B (3:59)

Wow, that is incredible. I did not realize that you guys are now starting to connect with folks all the way in Uganda. That's incredible. So are you flying out there and meeting with them?

C (4:11)

No, no. That would be. That would be amazing.

B (4:14)

That would be amazing.

C (4:16)

Well, in addition to that one, over the course of the last few months, we've talked with people who want to start groups in New Zealand and India, Guatemala, Colombia, at several different places in Europe. Even somebody I talked with, somebody in Amsterdam who told me the good and the bad coexist here as well. We need Strong Towns.

B (4:36)

I love that. That's amazing. Well, that's actually a really fitting introduction for today's article because we are talking about an international piece, although we can bring it back to our context here in the US or I should say multitude of contexts in the US but very excited about this one. So the title of this article is entitled Sponge City Copenhagen Adapts to a Wetter Future. This was published in Yale e360 by Paul Hakonos. Hopefully I pronounced that right, Paul. If I didn't, I'm sorry. So some of the highlights of this article. So basically, In July of 2011, Copenhagen was hit with this huge storm that caused more than 5 inches of rain to occur in just two hours. So very large amount of water in a very short amount of time, which flooded infrastructure and roads and basements and caused $1.8 billion in damages. This spurred the city to collaborate with a team of urban planners, landscape architects, engineers to transform Copenhagen into the world's first fully implemented solar sponge city. So the sponge city model blends both nature based surface features like wetlands and parks with engineered Infrastructure, so underground storage pipes, retention basins, et cetera. And this is really designed to create a situation where you can pretty readily absorb, store and gradually release excess stormwater and adaptation that is intended to be kind of more resilient in the long term compared to kind of what the conventional approach to stormwater mitigation infrastructure has been. So the city, the city's efforts have inspired other cities across the globe, including Auckland, Singapore, New York, Berlin, to emulate their approach. And another thing that I'll highlight that I think is really important here is that the infrastructure also doubles as kind of a social and place making project. So it blends the functionality with other kinds of goals like recreation and design bike shelters, there's a skate park, an amphitheater, and it all stores stormwater while also being a community asset. I'm really excited about this because there is a project that I worked on in Kansas City that this is basically the story of that project. Although it's not an entire city like Copenhagen, it's a very small geography. But, but I'm very excited because this is, this is an approach that I'm, that I think is really needed. It's the kind of thinking that I think is needed. And I know, John, you had a lot of questions about it, but yeah, I'm excited to hear about what your perspective is on this article as well.

C (7:51)

Yeah, absolutely. And I was excited to hear that you had worked on a similar project in Kansas City when, when you and I were talking about which articles we should, which article we should talk about. The reason I really landed on this one is my daughter just got back from a year long exchange as a hero. She did her junior year of high school in Denmark and so I, for one year I was hearing about all these amazing, you know, the amazing built environment in, in Denmark. And so it was going to be fun to talk about this. I do admit though that I'm, I'm kind of conflicted about this. And so I'm really, I'm really happy that you have been, you know, been working on a similar project in Kansas City or that you did because on the one hand the project sounds amazing, but it is also a massive project. It's, you know, well, I think It's, I think one estimate $1.3 billion or something like that, well over a billion dollars to do this project. It's going to take multiple decades and like the strong towns advocate in me is like, okay, let's wait a second. What's the next smallest thing that we can do? But then like what they're actually creating sounds amazing. And so do you feel that tension as a. As a planner and as a strong towns advocate or like, are you all in on this?

B (9:11)

No. I mean, I think. I think that where you're coming from is. Is the right perspective. The idea that you're just going to do this all in one fell swoop is a questionable approach. Doing this on a citywide scale. I do think for stormwater planning there, there is a citywide persp take because you're dealing with watersheds, you're dealing with impervious surfaces. There. There are ways to look at it that are citywide. One of the things that I'll mention on the Kansas City project that I worked on was that it was actually an incremental project. So I think it was like $20 million, which in infrastructure world is not very big.

C (9:59)

And.

B (9:59)

And it was the alternative to the $100 million official engineer recommendation for building a pipe and moving water from one place to another, which was the more conventional way of doing it. And instead what they did was actually use rainfall data, which is what addresses that, you know, the harsh rains that are described in this Copenhagen article, where, you know, you're not talking about situations where it's raining for days and days. You're talking about, you know, flash flooding, essentially, where it's just the fact that you don't have a lot of time in the equation. And what the project in Kansas City does is it doesn't, you know, get rid of all puddling and flooding completely, but it takes three feet of flooding down to, you know, maybe four inches of flooding. And it makes the area a lot more adaptable and utilizes an approach that both uses underground infrastructure and the underground infrastructure. It functions both as a storage and transference mechanism, but also the way that these systems are designed is also intended to slow down the pace of water, which is part of the problem here. And so it combines those kind of gray water approaches with the green infrastructure as well. And the thing about doing these kinds of smaller, you know, quote unquote, smaller infrastructure projects more tactically is that they can make really big impact in the right places. So you don't necessarily. I mean, I don't want to make a broad statement necessarily, but my instinct is that you don't have to make an entire city a sponge city and just say, hey, we're going to rebuild the whole city and do infrastructure projects like this all over the city. And now Kansas City is a sponge city. I think that it's more so an approach that Says, where can we make these very incremental tactical enhancements that soak up water where you're actually getting problems, you're getting flash flooding. Because when flash flooding occurs, it's not, it's typically not everywhere. It's typically in very specific areas where water collects because of topography and impervious surfaces and lack of inlets and other things. So it's like, I think that that's also if you have a combined sewer overflow system, which is what Kansas City's problem is as well. So separating that out is a big impact. That's my initial thought. There is that, yeah. When you look at this idea and think of it as a citywide project, that is a very different conversation than saying, hey, how can we think about infrastructure differently, especially with regard to stormwater mitigation? How could we think about it in a way that mitigates stormwater in a reasonable way? We're not trying to get rid of all water, but we're trying to be reasonable with providing adaptable approaches and apply them in a really strategic way that is meaningful and then also testing that to make sure that it's doing what it's supposed to do before you go do the next project. So that's kind of my gut feeling on that. Kind of a long winded answer for you.

C (13:55)

No, it's really, really helpful. As I was reading this article, it reminded me of a couple of different things and I won't get into all of it now, but I remember coming across years ago this concept of the permaculture city. And one of the principles of permaculture, to my understanding, is that you don't want water to exit your, the land too quickly. And so what this does, this, this project in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, as you said, is that it, it captures the water, it stores the water. So this is good not only for times of flood, but it's actually important for times of drought, which much of Europe is in right now. And so it does, it does capture that water and keep it from, from rolling off too quickly and makes it usable for the future. Is that, is the permaculture, this city, something that you've come across in your work?

B (14:51)

I haven't come across that idea, but that does resonate to me based on my experience on this other stormwater project that it is about. It's not about building $100 million pipe to shoot the water down to the nearest creek, but it's more about how do we more meaningfully utilize space in an urban area to realistically mitigate stormwater where it's at and slowly release it back out into the overall system rather than just shooting it down to the next people and causing impacts that may not be fully understood just by trying to get move it from one place to another.

C (15:41)

Absolutely. And it reminds me, Chuck, one of Chuck's favorite books is, I think it's Collapse by Jared Diamond. And I actually haven't read it myself, but I've heard Chuck tell the story of how the, the farmers in, in the Andes had plots of land scattered around the mountain. And experts came in and said, well, you know, you could do this a lot more efficiently if you all just kind of collected your pieces of land closer together and, you know, you wouldn't have to travel as far. And so they did that. And what happened is like when this one piece of land, like this now like collected piece of land kind of went, like if there was a bad, bad year or something happened, there were maybe there were insects or pests or something, they were devastated all at once. But what the benefit of having these different plots across a wide range of areas was that it had this built in redundancy. And that's what the, like my understanding of the Copenhagen project is. Yes, there are these four kind of massive underground tunnels and there's a lot of underground infrastructure, but above ground there's actually a lot of redundancy in all of these different bioswales and parks and parklets and skate parks. And so you do have a lot of built in resilience that I think would appeal to many strong townspeople.

B (17:03)

I really agree with that. And I think it's a good way to put, put this concept of just trying to make a more resilient landscape. You know, the big issue with stormwater is just the fact that we've built things in places that, you know, in the case of the project that I worked on, it was because they built this area of the city on top of a creek back in the early 1900s, late 1800s. And it turns out that that's probably not a good idea. Water wants to go where it wants to go. And so trying to better align our infrastructure systems with what the earth wants to do, I feel like that's what adaptability and resilience is all about, is just being able to have a city that is in alignment with how physics works and how the earth works.

C (18:06)

Yes, I love that. My favorite writer is somebody named Wendell Berry. My friends of mine, they joke that we should have a Wendell Berry drinking game for John. Every time John mentions Wendell Berry So here I am, I think we're 16 minutes into recording and I'm reading.

B (18:20)

All right, everyone take a shot or.

C (18:22)

Everybody take a shot. If you're listening, this is. Yeah, no, and so Windle Berry's from Kentucky, and so if you have bourbon, that would be even more appropriate. But, no, but when, as, as I was reading this, I was reminded too of an essay that Barry wrote decades ago called Solving for Pattern. And Barry is not only a writer, he's also a farmer. And he's been a real advocate for farms, farmers and farming culture for a long time. And I went back and I reread that essay in advance of this recording. And Barry, in that essay, his primary topic is farming and land use, but he's talking about. His points are, I think, broadly applicable to problems that arise within complex systems. And in that essay, he distinguishes between bad solutions and good solutions. And he says that bad solutions solve for a single purpose or goal, but are ultimately destructive to the larger pattern, whereas good solutions are good because they are in harmony with the larger patterns. And so he offers up some, some guidelines or standards for what he considers a good solution. And I think there are 14 of them, but I'll just mention a couple here. He says a good solution accepts given limits, using so far as possible what is at hand. And he says the most, far the most. The more far fetched the solution is, the more it should not be trusted. And then another one is a good solution improves the balances and symmetries and harmonies within the larger patterns. It doesn't enlarge or complicate one part of the pattern at the expense of the other. And so while there's a lot about this cloudburst management project that I don't understand and I don't obviously understand, like the budget situation in Copenhagen, you know, are they, you know, can they afford to build and maintain this? That. There's just so much that I don't know. But one of the things that I do appreciate is it feels like they are solving for a pattern. Windleberry says that a good solution solves more than one problem. And you touched on this when you were describing it. This, this, this project increases water capacity, it freshens the air, it provides habitat for birds and wild and flowers. It promotes biodiversity. It's beautiful. And as you said, it's social, too. It's, it helps. It's going to bring in more parks and skate parks and amphitheaters, and it's good for times of drought as much as times of flood. And so I, again, I, it kind of brings me back to this permaculture idea. This seems to be a project that is solving for a larger pattern and is in harmony with the largest pattern, which as you point out, is nature itself.

B (21:13)

Wow, that makes me think of so many, so many different things. And I don't want to get to the nitty gritty of what my experience had been, but, you know, one of the things that the team faced in Kansas City on a project like this was the fact that the, you know, the, the traditional stormwater design standard is focused on addressing the 10 year flood standard, right. Which is not necessarily in alignment with what, what kind of observed or measurable stormwater events look like. And that was a major barrier because addressing that 10 year flood, it requires a huge level of investment. It's the million dollar, or sorry, $100 million infrastructure improvement that alleviates flooding completely in the worst case scenario kind of event. And the business owners in this area ultimately had to come to the agreement and the understanding that trying to do the moonshot project is maybe less meaningful, but it also is not feasible and that they could wait and wait and continue to have properties destroyed and people injured and people losing cars and in these floods, or they could accept the barriers that they're faced with and the limitations that they're being faced with and say, is there another option that is more incremental that alleviates the problem to the extent that we're not going to likely experience, you know, major massive damage events when we get these, you know, frequent flood flooding events, these flash floods in the area a couple times a year. And so that, that was something that I, that really opened my eyes to how things, what the limitations are, I guess, and how doing something more incrementally can actually get to starting to impact not just one area, but areas downstream. And you know, thinking of this big picture system of how water flows through a community, right, it's like there's, there's a lot of like tactical things that can be done that, you know, no, it's not going to be the moonshot fixed everything expensive project. But what if, what if you had a whole system of smaller projects that started to combine to cumulatively actually address flooding in a very, very, very meaningful way.

C (24:20)

And as a planner, I think I have, I guess, an intuitive answer to my question. But you would know, are we obviously at strong towns talk about the importance of maintenance, replacement, being able to afford that is green infrastructure like what they're describing in this Copenhagen project, less expensive to maintain and eventually Replace than the gray infrastructure or are they roughly parallel?

B (24:50)

You know, I couldn't tell you that. I don't really know. My gut instinct is that. I have two thoughts about that. My gut instinct is that gray infrastructure is probably more expensive than green infrastructure in terms of long term maintenance. But I don't know for sure. But just thinking about, let me put it this way. I guess my second thought was that green infrastructure does require maintenance. It's plants and it's, you know, you, you do need to take care of your trees and if you have, you know, planters and those sorts of things, it's not like you just plant these things once and then never touch it again. There, there is maintenance that's required, but I think that requires probably more iterative maintenance than say an underground stormwater tank. That maybe doesn't require as iterative a level of maintenance, but does require maybe more expensive maintenance when those things come due. But again, I'm not an engineer. I, you know, this is just kind of my gut feeling about what the possibilities may be. It could be very well the opposite, that green marine infrastructure is way more costly. I'm sure that there's some engineer out there or somebody who works in maintenance that knows the answer to that. I'd also think that underground stormwater probably has a maintenance aspect related to getting debris out of whatever system that looks like because debris is undoubtedly still going to go through the system, get caught, even if you have filters. So I would imagine that, that there's some maintenance aspect of that as well. But yeah, I couldn't tell you for sure what would be more expensive.

C (26:44)

It is interesting to think about how this project is doing is solving multiple different things and providing multiple benefits to the community. Because if it is people centered places that are ultimately more financially productive, then I don't think it's too much of a leap to say that this project is creating more people centered places that are going to be more financially productive that would help pay for, pay for maintaining and eventually replacing elements of this, of this project itself.

B (27:15)

Yeah, well, you know, that was a big part of the conversation in Kansas City because you know, this, this was a very already, you know, fiscally productive area in terms of its tax revenue per acre. And so investing in a place like that. I mean it, I feel like it's just a non question that you would want to invest in a place like that. And the thing that, to your point about the benefit of having multiple, I think you said like multiple benefits or outcomes of a project addressing many different things. Is that these projects, they're fundamentally infrastructure projects and they have a very specific function, which is to address stormwater. But that doesn't mean that you also can't integrate place making elements into it. Especially like if you're tearing up a street, you got to put something back and it may as well be a better street than it was before. Or maybe you're dealing with a park area and there's opportunities to utilize a maintenance trail to be a pedestrian walk away and things like that. And so I think, I think this multidisciplinary approach to what are really these functional engineering projects can be really valuable for helping cities get more out of these projects than what it fundamentally is. I think probably for some cities, when they hear that, they're like, no, that's going to run the price up. And if we start bringing on crazy landscape architects and designers, suddenly they're going to recommend things that don'. Fall into the scope. But I think that that doesn't have to be the case that you can take this multidisciplinary approach to stormwater infrastructure and find ways to be really smart about how you, how do you take functional aspects of that and make them, you know, community asset builders?

C (29:22)

Yeah, I love that. That's awesome.

B (29:25)

I'm very passionate about this topic, if you can't tell. I think it's a really cool approach, no matter how small the project could be. I think finding ways to combine infrastructure with place making enhancements. It's a really good opportunity to integrate urban design and good planning into cities without, in a way that's not just like putting together a comprehensive plan or working on a zoning code. That there's some really meaningful work that could be done by people who think like planners and landscape architects and other designers. If we could integrate teams with those engineers and work together.

C (30:10)

Yeah, it's like the poet Alexander Pope said. He said, consult the genius of the place. And I say this as a non engineer and as a non planner. But the more that we can do to have our, the complexity of our towns and cities in harmony with the laws of nature, I think the better we will all be.

B (30:32)

I love that. Consult the genius of the place. That's great. That's great. Any other thoughts about this? I mean, I know you, your daughter spent some time here and I, I'm curious if you had a chance to really visit and, and experience what this kind of looks like or. Because I've never been to Copenhagen.

C (31:00)

No, we're actually going in June. So she was with the Rotary. The Rotary Youth exchange program. And one of the things that they encourage parents is to not visit during the year long exchange because it triggers homesickness. But then if you can, if you can do it, actually go after your child graduates high school and let them be your tour guide. And so we are going in June of 2026, and Molly was not in Copenhagen. She was in the second largest city in Denmark, a city called Aarhus. But we're going to visit both cities as well as other places in Denmark and she will be our tour guide.

B (31:39)

Well, that's exciting.

C (31:40)

When she saw how amazing the built environment there was, like, would she even want to come back to the United States? She had a great exchange. She really made the most of it and she was really ready to come home, which was gratifying for me.

B (31:54)

Yeah, I feel like going to Europe kind of ruins you because you come back and you're like, why does it look like this?

C (32:04)

That's, that was my experience in Scotland a couple years ago.

B (32:06)

Really? Yeah, it's. It's a little bit of a. In addition to the jet lag, there's this little depression that creeps in that's like, why did I get on the plane?

C (32:18)

The very first thing that she did when she got home was to borrow the car.

B (32:22)

Oh, really? That's funny. Well, yeah, this is really a fascinating project. I'm excited to hear more about it. And I like this idea of kind of the sponge city idea is interesting because you're thinking of it as an entire city, but I think from a strong town's perspective, we could just think of sponge neighborhoods or sponge districts. Yes, a sponge block. A sponge lot. I feel like there's a Dr. Seuss book somewhere in there.

C (33:00)

Or Spongebob.

B (33:02)

I was thinking Spongebob.

C (33:04)

No, but I think that you're, I think that you're totally right, you know, at this, it's, you know, this is a, it's a, it's a grand project that I think is very inspiring and I think when we see it next year, it will be beautiful. And doesn't. It doesn't have to stop that grand scale doesn't have to stop us from finding what works for our towns and cities right now. Even if that is, as you said, a sponge block. Sponge.

B (33:25)

Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And just thinking, I mean, I've been doing my own stormwater work on my, my home property and my home property at my house, and I didn't really make the connection between the larger scale and what I'm doing. What I'm doing Just on the lot that I live on. But from a strong towns perspective, it's like what if we as individuals who probably know the stormwater issues more than anybody on our particular property because we know where it's coming in in the basement and we where it's puddling in different areas and try to find more resilient ways to capture stormwater and move it to areas where landscaping can be. I mean, that's basically what I'm doing at my house is finding ways to have stormwater containment and landscape beds and making some adjustments to topography to try to get it out to the street. So yeah, I'm creating my own little sponge city on my lot. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that my neighbors are doing the same thing. But you know, there's probably very impactful things that we could do on individual levels that are in support of an overall sponge city model.

C (34:54)

I love that so much. That's great.

B (34:56)

Yeah. Cool. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I guess we can leave it there. But before we finish up today, I want to do the down zone. Hopefully you have one.

C (35:09)

I do.

B (35:10)

Okay. I didn't remind you. I wasn't sure if you'd remember. Great. Well, what do you have for me for the down zone?

C (35:17)

All right. So I realized a couple days ago that I was reading and loving two books, both of which had been recommended to me by colleagues. One is a book by Ann Cleaves and in particular I'm reading her Shetland mystery series that was recommended by my colleague Linda. But the one I really want to talk about, and I'm always years late for this, is the Thursday Murder Club. I just finished reading the book the Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osmond. They're turning it into a movie that comes out and later in September on Netflix. It is just an amazing book. It is set in an old folks home. Probably it's probably not the right language in England. And there is a group of four senior adults who meet every Thursday to look at cold case murders and try to solve them. But then what happens is that there is a, an actual murder that happens in close connection to their, their home, to their old folks home. And the book is delightful and charming. It's also often very, very tender. The characterization is beautiful and brilliant among these, not only these four main characters, but the quite large cast of characters. They're like very distinct characters, but it's very funny without being jokey. And I found myself long before I was finished with the book, recommending it to person after person after person because the reading experience was just so delightful and these folks are, you know, they're older and so some of their, some of their partners, you know, are suffering from like, you know, like dementia. And so like there's, there's a lot about the aging process too. It was just lovely. I believe that it is a classic of the mystery genre. It is a modern classic. 5 out of 5 stars. I just love it so much. And there are a few others in the series and I can't wait to start book two.

B (37:26)

Fabulous. Well, that's, that's a pretty, that's a pretty big compliment. So. And who's the author again?

C (37:35)

Richard Osman. O S M A N and he, he comes. I think he has a background in. Yeah, he's a background in TV and that may be why his voices are so good.

B (37:47)

Oh, that's very cool.

C (37:51)

And it's just, yeah, it's very delightful. But I always love the Down Zone is always my favorite part of the podcast because I'm always interested to hear like what you're doing, what you're reading, what you're watching. So what's yours this week?

B (38:04)

Well, actually I wanted to share something a little bit different and put a plug in for the fact that Chuck is coming to Kansas city again on September 30th. I'm really excited about it. My, one of my friends and mentors, Dennis Strait, he organizes a speaker series with the Kansas City Library called Making a Great City Speaker Series. And they're doing it, they're doing basically an installment where Chuck is opening it up on September 30, but it's all focused on housing and housing as economic development and having really trying to start a broader conversation about housing in Kansas City alongside many people who are also talking about it. He's bringing in a couple of other people, I think. October we've got AJ Herman from Accelerator for America, Ali Quinlan from Incremental Development alliance, and Koby Lefkowitz, who's the author of Building Optimism and An Incremental Developer. So I'm super excited about this lineup because it's very focused on strong towns thinking about housing and also about incremental development and the role of smaller scale development in this overall picture of housing. Because people kind of think about it as we just need to build giant projects and then we'll solve the housing, the housing crisis. And this is really about kind of the smaller scale wins that could happen in this picture. So very, very excited about it. And if anyone is listening and you're in Kansas City, you Should go to these. Go to the series.

C (39:56)

That sounds awesome. As somebody who loves Kansas City, I love that for Kansas City.

B (40:02)

Me too. I love Kansas City, too.

C (40:03)

I'm typically. I typically wear my Kansas City Royals baseball cap unless I'm doing something official for strong towns. And if this is going to be on video, like, I should not wear a Kansas City Royals hat. But normally I'm. I'm wearing my Royals hat all day long because I just love that city and I love that team. So, yeah, that's awesome happening in Kansas City. I love it.

B (40:24)

There's a lot of great things happening, A lot of things that can be done, but there's a lot of great things happening. And we just need to decide on a location for the Royal Stadium. Any day now, right?

C (40:38)

Yeah.

B (40:38)

Yeah. We need to know. So hopefully we find out soon and.

C (40:43)

Then I'll bring my. My family to Kaufman before it's gone.

B (40:46)

Yeah, definitely do that. I've. I've been able to see a couple of games this year and visit Kaufman and. Yeah, it's such a cool, cool complex. It's old, but it's. It's a neat, neat ballpark. Yeah. Well, hey, thanks, John. I appreciate you joining me again today and hopefully you won't be a stranger. We can do this again.

C (41:08)

Yeah, I would love that. Thank you for. Thank you for having me.

B (41:11)

Sure. Thanks. And thanks everyone for listening to another episode of Upzoned. Thanks, John.

C (41:17)

Bye.

B (41:22)

We're about to get down tonight.