Welcome to the New School for City Builders

Hello and Welcome to the New School for City Builders.I’m your host, Seth Zeren. I’m a recovering city planner turned neighborhood developer living in Providence, Rhode Island.Build the Next Right Thing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.I love cities. I’ve always wanted to know why most old places feel great and most new places do not. I went to school, became a planner, and later a developer in my search to understand how to make great places—and then to start building them. But along the way, I learned something important, a place is only as good as the people. It’s people that design, build, and run our cities and towns. Getting the design right matters, but getting the right people in the room with the right skills, knowledge, and perspectives matters more.In my first job as a planner, I would often butt heads with our city engineer. Trying to make a main street more walkable, he’d retort: No, we can’t put a stop sign there. No, we can’t add a crosswalk. We don’t have the MUTCD warrants. The who with the what now?It was like we spoke different languages; even had different ideas of what the city was for, how it worked. And it’s really no wonder: architects are trained in the school of arts and architecture; the engineers are over in the engineering college; the planners go to the school of public affairs; the developers are in the business school; and the budding activists are over in the sociology department.You can get a degree in civil engineering without learning anything about what a city is. You can get a planning degree knowing nothing about development. And a business degree in real estate without learning anything about architecture or construction. These silos persist from the college curriculum to licensure and professional turf.A lot of what I learned about how to build a good building, city, or town I learned from the New Urbanists. The founders of New Urbanism recovered lost ways of building and reshaped the way we build cities and towns. But a generation later, the schools that train our city builders are largely unchanged. In a country of 340 million people, spread across 3,000 counties and 20,000 cities, towns and villages, we need more than a conference of a couple thousand people.Because our cities and towns are struggling: rising home prices, crumbling infrastructure, insolvent budgets, missed climate targets, sclerotic government, and too many ugly places not worth caring for.But there’s no law of nature that says things have to be this way. There’s nothing we messed up that we can’t fix, if we change how we work, and what we’re working for.That’s the purpose of this show. In each episode, I’ll talk with people who are rethinking how we learn to build cities. Together, we’ll ask questions like:* What should someone actually learn if they want to build great neighborhoods?* What knowledge and skills are missing from today’s professional training?* What educational experiences helped shape some of the best designers, developers, and public leaders of today?* And if we were starting from scratch, how would we design a school that trains the next generation of city builders?This podcast is part of a larger effort to imagine—and eventually create—that school.A place where people can learn the craft of city building through practical hands-on projects. A school where the disciplines are not siloed off from each other. A community that comes together around a shared vision for what makes a great place, and how to work together to get there. Because saving the world is a team sport.The future of our cities won’t be determined by policies or plans. It will be led by the people who know how to get s**t done.So whether you’re a young professional looking to learn from leading practitioners, or a student looking to make the most of your education, or an experienced city builder looking to give back by teaching the next generation, I hope there will be something for everyone who cares about how we build great cities and towns.If you want to be part of the conversation and support this movement, please like and subscribe on whatever podcast platform you prefer. Give us a 5-star review–no really, it actually matters! Share it around to your friends. Tout it on whatever social media platforms you frequent. I plan to keep the show free to listen to, but if you’d like to support us so I can keep it going, please consider joining as a paying subscriber at my substack, Build The Next Right Thing. Every little bit helps.Thanks for listening.And welcome to the New School for City Builders. Get full access to Build the Next Right Thing at buildthenextrightthing.substack.com/subscribe