Go Cultivate! – Details, episodes & analysis

We’ve reached the end of Go Cultivate! Season 3! To wrap us up, Kevin details the impacts that the suburban experiment has had on our country and asks the question: what does ‘quality of life’ really mean, and does an auto-centric lifestyle support these outcomes? After defining actionable steps to take in order to address the challenges posed by the suburban development pattern, Kevin emphasizes the importance of finding and connecting with other people and groups in your area to drive meaningful change at the local level. We believe that by working together, we can create more vibrant and inclusive communities that are built to last and benefit everyone.

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In this episode we are sitting down with Matt Meals, the newest addition to Verdunity’s engineering team. He and Kevin discuss Matt’s journey to Verdunity, and his perspective on how land use fiscal analysis gives cities the education they need to plan for communities to take root, as well as how it empowers citizens to take active roles in shaping the future of their communities. Throughout the interview, Matthew emphasizes the importance of context and community in engineering and design, and shares how his passion for environmentalism and sustainable energy led him to where he is today.

Matt Recommends:

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam

Fiscal policy, municipal finance, thoughtful budgeting, and infrastructure maintenance. If you ever wanted to know where and why your city's money gets spent, you'll want to hear this. Mark Funkhouser, former mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, with decades of experience in municipal finance, and Liz Farmer, a writer, thinker, and consultant on policy and budgeting, are two of the most knowledgeable people when it comes to local finance. They present us with some really tangible options for getting more out of those in this episode and explore how the systems we have built are fragile, like we've seen in places like Pittsburgh and even in a place like Texas that is ostensibly booming.

There's a lot more. Don't miss it.

Some things to check out after the episode:

Mark’s 2015 Governing article about Infrastructure vs. Pensions: https://www.governing.com/gov-institute/on-leadership/gov-fiscal-issue-that-matters-most-infrastructure-pensions.html
Liz Farmer’s Substack article on 5 things she’s learned after a decade of reporting on municipal bankruptcy:
https://lizfarmer.substack.com/p/5-things-ive-learned-after-a-decade?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=560793&post_id=96315141&isFreemail=false&utm_medium=email

Volcker Alliance Paper: https://www.volckeralliance.org/resources/sustainable-state-and-local-budgeting-and-borrowing-0

BOOKS

Dignity by Chris Arnade
Bonds of Inequality by Justin Jenkins
Still Broke by Rick Wartzmann
Strong Towns by Charles Marohn
Think Again by Adam Grant

Contact Mark or Liz
mark@mayorfunk.com
Website: mayorfunk.com
Twitter: @mayorfunk

liz@majorfunk.com\
Substack: Long Story Short
Twitter: @LizFarmerTweets 

Today is a bit of a Thanksgiving grab-bag. Kevin and Jordan discuss:

• what cities (of any size) can learn from the Amazon HQ2 contest about economic development and “being your best you” [1:10]
• what the California wildfires should be telling cities about the implications of their development patterns [19:20]
• whether “criticize then commit” is a philosophy city leaders can employ in citizen engagement [30:20]

We also take a few moments at the end [50:00] to let you know about a few cool things we’re working on.

1. You can sign up for our brand-new Cultivate Journal, a monthly roundup of our best podcast episodes, written pieces, things we’ve read, and upcoming live events.
2. Join us on Friday, Nov. 30 [THIS IS A NEW DATE!], for a free live webinar: Dollars and Sense: How to Cultivate (Real) Fiscal Sustainability + Community Engagement
3. In 2019 we’re launching our Go Cultivate! Online Community. If you share our goal of building and managing cities in a more collaborative, fiscally-informed, and people-friendly fashion—and you want to discuss ways to deal with your city's challenges with like-minded peers—then this is your place. Sign up here and we’ll let you know when it’s officially open.

This podcast is brought to you by your friends at Verdunity. For more episodes, check out verdunity.com/go-cultivate.

(The music in this episode is from Custodian of Records)

This is the first of a short series on city growth. Are there good ways or bad ways to grow? In this episode, we're asking whether there is such a thing as growing too fast or too slow.

Jordan speaks with Verdunity's Felix Landry about both the financial and social/cultural implications of fast growth vs. slow growth. We discuss the ways building standards can help or hurt, what it means to love a place, whether cities have knobs that can speed up growth or slow it down, whether it matters that you build a whole block out at once or over time, why scapegoating renters is off-base, and much more.

Have thoughts on this discussion? We want to hear from you. Email us: info@verdunity.com.

The Go Cultivate! podcast is a project of Verdunity. Learn more at verdunity.com.

(The music in this episode is from Custodian of Records.)

Jim Walker is CEO, cofounder, and lead artist at Big Car Collaborative, an Indianapolis-based art and design organization "brings art to people and people to art, sparking creativity in lives to support communities." Jim and Jordan talk about the role of artists in making neighborhoods more loving, vibrant, and homelike—and the ways partnerships are always messy but always necessary in making good things happen.

Here’s a further sample of our conversation topics:

• Why community building is about the personal connections between people
• Big Car’s role as a “neighbor-to-neighbor” project, as well as its role as a hub for arts, cultural events, making things, and as an example of putting an old place to new use with minimal infrastructure
• Pop-up testing sites as a way of exposing the City of Indianapolis to new ideas
• Why and how Big Car Collaborative started out in the bathroom of a (former) nunnery
• How artists make a neighborhood desirable and often end up getting pushed out—and how Big Car is trying to buck that trend by building a long-term home for artists in the Garfield Park neighborhood of Indianapolis
• Why “socially-engaged art” is about "making things happen," rather than just “making things"
• What it means to invest in the people in a neighborhood
• The Tube Factory – an example of adaptive building re-use that flexes to be what the neighborhood wants it to be
• Partnering with the City, philanthropic organizations
• Where the name “Big Car” comes from
• Why collaboration (both internal and external) is messy but essential to making something happen – and how it leads to unexpected places
• Why so many partnership difficulties revolve around money
• Partnerships generally happen between people, rather than entities
• What it’s like partnering with a City through changes in administration
• Demonstrating that artists can (and should) be voices at the table in city decision making
• How to make sure pop-up placemaking turns into “placekeeping” that benefits people in the neihgborhood
• How Jim thinks you can start something like Big Car in your own community (hint: it should be fun)
• The importance of working on projects with friends – and the opportunities to find a friend group through community work
• Jim’s book recommendations!
• Why a place can be a home instead of just a house
• How planning and design could be different if we spent lots more time out in the physical places we’re working in

Follow Jim on Twitter: @walkerjj
Learn more about the seriously kick-ass Big Car Collaborative at bigcar.org. And check out the Tube Factory Artspace at tubefactory.org. (If you are planning to host an event in Indianapolis, this is the place to be!)

The Go Cultivate! podcast is a project of Verdunity. Learn more at verdunity.com Find our other episodes and blog posts at GoCultivate.org.

(The music in this episode is from Custodian of Records.)

Kevin and Jordan discuss the beginnings of a framework for getting any city in better fiscal shape – all while building trust and collaboration with residents of all neighborhoods. Buckle in! We made Kevin the mayor of a city for this episode.

The Go Cultivate! podcast is a project of VERDUNITY. Learn more at verdunity.com Find our other episodes and blog posts at GoCultivate.org.

(The music in this episode is from Custodian of Records.)

We're trying something new here. The Verdunity office is always buzzing with good discussions about what's on our minds that week. So, instead of keeping them all to ourselves, we'll be dropping short, spur-of-the-moment conversations like this one into the feed from time to time. It might be something we've read that day, an interaction we've had with a community leader, or just something we ate (hopefully not).

Today, Tim Wright (the brand-newest member of Verdunity!) and Jordan Clark chat about neighborhood identity and community involvement.

The Go Cultivate! podcast is a project of your friends at Verdunity. If you like this addition to the podcast feed, or if you hate it—or if you really want us to riff on a particular subject—let us know: info@verdunity.com.

Find us elsewhere in cyberspace: Twitter and Facebook

(Music in this episode is from Blank & Kytt)

Kevin sits down with (fellow engineer) Chuck Marohn from Strong Towns to talk about recognizing our delusions, admitting failure, and embracing the "chaos" of bottom-up action at the local level.

Here are some highlights from the discussion:

• When optimism becomes delusion for city administrators.
• The ways that many engineers and other professionals have built up natural defense mechanisms to avoid acknowledging failure and fallibility.
• The common myth in Texas and other high growth areas that "fast growth will continue indefinitely and it will solve all our problems"—and the two possible ways it could end.
• Not learning lessons from major events: droughts and near-bankruptcies.
• The social and economic results of "slash-and-burn city development."
• Why city leaders should be more supportive of the short-term "chaos" of bottom-up action—and more wary of the long-term chaos of rigid order.
• How affluence makes people and cities less adaptive—and how small, early failures can build resilience.

Links:

• Chuck's Strong Towns podcast episode on the peak delusion of the long emergency
• Kevin's post for Strong Towns last year: How Strong Towns changed the way I view development
• Reflections on the Strong Towns North Texas Regional Gathering - Ivy Vann

The Go Cultivate! podcast is a project of VERDUNITY. Learn more at verdunity.com. Find our other episodes and blog posts at GoCultivate.org.

(The music in this episode is from Custodian of Records.)

This is the second of a two-part interview with AJ Fawver, director of planning for the City of Lubbock, Texas. (Follow her on Twitter: @planningguru. Read her blog on ELGL here.)

In part two, we talk about the world of strengths assessments and communication styles—and how they can be applied to make organizations like city government more effective and empathetic. Then Kevin asks AJ what she as a planner wants people other roles in the city to know. They run through advice and input for elected officials, city management, economic development folks, engineers, and citizens.

The Go Cultivate! podcast is a project of VERDUNITY. Learn more at verdunity.com. Find our other episodes and blog posts at GoCultivate.org.

(The music in this episode is from Custodian of Records.)