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- [00:08]
A
Got my bus pass been a ride first class streetcar downtown with a fine Ladies in the peeps are OG say don't hurt nobody looking this damn thing the conventional story about aging is that people raise a family, become empty nesters, and eventually downsize by moving into a smaller home. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal titled Boomers Were Supposed to Downsize, they are Buying Bigger Homes Instead suggests that scrip is changing, at least for the most affluent of baby boomers. Rather than buying smaller homes, many of them are purchasing larger ones or investing heavily in additions and renovations. They're creating homes designed to host children and grandchildren, accommodate aging in place, and serve as gathering spaces for family and friends. The article argues that this shift is possible because this generation controls an extraordinary share of the nation's wealth, much of it accumulated through decades of home price appreciation and rising financial markets. We're going to discuss this article and I suspect there will be a smidge of baby boomer bashing here at the top, but I promise we're going to keep that to a minimum because I would like us to move beyond individual choices being described and think about what they reveal about the housing market as a whole. What does it mean when the generation that owns most of the country's large homes is also competing for even larger ones? Is this simply a story about changing retirement preferences? Or does it tell us something deeper about wealth, housing demographics, and the way our housing system functions? Welcome to Upzoned. This is where we take one big story making the news and explore what it can teach us about building stronger towns. My name is Chuck Marone. I'm the president of Strong Towns. And because I'm going to ask each of our guests to share their age so you have that perspective going in, I'm going to say that I'm solidly gen X. I'm 53 years old. To help us wrestle with the questions presented in this article, we're joined by First Richard Rumreux. He's a historic properties renovator, market researcher, teacher. Since the 1990s, he's worked on stabilizing and renovating historic properties, including a colonial era family farm and duplexes from the 1850s and 1890s. He's also part of Strongtown's RVA, the local conversation based in Richmond, Virginia. Richard welcome to Upzoned.
- [02:35]
B
Thank you Chuck. I am 61, which means I am like the last of the baby boomers. Name after me according to some.
- [02:44]
A
Well, I'm very happy that we have a baby boomer, technically late stage baby boomer on the podcast to represent. I won't put all that burden on you, however, so thanks for being with us.
- [02:57]
B
We're a diverse generation, that's for sure.
- [03:00]
A
And we have Millennial Andrew Burleson, chair of the board of Strong Towns. That's a role he's had since 2014. His work spans urban planning, real estate, financial, technology, publishing. Not only a founding visionary for Strong Towns, but a good friend of mine. Andrew, welcome back back to Upzoned. Am I misrepresenting Millennial? Would you claim Millennial?
- [03:25]
C
No, I am very happily a millennial. I'm still coming to grips with that. Meaning middle aged. I can't decide if that's okay or not yet, but I'm 42, so I'm just like, I guess, right on that cusp. But the thing is, I have four kids and I actually feel like that's the thing that makes me feel more okay with it. Know, like, I remember being a kid and, you know, parents, it was like by definition, the people with all the kids, those are the middle aged people. Right. So I'm just trying to think of it as a, it's not a, it's not an unwelcome milestone. It's a celebration. It's a fun time of life.
- [04:01]
A
Feeling old is a shared experience that hopefully we all get to share at some point in life. Yeah. Having two kids now in college, definitely you. You start to come to grips with the idea that time passes and you become the thing you never thought you would be, which is a little bit older every year. Andrew, start us off here. I know you had a lot of passion about this article and it was almost in a sense, like rage bait to you. I want to, I want to get your take first before we pass it to Richard and I share some of my initial thoughts on it. So go ahead.
- [04:39]
C
Well, I, you know, I guess I'll let the listeners in on. Actually, I'd actually told Chuck I wasn't sure if this was the best topic for me to chime in on because I saw this article before. Chuck asked me about it, and it really steamed me a little bit. But my wife told me it would be good for me to practice speaking about these issues with restraint. So.
- [05:02]
A
So this is like therapy for you?
- [05:04]
C
Yeah, we're going to find out if it works. But I think, okay, I think we have to face part of this is just journalists want impressions on their stories and they went and found somebody to be a very acerbic representative of the boomer generation, like right at the top we have, we'll downsize when they plant me six feet in the ground, said Victor, age 64. Okay. That's not how normal people talk or think. So if you wanted an avatar of a boomer to be angry at, they found the guy. And you know, this is why this came across my feed. I saw of people sharing this and being angry at his quote and yeah, it got me a little, a little hot too. So, you know, but I think we have to sort of like to some degree stop and say, okay, this is what journalists do, they sell entertainment. So let's see a little past that. See a little bit past that and what else is going on here and maybe that's what we can discuss.
- [05:57]
A
Richard, what was your initial impressions here? How were you, how'd you approach this article?
- [06:04]
B
I mean I really got interested in this idea of someone Moving from a 2,000 square foot house to a 5,000 square foot next door. And I actually started to wonder were they allowed to do anything with that 2,000 square foot house? And it looks like in that city maybe they could have built an 1100 square foot ADU in the backyard. I don't think many people want to do that. Becoming a part time developer can take a lot of time and things can go very, very wrong. So, you know, they made maybe a great choice and I, I don't know what's going to happen with the other house. I really thought about that quite a bit. Like, is that a tear down now because, you know, the house next door is 5,000 square feet.
- [06:46]
C
Yeah.
- [06:46]
A
It seems disproportionate to the neighborhood now. Right. There's some, something messed up there in the dynamics.
- [06:52]
B
Yeah, it feels like they were, there's something, is an incremental development is maybe not allowed or not thought of as an option. And maybe that's a problem with boomers is they're not good at thinking. I got to move to a different house. I will renovate the kitchen at great expense, but I'm not going to do a big A to you in the backyard. I don't know.
- [07:15]
A
Yeah, I had two immediate reactions here. The first one was aligned a little bit, Andrew, with I think your more, let's just say your less emotional side, which is to say, you know, this is in a sense a representative of an affluent baby boomer mindset. And that is not the, I think either a, the dominant experience of baby boomers or also the guy was 64, which I'm going to look over at Richard and say is still a young guy. Okay, let Me say this in a nice way. I know a lot of people who have entered retirement with a lot of vigor and a lot of, you know, plans and dreams. And then all of a sudden, like a switch flips, you break your leg, you suffer a heart attack, you. You meet something that changes your life in a way. These people have not come to grips with that or experienced that in the story. Hopefully they won't for decades. But at some point, everybody does, right? They're young baby boomers. And this maybe describes a very minority experience, which is young, vigorous, highly affluent baby boomers who have reached a point in life where they can, you know, fulfill every dream they had, travel the world, buy a big house, host Christmas, and, you know, da, da, da, da, da. I think it's maybe wrong to over represent that. But the other question that I had, and the thing that I kind of struggled with is we have this narrative about the idea of downsizing your experience. Is that really normal throughout history or is that like an expectation that we created? I think of like the World War II generation. And I can just look around and they. I mean, and maybe I'm misplacing this or just saying my own experience, but the people that I knew in that generation tended to live in more modest homes to begin with. There was no downsizing because they were living in more modest places. My grandpar lived in a very modest home. My wife's grandparents lived in very modest homes. I can look around and just see that they were all kind of living modestly. The baby boomers maybe had a different expectation because their baseline was just higher than what prior generations had experienced. And so was there an expectation of. Of downsizing that really is not historically based, but just like culturally anticipated to the sense where we're measuring this against something we thought might happen someday. Andrew, thoughts?
- [09:54]
C
Well, you said a couple things there. There was a line in there about, you know, one client who downsized, struggled to fit an art collection into his new home. Okay, we're not talking about normal people at this point. Like, yeah, that's just not. But to your point of the different expectations and how people think. Yeah, I think that's a real thing. There's a line in the article. Couples see their late in life residences as their dream homes. It's a celebration of their life and achievements and being able to invest in themselves. Well, yeah, my experience. And by the way, I think this is a really undervalued point. This is something I've cared about, so I don't know how deep I want to Go on this tangent. But as a Christian, this is something that I have wrestled with with my parents and their peers in the church community, that my experience is boomers really idolize houses and cars, really deeply idolize. And what you'll see is they make, in my opinion, unreasonable sacrifices to have bigger houses and nicer cars, which reflects an underlying value that they see their identity as caught up in that, as it being very, very important to how they feel about themselves and how they think other people will feel about them. To be the kind of person who has a really luxurious giant house. Now, that's just my lived experience. So that's certainly. We're talking about millions and millions of people. This is not describing everyone, but that's a common pattern I've run into. And therefore, to me, it's not surprising that that came up in the article. And it's not surprising that you would have people, if they feel that way, of course they don't want to downsize. Like that would be. The article said if you downsize, it's almost like a sentence, like you've demoted yourself to a lower social class. Okay. Or worse. I mean, I don't know what a sentence means.
- [11:45]
A
I read that as, I read that as you're acquiescing to age. Right, that too, sure.
- [11:51]
C
Yeah.
- [11:52]
A
Yeah.
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C
You're giving up.
- [11:53]
A
Yeah, Right, right. I feel like they, besides interviewing some people who had gone through this, they interviewed a lot of realtors. Realtors do a very good job of like promoting their craft right there. Yeah. Everybody's up, everybody's upsizing, everybody's buying new house. Like, get on the. Don't, don't miss out here. I wonder from a builder's standpoint if your experience has been different or if you would have a different interpretation than maybe what some of the realtors in the article suggested, as this is like a widespread phenomena.
- [12:23]
B
Well, I mean, the article says boomers were supposed to downsize. So one way or another, if you think you're supposed to upsize or you're supposed to downsize, that's kind of a problem with human behavior. I mean, people are going to do what they're going to do. So I think maybe the expectation for downsize was unrealistic. If someone is a boomer and they grow up in a, you know, 3,000 square feet house with bunch of kids, are they going to move into an 800 square foot ADU in the backyard? I mean, probably not. My dad traveled the world because he was in the foreign service, so it wasn't fancy. Fancy Art, but it's stuff from all over the world. It's nice to keep that. It's hard to put stuff, stuff like to. And so there was another article referenced in here, why older millennials are aggressively downsizing their lives before they even hit 50. So the next generation, you probably have to start early. If you wait until you're 70 and you have the art collection, it's not going to be easy at all. So I think maybe the expectation is a little bit unrealistic about the downsizing. And if someone downsizes a little bit or makes their house flexible so the kids are in home care, stays that a bit, that's a pretty neat thing. That is a variety in how people are using their housing.
- [13:45]
A
Here's a thing that I struggled with, or I feel like there's a thread here worthy of discussion. And that is just how housing as wealth shapes the way we think about decisions, spending decisions, lifestyle decisions, and what have you. Baby boomers have grown up in a period of time where housing values appreciated faster than inflation. And that's accelerated, obviously, over, you know, what would be the last 25 years. And so, you know, their experience in life has been, I buy a house, that house gains wealth way, way faster than my stock account, way faster than any savings that I might have, way faster than my pension or 401k or what have you. This has been a great, great investment. That hasn't necessarily been the case for other generations. I look at myself as being a bit behind the typical boomer. And, you know, the house that I bought went through the appreciation, you know, we built went through the appreciation in the 90s, then the rapid acceleration of the early 2000s, then a huge crash, and then, you know, there's been more volatility in there. I wonder how much of the concept or the idea of what a house should be for boomers is just based on a different set of experiences than it would be for other generations. Richard, you're nodding. You want to take that one first?
- [15:18]
B
Yeah, I think a lot going on there because if they'd stayed in the 2,000 square foot house and put put on a 1,000 square foot adu, their banker and realtor and stock advisor might have actually not been happy. Like, you don't know how well that's going to be valued. They might have been better off tearing their house down and building a McMansion. I mean, the numbers can work nicely for ADUs, but it is a pretty different thing and people don't really know how they will be assessed.
- [15:49]
C
Yeah, that's a really good point.
- [15:51]
B
So, yeah, it becomes a pretty big risk. It's a lot to ask, like, oh, why don't you do something really quirky, you know, with your house that's in their McMantins around you, but you're going to do something quirky and.
- [16:04]
C
Well, right, the quirkiness. This is something I've seen a lot in living in older cities and looking at older properties is that you will see a home that is really well suited for the people who live there. And objectively, you'd look at it and say, like, that's a really nice home, but it really struggles to sell because it's too tailored to the people who live there. And so, you know, you can't really find that buyer who needs that exact same space. But it's kind of too bad because I think that goes, Chuck, to your point you've made so many times about when our houses are these critical financial assets, personalizing our house to fit ourselves becomes a financial risk we can't afford to take, which, like, is that really the world we want to live in? But I, I have experienced that firsthand.
- [16:52]
A
Yeah, I think about, like when Michael Jordan's house came on the, the market, the idea was that this would be super, super expensive. But they couldn't find a buyer because anybody who had that kind of money didn't want the house customized in the way that Michael Jordan did. Or they were going to be buying it as like a museum piece, which is kind of ultimately what happened. Someone bought Airbnb, did I used to do lakeshore permitting for high end lakeshore properties. So I worked for a bunch of cities whose market was people from the twin cities, the Minneapolis St. Paul area, who would buy a second home, a lake home. They would generally buy a small cabin and then they would want to scrape it off and build their retirement home or their second big lake home or what have you. And the interesting phenomenon to me is that they were all building their own castle, like this is how we want it to be. And the interesting thing about it is the next person coming up was never going to buy your castle. They were going to buy the crappy cabin next door, tear it down and build it in their vision, like their new castle, because the price would essentially be the same. My theory was that ultimately this would devalue all of these. And I'm not sure as we're quite there yet, because there's still a market for, I mean, obviously there's a market for high end shoreline property, but I don't know, as the return on investment is there. Right. Is that kind of what you're getting at, Richard, is that it is a small market, but it's also a weird market. And maybe as an investment property, it's not necessarily the. The way you're going to make your return.
- [18:34]
B
Yeah, I mean, just the kind of colors they use in Europe for their kitchens. Like, they do whatever they want. They do really fun stuff. And Americans are not going to do like, you know, an orange tile because it's gonna. You're gonna lose $10,000 if you sell the house. You love it. Right. Like, there's just so many things like that. And. Yeah, but people are advised not to do that. It's hard. And you know, you do get in trouble if you do that. If you do something really beautiful. And you know, you have to even rent the house. We have a place, we did a very nice job that we're renting out. We put on a gorgeous deck. People don't care about a gorgeous deck. They want another room with a big television. And it's, you know, it's kind of humbling when you find that out. But it does tend people towards getting very conservative and just trying to do what, you know, what you're supposed to do. And I think that's kind of problematic. I mean, if we have housing choices, then the supposed to that shouldn't. Or, you know, you talked about conventional. What's conventional? There's these conventional stories and you could lose money if you go away from that. Or maybe your kids won't visit. Right. Like, maybe it's too quirky and your kids are like, dad, Grandpa, this is. I like staying at hotels. Your place is weird, Andrew.
- [19:57]
A
I feel like there is a majority baby boomer story that is not this one. And I'm gonna push you a little bit. Cause you talked about your experience with people in your congregation. And I respect that because I shake my fist at my parish council who insists on building big parking lots around the church and tearing down the neighborhood in order to make it happen. We started a new we struggle for priests yet. We started a brand new parish outside of town so that the people who live in the big homes out of town can have a parish closer to them that they can drive through with a big parking lot as opposed to coming into town. I do think though, that there is a. And I watch it happen. I watch it with my parents who are in their mid-70s, you know, solid in the baby boom generation. I watch this kind of, I don't know, Recognition that I can't maintain a 5,000 square foot house. I can't take care of this property. I think for all but the very affluent, this type of housing becomes a burden. And I see a lot of them stuck then because they are expecting or they've anticipated a high payout, but they've not anticipated a high transition cost to whatever they want to go to. There is a dearth of, at least in my community, there's a dearth of housing that would be, let's just say, like dignified for people of that age. You can move from the split entry suburban home that you had that was 2,500 square feet down to something else. But that something else is going to be assisted living or an apartment complex or something else. It's not going to be a house in a neighborhood where you kind of envision yourself living with other people. I have some empathy for, and we can say it's the self created problems that boomers have created for themselves in housing choice. But I feel like this article is not representative of what I experience as the dominant problem that many, many aged people get to when they're forced to make housing choices in today's marketplace. I don't know, do you have thoughts on that?
- [22:18]
C
I see a lot of people struggling with hard choices and I would say the kind of conversation I overhear both from the boomer generation, people who I talk with and listen to and with as a millennial, my peers talking about our parents and what our aunts and uncles and relatives are going through. And I think it's something you said earlier. A lot of people kind of hit a certain age and they've got a lot of vigor and they're sort of whatever the article said. It's a celebration of life and achievement, being able to invest in themselves. And the thing is, you don't know how long that's going to last. So my parents, when they were, I guess probably about late 50s, moved from a two story house to a one story house, like kind of similar size. But they specifically were like, yeah, we've watched other people end up in a house they can't maintain. Just exactly what you were saying, Chuck. And they didn't want that to happen to them, so they did that. But you know, they're not having any trouble with stairs yet. And they've been in the, their quote, new house more than 10 years now. I'm pretty sure I can't remember exactly what year, but you know, it's been a while that they've been there. They're not. They're not needing that yet, but they're thinking ahead. Meanwhile, you'll see some people who. And it doesn't even necessarily matter, the age, right? Like, you don't. Because you don't know. You don't know when you're going to have problems. But I have heard the conversation of, oh, did you hear what? You know, uncle so and so he just bought that big place, and I don't know, it's a bad idea. Why did I know? My, My grandparents moved when they were in their, I think, early 70s, moved out of Dallas, where they had lived forever, out to a golf course community two hours outside of Dallas. And they were so excited about this. And the whole family conversation was all like, oh, what are they doing? You know, like, they're gonna. They're. They're throwing away this. Like, they. Cause they lived in a house that was close to family and where they could have, you know, could easily maintain and move to a place that was far away from any kind of support. Now, you know, I don't think they regretted that ultimately, because they just had always kind of wanted to have their house in the woods, and they did it late in life. But people do get stuck. People do get stuck, and they do end up making decisions that seemed like maybe a small risk at the time, and then it just didn't, you know, it didn't work out. And that's hard. And so I think. I also think it's very human to, like, I guess that's the last thing I would say on this is it's very human to feel like nobody is excited about getting older and having that come with new limitations that, like, no one wants their body to begin to struggle. That's not an experience any of us look forward to having. And so I think it's very natural and normal to want to tell yourself, like, I'm not going to struggle with that. I'm not going to have that problem. I'm going to be the person driving when I'm 90, and I'll be fine. And then if it ends up that you aren't, and you made decisions two years earlier that, you know, really are hurting you now, it's like, well, I mean, okay, you rolled the dice and you lost and that that hurts. But it's not like I could say I would never roll those same dice, you know, Like, I. I think it's very human to. To want to have the experiences you wanted to have, even if they seem a little late in coming.
- [25:31]
A
Richard One of the things in the article, it talked about families, boomer families who are welcoming their kids back into the spare bedrooms and welcoming, you know, building a backyard cottage and having their. Their kids and their kids. Families live in those places. My experience has actually been the opposite. And I feel like if we can accelerate the opposite, the world would be a much better place. And by the opposite, I mean the kids owning the house or running the house and the parents living in the backyard cottage or, you know, having a spare bedroom or two. I, I've experienced that myself a few times. I've seen that in a number of places and have it work out really, really well. I don't know if you have a take on that or not, or if you've seen it one way or the other work out better. But to me, there seems like a natural kind of evolution of a thing where, okay, you know, the, the, the parents don't need the huge place anymore, but they would like to be close. They would, and everyone would like them close. They like to live together, they like to live near each other. I don't know what's been your, what's been your experience with that.
- [26:41]
B
I mean, there could be a Midwest versus east coast city difference with that, what the expectations are. I mean, we know some good friends of my mom, they moved. I think it was King William county, about 40 minutes outside of Richmond. Beautiful old house. Fix up an old structure to be like an adu. Put in a beautiful swimming pool, some beautiful trees. For 20 years, they were hoping their grandkids and kids would visit a lot more. And then they moved away from that. And that's kind of. I'm encouraged to hear your story because I think that can be sad when you have the really big house. It might go great for two or three years, and then if the kids get really busy, you just may not see them. And then I think that's the case where a lot of parents will move out of that house, maybe not sell it as a big gain, because it actually might be, you know, quirky. The article talked about professional grade meat cutter to cut prosciutto. Well, maybe that just doesn't feel right for some people. You know, maybe the house next door, if they put in a large adu, would do better. And there's something a little unusual. This is a side thing. Maybe it doesn't make sense in here, but Kevin Vonk, our director of planning and development review, we're doing a code refresh. We already have. You can build ADUs by right, but he is suggesting you can build ADU up to a thousand square foot larger than your original house. So if you have an 800 square foot house, you could build a thousand square foot ADU. You could do that. You could do the east coast thing where you're actually moving up into a bigger house, you know, use the smaller house for your kids or do something later. And I think if there's more flexibility, I think that helps people from, you know, getting stuck with something that's too small or too big.
- [28:39]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [28:40]
A
Before we switch into the down zone, Andrew, I'm going to give you and Richard both last thoughts here on the article. Anything you, anything we haven't covered that you want to make sure we chat about.
- [28:53]
C
Well, maybe not the article, but just the last thing you guys were just saying. I actually think there's an under explored, I don't know, topic of multigenerational housing in general where like as we're talking about this, we're talking a lot about, you know, kind of a hierarchical relationship, right. Who gets the big house, who gets the little house, which is, is the ADU actually the big house. Maybe in some cases. Right. But there's kind of a lot of thinking about like the bit the good, the bigger better and the like smaller, worse. And you know, I think we have from historical, you know, cultural, I don't know, like inheritance, we have this idea of the aging grandparents who need a modest place to live out their last few years. Well, you know, we're all living a lot longer. We're healthier longer. That's a wonderful thing. You know, we talked about earlier. Maybe people aren't excited to like embrace that before they have to and so they want to keep the bigger house for longer, etc. Etc. Okay, the point being, I think we get a little hung up on that, like who gets the big one, who gets the small one. And I, I think there's actually probably a lot of opportunity in the next generation to have new types of housing, like new actual building types where, what if you lived around a courtyard and it had, you know, six bedrooms and two kitchens or whatever, but you had two generations and you know, several. And that is actually starting to happen. Like, I think that's, this is one of those like quiet trends, especially on the west coast, where new multigenerational housing is starting to be built, where it doesn't look like a big house and a small house or like a good house and a bad house, and, and that there's some clear better unit that one of the people is arguing over, but rather that it's just more of a shared communal living arrangement that puts everyone in a little bit more equal footing. And you use the word dignified earlier, Chuck. Like I think, I think for both, you know, for, for, for, for parents, I don't think anybody who lives in the backyard is unaware that they live in the backyard. You know what I mean? Like that shape, that form of that house creates a certain implication and that's not a bad thing at all. But you can understand why the parent living there might feel like, oh, I'm kind of, I'm kind of accepting my decline. And the child living there might feel like I'm accepting my failure to launch, you know, like I haven't really achieved what I thought I would have. So I just think there's probably a lot of opportunity in the next, you know, the time ahead of us to actually have different ways of arranging space that make people feel like they could live a multi generational life that was actually better than just, you know, a backyard cottage. Now I love backyard cottages. I think we should have so many more of those. So that's not a knock on those at all. But just to say there's many more options on the table, I think such
- [31:37]
A
an interesting cultural place we've gotten ourselves to. Richard, some last thoughts before we go to the down zone.
- [31:43]
B
I really appreciate that, Andrew. I think multi general housing, we're a little bit ambivalent about it in many other cultures it's actually admired and it's a very positive thing. And you know, the whole idea now is there's Social Security and your parents should make a good amount of money so they're going to be able to take care of themselves when they're older. They don't, you don't want them moving in and you don't want to move in with them. That's a, that's a low status, that's a, that's a bad thing. So in that sense this article was kind of a positive thing. How fantastic. They moved into a bigger house and they want to get their kids in that house as much as possible. They're making it, you know, what they do in five years might be different. They can change things. They could pro possibly add Nadu to that house and you know, have someone stay in it. I, I'm a little bothered by the article that it was a little static. The whole thing. It's this either or, it's either you're terrified of the future and you need to downsize into a teeny home because things are going to Go bad or you're doing really well and you know, pry my big, my upsized house out of my cold dead hands kind of thing that does really well for selling media, but that's not where people are. Maybe separate thing. I am fascinated. My mother lives in a neighborhood in Northern Virginia which is a pretty expensive area. But her neighborhood happens to have many, many houses that haven't changed that much. And it's kind of surprising. Those are pretty good jobs around there. And there may be 1800 square foot houses that don't have fancy additions. A lot of people live there. They don't do the big addition. They stay in their houses. They do minor changes, they do incremental changes. But that's not as interesting a story as grandma moving from the 4,000 square foot house into the small ADU in the backyard. And it's all working out well. She comes and eats with the family or the opposite, the wealthy family that has the kids hanging out in the playroom.
- [33:42]
A
The baby boomers throughout my life have been this obviously massive force reshaping everything. I think I've started to recognize it first when Harley Davidson stock went through the roof when they all reached their 50s and now Harley Davidson went through bankruptcy because they're all in their 70s and you know, no longer trying to relive that era of their youth. Right. That live that dream. I had two uncles who bought Harleys and then one got in a bad crash and you know, regrets now probably doing it, but you know, what have you. It's interesting thing as we talk about housing, I always think like, yeah, if, if the millennials can hold on to their 50s, there's going to be a lot of homes available and they're going to be priced pretty reasonably because there'll be a glut in the market at some point. I, I don't think that's necessarily like the factor driving housing today, but it is a reality, is that, you know, things are going to, things will shift and time does go on. And it's a very, it's an interesting thing to have a boom, right, Like a bubble that goes through life, shaping everything. And I, I think one of the things the millennials have often not appreciated is that, you know, they are also a boom, a bubble. They're, they're an echo of the baby boom and they kind of live in that, that wake that my generation, Gen X has learned to surf a little bit, maybe just like get beaten up by the waves. Anyway, I've given myself the last word. Let's shift to the, the down zone. The down zone is a, our own quirky little thing where we ask our guests to talk about one thing going on in their life and pop culture. Something they've, they've been reading or watching or, or, or taking in. I'll start just to get it going. I, I am in the final, I think the final four weeks now, three weeks of putting together the manuscript on the next Strung Downs book. And that usually forces me to not go deep into any other things that are going to rob me of, of thinking capacity. So I actually was listen last week or so to the book called Regime Change Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. And Bob Woodward used to write these books about every president. And I actually found them to be going back to George W. Bush. I was listening to those and the ones for the Obama administration and the first Trump administration, I actually found those to be really kind of helpful in a balanced journalism kind of way. You know, it's not current events reporting, but it's very current reporting. So it kind of puts a spin on that. This one was, I want to say in the same vein, obviously not written by Woodward, but I think the reporting was good and in as much as it can be, you know, a balanced take on something that has happened recently. I felt like it was a very good attempt to try to explain what is going on and put you in the room and the scenes of some of the things that have been in the news recently. So I got a lot out of the book. I thought it was really good. Andrew, you have a down zone to share this week.
- [36:55]
C
Yeah, I wanted to, I guess, give a shout out or give some spotlight to a newsletter I really enjoy, which is called Kids Over Cars. And the author, Darren Thacker is a former US DOT staffer who, he and his family have kind of adopted this nomad life where they are going around exploring the world and essentially photographing and telling little stories about every playground and every, you know, waterfront and, I don't know, museum and grocery store and all the little things that they have found around the world that are really fun and friendly to their children. And they have two, they have two young kids and it's just really great. It's just encouraging and it's full of all kinds of things basically showing in the spaces where kids are, are able to roam free, how much fun they can have and how much joy that can bring to, to the people around them. So anyway, yeah. Darren Thacker, Kids Over Cars. Highly recommended for anyone who likes to see kids having a good time.
- [38:02]
A
Andrew before we get Richard's town zone, I forgot to mention at the top that you have a substack that is similar. You just reminded me. What's the name of your substack so people can follow you?
- [38:13]
C
Free Range City. So you can find it online. Freerange City. And yeah, Darren is a kindred spirit. I don't really know him personally. We've chatted on substack once or twice. But it is not surprising that I really enjoy his work.
- [38:29]
A
Yeah, yeah. Richard, you have a down zone to share.
- [38:33]
B
I love architecture books, so this isn't down. Well, it is down zone because they're really pleasurable for me. Last year, episode number 42 of the Building Culture, they talked about the North Atlantic Cities by Charles Duff. And it's just a really fun read about, you know, architecture with just some good. So much, so many literary references that help you to understand why people live in certain houses. A lot of fascinating economic stuff about how Manhattan gets crowded out by all the shipping coming across the ocean, that luxury apartments are being used to store goods. And then there's this suburbanization. People are running away from Manhattan because there's no space in Manhattan. There's all the shipping coming in. Just a really, really lovely book and just he's fun. He, you know, sees the beauty and where people live and how they live and their decisions about housing.
- [39:35]
A
That's Richard Romero. He is part of Strong Towns RVA Historic Property Renovator in Richmond, Virginia. Andrew Burleson is our board chair. Thank you both of you for being here today. Want to thank everybody for listening. If you're a baby boomer, we love you. We're glad you're here. We're glad you're part of our conversation. If you're not a baby boomer, if you're a millennial. Yeah, we love you too. Gen X. You know, you don't need affirmations. So we're good. And all you young gen zers, I'm really excited about the future that you're going to bring too. So everybody, we're happy you're here, happy you're part of our conversation. Keep doing what you can to build a strong town and we'll talk to you next time. Take care. Let me show you what I'm about to do.
- [40:18]
B
Get up. This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a non profit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a strongtowns member@strongtowns.org membership.