Zoning Reform Is Only Step 1 in Fighting the Housing Crisis

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Upzoned

Episode Title: Zoning Reform Is Only Step 1 in Fighting the Housing Crisis
Date: December 10, 2025
Host: Abby Newsham (Planner, Kansas City)
Guest: Edward Erfurt (Chief Technical Advisor, Strong Towns)

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode dives into the hot topic of state-level zoning preemption as a response to the housing crisis, focusing on Utah's proposal to override local zoning powers to increase housing supply. The conversation explores whether such state interventions truly address affordability, or if deeper reforms are necessary—including changes to finance, development culture, and support for small-scale builders.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Utah’s Zoning Preemption Proposal: Context and Debate

• Utah faces a projected shortfall of 50,000 homes within a decade (00:55).
• State leadership is considering overriding local zoning to encourage higher-density housing (00:20). This would follow similar moves in other states focused on increasing "supply, supply, supply."
• The traditional suburban, single-family character of Utah makes this move especially significant.

Memorable Quote:

"State preemption is really not about saying people must do this, but rather more so about letting people do what they want."
— Abby Newsham summarizing Ali Quinlan (01:22)

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2. Why State Preemption Often Fails to Deliver Affordable Housing

Edward Erfurt draws from on-the-ground examples to explain why legalizing denser housing types (“allowed by right”) doesn’t always translate to new construction (“possible in practice”).

• Barriers beyond zoning:
  • Overly complex permitting processes, especially for small projects like ADUs (03:34–06:09).
  • Lack of contractors and labor trained or willing to build small-scale infill housing (06:09).
  • Difficulties in obtaining financing for new housing types (06:09–07:42).

Notable Quote:

“Just doing a preemption, just allowing [something], ... if we don't have people on the ground at the most local level that understand the aspects of this, it's not going to go anywhere.”
— Edward Erfurt (07:42)

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3. The “Allowed by Right” Paradox & Construction Realities

• Legal permission does not equal feasibility; development economics favor projects with economies of scale (08:03–11:44).
• In Kansas City, most new ADUs result not from new builds, but from splitting lots with existing accessory units—enabling small starter homes using the existing housing stock.

“Just because they are allowed by right doesn't mean that we're suddenly going to see tons and tons of accessory dwelling units or cottage houses.”
— Abby Newsham (08:03)

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4. Housing Types and Financial Products

• The prevalence of only single-family homes and "5-over-1" apartment structures is driven not by planning trends, but by standardized loan products (12:38).
• California’s mixed results with ADU preemption: only after builders and financiers adapted did ADU construction scale up (12:38–13:34).

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5. What Should States Actually Do?

Erfurt suggests states have a bigger role than just rewriting zoning laws:

• Workforce Development: Invest in training builders and revitalizing the trades to deliver a diversity of housing types (13:44).
• Tackling Complexity: State mandates often tie up both large and small cities in professional fees and code rewrites, making it hard for small towns to comply (16:19–18:06).
• Provide Support: States could fund code updates or provide technical assistance to lighten the burden on municipalities (18:06).

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6. The Regional Approach vs. Local Control

• The ideal scale for housing policy is regional because housing markets span across municipal boundaries—but politics makes this difficult, leading states to intervene (19:39).
• Erfurt and Newsham agree that new developments should "thicken up" traditional urban cores, not disrupt built-out, finished suburban neighborhoods (32:54–34:29).

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7. The Limits of Zoning Reform & Need for Culture Shift

• Zoning reform is necessary but insufficient; the real challenge is the culture of how—and by whom—development happens (34:29–36:15).
• Supporting local small-scale developers and building "implementation capacity" is much more impactful for affordability and economic resilience than any sweeping zoning code revision.

Notable Quote:

“...Training [developers] ... that Inc Dev and Neighborhood Evolution have really dialed into—that is exponentially more powerful than just creating a mandate across the state.”
— Edward Erfurt (36:35–38:06)

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8. Empowerment, Wealth-Building, and a New American Dream

• True housing reform shifts from a single-family "ownership" ideal to broader opportunities for local residents—enabling small business owners and individuals to own, rehab, and profit from real estate (38:06–40:32).
• Social accountability is higher when development is local, not when “an army of out-of-town experts” comes in (40:32–41:25).

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9. Final Takeaways

State Preemption: Useful, not Sufficient

• Removing zoning barriers is just a start. Financing, construction culture, permitting, and technical know-how are just as critical.
• The best housing reform strategies combine top-down support (like code updates, builder development, and access to capital) with bottom-up empowerment of local “doers.”
• The “housing crisis” is, at its root, about systems, not just policy.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On the real challenge:

  “The biggest paradox...is that just because it’s created locally doesn’t mean that it becomes usable by citizens that are non-professionals.”
  — Abby Newsham (23:34)

• On process complexity:

  “We’re not doing skyscrapers or bridges over the Grand Canyon. We’re trying to figure out how to get 10 houses on a street and we’ve got this army of people to review all of these pieces.”
  — Edward Erfurt (27:38)

• On culture change:

  “It is about changing the culture of building and trying to find ways to finance this stuff...incredibly valuable because it's about implementation—actually making things happen, not just enabling them to happen.”
  — Abby Newsham (34:29–42:33)

• On what states should do:

  “If the governor really wanted to make an impact to lower housing costs...I would start with the building code.”
  — Edward Erfurt (22:19)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• State Preemption in Utah: Context – 00:18–03:34
• Why Preemption Isn’t Enough – 03:34–08:03
• Allowed vs. Feasible; Construction Realities – 08:03–13:34
• Policy Recommendations & Regionalism – 13:34–20:39
• Barriers for Small Developers – 25:54–32:54
• Building Culture, Training, and Financing – 34:29–43:21
• Summary & Closing Thoughts – 43:21–44:25

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Tone & Takeaways

• Thoughtful, practical, but skeptical of “easy solutions”
• Emphasizes both technical and cultural barriers to reform
• Urges listeners to think beyond zoning—toward financing, capacity building, and empowering local actors

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Concluding Insights

• Zoning reform is a crucial first step, but it must be matched with investments in people, skills, and systems that truly enable inclusive, affordable, human-scaled development.
• Empowering local people to be developers and owners, not just residents, is central to economic resilience and community character.
• Top-down reform works best when paired with bottom-up support.

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(Ads, intros, and outros omitted as per instructions)

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

This is Abby and you are listening to Upzoned.

Hey everyone, thanks for listening to another episode of Upzone, a show where we take a big story from the news each week that touches the Strong Towns conversation. And. And we Upzone it. We talk about it in depth. My name's Abby Newsham. I am your host and I'm a planner in Kansas City. And today I am joined by our friend Edward Erfert, who is the chief technical advisor at Strong Towns. Welcome, Edward.

[B]

Hey, thanks for having me, Abby.

[A]

It's always great to have you on. I feel like you're becoming a more regular guest here.

[B]

Well, you pick all these really spicy articles and I have lots of opinions, so I love it.

[A]

Yeah, this is going to be a fun one because you actually just wrote an article about this topic, so I'm excited to hear your thoughts on this, so I'll just jump right in. So this article is entitled Utah's governor suggests overriding local Zoning. Could his plan solve or shatter the state's housing future? This was published in realtor.com so as the title says, Utah leadership is flown floating the idea of taking zoning power away from cities in the state in order to allow for higher density housing. His primary message has been basically supply, supply, supply. This would make Utah the newest addition to a handful of states across the US that have used preemption powers to override local restrictions on housing supply. According to the article, Utah is on track to be 50,000 homes short in the next decade and the median home price is now five times higher than the median income. This has come as somewhat of a surprise, particularly because Utah is known for being a pretty suburban friendly place with lots, lots of social conventions supporting homeownership and the nuclear family structure. But according to our friend Ali Quinlan, who is quoted in this article, state preemption is really not about saying people must do this, but rather more so about letting people do what they want. She argues that states should remove government regulations that prevent people from doing. Very practical, very common and very historical approaches to the way we used to build towns. And in short, building housing that is in attunement with our direct needs. Is a more a more reflective American tradition to our history than building sprawling single family neighborhoods which really only became the convention in the last 70 years or so. So we've talked about state preemption quite a few times on Upzoned and it's been a while, but I think the conversation has evolved a bit. And Edward, you actually just released an article on Strong towns entitled why State housing reform is failing and what we can do about it. And you're kind of spelling out why state wide preemption efforts aren't producing expected outcomes. So I want to start by asking you why state preemption isn't the silver bullet to housing affordability in your view.

[B]

Yeah. So I was out in Arizona, out in Flagstaff, and they're really having this heavy debate in Flagstaff. What I found so interesting in the city is that their city council has created a housing emergency. They proclaim that they're in a housing emergency, and they have gone out and had the planners figure out ways to help with housing. And in Arizona, they created some preemptions to allow for rear cottages, accessory dwelling units, so that you could do it in lots of cities. And it was set to be like the higher density cities and it was near transit. You know, all of the types of things that would make planners feel good for that type of smaller housing. And in Flagstaff, with their housing emergency, the planners explained to me that they extended this out over the entire city so you could go, you didn't have to be near transit. You could be anywhere in the city and do this. And then a couple people tried to go and build these rear cottages and they could, they hit every barrier you could imagine. The first is that these, the permitting process was just overly complicated. So even though you could build an accessory dwelling unit or a rear yard cottage, the process to go through it was as onerous as if you're building a brand new house. So you have this little tiny 500 square foot or 400 square foot rear cottage. It's where maybe a garage exists today. But we have to go through all of that process that we would do for a brand new house, and all of that is driving up costs. Then when people try to finance these, it wasn't like something you could just go to your bank account and borrow from. You have to go get a loan because of the cost. And the numbers they ran to me, which really, I don't want to throw the exact numbers out because they vary so much around the country. But the square footage costs were astronomical. It was as if you were building with Italian marble and using, you know, slate roofs. But, but these are just little, like that's the type of price point. What I found there is that even though you could do housing, even though the policies set up from the city council saying that we're in a housing emergency, this is a way for us to deliver on that.

The city staff, their zoning code, their comprehensive plan, had not caught up to these small units, they couldn't actually do this smaller increment. The other thing that occurred on this is that because that was that barrier, then finding the contractors to build that. If you had the choice of building a big house on the edge of town with no neighbors and you were going to get paid, that what you're going to get paid for that, versus trying to build in town a more complicated building environment with neighbors and smaller staging areas. The builders just threw their hands up and said, I'm not going to do that. And if I'm going to build in those areas, I'm going to charge more for it. So again, driving those costs up. And finally, when people go to the bank, the funding mechanisms for these, they're there, they're out there. But just coming on the market the first time, doing these in a community, it's not readily available. Those resources aren't there. And if you're. So you make it hard to get it permitted, you make it hard to find builders to do it, and then you make it hard to do financing. It doesn't matter what the state gave a preemption for on the ground. The operators aren't figuring it out. And I see this in many cities where.

You know, we go and we try to make it easy, but just doing a preemption, just allowing it, and we can put all different types of terms behind it, we can allow it by right, we can encourage it. If we don't have people on the ground at the most local level that understand the aspects of this, it's not going to go anywhere.

[A]

So you said something in your article. You talk about the difference between allowed by right and possible in practice, which I think is such a simple way of breaking down this issue, because I think ADUs, that's a big one. That's one that, I mean, we see all around the country. Cities are starting to permit ADUs, which is awesome, and they should permit ADUs. But just because they are allowed by right doesn't mean that we're suddenly going to see tons and tons of accessory dwelling units or cottage houses. And that's what I've experienced as well here in Kansas City is that people are now allowed technically to build accessory dwelling units all across the city. But construction really does favor economies of scale. And so it's extremely expensive to build an accessory dwelling unit. It's great for properties that had existing accessory dwelling units. We have a lot of historic neighborhoods with historic, you know, cottage housing that is on site, like detached garages that have an apartment above it. And what I'm actually seeing happen now is people are starting to split their lots to sell those existing accessory dwelling units. So they're no longer accessory but rather starter homes, small scale starter homes that people can buy, which to me that is like it's not a silver bullet, but that's like my favorite innovation in the housing world right now is just breaking down lots and allowing people to buy a little house in neighborhoods with lots of different types of houses using existing building stock. And I don't know how you get to. I guess, you know, this article that we're covering is asking whether or not this strategy of state preemption is going to solve or shatter the state's housing future in Utah. And I, I think what, what they're really trying to do here is align housing policy and allowances with, with larger projects. The, the ability for people to build like large 5 over 1 podium Apartment buildings because that is really what people can build these days. And construction favors economy of scale. I think my big question is what policies would better align with construction realities and can you actually make small units happen in an affordable way, in a way that scales to the extent that large apartment building scale for developers? I would really like to see our society have the ability to build small units at a scale that doesn't necessarily look like these five over one podium apartment buildings. Can we, can we build accessory dwelling units and make it easier, cheaper, faster to do? Can we make it a viable business decision for people, something that people actually feel like there's an incentive to do? Same goes for duplexes, townhomes, just all these really small housing types. That seems like something that we have not been able to figure out as a society. And I don't know that we will anytime soon.

[B]

Yeah, what I see on this is that.

When we're looking at the world, Abby, and we see the five over one or we see the single family with the two car garage. What I see more than housing and, and I think Chuck has pointed this out many, many times, what we're actually looking at are two financial products that just coincidentally create housing. A developer can go to the bank and go and get funding for a 5 over one. They can go into the bank and get a mortgage for a single family detached house because the banks are willing to sell those, their federally backed mortgages. These are things that the banks then also can resell. They can bundle them and resell and make money on. So that's a very easy thing for banks to get lots of Money out on the street.

So that is what we see in those pieces. What has been shown in California when they did their preemptions and allowed ADUs across the state. So the rear cottages by right in California. If you look at the mapping that has been laid out on this of how many units per year, it took a long time for California to start to see ADUs show up on permitting where people could do it. And the first thing that occurred is that there were builders that were willing to build these. So that was ahead of the game in many places. But there wasn't the financing for wasn't until the builders really worked through and figured out the finance models and getting the banks on board with this type of housing type so they could go and start to build. Once they unlocked that, they got that to scale.

When I look at Utah, I mean Utah is an amazing state. It's got some really urban cities, but it has a vast landscape.

When I look at those things, what, what could a state do? Okay, so we allow that. We, we preempt this, we allow this type of housing type or, or a variety of housing types across the state. We abolish the single family zoning, we allow people to do four to six units on a lot. We abolish the minimum lot size. That's all great. Those are things that help to move that forward. But at a state level, there are other tools that I don't have at a municipal level that could help like building the cohort of developers and builders. When we look at all of our community colleges, when we look at what we're offering in high school, are we teaching people the trades to build.

To deliver that type of housing? And.

I find with all of these is that.

The well intentioned preemptive mandates all sudden have created. And we look in this article, the pushback that's coming to the governor on this is coming from the Republican party and it's coming from local cities that are saying, hey, you're taking away our home rule, you're taking away our ability to locally govern our communities. And again, what's happening with that type of preemption is the debate is not about housing, it's about the little fiefdoms of all of our cities.

[A]

It's about control.

[B]

It's all about that control. And I worked in a city and did a lot of advocacy to protect our home rule rights as a city. So I get that. But these debates, nobody is going to battle, you know, the, the battle here and all the messaging is not going to be around Housing. And even if this goes through and they make it through all the legal things, the whole debate of this is going to be about the rights of cities. And that really puts us all at odds with state government, because there are things that our cities really need our state governments to do to support our housing and our communities. And we just seem to get in this distraction.

[A]

So do you think that state preemption is part of the puzzle, or do you think that this is something that individual municipalities should be debating and doing kind of on their own?

[B]

I think it's a tool. I don't think it's the tool. I don't think it's the first tool I would do. I mean, I think on these things, the. So here. Here's what I saw. Every time that our state legislature would. Would rewrite something when it came to land use, you. You have two scenarios. You have a city that has a big planning staff and a really, really thick land development code. And all the performance standards associated with whatever preemption are in five or six areas of the code. And you're already a busy community, so you have lots of permits coming in, and your staff is just overworked. And now you have to rewrite your zoning code to accommodate that preemption. And it's like every tentacle. So we have to go in and update fence and parking and landscaping and all those things in there. And we spent a lot of money then to hire consultants to come in and help rewrite the code. And everybody gets upset because we're changing the code and we're rehashing the fact that we no longer have the right to choose the type of housing we want in a local level, and you just get stuck and marred down in that. The other scenario is that you're a small community, that maybe you don't have a planning department, maybe you are very light on your zoning in those performance standards, and now you've got to somehow insert that. You're allowed to do this, and you have to administer it. And in those small towns where this housing is really needed, again, you get marred down in trying to chase what the legislature has mandated you to do. And I just don't see those as either of those as a positive outcome of this.

[A]

That's a good point, I think. I mean, at the very least, states who go through with preemption of these kinds of issues, it'd be nice if they provided some support to cities so that they now don't have to turn around and pay to have consultants update their code saying that as someone in consulting, like, I mean, is a cost on cities that now they need to go into their code and try to update everything. Which is. Sounds simple, but it's is not. You know, it's like I feel like with zoning it's like you touch one thing and it touches eight other things. It's just ongoing. So that, that's something that actually could be a pretty big lift for smaller communities, really any communities. So I'm with you on that. One thing that I, I think about a lot is, you know, I, I'm not confident that we should be looking at this approach to basically for individual municipalities to come around on these issues, you know, little by little and kind of come up with all their own versions of, of allowing different housing types. I'm not completely convinced that that's like technically the best way of, of addressing the broader housing market because the housing market really is a regional market. And then you have, you know, areas with more or less pressure. But it really is a regional issue. And I wish in a perfect world that these things were dealt with in a more regional way. But politically that is probably something that will never happen. Hence why states are stepping in and doing this at a state level. But I wish that we did a lot of different things at the regional level level in planning. And not to say that there's like a one size fits all solution, but I think if we were able to look at things that are regional, which is the housing market, from a regional perspective and able to maybe come up with lots of, you know, local solutions. But, but it fits into a regional picture and is rational from. In that respect, I wish that we were able to come up with that kind of system to regulating and managing land use issues.

[B]

And there are things that we could do at that regional level, especially the support from the state. So at a regional level, let's look at our regional local banks and let's work with them to identify the financing available. And in markets where financing is difficult or there's higher risk, if the state wants to do something, why can't the state or the cities go in and help be guarantors of that the most to gain out of these investments? So going in there and supporting that the zoning codes are so tough because every municipality. So you. When you go down and you think you've got people, counties and cities and townships and overlays and historic. It's like this quagmire that's all from the bottom up that now the top down trying to push on the, the one Area that the state legislature has full control of that impacts our building environment. The one set of state standards that all of the states are adopting that go through the state legislature is the building code.

Building code. What I like about the building code is it is agnostic to your community. It basically is outlining the forces of gravity, the wind loads. You know, there's some regional components to it, but in general, the way that buildings get put together is the same across your state.

The state. If the governor really wanted to make an impact to lower housing costs, if the governor wanted, or the legislature wanted to go and impact something that would impact everybody across the state, but not require all of this retraining and not take away city municipal home rule rights, I would start with the building code. What are the things that we've adopted in the building code, the energy code, our electrical, our fire codes, all of those pieces statewide level that's making housing less affordable and more complicated to construct?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, that's actually something that in Missouri is a big conversation really happening on the east side of the state. There's a whole campaign to have a statewide building code because we do have the. This issue of local municipalities adopting all different building codes and you know, a lot of debate about what the best path forward is. But there is a group that's advocating to have a state building code established in Missouri.

I do want to kind of touch on this, like this paradox of local approaches to regulations because while establishing your own local building codes under many different geographies across a state, across a metropolitan area is, we can kind of think of it as bottom up, because yes, it's going through these localized processes and is being written at the local level. The irony of that is that it ends up requiring experts and paying professionals to navigate because it's also complicated, which then further, it further favors large scale development projects and not localized development projects done by citizens that are not professional developers. And that's, I think that's a big paradox that we should be thinking about because we need to be thinking about who's using these systems and who we want to be able to use these systems. And while, you know, people will make the case that, well, we need our local zoning code because it's our bottom up, you know, local localized approach, and we curate everything to this very particular context, etc. That's true, but we do need to be thinking about who we want to be utilizing these and how challenging these tools are to use. Because, I mean, I'm thinking of my own city and many cities that if you are not a local or if you're not a professional developer that really understands this stuff, you're going to have a very, very difficult time navigating these systems. And I know planners that do know these systems that have become small developers and have had a very hard time navigating these systems from the other side of the coin. So something worth thinking about, I think, is that paradox that just because it's created locally doesn't mean that it becomes usable by citizens that are non professionals.

[B]

Well, I, I like the image that folks talk about when they talk about developers coming to town and when they go and present projects and they talk about, you know, like the evils of the, the team that comes in for the evil development project, right? There's the two attorneys that show up, there's the couple land use planners, there's the engineer. They're, you know, all this whole army that has to show up to present a project. And that it's, you know, in our world of nimby, this is perceived as like the evils of development. I see something different with that. I sit there and I wonder why does it, what does an attorney know about land plans? Like what, what law school course they took on that? And I get, there's land use law and contract law. But like understanding the street width, that's really what an attorney is best to explain. Then we go through and it's like, now we've hired a planner that should know how all of this works and understanding the code. But we've got to have like two of them. And then we've got to have the engineer to tell us where the water goes and how all this works. We've created such a system that we have this whole team of folks. And then at city hall, they're, okay, well, let's bring out the team. When I was in Florida and we're talking about like 2009, 2010, where nothing was being built, our development review team was 17 people around the table to administer a code.

None of that makes sense to me. We're not doing skyscrapers or bridges over the Grand Canyon. We're trying to figure out how to get 10 houses on a street. And we've got this army of people to review all of these pieces. And so when I say that it may be possible, you can come in, hey, can I build this thing in your town? Yes, you can. Here are the 45 things you need to prove that you're accomplishing. Here's the studies you need to do that. Zero impact on everybody.

And then here is the year long public engagement process you have to go through to do it. So you can.

If you do all of this, performance standards, and guess what, when you get to the end of it, your 12 unit apartment building is going to be single family detached house on a 2 acre lot, like whittled it down. So no matter what you submit, yes, you can do the apartment building. But in fact all of our performance standards, without even getting to finance, result in one outcome like that is, that's the system that I'm very frustrated with that we've got to untangle if we want to achieve affordability and housing at scale across the country.

[A]

Yeah, I totally agree with you on that. I feel like if you have to hire a very expensive attorney to navigate a process for a, you know, simple project, that means that your system is messed up, that your zoning code is not operating the way it really ought.

[B]

To be because you're, you're demanding a larger scale of increment than your community can digest.

[A]

Yeah, that's a good point. Because you need to have someone to manage the compliance and the process from a legal perspective. And that adds a ton of cost to projects as well. I mean, especially if you're building like a duplex or an ADU or whatever, if you have to have an attorney managing that process for you, that's, that's not going to be an affordable house at all.

[B]

No, all of that. So as we go through and we look at the things that like the state level, it is easy for a governor to say by edict I'm going to allow this type of housing across the whole state. Like that is easy. And everybody can say great, that's going to do this. That's going to create a bunch of supply. And I'm sure I'm going to upset our folks in our yimby movements that also not all that supplies are going to lead to all of this lower cost housing.

Our world is way more complicated than that.

The questions I would be asking are what are the things that are holding you up? What are the things that are pushing you back? And we do an exercise in our accelerator program. When we do our bottom up Revolution course. The very first thing we do is we ask folks to pull up the map of their community like on Google Earth and we ask them to identify the traditional development pattern in their city. So where are the places that there's a grid of streets and a mix of uses? You know, sometimes that's your historic core. Like where is that place in your city? And Then you see all the rest of the city. What's the rest of the stuff? That historic core, that traditional development pattern is the proven complex neighborhood pattern. Everything else is the merely complicated. The suburban shopping mall, the isolated subdivisions, all of those areas. It's really hard to throw in all of these preemptions into a development pattern across the US that we have designed and financed and developed to build everything out to a finished state. So, like, just, just saying, okay, in the suburban area, you, that you, your HOA restricts everything in your life on your property. The only thing we're going to see a change on is the landscaping is going to grow and we're going to allow you to change the color of your front door. It's really hard to come in and say, oh, yeah, by the way, now you're allowed to do this, like other increment of development. I mean, that's jarring in those particular neighborhoods. And it sets up a battle that I think is one we don't need to have. We could be working in our traditional development patterns, thickening up where we expect to see changes to get a foothold on this. We can build trust that we can actually do simple requirements to perform to make sure this stuff works. We can test it out in those neighborhoods before we go and we start kicking the hornet's nest.

[A]

Yeah, I agree with you there. I mean, I think there's a lot of places in our country that have been built out to a finished state. And when I think of housing variety, I mean, my mind really goes to urban areas. I think maybe everybody thinks about this a little differently. But yeah, I think, I mean, and I'm probably biased because I, I live in the city, in, in my city, but yeah, there's, there's tons of neighborhoods that have vacant lots and empty space and opportunities to thicken up. And that really feels like the priority here. I mean, it's where your transit is. It's where you have your most efficient land use patterns, your opportunity to build where existing and aging infrastructure exists. I mean, this seems like the most fiscally productive approach to enabling more housing. I think a lot of people would, would, would agree with that. I mean, it's. I don't think a lot of people are thinking of, you know, going into some subdivision on the outskirts of town and this is where this should go. But when you have these state preemption efforts, I think for some people, that's where their mind goes, is that suddenly in my single family neighborhood, we're going to have this like, huge Building built. Not to say that that couldn't happen in certain places, but I don't think that that's the intent. But.

I guess one other thing I do want to bring up is that, you know, shout out to organizations like inkdev and Neighborhood Evolution and other folks that are kind of focusing on this other side of the coin, beyond the zoning conversation. Because it's really important to acknowledge that this really all goes beyond a conversation of zoning. I think yes, Z is a challenge and needs to be addressed in our land use conversation, but financing, training people to actually do small scale development projects to be able to pull off this kind of thing is really changing the culture of building and it's going to take a really long time. And I would say it's a lot harder than changing zoning regulations. So actually changing the culture of building and trying to find ways to finance this stuff is a huge piece of the puzzle of building communities.

That not only supply more housing, but also are just more in attunement with people's changing lifestyles and changing demographics and doing it in a way that is in attunement with local culture. I think more than zoning would be able to accomplish. I don't think zoning is necessarily the best tool for building housing in a way that quote unquote reflects community character in a perfect world. I think that you do that through the type of people who are building in your community and that is local people that have to bump into each other at the grocery store.

[B]

And you know, that is an area at a state level that things can happen. Because what you're describing, Abby, is investment in our communities. Some would call that economic development. And what I find in when I go anywhere in the country.

All of these cities are looking for this aspirational folks to come to their town, somebody else to come. They're out advertising in another country, another state. They're trying to grab folks. But what I really have found is that in all of these towns, the developers and the investors that every community wants and needs is already there and, and training them. If, if we just, if we just as if we're going to go be as bold as requiring every zoning change, you know, every, every community change for zoning and preempt some sort of zoning piece. I would like at the state level, let's be as bold in our economic development department and let's stop going and trying to steal another business from another state. Let's go figure out who is already in our state and work on incrementally supporting them. These are the Small builders, these are the new business owners because they're there in all of these cities. They just need that little bit of assistance to get moving forward. And when I talk about assistance, it's simple things like knowing they're not alone, creating a cohort, providing that mentorship structure, introducing builders to bankers, that, that simple, simple stuff that Inc Dev and Neighborhood Evolution have really dialed into that is exponentially more powerful than just creating a mandate across the state.

[A]

Well, in, in my perspective, that that is really an opportunity to have the new American dream. I think people see these state preemption efforts and they say, well, single family zoning is the American dream. It's my opportunity to own something. And this is undermining that. That's a perspective that people have. And this, this other approach that says we're actually going to invest in, in maximizing people's ability to not just own a single family house, but to actually have ownership over their community in other kinds of ways. I mean, every little business owner, I think, should be able to have training to own their own property, like to be, get resources. If you own a hair salon, if you own a coffee shop, if you own a brewery. Like we should be supporting these people to own their own real estate if they would like to, if they don't want to lease and if they want to build their own shop, if they want to rehab a building and have apartments upstairs. Like this would be a very meaningful way for us to enable small scale incremental development, which translates to, to wealth building opportunities in a way that goes beyond this kind of one size fits all solution. That is you can buy a single family house and that's kind of the only way to build wealth in this country. I think that there's other ways that we could invest that would have outcomes in our communities that are much more shaped by the hands of local people. And you know, that's different than, you know, just enabling a big developer from a different state to come in and build a big building and use their team of experts and advisors to get them through the process. And then they're kind of not accountable in a social sense. You know, if Abby Newsham goes and builds a duplex in her neighborhood, I have to run into my neighbors. There's just a different, I mean that, there's a different level of social expectations when local people are doing things that, that zoning can't really do for you. I mean, it's, it's just different.

[B]

And what you're saying is something that is scaled at every level of government Every community could do. And I will tell you, there are those investors and people that care deeply about their community. Regardless of the communities I go into, regardless how distressed or how affluent they are, they all exist there. When I think about that, that's truly unleashing this swarm on the ground that would have real positive change and we wouldn't be bickering over what the governor was saying or what a political movement was going to be or preemption to our local control. What you're describing is the most democratic of all things that we could do by empowering everybody to participate in the process.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And that's just. That's different than. Than trying to locally zone your way into outcomes. I feel like this is a much more like systematic, social way of looking at things that it is about changing culture. And again, shout out to Neighborhood Evolution and Inc. Dev. Because, like, these are the organizations that are actually on the ground doing that kind of economic development that a lot of economic development agencies aren't doing yet. And, you know, investing in training and resources and capacity building for locals is really, I think, a huge piece of the puzzle. Not just in the housing conversation, but in just the how are we going to build our cities Conversation for the next hundred years plus.

[B]

And I can tell you, because I've seen the contracts and I've talked to the cities that have hired those groups to come in and help them. What they're making in that investment is way less than what they would be making an investment. To have a talented planner like you come in, Abby, and rewrite their zoning code.

[A]

Yeah, it's true. And like, this isn't an ad for them, but like, they are. What they're doing is incredibly valuable because it's about implementation and it's about actually, you know, making things happen, not just enabling them to happen, because it takes people. The people who are doing plans or the people who are reviewing plans and managing development at a city level are not the ones actually building things. And so.

These processes can really bring in alignment the kind of policy and regulator side with the doer and implementer side of things. And that's something that's really needed here.

In the built environment.

So let's do the down zone. This has been a great conversation. I think. I think we've answered the question that this is probably not going to shatter Utah's housing future, but there's just more to the puzzle.

[B]

Yeah. I would not fear. If I'm in Utah and this is going forward, I would not fear it because I assure you there's enough performance standards and barriers that would there be other places besides your neighborhood where this would start first?

But I think this opens up a discussion that people should be having at every level.

When you see the numbers being thrown out about how many houses these communities are short, we should be asking ourselves, what can we actually do today to address that and move past all of these other wildly.

Challenging debates.

[A]

Yeah. And when looking at all the other barriers to building housing like building codes, finance, cost of construction, approval processes, etcetera, I think regardless or not, if you have state preemption happening, the question should be like, who are we enabling to build and how should we adjust these standards or provide resources to enable the type of development we really want to see? Because it's not all about zoning at the end of the day. Okay, so down zone. This is the part of this show where we can share anything that we have been reading, watching, listening to anything that's been going on in our lives. So, Edward, I'll throw it to you. What is your down zone this week?

[B]

I am getting ready in about 20 minutes. Get hitting the road with my family. My son is active in an FLL LEGO team. So this is the first LEGO League challenge. Yeah, so it's like LEGO Robotics. And this weekend, tomorrow is our big West Virginia state championship on this. So this is the second year doing it. We're all really nervous, but his team is doing an incredible job. So tomorrow is. It's going to be a really fun day. They have these robotic LEGO matches and then they have to explain things they've studied and explored throughout the year. So high energy day. But yeah, we're going to be hitting the road. So we get there in plenty of time because we start at 7. We have to be at the college at 7:30 in the morning to kick all this off. But yeah, fun, fun stuff. Watching a bunch of kids really take up Legos and they're coding them and building pieces and doing all different types of mechanical stuff with it. It's been fun to watch this whole team develop. So, yeah, tomorrow's the big. It's a big Super Bowl.

[A]

Yeah, that's a big deal. I would have never guessed that you would share that today. I've never heard of this before.

[B]

Yeah, no, like we didn't know either. It's, it's through STEM and it's supported by Lego. And last year one of our teams made it to the international competition. So it's just, it's really fun to see how this works. And.

You know, I'm I'm looking at this and I've got 40 some years on all of these kids and just watching the innovation of solving problems because they've got. There's a theme and there's different challenges on a board. So the robot has to go and push and pull and grab and lift stuff. And like, this team this year, his team is like, these kids are brilliant and they don't know it. They have figured out how to do, like, the least amount of code. They figured out, like, one of the. Everyone likes to do all of this type of elaborate movement with lots of motors. This team actually figured out how to use a block and a stick to get, like, a bunch of points on the board. Like, they were like, look, what is the simplest thing we could do to yield the most amount of points? So all of that thinking, I'm like, wow, I feel good about the future if we could simplify stuff and accomplish great things. Like, these kids are speaking my language.

[A]

So that's wonderful. That's so over my head, but that's wonderful to hear.

That's awesome. Well, have fun with that. I hope they win.

[B]

Yeah.

They'Re going to score big. I have big hopes for them. It's not just because I'm like a proud dad. They really have worked hard and they did really well at their scrimmage earlier in the year. So we'll see. But it'll be fun to see how all the other teams play out because it is a. It's a competition and they are. They are all striving to be the best at what they do.

[A]

Well.

For me, I. I feel like I've just been extremely busy in the past few weeks. I. I always kind of anticipate with the holidays and this type this time of year that things would be more relaxed, but it's always just way more busy than I think it's going to be, from, like, figuring out presents for the holiday to traveling and figuring that out. I'm also buying a house, and I'm closing in a couple of weeks, and that is. It's not the best time to buy a house, by the way. I don't know what I was thinking, but that's what I'm doing.

[B]

It's your investment.

[A]

I know, I know, but it's. So that's another thing. And I'll be moving in two weeks. And. Yeah, it's just. It's a whirlwind. The. And will be for probably the next month. But I've kind of been.

Just kind of enjoying the holiday season. For what it is. Even though it's really busy, I'm going to all the like holiday parties and events that are happening around town and.

Enjoying the lights and playing a lot of Christmas music. It's just something that I, I actually really like holiday music. Some people don't, but.

[B]

Oh, nonstop. November 1st I can start playing it really.

[A]

Okay. So you understand.

[B]

My family does not. But I like. Yeah, I love it.

[A]

I mean my radio station is tuned to it and I turn it on for my animals when I leave the house. It's just playing all day and it's on my Spotify and it goes right on in the car. And yeah, I've got it playing all month. I'll be sick of it by New Year's, I'm sure. But it's, it's one month a year that, that I'm blasting the classics.

[B]

So is there a favorite classic Christmas song or carol that you have?

[A]

That's a good question. I mean I think All I Want for Christmas by the Mariah Carey version is like it's. I know that's what everyone probably says, but it's so good and anytime it comes on, I'm just like so filled with joy. So that probably is my favorite.

But I mean I also like, I really like the classical music.

Like the. What is it? I'm trying to think of what that kind of classical.

Song is. Like the Nutcracker, for example. Like I like the classical music as well.

[B]

Yeah. Now it's all good stuff. I, I always am akin to the, the little. Remember all the claymation, Frosty the snowman and reindeer and all the squeaky noises. Like any of those songs, like you can't hear too much of it. Like it, it really can worm right into your brain. But like when all those come on, I just remember like the excitement of showing up those cartoons. Showing up on tv.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And doing that.

[A]

So I love the Claymation. That was so cool those, those Claymation animations. Yeah. I've got. So my boyfriend has a 10 year old, which is a great excuse to re. Watch lots of old Christmas music movies. And like last year we went and saw what is it called the Polar Express in theater. So they play it downtown in the theater and everybody comes in and they bring like bells that they shake during the show. And it just like is so fun to go do those kinds of things. And I think we're gonna go see Elf probably in the next couple of weeks. I really like, during the holiday season especially, I like to be a tourist in my own city. I just think it's a great excuse, like, go do all the things that a tourist would do in your city, because there's so many little markets and just fun stuff to do. And you, like, whether you're doing it with children or not, it's just fun to do it and to make. Make an. Make a day of it, make an event of it. So that's what I really try to do all of December.

[B]

That's great. Yeah, it's. It's one of those times of years that you get the excuse to go lots of different places. And, you know, now that we've gotten past all of the crazy Black Friday stuff, it. It, like, that seems to be, like, the. The really dark time of the holiday season. Once we get past that, like, everything seems to, like, smooth itself out and people are all out for joy.

[A]

Yeah, totally. Yeah. This month is. It's busy in a lot of different ways, but busy in a good way is the fact that there's just so many events and things going on, and I just. I really like to do those things. So, yeah, I'm something to look forward to in this next month. Moving I'm looking forward to, but the process of moving is kind of a lot, so, like, I'm looking forward to it, but am I looking forward to moving things physically? No.

[B]

Yeah. So, well, you'll get moved in pretty quick and you'll enjoy your new house.

[A]

Yeah, it's gonna be awesome. I'll send you the Zillow listing. It's fronting on a big park, so this will be my first time living on a park, and I'm super excited about it. And it's a historic home, and it's beautiful. I'm so, so excited.

[B]

That's awesome.

[A]

And it's right next door to a bunch of six plexes.

[B]

Oh, so now you can move in and be like, I had no idea. Yeah, I'll start density in my neighborhood.

[A]

Yeah. I'm gonna start calling the city and complaining.

[B]

If I knew that, I would have never bought on this street. Right?

[A]

Yeah. These renters.

[B]

And there are people in the park, too. They're gonna make noise my park.

Yeah.

[A]

I'm gonna live. Live long enough to become the villain, you know?

[B]

No, I love that. We'll. We'll see that transformation. It always happens.

[A]

Wouldn't that be fun? Yeah. I'll be. One day. One day.

Okay. Well, thanks, Edward. You enjoy your Lego tournament, Super bowl, and your weekend, and thanks, everyone, for listening to another episode of Upzoned by Edward.

[B]

Thank you.

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 Strong towns [e-mail] membership.

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