MODERATOR:Shannon Guzman,is the director of Housing and Livable Communities for the AARP Public Policy Institute.
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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Plenary Panel The Built Environment
Coralette Hannon:Welcome back.
Shannon, over to you.
Shannon Guzman:Thanks, Coralette.
I’m so excited to introduce our two panelists today.
But before I do, I want to remind everyone about the Slido platform.
You should see the instructions on how to ask a question.
All right, now it is my pleasure to introduce you to our two panelists.
Marques King, RA, is an architect, urban designer and proud native Detroiter.
Toccarra Nicole Thomas, AICP, is the director of land use and development at Smart Growth America.
Let’s start off with a Slido question: “Livable communities are good for people and businesses.
They encourage higher property values, increased economic activity and savings for communities.
What livable communities features contribute to the economic development of your community?”
Let’s take a look at some of the responses.
Okay, Complete Streets, walkability.
Marques, what do you think about the responses coming in?
It’s really encouraging that people, sort of, recognize a lot of these themes.
It’s quite promising.
Shannon Guzman:Great .
Toccarra, do you see any other key themes or surprises?
All of these features generate economic vitality for a community.
Shannon Guzman:Alright, great.
Well, thank you both for your key insights.
Your work as an architect and designer has focused on revitalizing communities through small-scale neighborhood development.
How does incremental development work and what are the economic benefits to the community?
Marques King:Yeah, that’s a great question.
These types of developments consist of things like house hacks.
These are the owners of these projects.
These are the developers of these projects.
These are the managers of these neighborhood assets.
It stays down the street.
I call this phenomenon, small buildings but big returns.
Shannon Guzman:So that’s great, Marques.
That point really resonates with me.
What is the fiscal impact of smart growth and land use policies?
How does walkability lead to more prosperous places?
Toccarra Nicole Thomas:Oh gosh, Shannon, that is a great topic, great question.
I could talk about it for hours, but only three minutes.
So I will say in short, it’s a huge economic generator.
Smart growth, in other words.
Say that again: The cost of sprawl costs Americans $1 trillion in a year.
Conversely, we found that Smart Growth is more cost efficient than sprawl.
It gives more money back to your local economy, which Marques kind of touched on a little bit.
And then it can its like a 10-x multiplier for your local economy, and specifically for tax revenues.
So, in short, smart growth is fiscal.
Growth is fiscally sound for community.
So if your residents are prosperous, your community is going to be prosperous, right?
Shannon Guzman:Thank you so much.
Toccarra Nicole Thomas:Correct.
Shannon Guzman:Yes, that’s great.
So, thank you both for those responses.
Now I have a question for both of you.
You’ve both worked to champion housing that is affordable for people of all incomes.
Toccarra, let’s turn it over to you to respond.
Toccarra Nicole Thomas:Thank you for this.
Shannon Guzman:And Marques, what are your thoughts on the question?
The very definition of a family is now more diverse than ever before.
Even though the average family size is shrinking, the amount of family types is increasing.
Shannon Guzman:Yeah.
So Marques and Toccarra, you both raised some great points here.
Well, thank you both for sharing your expertise on housing and housing’s contribution to economic development.
Now I invite you both to deliver a quick, rapid-fire response to our final question.
Marques, I’ll hand it over to you to get us started.
Marques King:All right.
I think, first, something that everybody can do is just be an advocate for zoning reform.
Advocating for a palatable mix of uses so that’s something that everybody can do.
Well, that somebody is probably you, right?
Shannon Guzman:That’s great.
Now take it away, Toccarra.
Find out who is your local elected official and call them.
Participate in your local council meetings, your local planning commission meetings.
So, in short, advocate, and then, finally, mentor.
Shannon Guzman:So, this is great.
So, I love how, Marques, you talked about, seeing ourselves as the agent of change.
You know, if we see something that needs to happen in a community, why not us?
Why not us be, you know, why not me be the person who does something about that?
And then talk about those housing types that will work for the community.
I think this is really great, sound advice.
Thank you both for providing our audience with a call to action.
We have Mike here with us to help facilitate the live Q&A.
Mike Watson:Thanks, Shannon, Marques, Toccarra.
You don’t have to do anything special to make this a place where people want to be.
Some typical examples of third spaces are a park.
Parks, public plazas if they are truly public and not privately developed and privately held.
What’s another example of a third space?
Mike Watson:Perfect.
Can you take this question?
Marques King:Absolutely.
There’s a little bit of regulation, but within reason.
What are those, what is the image of the city?
What are the physical elements that support that?
Mike Watson:That’s great, great add on to that, Shannon.
And Marques, I love that response there.
Shannon Guzman:So, Toccarra, do you want to take a crack at that one?
Toccarra Nicole Thomas: Of course.
So, first off, I’m always going to plug form-based codes.
you could have them at a different variety of contexts.
So where’s your main street?
Is your main street walkable?
Does it have a variety of use types along your main street, right?
And then when you have your clusters of housing, are those walkable?
Are those connected to other walkable communities?
Is there a trail system?
Is there your uses, like, your daily needs next to housing?
And then I add a plug: don’t just install sidewalks as infrastructure.
And then you oughta have those uses of spaces along that web connection, right?
And then having this infrastructure that supports walkability.
So, benches at a regular interval but, remember, no hostile architecture.
We want to support everybody, have walkability for all.
So, including that jot down of infrastructure along with the sidewalks.
Marques King:Yeah, I think Toccarra hit a lot of the core points.
Shannon Guzman:That’s great.
Mike Watson:Fantastic.
Thank you both for those answers.
I think we have time for our final question.
I’m going to kind of lump a few together that we’ve seen here.
Shannon Guzman:So, let’s go back to Toccarra for that question.
Toccarra Nicole Thomas:So, thank you for that.
I’ll start with ourZoned-Inreport.
It is a little bit dated.
So, you don’t get that sticker shock right away, right?
And so, what do I mean by that?
I creates this scarcity that’s artificial which drives up prices.
So it’s almost, kind of, like supply and demand economic theory, right?
Mike Watson:Fantastic.
Shannon, Marques, Toccarra, I want to thank you so much for joining us.
That was a really fantastic conversation.
Thank you again for being here today.
Shannon Guzman:Thanks, Mike.
Marques King:Pleasure.
Toccarra Nicole Thomas:Thanks for having me.
Mike Watson:Thank you all again.
That’s all one word.
or the pop-up placemaking guide that we created with Team Better Block.
Again, that web address isAARP.org/LivableLibrary.
We hope you’ll check it out.
