Podcast Summary:

New Books Network — Benjamin Schneider, The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution (Island Press, 2025)
Host: Timmy Correjo
Guest: Benjamin Schneider
Date: December 9, 2025

Overview

In this episode, Timmy Correjo interviews journalist and author Benjamin Schneider about his new book, The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution. Schneider critiques the stagnation of American city-building since the mid-20th century and calls for a renewed, more ambitious approach to urban planning—including housing, transportation, and downtown development. Blending historical analysis, case studies, international models, and profiles of contemporary changemakers, Schneider's book aims to inspire and inform a new movement of city-building to meet today’s social and environmental challenges.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Genesis and Scope of the Book

• Background: Schneider reflects on a decade covering urban planning and public policy, culminating in this book to synthesize his findings.

  “I've been following a lot of these trends in urbanism and urban planning for my entire career. And I felt that I wanted to kind of bring together what I'd learned into one easy to read and interesting package in this book.” (02:24, Schneider)

• City-Building as a Forgotten Art: The book frames "city-building" as an umbrella encompassing housing, transport, and downtowns—an art lost in the U.S. post-1960s due to outdated paradigms.

  “The built environment of today in American cities really does feel like it was conceived of and built in decades long ago.” (03:55, Schneider)

2. Cycles of Urban Innovation and Stagnation in U.S. History

• 19th/early 20th centuries saw innovation (e.g., row houses, bungalows, "missing middle" housing) created in response to necessity.
• This was followed by a clampdown:

  “By the 30s, moving through the 50s and 60s, those kinds of housing typologies were broadly illegalized...single family zoning won the day.” (08:00, Schneider)

3. Learning from International Models

• U.S. exceptionalism in urbanism challenged:

  “In urbanism, America is...a horrible outlier in, across almost any metric you can think of.” (10:41, Schneider)

• Suggests the U.S. can "copy and paste" certain technical solutions (e.g., French automated trains, modular housing) even if broader social transfer isn’t feasible.

  “Those technical pieces are things that Americans should be much more open to really heavily borrowing from other countries.” (11:57, Schneider)

4. Housing: Ideology, Policy, and Innovation

• Cultural and Ideological Underpinnings:
  The "cult of the single family home" runs deep, tracing to Jeffersonian anti-urbanism, the Transcendentalists, and Olmsted's pastoral suburban visions (ex: Riverside, IL).

  “What I call the cult of the single family home...begins as early as Thomas Jefferson and his valorization of the yeoman farmer and kind of an anti city view that he held.” (15:13, Schneider)

• Material and Financial Policy:

  “The single family home boom that happened in the wick of World War II was a heavily government subsidized endeavor...the government set up mortgage banks that basically provided a backstop to builders...” (19:48, Schneider)
  “Racial segregation was...an implicit agreement in these laws that suburban subdivisions were not going to sell to black people.” (20:28, Schneider)

• Regulatory Barriers Beyond Zoning:
  Building codes, often designed to impede apartment construction under the guise of safety or morality, now hinder innovation and affordability.

  “Make fire codes...so stringent that it becomes impossible to build apartment buildings. And that's more or less what happened in many cities.” (25:04, Schneider)

Notable Quote

"Many cities it’s illegal for unrelated people to live in the same house, which is a crazy kind of regulation that still exists in many places." (26:30, Schneider)

5. Contemporary Case Studies: Reform in Action

• Berkeley:
  Councilmember Terry Taplin's leadership moved the city from decades of housing stagnation to recent rapid permitting, stabilizing rents and addressing exclusionary legacies.

• Seattle’s Social Housing:
  Local organizers established a new public benefit corporation, inspired by Vienna's system, that develops mixed-income social housing.

  “The folks in Seattle are just one example of this much larger movement of social housing...after a long lull, where the public sector really wasn’t doing that...” (28:32, Schneider)

• Tension & Synthesis Between YIMBY and Social Housing:

  “The divide is much narrower than I think it’s painted in social media conversation...in order to enable social housing to be built, you need the zoning reforms and building codes that allow housing...” (33:12, Schneider)

6. Transportation: The U.S. Stroad and Beyond

• The Problem of the “Stroad”:
  America’s dominant auto-centric arterial, hazardous to pedestrians and emblematic of failed design.

  “The stroad is the perfect encapsulation of the treatment of streets as just completely disconnected from the human experience.” (36:28, Schneider)

• Complete Streets and Redesign Efforts:
  Advocates push to allocate space on streets for all users, facing varying opposition, especially around parking.

  “Complete streets is a really helpful kind of North Star for advocates. It basically just means providing space for everyone to be safe and have a place of their own on city streets...” (40:36, Schneider)

Notable Moment

• “The street is this just fundamental unit of transportation, of community life. And it’s so often an afterthought.” (36:28, Schneider)

• Transit and Subways:
  U.S. public transit lagged when cities let private providers collapse and failed to fund expansion, resulting in timid, maintenance-oriented systems.

  “Transit is basically this thing that you maintain in a modest state. It’s not something that is meant to be significantly invested in, in terms of expansion.” (46:06, Schneider)

• Passenger Rail:
  While Amtrak remains underpowered, promising new routes and ridership increases show potential.

  “The last couple decades for Amtrak have been much more successful, much more ambitious. The ridership is like 50% higher now than it was 20 years ago...” (49:12, Schneider)

• Freeways & Urban Destruction:
  Mid-century freeway construction "targeted Black neighborhoods," causing widespread displacement and devastation.

  “The before and after photos of freeway corridors and interchanges are deeply disturbing. I mean, it looks like there were bombs that were dropped on these neighborhoods.” (54:18, Schneider)

• Future of City-Building:
  Cautions against nostalgia for past urban renewal, but urges proactive reimagining (e.g., removing freeways, Albina Vision Trust in Portland rebuilding a Black neighborhood atop a cap).

  “Affirmatively trying to correct the wrongs of the past, not by leaving things as they are, but by building something better.” (57:04, Schneider)

7. Work, Downtowns, and Malls

• Downtown Renewal and Legacy:
  Urban renewal created office-focused, less livable monocultures in formerly vibrant downtowns.

  “The downtown landscape became much less livable, much less neighborhoody, to make space for these business oriented corporate settings that today we’re realizing aren’t particularly appealing...” (62:01, Schneider)

• Shocks to Downtowns and Malls:
  COVID-19 and changing work/leisure habits force a rethinking—move toward mixed-use environments.

  “The most exciting reimaginings of malls and downtowns are all about making them more mixed, use more kind of livable places for people to spend time beyond just going to work.” (64:00, Schneider)

8. Resonance Beyond Big Cities & Industrial Urbanism

• City-building lessons apply to small and mid-sized cities (e.g., street safety, innovative industrial design).

• Argues for denser, adaptable "multi-story industrial buildings" as opposed to sprawling single-story "boxes."

  “Returning to the wisdom maybe of the multi story, maybe multi purpose industrial facility could be worth contemplating...” (67:59, Schneider)

• Missed Topics:
  Schneider regrets not delving deeper into “strip malls,” particularly mini malls as small business hubs, but notes their California specificity.

  “I'm intrigued by the culture of strip malls and the sort of types of businesses that emerge there and how that seems so anathema with the urban design that is so hostile to human life…” (71:08, Schneider)

• Aesthetics as Next Frontier:
  Indicates a desire to focus future work on the “aesthetic register”—ensuring new buildings inspire and delight, reflecting present values.

  "How do we ensure that new buildings are beautiful and are appealing to people and are reflective of the sort of values that we have today?" (72:29, Schneider)

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On American Urban Exceptionalism

  “In urbanism, America is...a horrible outlier in, across almost any metric you can think of, whether it's like pedestrian fatalities, whether it's...housing supply per capita, pretty bad statistic for America compared to many other countries.” (10:41, Schneider)

• On Freeways as Destructive Force

  “It looks like there were bombs that were dropped on these neighborhoods.” (54:18, Schneider)

• On the Need for New Ideas

  “We're in need of new ideas and new built forms to supplant some of these really outdated both ideas and physical structures in cities.” (05:54, Schneider)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:24] Schneider’s background and genesis of the book
• [03:55] The lost art of city-building and legacy of old paradigms
• [06:47] Cycles of U.S. innovation and when they stopped
• [10:41] Learning from global urbanism and debunking U.S. exceptionalism
• [14:00] Housing, culture and the ideology of single family homes
• [19:48] Racial and financial engineering behind housing
• [24:32] Building codes: the new policy frontier
• [28:32] Contemporary U.S. reforms—Berkeley and Seattle as case studies
• [33:12] Debates within housing advocacy: YIMBY vs. Social Housing
• [36:28] Transportation: what is a “stroad” and why is it a problem
• [40:36] Complete Streets and reallocating space
• [46:06] U.S. subway history and the problem of ambition
• [48:52] The story and potential of U.S. passenger rail
• [54:18] Urban freeways: history, destruction, and racial injustice
• [57:04] New directions: repairing and reimagining city-building
• [58:19] Downtowns and malls: past, future, and the COVID shock
• [67:45] Industrial urbanism and lessons for smaller cities
• [71:08] What got left out: the urban meaning of mini-malls

Conclusion

Benjamin Schneider’s The Unfinished Metropolis urges Americans to rediscover the lost city-building ethos, adapt and innovate for future needs, and learn both from domestic history and global peers. This episode provides a comprehensive vista over the book’s analysis—spanning policy, ideology, and concrete action—aimed at motiviating city-builders and ordinary listeners to reimagine what American cities could become.