Kevin Klinkenberg is an urban designer, architect, planner, and writer. He is the Executive Director of Midtown KC Now, a nonprofit in Kansas City working on effective community development and management in Midtown Kansas City. Kevin is also the host of the Messy City Substack and podcast, where he dissects work on design, development, planning, and placemaking around the country. In this episode, Geoff and Kevin discuss localism, effective municipal governance, New Urbanism, the human-scale, and more.
You can find Yeoman on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube, and elsewhere.
Links
The Messy City Substack and Podcast
Human Scale by Kirkpatrick Sale
Timestamps
0:00 – intro
1:16 – subsidiarity and localism
4:15 – governance, three pillars of community building
8:07 – management of schools, bigness
11:32 – New Urbanism and human-scale systems
15:27 – emergent systems, lean urbanism, historical patterns of development
19:36 – building inspections, utilities, permits
20:57 – prospects for organic growth in New Urbanism today
24:06 – Euclid, changing times
28:23 – Kansas City
35:18 – city dashboard: safety, schools, affordability
38:46 – small cities, small teams
44:52 – strong and weak mayor systems
56:17 – renewed interest in the human-scale, doing the basics well
1:02:49 – conclusion
Yeoman 