The Messy City Podcast Kevin Klinkenberg

I join my favorite Akron-ite, Jason Segedy, in Akron, to talk about northeast Ohio, Strong Towns, and generational roles. We do this while sitting outside a former major tire factory, in the tire capital of the world. What a cool scene it was. It makes me think I need video for these discussions.
Jason and I seem to have a lot in common, and he’s the kind of person I can chat with for hours. As I told him toward the end, I also just really love and admire people who love their town. It’s become such a rare quality these days, so perhaps I just notice it more. But it’s energizing and endearing to find people who have a deep love affair with place.
We spend a fair amount of time talking generational issues, and no small amount critiquing our own cohort - Generation X. What’s next for us? Will our age group step up to be the adults in the room, or will we lean into our well-earned cynicism and be lifelong critics?
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”


Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

Two of last year’s most popular guests return to talk all things KC real estate, and especially urban core development. It’s a challenge right now, and we talk about why, and when things might change.
We also hit on some topics that people like to avoid, such as this piece on surging exurban development in our region. Do urbanists understand how little we produce, compared to what’s happening in the burbs?
Finally, we discuss the tangled web of drug stores closing in the urban core, and the importance of beauty in the urban environment. In fact, last week, I wrote about this topic here. And, for more, see this great video by former Charleston Mayor Joe Riley:
For Midwesterners, we need to do better.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”




Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

Every so often, I get into the personal advice game. Perhaps it’s a side effect of being a father, as well as hitting a point in life where you’ve seen and done a lot. I like to share whatever wisdom I’ve learned, in the vain hopes that someone else can benefit from my experience. That’s especially true for younger people who have a passion for cities, for development, and for making beautiful places.
Along those lines, in this episode, I discuss my pet peeve with the word “they,” how to think about issues in your community, and what I’ve learned about external locus of control vs internal locus of control.
Get building, get positive and work towards a better future.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”
Transcript:
Kevin K (00:01.26)
Welcome back to the Messy City podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg. Thanks for joining me. It's been a while since I've had the opportunity to do a solo podcast and just talk about a few things that are going on and some thoughts in my mind. And today seemed to work out really well for that in this week. So I'm going to share a few things that are going on and hopefully give you a little bit of inspiration in your day.
If it doesn't inspire you, you can send me a note as well and say, hey, you were completely off base there or lost and that's fine too. Of course, I can't help but record these now and think about my friend Chuck Morrone's comments about my own voice and how things sound. I think if you do anything like this, you're the kind of person you probably never liked the sound of your own voice, but it's good to know that others respond to it and like it.
And I'm happy to keep doing these. There's a lot going on right now. There is coming up here in May is the Strong Towns National Gathering followed by the Congress for the New Urbanism. It's a big deal in the urbanism world. Those annual confabs, which I have gone to for a number of years. Don't know that I'll keep going to those indefinitely, but I still think there's value in that or similar groups like them.
depending on what your own interest is. I'm also keenly aware that the National Town Builders Association does a couple great get togethers every year. Those are, that tend to be people more on the development side, as well as the Urban Guild, which is a group that I'm a little bit affiliated with as well, which is mostly designers and architects, but it's a lot of people doing really, really cool stuff to try to make the world a more beautiful and better place.
They have a get -together coming up this later later this year in November, which will be in Huntsville, Alabama And I'm gonna try to make it to that as well. Don't know if I can do all these things. It's a challenge when you've got a family and work and everything else, but I do always enjoy getting together with colleagues and learning about what other people are doing Figuring out what I can take back to my own community and just getting inspired from other people. So
Kevin K (02:28.844)
I have always enjoyed that. I suppose it appeals to the extroverted nature that I have. But I certainly enjoy getting that inspiration from others. So I want to talk a little bit today on a different tack. This is not necessarily a new subject locally, but it's something that's been on my mind. And bear with me as I go through this, but there's a new...
There's a new attraction in Kansas City that opened late last year. We are among many cities now in that we have a Ferris wheel near the downtown area because you know how these things are, all the trends come and go and activities come and go. And right now it seems like every city has to have a Ferris wheel, a big Ferris wheel for people to get up and view the whole city and everything e

Chuck Marohn, the President and Founder of Strong Towns, joins me to talk about his newest book, “Escaping The Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis.” Along the way, we also discuss the upcoming Strong Towns National Gathering in Cincinnati, a different way cities can think about building and financing new sports facilities, and our different takes on the place-making of Disney World.
If you have an interest in attending the National Gathering in May, I highly recommend it. Register at this link, and use this code for Discounts: KEVINK2024
For some background on Walt Disney’s history in Kansas City, check out Thank You Walt Disney.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”
Episode Transcript:
Kevin K (00:00.964)
Welcome back to the Messy City podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg. I'm delighted today to have my friend Chuck Morrone on the show. Mr. Strong Towns, Chuck, it is so good to see you and I'm really excited to talk with you today.
Charles Marohn (00:16.848)
Hey, I'm really happy to be here. And here's the amazing thing. I listen to your podcast. You have a great voice for this. I mean, I have this horrible voice that people have grown used to. But when you turn on, you're like, hey, this is the messy city podcast. I'm like, yeah, man, you should be doing way more of this.
Kevin K (00:37.38)
Well, at least you didn't say that I have a great face for radio. So.
Charles Marohn (00:40.72)
Well, you and I both.
Kevin K (00:44.484)
Oh man, well, it's fun. You know, I'm still very much an amateur at the podcasting gig. And it's been fun to learn and experiment with it. You've been doing it for quite a while. And so I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you on this show. And we've got a couple of, a couple of fun topics, but in a couple of things that I think will get more serious and interesting as we go. And we'll just get through whatever we can get through. But.
Charles Marohn (01:11.568)
That sounds great. Well, you've been having all my friends on, you know, so like, yeah, here's Howard. I'm like, wait a sec. That was a blast. And then you had, you had Seth Zeran on recently. I'm like, that's really cool. So yeah, it's been fun. You know, I, I know you and I know, uh, you know, some, some of the ways that you think about things. And I really am. I love chatting with you, um, hearing you have these.
Kevin K (01:15.172)
I try to do that.
Kevin K (01:19.076)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Charles Marohn (01:38.704)
fun conversations that we sometimes get to have in person. Hearing you have them with other people is just, it's a delight for me. So yeah.
Kevin K (01:46.02)
Well, that's very great, very flattering to hear. You know, it's one of the fun things you've probably experienced this too. One of the fun things about having a podcast is you get to choose who you want to talk to. And there's a lot of people that we know and we've all known for a long time that I get to learn so much more about. And for me, that's been one of the most enjoyable aspects of this is just getting to really know people's backstories a lot more. And so that's been a great pleasure.
Charles Marohn (02:04.496)
Sure.
Kevin K (02:16.036)
So.
Charles Marohn (02:16.4)
Yeah, yeah. Well, you you know everything about me, so we don't need to talk about.
Kevin K (02:20.1)
We know a lot about we know a lot about Chuck. Chuck, fortunately, shares his backstory a lot, although I'm sure there's tons we could get into. I'd rather save the time for some other topics, but you. You do have an awful lot going on right now in this moment, and I want to talk about a couple of those things. One is you have a book, a new book, the strong escaping the housing trap, the strong towns response. This is your.
Charles Maroh

Butch Rigby is a long-time Kansas City developer, small business promoter, and city booster. We decided to sit down and talk about the looming ballot initiative on April 2, and the pros and cons of the current proposal for moving the Royals to the Crossroads neighborhood.
You can listen to more of Butch’s story in this podcast.
Another podcast of interest is this discussion with Philip Bess, and our work together to save Fenway Park.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”
Episode Transcript:
Kevin (00:00.644)
Welcome back to the messy city podcast. I've got a returning guest, butch Rigby here, otherwise known as Kansas city's George Bailey, as I've described my, uh, my longtime friend and, uh, and partner in crime on, uh, Kansas city issues, downtown development issues, et cetera. And, uh, Bush, it's great to see you. Oh, Kevin. It's always great to be here. Matter of fact, it.
feeling like Savannah, Georgia. It is. I mean, it's already in the 70s and it was the 70s in February or something. That was crazy. So I know everything's blooming. All the stuff I planted last fall is looking good. So I'm happy. I was worried that everything bloomed too early and it was going to get frozen out. But I don't think so. I know. I think we're like straight into lake season pretty soon. So that's all right. Well, butch, I wanted to have you in today to talk about.
the baseball stadium issue in particular, because it's a hot topic here locally. There is a proposal on the ballot coming up in April here in Kansas City and Jackson County to extend a sales tax, an existing sales tax that will expire in a few years.
to help fund a new baseball stadium for the Royals in a downtown location in the Crossroads area. And then also provide funding for the Chiefs for a series of improvements to Arrowhead. And Butch and I go way back on this issue. We had a lot of fun years ago talking about the potential for downtown baseball when we were both volunteering with the Urban Society of Kansas City.
That's correct. That's right. Shout out to all of our urban society buddies. Oh yeah. They knew who they are. And I think it's interesting, maybe where we could start Butch is to kind of put things in context for what we talked about. That was probably now 20 years ago when we were getting involved in that. Just about. Yeah. And so that was when the Glass family owned the Royals. And...
Kevin (02:16.186)
Downtown was coming along, but it was still a little bit more in its infancy of redeveloping. And there was a push on the part of a lot of people to try to get the Royals to consider coming downtown. And we took on this crazy volunteer task of looking at all the different sites that there were downtown and trying to get people to analyze them and...
put their thoughts together. That was, in retrospect, that was kind of a wild thing. And we had a couple hundred people who volunteered with it, as far as I remember, right? We did. And, you know, of course you have to remember 30 years ago when I bought my first building down in what was then Film Row, 19th and Wyandotte, you know, before the days of Crossroads, it was a ghost town. And I'm not kidding. I mean, it was literally...
On a Friday night, we would hold these Christmas and July parties to celebrate the history of Film Row. And we were the only thing going on down there. Now, you know, we were begging for tenants. I had a few buildings that I bought and I was having a challenge keeping a coffee shop tenant open. Certainly wasn't, you know, having any luck with restaurants or anything like that. That's just natural when you've had, you know, a big daytime population in office towers in the, inside the loop.
Uh, but you really have, uh, I think we had 2 ,500 residences downto

Of all the parts of this enjoyable conversation with Seth Zeren, now of Providence, RI, the part I liked the most was this quote:
The worst fight is with your allies that betray you.
The quote, which is mostly about perception, says a lot about people who are frequently in heated agreement with each other, but find themselves disagreeing on something that’s very minor in the big picture. We discuss this as we discuss his post called, “When New Urbanists and YIMBYs fight.”
Seth has a great Substack, talking about all the overlap in his interests from city planning to development and more. His path and his passion are impressive. From his early days working in local government, to now the cold, hard reality of making development projects work. And what’s next? Perhaps some place management, perhaps some housing policy advocacy, perhaps just more really interesting redevelopment projects.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”
Transcript:
Kevin (00:01.269)
Welcome back to the Messy City podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg. I'm excited today to have Seth Zarin here with me on the podcast. Seth and I have met in the past and corresponded a little bit. Seth has a sub stack that I definitely recommend called Build the Next Right Thing. And he's in Providence, Rhode Island, which is actually, I think, one of the sort of most underrated
smaller cities in the country. I've always really liked Providence, enjoyed it. So Seth, welcome to the podcast. I know we're going to have a lot of good things to talk about. We're going talk some housing and some other stuff, but glad to have you on so we can do this.
Seth Zeren (00:43.574)
Thanks Kevin, it's nice to be here.
Kevin (00:46.261)
I think, you know, Seth, I want to kind of start by talking about you're another guy who has a really interesting path and background into becoming into the development world, which is what you're doing now, but certainly not at all where you started. And I wonder if you could kind of walk people through your professional background and then even like why you wanted to do a sub stack.
in the first place, as some of us silly people do to put thoughts out in the world.
Seth Zeren (01:19.862)
Yeah, absolutely. I usually introduce myself when I meet people by saying that I'm a former climate scientist, recovering city planner, turned real estate developer. I usually get a laugh on recovering. Much like people who have all sorts of addiction issues, city planning is something that you always kind of in the back of your head, always kind of want to work on, but can be really challenging.
Kevin (01:35.381)
Ha ha ha.
Seth Zeren (01:48.918)
I'm actually from California. I grew up in the San Francisco suburbs, south of the city in Silicon Valley, basically. And by the time I graduated high school, it was quite clear that I would never be able to afford to live there. At that point, houses were selling for about a million dollars for a little ranch. Now it's about $3 million. And so by the time I left for college, I sort of knew that the housing situation there had been a little bit of a mess.
broken so much that it was really unlikely that I would be able to find a good quality of life there for myself at that time. In college, I ended up studying geology and climate science. So I was a geology major, geosciences major, and I narrowly averted the PhD. I dodged it, fortunately, and I found myself really becoming interested after college. I went and lived in South Korea for a year and I taught English there. And
It was such a different experience than growing up in an American suburb or in a small town where I went to college. And it really got me thinking a lot. And when I came back to the U S and I went and worked at a boarding sch