, which is absolutely ridiculous. It really should be divided up into, you know, four cities, you know, based on that size. Yeah.

00:32:08:19 - 00:32:33:23
Joe Minicozzi
You want to see Austin? Let's do it. Yeah, let's. Austin So, I mean, this is super old. This is almost ten years old now. Okay? So, so I apologize for the quality of these slides, but because it is old but this is, this is Austin. What I like to tell people is that sort of like think of it as like an economic brain scan.

00:32:33:25 - 00:32:59:06
Joe Minicozzi
If I can show you a picture of your brain, why can't we show you a picture of economics? So here's here's Travis County in total value. So this is how people typically talk about real estate. Think miles per take, right? So gray is nontaxable, green is low value. Purple is high value. So you have some properties that are over $190 million, probably way more now because this is ten years ago.

00:32:59:08 - 00:33:17:02
Joe Minicozzi
But you see these these you know, like like a doctor reading a CAT scan. You can see these hotspots right here along the highway. Well, to be fair, those are huge parcels. So this is you know, we don't talk about cars on a miles per take basis for efficiency, do we? So why do we do that with real estate?

00:33:17:04 - 00:33:32:21
Joe Minicozzi
It's a rather than total value. Here is a value per acre in the map changes and you see this heat shift here. Right. And one of the things one of the things that I realize is people can't read maps or, you know, they just they just don't see them associated. So we're just like, let's just take it to the third dimension.

00:33:32:24 - 00:33:47:23
Joe Minicozzi
The other thing is if you just look at the scale, people have a bias in the way that they read information that they're like, orange to purple, whatever. It's just a change there. But you're not going to remember those numbers or understand the context. So here it is, and here it is in three. D Can you tell where downtown Austin is?

00:33:47:25 - 00:34:06:19
Joe Minicozzi
You know, so if everybody's paying the same Travis County millage rate, right. So you are a Travis County taxpayer. So one of the reasons why we always go for county is because you're paying county taxes. When the county is receiving all of those property taxes. Are they putting that back into the city where it's coming from? Any answer is no.

00:34:06:21 - 00:34:32:19
Joe Minicozzi
Oftentimes that goes to county infrastructure, which basically rewards them to keep on sprawling out to. Right. So you see all of this low value as you head out of Austin. So you mentioned Austin is big, but Austin is really that much. So what about all the rest of it? So let's go back for a second. Look at all this stuff out here that's not part of Austin.

00:34:32:22 - 00:34:52:10
Joe Minicozzi
Who's covering all that infrastructure? That infrastructure is literally twice the size of the footprint of Austin, all those county roads out there. And are they paying for it or is Austin paying for it? That's a question that should be in your head. And again, I said, don't hate the player, hate the game. People need to understand the game in order to play it, though.

00:34:52:12 - 00:35:12:08
Joe Minicozzi
So this is why we do that data dominance, just Austin itself. Yeah. So Travis County needs to be all over. Throw in love at Austin because that money's just going to shovel it out in spades. Out there you can see the spine. And you're right, there should be. If this is Mt. Everest here in downtown, you should have some foothills around.

00:35:12:11 - 00:35:36:29
Joe Minicozzi
Actually, you know what? Now that we're talking, I'll show you an example that you saw, give you an idea of the change of air quality. So this is Springfield, Missouri. One of the things that you can see going on is there is downtown right here. It's going to zoom in. So you've got downtown right there. But you can see that there is a what used to be a whole different city called North Springfield.

00:35:36:29 - 00:35:55:24
Joe Minicozzi
They've been kind of together, but it has its own little main street going on up here. So, yeah, you don't have to be downtown to create value. You can have little baby downtowns, but you can see there's suburban sprawl on the South side. It's just kind of ooze this way on down and on the north side it sort of stunted.

00:35:55:27 - 00:36:19:11
Joe Minicozzi
What was kind of was kind of interesting to talk with them about the growth pattern. And again, it's like we tend to accept our city as this is. You know, somebody's been planning this. There's decision makers making these decisions. And the reality of it is is there's a decision that happens. But then this kind of we get on sort of a treadmill where life goes on and we don't necessarily reevaluate that decision.

00:36:19:11 - 00:36:33:28
Joe Minicozzi
So when I was showing this to them. And you can see the suburban sprawl at the city edge. There's a lot more of it on the south side down here out in the county. You see that? Yeah. For some for some reason, the annexed way to help out here. But whatever. I mean, we see weird things all the time.

00:36:34:00 - 00:36:59:26
Joe Minicozzi
But notice on the north side there's no growth over on the north side. Well, why is that? Well, if you go back and look at their realignment. So these were made illegal in 1968. Green is good. So green got mortgages, blue probably got mortgages. Yellow was a little bit more difficult and red was not red was it was really difficult to get one is to get a mortgage but also get it securitized under the FDIC.

00:36:59:28 - 00:37:07:11
John Simmerman
Yeah. So, Joe, you may be getting to this, but just in case you're not getting to this, define what redlining is.

00:37:07:13 - 00:37:28:01
Joe Minicozzi
Okay. So people call these maps red line maps, but they're known as the home Veto LC Homeowners Loan Corporation. So the federal government, 1906, 1934 changed mortgages. So mortgages went from seven years to 30 years. See if I could do this on the camera properly. That would go in 30 years. So that was a huge jump in mortgages, right?

00:37:28:08 - 00:37:55:02
Joe Minicozzi
We ten today, if you just talk to your friend at like a cocktail party and you're like, you could you imagine a time with seven year mortgages, like they would think of you like a martian? We just assume we've always had 30 year mortgages. SIGNAL The federal government changed that in 1934 because we were in the middle of the Depression and they're trying to get people into single family homes because single family homes create more labor because you got four walls as opposed to a multifamily project where you don't, right?

00:37:55:05 - 00:38:15:18
Joe Minicozzi
So you create more stuff. If we create more stuff, we get more people employed. I mean, it's kind of brilliant, but the federal government stepped in and said, We understand there is risk because of the economy, so we're gonna go ahead and absorb that into the mortgages and protect it. But we can't control everybody's decisions. So we're going to do is let you control that with these maps.

00:38:15:18 - 00:38:37:25
Joe Minicozzi
So you make you pick the neighborhoods that are good investments, you pick the neighborhoods that are bad investments. Hazardous was you were deemed hazardous by two main characteristics, whether there was an infiltration of immigrants. And in the 1930s, the number one, the immigrant class were Italians. So people like me watch out. I could take down your real estate value.

00:38:37:25 - 00:39:01:06
Joe Minicozzi
I'm hazardous. Right? So that's that's that's that's class number one coming in at number two in the immigrant class. We're Germans. Well, guess what kind of Germans were coming into the United States in the 1930s? Those refuse fleeing Germany. So it was. That's the immigrant class. The other the third, the third group was was black population in their language, Negroes.

00:39:01:08 - 00:39:24:00
Joe Minicozzi
So here's the problem. I mean, there's lots of problems, but in a simple level, I can change my name to Smith. There were there were Italian neighborhoods that were sometimes classified yellows because there were Italians. They came a generation before that. But if you are black, you can't change the color of your skin. So the pernicious and I saw this was from 1934 to 1968.

00:39:24:02 - 00:39:45:20
Joe Minicozzi
This went on three generation. So notice on the north side, it's all this is this is downtown right here, this little white square right there. The whole north side is pretty much deemed undesirable. So it didn't receive all that capital. You couldn't get a mortgage loan, You couldn't get a you can do a home repair loan or anything like that.

00:39:45:20 - 00:40:04:20
Joe Minicozzi
You just we're extracted from the economic system on the south side. It's like, hey, you're awesome. I think one of these neighborhoods was deemed white men. Capitalists lived there and that was what qualified it for being awesome. And it's just like, so we're throwing money and protections of money at communities. Well, that's going to it's also going to affect community design.

00:40:04:20 - 00:40:25:12
Joe Minicozzi
So here we are. Flash forward. This was deemed illegal in 1968, the year before I was born, and still today it's still spreading southward. So the snowball got pushed downhill. And it's just like, let's just talk about this. This isn't these are choices that were made and it affects the shape of our city. It's not that this is the desirable part of town because the earth is better.

00:40:25:12 - 00:40:41:28
Joe Minicozzi
There is because of economic systems that were put in place that fertilize that soil. So that's that's why we showed that map to them. And to their credit, they're just like, that's cool. I mean, it just they needed to have this conversation and this helped them wrap their brain around it so they can get past that bias.

00:40:42:01 - 00:40:51:06
Joe Minicozzi
This is not easy stuff to talk about in a lot of communities. Another book to recommend, Richard Roth Jeans, Color of Law.

00:40:51:09 - 00:40:54:06
John Simmerman
Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

00:40:54:09 - 00:41:14:07
Joe Minicozzi
And they came out with the second one. It's called Just Action that has what can you do to to repair some of these indices. But in a lot of communities, we have to first accept that this is a truth of what happened. So we show it to them. Let's go back to the map for a second so you can see this again.

00:41:14:10 - 00:41:38:21
Joe Minicozzi
So you see on the north side, here's downtown, here's the north, and you can see it's pretty flat up there in value and it's a lot hotter down here. This is this is definitely a new suburban area and it's coming in hot because people pay more to live down there. But also think of the infrastructure from your job downtown or anywhere in the city to get all the way out there.

00:41:38:28 - 00:41:43:07
Joe Minicozzi
So somebody has to pay for that system to go out there. Yeah.

00:41:43:09 - 00:42:13:09
John Simmerman
Well, and you bringing up a really good point in, making that comparison to a hot area that is sort of a newer area in that suburban context down there, there may be an impression or a belief that, well, yeah, the, the it was really spiky and peaky there in, in Austin because there's so much new stuff, you know, going in, there's so many new towers going in.

00:42:13:12 - 00:42:59:23
John Simmerman
But as you pointed out, that was a decade ago. I mean, it's probably even more pronounced now, a decade later with the amount of growth. But I would suspect that at least in the Austin, if we ran the numbers now, we might see some spiking, is following some of the the development corridors and the transportation quarters and the TODS that are that are going in where we are seeing a thickening of the housing stock and we're seeing, yeah, you know, multilevel, you know, multi properties going in all along those areas as is also Austin like many other cities are trying to reverse the destructive land use codes which has been you know that that

00:42:59:23 - 00:43:04:07
John Simmerman
policy that continues to support the challenges that we have.

00:43:04:09 - 00:43:31:08
Joe Minicozzi
sure. Yeah. I'll show you some of that. There's this this is another way of looking at it. This is California. This is Rancho Cucamonga. And California has a policy called Prop 13 where you're taxed on the value of your house. But when it was pressed to, it's like a 2% gross every year thereafter. So there's an incentive to stay in your house and not move.

00:43:31:10 - 00:43:51:10
Joe Minicozzi
It really shows up quickly here when you see new development versus old development. So this is an old suburban neighborhood over here in Seattle. And yellow and green is still a very wealthy part of the community up against the side of the mountain, which is this green pad over here. And that's like it's this is the higher land.

00:43:51:10 - 00:44:17:05
Joe Minicozzi
You get these great views well over over, over on the east side of town. This is a new development. So you see how it's coming in hotter. But it's the same. It's the same type stuff. It's It's suburban development. It's not this is the best year ever because it's brand new. Well, guess what? It's going to it's going to be trapped in amber and not grow because they adopted a policy that keeps it flat.

00:44:17:07 - 00:44:41:19
Joe Minicozzi
One of the things actually since since you all saw our models, you see these purple mountains in the in the in the downtowns. Do you see one in this model. No, because they never grew up there downtown. This is just monolithically strip malls and single family housing. So they basically and again, when we have community conversation, think about who shows up in the room.

00:44:41:19 - 00:44:58:16
Joe Minicozzi
It's going to be people who live in houses and they have that biased perspective about what they want in their life. And the communities making a decision is, is do any of these people own a downtown building or even know what they do? So what ended up happening and I help explain that to them because they are these are choices.

00:44:58:18 - 00:45:25:18
Joe Minicozzi
This is their downtown right now. It's about $400 million of value. If they let their downtown grow up at the rate that their suburbs are growing up and they just focused on that a little bit, their downtown would be worth $4 billion. So it's like, look, you made a choice to not in the thing you mentioned, which is a lot of cases, mixed use buildings and walkable stuff.

00:45:25:21 - 00:45:44:29
Joe Minicozzi
It's illegal because you need to have all these parking requirements, all these other buffers and all these other things that you shouldn't have in a downtown environment. You should have people need to I mean, think about it. Whenever you walk around the city, a city that you go and pay money to go walk around in, and we all can go to Europe or Boston or something like that.

00:45:44:29 - 00:45:52:16
Joe Minicozzi
We're like, What kind of enjoyable this is? I can walk around and you end up walking like ten miles because you're like, It's designed the way that people walk.

00:45:52:18 - 00:46:23:16
John Simmerman
Yeah, and I'm glad you mention that. I'm glad you mention that to Joe, because that brings it home back to why we're having this discussion in the first place on the active towns is the fact that the way that we have been developing in a, you know, a horizontal expansion model, not only is it bankrupting us, but it also continues that that downward spiral where we just don't have meaningful destinations within walking and biking distance.

00:46:23:16 - 00:46:46:18
John Simmerman
And that directly impacts active mobility in active transportation, not to mention the fact that as as Chuck points out, after we get through the life cycles of when the bills start coming due to try to support that stuff that's out on the fringes, that's not able to pay for itself. Cities are literally going bankrupt. They do not have enough money to be able to have the nice things.

00:46:46:18 - 00:47:04:16
John Simmerman
In other words, continue reinvesting in, you know, the sidewalks that are broken and the, you know, the pathways and trails and transforming our transportation system to be able to support like we saw in in the images there from the Netherlands, support active mobility.

00:47:04:19 - 00:47:28:20
Joe Minicozzi
You know, it's kind of comical to me is, you know, when I go to places in the in the Sunbelt, in the in the south, even Austin and I'll I'll talk with him about South Bend, Indiana, and what they did and what how they got themselves in a hole. But one of the things that happened in South Bend, they could jump ahead of that one real quick.

00:47:28:22 - 00:47:32:13
Joe Minicozzi
This I'm going to have to go into animation mode to see this one.

00:47:32:15 - 00:47:43:22
John Simmerman
Yeah. And I'm glad you're bringing up South Bend, Indiana, to, of course, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is is secretary Pete British. So there's a little bit of context there as well.

00:47:43:27 - 00:48:07:22
Joe Minicozzi
Yeah, no, he actually he his team hired us in 20, 2016 and we went back in 2019 and did more work. But one of the things that we noticed and I'm going to go full screen here was their pipes. So on on the bottom left is their population growth. And you can see them growing. Their peak population year was 1963 and then they lost Studebaker and Packard to Detroit.

00:48:07:22 - 00:48:33:16
Joe Minicozzi
Their population drops and then they kind of flatlined. They really they basically have hovered around the same average population on the right as their pipes going on the ground. And I'll drop a boundary when their population stops that. Here you see the pipes growing out from the center outward, and you usually see this with streets and infrastructure. It all starts around here, downtown, kind of works its way out right about here is when their population stops.

00:48:33:18 - 00:48:58:21
Joe Minicozzi
So we show this to them. We're like, How is it you keep on building pipes when your population stops? So what ends up happening is if you're adding more infrastructure so you're not adding more people, you're putting more future costs on future of the landowners. Now, as Chuck points out, the strong towns, the cost of this infrastructure are usually borne by the developer and then they flip it over to the city, and the city thinks it gets free infrastructure, but it's not free.

00:48:58:21 - 00:49:00:06
Joe Minicozzi
You have to fix it over time.

00:49:00:08 - 00:49:16:03
John Simmerman
Right? You feel you. You feel it's a Ponzi scheme, you know, you know, chasing wealth where the city fuels kind of, you know, wealthy at the time because, well, we get the tax rolls. To your point, though, it's a future obligation.

00:49:16:09 - 00:49:39:14
Joe Minicozzi
Yeah. So this is this is what they had in 1960. This is a little blow up of downtown. And you can see two blocks of force, main force, force main are basically mechanical, mechanical apparatuses that are pushed on to pipes to force the water or sewerage through it, where stations are, where you have to lift the water or sewerage uphill.

00:49:39:16 - 00:49:57:01
Joe Minicozzi
So these are the expensive things gravity feed as you put a pipe underground because once it's if it flows downhill, it's easy to just letting the earth work for you. The other thing to know about is from an environmental side is you typically need these things in low lying areas. So that's a signal that these are wetlands that they're building in.

00:49:57:04 - 00:50:17:23
Joe Minicozzi
But if you look at it, it's just a couple of areas by the river. Okay. This is what they were in 1960. Here is where they are now with their force mains and infrastructure. And here's their new boundary. So remember, they haven't added more people. So in 1960, they had 132,000 people, three live stations and a third of a mile of force Main.

00:50:17:26 - 00:50:43:19
Joe Minicozzi
Today, they're down to 103,000 people. So they've lost 22% of their population, yet gained 43 stations per person and 19 miles of force. Main So a drop of population of 22% again, and infrastructure 1000 and 6,000%. So they have enough pipe to go from South Bend to Asheville to our office. And this needs to be rebuilt every 50 or 60 years.

00:50:43:21 - 00:51:08:11
Joe Minicozzi
So who's going to pay for that? And we just I show that to folks in in Austin and I'm like, do you think that people in South Bend sat around in 1961 and we're like, someday we're going to see, of course. Yeah. You know, So it's like, don't be don't be foolish to think you're doing everything right now.

00:51:08:11 - 00:51:24:23
Joe Minicozzi
This. Yeah, yeah. It's like stuff costs money and it's I don't want to sound like everybody's conservative uncle at the Thanksgiving meal, but it's just like stuff costs money. Yeah. Anyway, yeah.

00:51:24:29 - 00:51:53:25
John Simmerman
Yeah, it's something. And, you know, we've got your website back up here again. Talk a little bit about for you, for your company and for anybody who's watching this or listening to this. And they're they're going, man, we need our city to, you know, sort of look into this and check this out. How does a an entity, a municipality, a city work with you all?

00:51:53:27 - 00:52:15:09
Joe Minicozzi
And after that is just it's it starts with a conversation, you know, depends on what they want to get into some and if you watch some of the videos and I recommend just point any of them off line there's there's the cost side of things like that we had to do for the pipes in South Bend. That's that takes a longer time to do the revenue side usually easier.

00:52:15:12 - 00:52:38:14
Joe Minicozzi
That's the first step And we always we always say start with your revenue. One is it's easier there's a cost side that's Eugene, Oregon so in red actually roll it back to that others there you go. Yeah in red is what's net negative in black is what's net positive. So and so think of it this way. You choose to live further away.

00:52:38:15 - 00:52:55:28
Joe Minicozzi
That's your choice. Knock yourself out. But there's a cost to doing that. And so if you move out there, we're going to send you a bill for your for your lift station that it has to go through your pipe, your miles, a pipe. Think of it this way. You know, John, it's like it's kind of amazing. We talk about that.

00:52:55:28 - 00:53:14:00
Joe Minicozzi
We started this conversation about technology. So I've got this phone right here, right? Yeah. Don't you think Apple figured out the cost of the aluminum, the cost of the glass, the cost of all that before they sold me this phone? Absolutely. So what? Why don't we do that with cities? Why do we sit here and have this conversation about value and what the hell does that matter?

00:53:14:02 - 00:53:32:18
Joe Minicozzi
So we tax and this kind of really sloppy property tax system or whatever, but it's just like, no, just think of it like a user fee. Like you want to choose to live way out on the north side of this community. Good. Go for it. One of the things about that north side, particularly on the west side of that river up there, a lot of that is wetlands.

00:53:32:20 - 00:53:54:08
Joe Minicozzi
And so there's it's really expensive because you're fighting Mother Nature. There's lots of live stations and pumps and all that stuff. So notice how red it is. So we're like, there you go. That's your choice. The community needs to be aware that that's like one eighth of the population that lives in that area, that we are subsidizing. Yeah, that maybe not even one eighth, probably like a 32nd.

00:53:54:11 - 00:54:11:27
Joe Minicozzi
And so is that the right choice for community subsidy? I don't care. It's your community, but maybe you need to build more of that stuff that's in the black, that's net positive to cover the cost of other stuff for folks that are listening to this, that live in a snow place, place that snows. Think of it this way.

00:54:11:27 - 00:54:36:26
Joe Minicozzi
If I live in a townhouse or 15 foot of frontage right, I got to plow. That goes by 15 feet. That's that's on a house. If I have a house with 250 feet of frontage, why am I paying the same rate for snow plow? Is somebody with a 15 footer. So right now we penalize the dense stuff. We penalize the downtown stuff is one way of looking at this image right here.

00:54:36:26 - 00:55:01:01
Joe Minicozzi
Right? It's over. And taxes, I think that should be a conversation. Right? Is that fair? Or you could say do more black stuff to cover the subsidy of suburbia. You're right. So we can't tell people like you got to stop eating pizza right? But you needed a salad. Everyone's like, you should exercise. So, you know, this is all back to you.

00:55:01:01 - 00:55:21:22
Joe Minicozzi
Behavioral health and how you would advise a client. If you were a doctor, you might want to say you might want to stop smoking. But if you showed people a picture of their lungs that were riddled with with holes of emphysema, that would probably get them to stop smoking, Sometimes it won't, because the addiction that George Bush said that we have an addiction to oil.

00:55:21:22 - 00:55:28:17
Joe Minicozzi
I don't think we have an addiction to oil. We have an addiction to a lifestyle choice that requires a lot of oil to make happen.

00:55:28:19 - 00:56:06:16
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And what's interesting, too, when we look at, you know, in the black, you know, these are using the the terminology of of the financial ledgers. If you're if you're in the black, think of Black Friday, you know, you're you're net positive here versus in the red. You're you're losing money. And what's really, really interesting about this, especially like with Eugene when you when you zoom in on that downtown area, many of these places that are, you know, so, so to speak, in the gray and in the black are some of the oldest parts of the city because they're near the downtown area.

00:56:06:19 - 00:56:20:02
John Simmerman
And to use, you know, Chuck's terminology, oftentimes these are sort of like even blighted areas. Yeah. And so versus where the shiny and new is out is the stuff that's losing money.

00:56:20:05 - 00:56:26:11
Joe Minicozzi
Actually, since you're on this scroll to the top of this map. Yes. Go north of Go north are downtown.

00:56:26:14 - 00:56:27:25
John Simmerman
Just north of downtown. Like right up.

00:56:27:25 - 00:56:46:25
Joe Minicozzi
Here. Yeah, right, right there. You see that little gray area that's kind of popping up? Yeah, that's it. That's that whole area. There is a little new urbanist development and all that stuff. All that stuff that's net positive are two and three storey buildings, you know, a little townhouses and a little mixed use buildings. It's like this.

00:56:46:25 - 00:57:23:03
John Simmerman
Nothing in this part of what we're talking about with new urbanism. Oftentimes in talking about the need for us to come up with land use code reform to be able to build, you know, more housing within meaningful destinations, meaningful distances, doable distances, walkable and bikeable distances to meaningful destinations. Is that thickening of the housing stock and and also eliminating the zoning codes that are preventing us from having businesses back in our neighborhoods like we used to have in a traditional neighborhood?

00:57:23:06 - 00:57:44:26
Joe Minicozzi
Yeah, well, it's also it's just let's just be real. It's like we're talking about is is we're all at a grocery store. If you're pricing potato chips at $0.05 a bag and the carrots cost you a $50 to stock, how is the consumer going to behave? You know, it's like probably not going to buy the potato, the carrots, you know, or somebody might.

00:57:44:28 - 00:58:04:26
Joe Minicozzi
And so we've we've designed a world economically where we facilitated the choice to do the wrong thing. And so it's no surprise that we have obesity problems that are because everybody's buying the potato chips. It's like, well, yeah, it's like one is they taste great. They're super awesome. We don't think about the consequences of long term decisions that humans.

00:58:04:28 - 00:58:25:26
John Simmerman
Yeah, and you're really touching upon something that I talk about all the time on the channel here, which is behavior change. And when we are able to create communities where being able to have active mobility as a legitimate and practical and pragmatic choice as humans, we're going to be like, yeah, I'm not going to get in the car.

00:58:25:26 - 00:58:51:11
John Simmerman
I mean, that would be ridiculous. Just like when you were in Amsterdam there it was like it was totally pragmatic to jump on the bike. I mean, why would you, you know, try to call an Uber or rent a car? You wouldn't. It just doesn't make any sense at all, you know. And so being able to support healthier behaviors, again, impacting public health oftentimes is saying, are we building our cities or rebuilding active towns?

00:58:51:11 - 00:58:58:15
John Simmerman
Are we building strong towns in a way that really reinforces that behavior that we'd like to see?

00:58:58:17 - 00:59:19:18
Joe Minicozzi
I have a confessional to make. Since you brought it up. I remember back and it was probably 2001, I was doing a lecture in Vancouver and, you know, they fly me out there. But at the time I was like so used to living in Florida that I just assumed I needed to have a rental car. I needed like, all this stuff.

00:59:19:20 - 00:59:31:17
Joe Minicozzi
And they they were so polite because they're Canadians and and they're like, all right. You know, you realize you can take the train. I was like, I know. I just I just it just didn't dawn on me.

00:59:31:19 - 00:59:40:00
John Simmerman
Well, then you may you may not have even had that that, that inclination. I mean, transit to somebody who doesn't normally take transit can be scary.

00:59:40:02 - 00:59:58:19
Joe Minicozzi
Yeah. Yeah. But then, you know, fast forward to Amsterdam. There was like seven bikes that we could that we could choose from that were just kind of sitting there at the, at the hostel or their hotel and there's like, take one. And it was just like it was so easy and they handed us a lock and off we went.

00:59:58:24 - 01:00:12:19
Joe Minicozzi
And you know, it's just the world has changed so much. And those areas that are ahead of it, ahead of the game and it's got put that forth out in are going to succeed. Can I show you one more example? Yeah.

01:00:12:19 - 01:00:14:12
John Simmerman
Yeah, totally. Yeah.

01:00:14:14 - 01:00:44:17
Joe Minicozzi
This is Indianapolis, Indiana. So this is Marion County. So we're talking middle-America here when talk talking Boston or San Francisco. So they've done two transit lines. So kind of zooming into the city, there's this red line that goes north, south and the blue line that goes east west. We are working on the blue line and we do this when we partner with like let's say we're working with the design team, we're working with a multi studio out of Kansas City with this one.

01:00:44:20 - 01:01:03:23
Joe Minicozzi
And so the designers need to know what to do, but they also know that they're going to be changing zoning and doing this other stuff. We also know the resistance. So one of the things that they were going to be recommending was things like getting rid of parking requirements. And when you walk into some communities and you recommend that, it's almost like people freak out, like the sky is going to fall off, you recommend that.

01:01:03:26 - 01:01:23:07
Joe Minicozzi
So how do you get people to get their brains around it? One of the things you can see is the red lines already done and you can see the production that's going on here. It's a lot of hot stuff. These are all missing middle and infill buildings that are super potent. You can also see even before their transit line on the blue line came in, you can see a little bit of a rash here.

01:01:23:07 - 01:01:44:07
Joe Minicozzi
This one little purple pixie stick right there, that's infill that's going on, that's highly productive. So there's a developer that's already figured this out and chances are they're fighting the system to get this stuff built. But it's showing the productive value and these are basically transit oriented cookie cutters that we went down the train line. Okay. So there is that stepping out for a second.

01:01:44:08 - 01:02:07:03
Joe Minicozzi
I'm going to go full screen on this one or actually this is the city or Marion County. These are the buildings and these are the parking lot. So just to give them a raw, there's like basics of your feet. How much fat tissue do you have versus muscle mass? Like what your your basics here? They've got as much land dedicated to roads as parking and then these are the buildings.

01:02:07:06 - 01:02:28:20
Joe Minicozzi
What people need to understand is money that comes back in this. So you'll notice there's a lot of white space that's your backyard, your buffers, your farmers or whatever financially. So this is the physical environment of Marion County. We threw the water outside because of water you can't build in it. So it's it's gone. But roads building and parking, this is everything else.

01:02:28:23 - 01:02:52:12
Joe Minicozzi
Berms, buffers, backyards financially is the right square. Look at how much money you're getting out of the buildings versus park versus roads. So roads cost you money. You don't get any money from roads. Look at parking. So okay, let's look at that for a second. Parking in roads are the same area, pretty much. Look at the area financially.

01:02:52:15 - 01:03:14:10
Joe Minicozzi
Why is parking so low of value right. So when the car is moving around, we pay for it. And these things called roads, when the car stops, we don't charge it the same amount. That's called a subsidy, right? Yeah. Yeah. If you're not paying the proper user fee. Secondly, look at this stuff that we love berms, buffers, backyards.

01:03:14:10 - 01:03:26:28
Joe Minicozzi
They take up the majority of our communities. They don't give us anything in tax. And I don't like to be rude about it and say you shouldn't have backyards. I just want you to know the financial consequences of that choice. You know, John, I could I could say like, hey, I want to have a full head of hair.

01:03:27:03 - 01:03:43:27
Joe Minicozzi
I think you should pay for it. Like, what kind of nonsense is that? But this is what we do with our government. Okay, So. So back to the transit zone. This is activity cookie cutter that's going to go ahead and hit play on this one. Let's drop downtown out because we don't care about that, because this is all about transit going into downtown.

01:03:44:00 - 01:04:06:25
Joe Minicozzi
This is the toad in time presented in this town. And I'm like, you need to realize something for a second here. You probably don't remember countywide, but let's look at countywide. You actually have more land dedicated to parking in this transit corridor than you do countywide. That is insane. So in the middle of your city, you've wasted all this space.

01:04:06:26 - 01:04:30:00
Joe Minicozzi
So? So just to make it simple, this is Marion from Marion County right here. There she is. She's got 1200 square feet of buildings dedicated to her. So the average citizen has about that much building, this much road and that much parking. When this gets built, this is the values of them. So the buildings valued about 52 bucks, the parking, $0.73, and the road is going to cost you $22.

01:04:30:00 - 01:05:02:05
Joe Minicozzi
It's going to cost you $22 in front of the building and $22 in front of the parking. So if you just think through this by paying taxes on the buildings, I pay in taxes on the parking, parking's only paying seven 1/70 the taxes of that building, yet the cost is the same. So that's the differential. If we if we just just for the fun fun of it, we're like, let's just go ahead and put 50% of the taxes out before it comes to the government into a savings account for the road to pay for the road in the future, how long will it take the building to pay off the road, and how long will

01:05:02:05 - 01:05:23:01
Joe Minicozzi
it take the parking to be off the road? Here's the numbers. 42 years versus 3000 years. A road only last 50 years. So parking will never pay for the road in front of it. That's that's a weird irony of the system that we set up for cars. Give me that for my bicycle or for for a streetcar line or something like that.

01:05:23:01 - 01:05:43:08
Joe Minicozzi
This is the subsidy that's out there. Just look, I don't care that this is there. Just make sure that you're aware of it. Secondly, these are the households in Marion County with no vehicles. So we're not talking to Amsterdam or Manhattan. There are people in Indianapolis that have no cars. These are households with one car, two cars and three cars.

01:05:43:11 - 01:06:16:26
Joe Minicozzi
So county wide, you're looking at 50% of the population have one car or less per household. When you look inside the transit corridor, it's 60%. So when not everybody has a car, why on God's green earth do we require two parking spaces per? And this is this is the thing where we let our biases of who's in the room making decisions drive the choices because, the people that make the decisions on city council or on city staff.

01:06:16:29 - 01:06:30:14
Joe Minicozzi
They probably have cars, right? You know, so this was a long way to get to a punch line. But this is it's just like I want to just I want you to see how imbalanced the system is. Does that make sense?

01:06:30:17 - 01:06:46:29
John Simmerman
Yeah, no, absolutely. And it it immediately brings to mind, you know, Don troupe's classic book, The High Cost of Free Parking. It's just it's one of those things where until we actually.

01:06:47:05 - 01:06:58:27
Joe Minicozzi
This is a much thicker book though I mean this is Yes, yes, yes. I will say I mean, it's not a light reading. What does Jeff Speck say in Walkable Cities? This is a book that you can kill a small child with. I mean, it's it's got espec.

01:06:58:29 - 01:07:17:23
John Simmerman
It's it's a classic now, you know, it's nearly nearly 800 pages long. And but it gets to to the point that you just made is that it's insane the way that when you really dig into the finances of of parking it's insane what we're doing with that.

01:07:17:26 - 01:07:46:07
Joe Minicozzi
But yeah yeah and it's that I mean, it's it's not a conspiracy. It's just it's we've made decisions and it just kind of sometimes it's sometimes pretty, you would think like everything around it, the process of making the decision is sophisticated and adult. The actual data and choices behind that choice are unbelievably naive over the long haul.

01:07:46:09 - 01:08:10:29
John Simmerman
Well, in the and it's it's a challenge that we have and it goes back to what we've grown up with, what we've become accustomed to, and then we start to have that sense of entitlement and expectations that go along with that. And so much of that gets built into to this. I really appreciate the work that you are doing and the work that Chuck is doing.

01:08:11:01 - 01:08:42:13
John Simmerman
It. It has really pushed me, you know, from a public health perspective to also kind of look at the parallels and and really see that we're all talking, you know, kind of the same language and we're looking and we're actually trying to get to the same place because ultimately I want to see thriving healthy communities and I want that health to be both physical health of the residents as well as fiscal health of the communities.

01:08:42:13 - 01:08:49:03
John Simmerman
And so it's been such a joy and pleasure having you on the active town's podcast for that reason. Thank You, Joe.

01:08:49:05 - 01:08:58:29
Joe Minicozzi
Thanks for having me and sorry for, for the podcast people. I'm a pitchers guy, but you can watch the video later. Thanks for this. I appreciate it. This is fun. Hey, thank.

01:08:58:29 - 01:09:12:19
John Simmerman
You so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Joe Nkosi. And if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, I'd be honored to have you subscribe to the channel. Just click on that subscription button down below and ring locations.

01:09:12:19 - 01:09:30:04
John Simmerman
Bell And if you are enjoying this content that I'm creating here on the Active Tennis Channel, please consider supporting my efforts. It's easy to do. Just head on over to active towns dot org and click on the support button. and by the way, you can also click on the store button too. I've got all sorts of cool swag out there.

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John Simmerman
Streets are for people of water bottles, coffee mugs, T-shirts, sweatshirts, all that good stuff. Hey, every little bit helps and helps support my efforts to keep this content coming to you. Again, thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers. And again sending a huge thank you to all my active town's ambassadors supporting the channel on Patron Buy me a coffee YouTube super.

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John Simmerman
Thanks. As well as making contributions to the nonprofit and purchasing things from the active town store, every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated. Thank you all so much.