Thomas Dougherty: Infill Development; Smaller Scale & Vibrancy; Humanism (#11)

Today, I have friend and colleague Thomas Dougherty on the podcast. Last year Tom joined the Building Culture team as our lead Urban Designer. He studied architecture and urban design at Notre Dame and focused on inner block development and has become known as the “alley-guy” for his expertise in creating spaces in these areas.

It’s a great conversation focused on the centralization of capital in real estate and how that affects decision making, how we prioritize profits over people and most importantly what we can do differently to try and solve these issues. We chat about smaller scale development and the creation of smaller grained places that are essential for vibrant communities, as well as how our current infrastructure is unsustainable financially and how we will see the effects in the next few decades. We discuss infill development, local investment and rethinking the way we raise capital, and finally we dive into the potential for infill development like creating streets as spaces that can really create beautiful, wonderful places. People really can be enriching forces on our built environment and are capable of immense good and immense beauty – hope you enjoy the conversation!

TAKEAWAYS
– The centralization of capital in real estate development leads to decisions that prioritize maximum returns over human flourishing.
– Smaller-scale development and the creation of smaller grained places are essential for building vibrant communities.
– Current infrastructure is unsustainable and requires financial innovation to address its high costs.
– Financing new urbanist projects is challenging due to the changing landscape of real estate finance.
– Infill development offers opportunities for incremental growth and the revitalization of existing communities.
– Local investment empowers individuals and strengthens communities.
– Capital plays a significant role in shaping development and should be aligned with the values of creating human-scaled places.
– Recognizing the potential of infill development and building streets as public spaces can create inviting and reflective environments.

REFERENCES

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CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction and Background
01:04 Becoming Known as the Alley Guy
05:01 The Concept of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs)
07:08 The Potential of Alleys for ADUs
09:05 The American Alley Hidden Resource
12:26 The Impact of Experiencing Human Scale
19:34 Reimagining Suburbs as Villages and Market Towns
30:04 The Limitations of Subdivisions
33:37 The Importance of Language and Advocacy
38:32 Empowering Individuals in Shaping the Built Environment
39:31 The Centralization of Capital
41:25 The Importance of Small-Scale Development
43:20 The Unsustainability of Current Infrastructure
45:52 The Need for Financial Innovation
47:23 The Difficulty of Financing New Urbanist Projects
50:15 The Potential of Infill Development
52:20 The Power of Local Investment
55:51 The Role of Capital in Development
57:19 Recognizing the Opportunities in Infill Development
59:52 Building Streets as Public Spaces

Welcome to the building culture podcast I’m Austin tanell and today I’ve got a friend and colleague Thomas Dow on and actually Tom came on as uh the lead Urban designer in building culture a few months ago and actually we’ve recorded this podcast back in November 2023 and

It got lost so I’m just now publishing um so there might be some out-of-date information there if we were talking about anything about building culture but it’s a great conversation Tom has a background um actually growing up on a farm and has Oklahoma roots and

And and did a uh lived up on a regenerative Farm in Ohio and his parents actually uh are very quite well-known um regenerative farmers and actually know Joe saladan over at polyface Farm quite well for anyone that kind of lives in that world and and knows about food and Food Systems um but

Today we uh we get to have about an hour conversation and and we start we we talk about the centralization of capital in real estate and how that affects decision-making um and how we prioritize profits over people and and what we’re trying to do differently um we’re trying

To solve these things not just talk and complain about them um smaller scale development and the creation of smaller grained places you know are really essential for vibrant communities um that our current infrastructure and the way we think about infrastructure is really unsustainable financially and if look at whether it’s strong towns or

Urban 3 um we’re in serious Financial um trouble with the way that we built build but we just haven’t quite experienced it yet but we think we really will start experiencing that over the next 20 30 40 years um we talk about how you know what given the environment that we live in

How do you do anything so we talk about infill development and how we approach and think about our projects and infill development uh um local investment and and kind of rethinking the way we raise Capital um and lastly talking about uh just recognize the potential for infill development and building streets as

Public spaces and can can really create beautiful wonderful places and this idea that humans can be an enriching where we we tend to think of human beings and people and developers as destructive forces because in so many ways we are destructive and extractive but also some of the greatest cities and towns and

Neighborhoods in the world or even forests that have been that have been maintained and the trees have grown beautiful and big and you can Gallop through the woods humans can actually cultivate and that’s really where Tom and I align here on values is it’s about people and we actually think um people

Are capable of immense good and immense Beauty um so hope you enjoy the conversation welcome to the building culture podcast I’m your host Austin tanell and today I’ve got a friend and colleague on Thomas dowy who actually works part-time for building culture but is in Westchester just outside of

Philadelphia um Tom could you kind of say hi and and just give a little bit of an intro in your background thanks Aus happy to be here um yeah you so we tried doing this recording what like two weeks ago and at that time you were like hey

Don’t actually talk too much about your background so I won’t do it this time um studied architecture and Urban Design at Notre Dame and uh and focused on inner block development so allowing developers and incremental developers to uh create new space inside the block that’s I’m focused on I’m

Excited you’re also known as The Alley guy I feel like in small circles um yeah talk actually a little about that how did you become known as The Alley guy that’s actually an interesting uh it’s an interesting progression okay so um we’re going to talk about human scale I think

At some point so that’s that’s a key aspect of it I was in grad school and I think um when I first went to grad school I was looking at both architecture programs F you know with the Urban Design concentration like Notre Dame but I was actually also

Looking at City Planning program so it was torn actually between the Berkeley program and the Notre Dame program and I end up going Notre Dame program and I’m really grateful for that and I think when you see the issues around you you know like like everybody’s car dependent

Like all the strong Town stuff like I think very often when you first get into uh reading cular or reading Andreas or reading you know whoever you’re reading you want to go um like fixed Transportation or like build new cities or whatever it’s going to be and so I

Kind of went in there with that in mind like I was reading stuff about like bus Rapid Transit which is probably funny for you to hear because like my like what I’m working on now but I was looking at like the macro issues of like isolation and

Like all the other um you know aspects of our built environment you know on the back of your shirt is uh we shape our our buildings there after they shape us and like obviously uh cities similarly so I was the macro aspects of that well my time in

School I slowly was focusing more more and more on what an architect or an urban designer can actually control and I think the main piece of that was like a scale reference when I was in Europe when I was looking at the places um that are inspiring us they’re not it’s apples

To oranges to the cities and towns we have today and so if you look at you know your favorite space or or or sequence of spaces or like downtown Florence OR Sienna or whatever and you compare that to you know wherever you’re going to go live like Westchester where I am and I

Use the example all the time the Imperial City of Rome fits inside of what people call my small town of Westchester and so I think of the lifetime’s worth of work and how many people live in Westchester for an example like people know because I don’t know either isn’t like 30,000 or

Something uh I mean it’s actually super dense it’s 22 or 22,000 people in a square and how big is it so the say it again wow yeah yeah so the Imperial City of Rome fits in a city of 22,000 people is what you’re saying uh more I would say like because

Uh if you go to most cities or towns that are mile and a half by a mile and a half in the United States they’re going to like have 2,000 people so it’s not really I see yeah youve got a lot of population density for the size we

Actually are one of the densest municipalities in the country right Westchester is um you know for for a small town uh and then you’re just referencing the scale sidetracked here uh but I was I was focusing more and more on scale and I remember you know we spent uh I spent a

Semester in in gaming Austria so like nestled in the Alps as an undergraduate it’s like this small town and we were in a a mon like a carthusian monastery from the 12th century and um it was an amazing immersion into like human scaled places walkability Beauty durability

Like you know we were we were in these these these coers and Courtyards and things that were 800 years old so that was pretty incredible and then when we were we studied abroad at Notre Dame in in Rome for a semester and I remember a a professor there who always had us

Measuring Street widths so we’d be walking down the street and be like okay what’s the width here what’s the width here and when we got back to the States I realized that a wide Street in Rome is closer to an alley width in the United States and so when I’m trying to

Create that sense of scale sense of place those are the right ways I can play with like unless you’re going to do Green Field development you can’t get to this kind of human scale and if you have to make room for you know all the parking and the deliveries and the fire

Trucks and everything else you’re also not going to be able to get at that scale okay so that’s one piece of it I’m I’m still answering the alley question the other piece was I was really interested in the small developer incremental developer and I was watching

The Adu movement on the west coast and I’ve been watching for a few years at that point and there’s some really interesting aspects to that and I think the most important one is actually you’re empowering um homeowners to uh make more of their lot and you’re enabling multi-generational living but

As I was thinking about okay so adus are happening on the west coast there they don’t have inblock alleys like service streets and by the way adus are kind of like garage apartments in some ways it can also come in different forms than that but I think that’s probably the

Simplest one for people to understand what you say or where you are absolutely that’s exactly what I’m thinking about like when I was when I was fascinated by them it it was it was as a you know a little guest apartment out the back and what most people don’t

Know that might be listening is that adus or garage apartments are illegal to build in the vast majority of our cities in the United States that’s right right it yeah current zoning just doesn’t have a use category um for making income on your property so that’s like Airbnb is

Illegal almost everywhere and that’s because you know the zoning is very specific about the uses you can you can have and if you’re in like a a a generic residential district those uses don’t include short it’s not just uses it’s really like dwelling you know R1 zoning

Is just like there going be one dwelling unit period there’s nothing else you know doesn’t matter yeah yeah anyway right well that I want to make sure people listening understand because I I can’t believe like there’s Adu is that that’s a very technical term you know people don’t actually know it unless

You’re in the industry well and I think that that technical term is why it slips through it’s absolutely a loophole right it’s saying like this is the secondary dwelling unit that can kind of slide underneath the radar because it’s going to be accessory to the primary so like

Let’s picture you had a lot you can’t just go build an Adu right you have to have a primary home for the second dwelling in it to be you know secondary to that primary home so whatever but I was watching that and I was thinking about adus moving East and we have

Alleys you know all well the Midwest has alleys like anything here City yeah about eight anywhere between about 1800 and about 1920 is going to have alleys and so I remember John gel did a study in um I think Seattle and one of the things he pointed

To was the alley network of the downtown juristic district and he was saying this land would double the public realm of I forget what it was maybe it was like it’s as much as like all the parks and whatever but if you imagine the number of alleys in

Um in your town you know it’s a huge amount of land and so I was thinking about that and I was thinking about this human scale and realizing that hey as Oklahoma City or these others start to legalize adus there is this there’s this moment where we

Could think about the alley as more than a service Street for picking up trash we could imagine it as a residential street at a human scale and the model for that was in Philadelphia you know that’s my experience when I was Timber framing in Philadelphia um I was walking around

Those there and that was very much um developed by incremental small developers wasn’t planned by the city they were just creating 18 foot 20 foot wide streets running down the center of um you know platted blocks so that’s that’s the alley thing um I wrote uh I

Worked I I was at it I was offered a year of independent research at Notre Dame in uh 2019 2018 2019 and um so that’s what I focused on and um a couple years ago I wrote I could kind of compiled a bunch of stuff and put together a four part

Article series that strong towns turned into an ebook so it’s called Uh the American alley hidden resource th the Alle very cool I didn’t actually know that was cool to hear myself actually hadn’t realized the the Rome your experience there and then I I like that correlation to of making the

Connection of wait the big street there is the little Street here but even recognize it and say you know imagine what alleys could be and it’s it’s interesting you know I was so shaped by um after college and you know I was going into accounting for anyone that doesn’t know that um

Before I got into all this but I had a three-month gap before my job started and I just made a bunch of money well I say a bunch of money for that age you know an apprenticeship not an apprenticeship sorry internship at the accounting firm and so I had three

Months and it was like I’m just going to go travel so I backpacked by myself for three months and just spent time in Spain and Portugal and I’d been to Italy a couple times like for like a week or something at a time in college but it

Was really those several months spent in Spain and I’m still new like I don’t understand I’ve never heard I don’t really know what suburban sprawl means you know yet or or something like that I certainly don’t know what new urbanism is and it’s hard like the older I get

Because I mean that’s quite a ways long time ago 2011 but like how much that experience shaped me because I I I suddenly I didn’t understand what it was but it was just the experience of walking and experience ing Beauty and being drawn to things and I was walking

Around like with Wonder a lot now I grant I know that if you live there you don’t you talk to people that live in beautiful places and it’s not like they’re just gaping up at the the cathedral or something all all day long but being surrounded by and sustained by

Beauty and having the freedom of Mobility not like people think and I’m suburbs of Houston right so quintessential suburban sprawl City and you know people are that the car is the ultimate freedom and and I understand that idea because when you’re talking about I can just get in my car and go

Wherever I want and if you’re talking about traveling long distance and stuff it’s it’s just the car is an unbelievably amazing technology and so useful in so many ways but the way we build it actually becomes more of a hindrance and and kind of like more like

Slavery than it is freedom um in terms of how we use automobiles here in our subdivisions and I don’t know it was just so eye openening to me to experience that beauty that scale um that really came back around too when when Frankle When I Met You in

2016 and and you really just talking about human scale is where I started to make more connections I mean I was reading Christopher Alexander at that point and other things but but yeah it’s it’s it really takes experiencing something else I think to otherwise you just don’t have the context to imagine

Something yeah I think that’s exact L right you know when you when you experience uh yeah that’s neat I didn’t I you know I didn’t realize you were backpacking around for three months until you told me two weeks ago about this um but it it made more

Like your passion and what you’re doing makes more sense now that I now that I know that you know for me it’s in part like being an undergraduate and living in this Monastery and wandering around these German cities at age 18 19 whatever I was and just

It just it’s it’s world changing um an susman uh who’s that um yeah we need to have her on this podcast she’s the um like the the psychologist who’s doing like the brain mapping and she’s making the arguments for The Human Condition and its relationship to the built environment and

Like the the theories such as like figmma taxis like were a wall hugging species well so are you know other animals to but like we do hug walls it’s just it’s it’s one of the things we do and so explaining aspects of the built environment she talks about going to um

France or something as you know in in in college and feeling more at home there than she’d ever felt at home you know and in the United States and I think that that’s a very common experience you know I have a feeling you had aspects of that definitely I was feeling that I

Felt myself I sensed myself being reflected in in the scale in the beauty and in large part you know we talk about human scale and um I think human scale almost most importantly is tied to or or as importantly as anything else is tied to durability and that that’s and

That um you know how do we measure the human the person in part is it the person’s relationship to Generations right you know it’s like childhood through old age the fact that somebody’s us in you into life and out of life and so those buildings and cities and towns

That have more of a Conta like historical context are in some sense reflecting the human scale in a way that you know are type five construction on top of a Podium for parking that’s going to be you know Class A Class B Class C Apartments real quick and then not worth

Inheriting not worth selling in like 40 years is clearly um not reflect ing the values of the person yeah I would agree with that and and you know well actually it kind of comes back to to how our architecture really is just a reflection of our

Values it really is a I guess you could say like a manifestation of values whether we realize it consciously or not you know it’s not like people are going on being like I value this therefore I’m going to build like this although some people do if you’re building a house

Right you might value a large living room whatever it is cuz you like entertaining but coming back to the experience of The Human Experience I grew up in the suburbs of Houston I remember the neighborhood I lived in was you know Suburban subdivision was it wasn’t like a a super nice neighborhood

But it wasn’t dumpy either it was like it was an enjoyable suburb you could say there was some trees you know some actually mature trees and I there’s almost a little bit of like that was the vision of suburb the suburbs in some sense yep cuz when I was

Growing up in Houston it really was that and then we could ride our bikes for you know I was 12 11 12 years old and we were riding our bikes for 10 miles out down BYU into things we go to stores right we’d find a Starbuck I can’t

Remember what stores we’re going to that age but you know what I mean we’ but we would we’ be out in the nature we’ play paintball we’d go camping like nearby and we were like my dad worked in the city in Houston but he did have to by

The way um Drive generally speaking about a 45 minute commute to work and on the way home it could often be an hour to an hour and a half you know just and that’s normal in Houston and that was back then that now I mean there’s so

Many people it’s normal that have one to two hour commutes in these cities but what’s interesting is when I as I was leaving high school there was so much development going around Houston but it hadn’t fully quite affected me by the time I came back like mid during college

There was nothing left there was no land left there was no nature left there were no par or there were there were Parks but they were like you know leftover parks and subdivisions that no one could access and you would wouldn’t want to use anyway because they’re like just

Lined by a fence and two houses on the side or something um and that’s where I like starting to really I was piecing that together recently like Suburbia does not scale well like that the idea of it can sound really nice and when you just have some of it it can be okay

Because at least you have the positives of the privacy and the you know quote unquote convenience of your your house that you go to but as everything around it gets as more actually Anthony said this other day the more people come to Suburbia the worse it gets yeah um versus largely speaking

Not always but the opposite happens with you know urbanism the more people come the more kind of like vibrant and Lively it gets and you know I’d say that with suburbian just that you don’t have any traffic gets worse you know you might have a few more services but it’s

Just it’s just all a very unpleasant experience at some point you can’t walk to school you can’t walk to Parks you can’t walk to the coffee C can’t do anything without getting in your car and if you’re a kid I mean you’re good luck you’re not going to do anything right

I think that’s that’s a really interesting um observation you know like the more the more people that come to Suburbia kind of the worse it gets I think one of the things is uh there’s Suburbia and then there’s Suburbia um I was actually just today um so I’m I’m in

This little you know mile and half by mile and a half uh Town that’s like really dense and walkable and actually uh some of our town developed in the 60s and so we have the kind of I mean and and so here’s Suburbia and suburbia right like we have some of that

Kind of cold theack stuff in our town with little th000 s foot homes or 1,200 foot homes like you know like the the size like just to get a scale reference like what kind of homes are being developed in the 50s and 60s right they were not the kind of homes we’re

Seeing being developed today on the amount of land and so it’s actually pretty tight neighborhoods on small Lots with small homes and so I was just out outside of our town uh serving a 1952 home today and was struck by um how pleasant uh 1950s suburbs can be especially in the

Philadelphia area and the earlier ones too like we had we there like 20s and 30s um era kind of like you know suburb right in between like where I am in Philadelphia they’re like actually really beautiful right well I remember when you visited Oklahoma City I don’t

Know when we because we bought here our house in 2020 20 very end of 2019 and when you came I think in 2020 or 2021 you’re like man this is beautiful like a this is great like this neighborhood and I would say it is great I mean the lots

Are about 50 feet wide by 140 they’re 7,000 foot lots a lot of them are actually single story and we’re we’re only a couple miles from downtown um but it’s got old trees but I would say the biggest key is well one of the biggest things I should say is detach garages

Off the back of the house so there’s houses are next to each other there’s a driveway in between these houses are only like probably 12 feet apart or so um but you’ve got a lot of space in the front yard you got the full front yard

The full backyard kind of thing but the house about 12 feet from each other and you drive down your driveway and go into the back garage and boy the difference that makes for how the neighborhood can look yeah and feel and um without losing any convenience in my opinion like I’ve

Never had that thought well by the way I mean my office technically is my garage but I walk out here every day the same so it’s like why uh I wouldn’t be like oh my gosh I’ve got to walk out of my house and back to the garage if I’ve

Going to the car as in it’s just I don’t know I actually have a lot of interest in in figuring out how to build suburbs well in the right context too not just H build you know because that’s the thing context matters and where you’re building matters um and not everything

Should be dense urbanism right not everything is inner city or something and what is that Suburban um how could we just make it like better I don’t know and even I actually want to brainstorm this with you Tom this is something I’ve been thinking I like brainstorm I’m

Gonna jump in here for the listeners that don’t know what we’re working on and stuff like that to say like we’re not I’m like we’re kind of like oh suburbs like because we’ve been reading things and obviously talking about people we’re part of like you know a community that’s bashed the suburbs for

So long that we can say like oh there’s some subs that aren’t so terrible but it’s not like I don’t think that either one of us is really itching to go build in that manner and if no not in that manner but I mean like what I’m talking

About by suburbs is I’m even talking about like the project we were looking at with these kind of like Charleston side houses but with land you know what I mean where I just mean because and here’s what I mean by this is everyone like the moment and this is actually

Something I want to brainstorm like next is like what is maybe some different terminology we could be using and even in the movements whether it’s new urbanism and stuff like that because when you just say Urban and Suburban I get that that is I get that it’s so confusing for

People because if you start critiquing Suburbia most people would just go well I like I don’t want to be on top each other all living in giant apartment buildings and condos and blah blah blah it’s like whoa whoaa we’re not talking about suddenly just making everything um attached housing or something there’s

Something wrong with single like having detach single family houses it’s more scale in quantity you could say in context and what’s around it because when I say like Carlton Landing is a great example complete suburb you could put that near Oklahoma City where you know it’s drivable too you know and you

Still have all sorts of services and school you’ve got a school you’ve got coffee shop you’ve got a beer spot you’ve got food you’ve got uh businesses around there and then yeah you might have to drive out to go to work but boy what a richer experience um I don’t know

What do you think about that so uh maybe just for for my sake and for everybody else’s sake like Define what you mean by sub because you just said callon Landing is a sub oh yeah thank you yeah what are we talking about just something that is not hyper

Urban okay so um I think what we should do at some point is sit down and look at um well so I would I would argue that um one framework and the best framework to go back to when we’re trying to think about this is uh settlement types and so

You can find a hamlet in England you can find a hamlet in Russia you can find a hamlet in China and so there are some certain characteristics of let’s say like what is a hamlet you know and maybe that’s that’s the least answer the smallest collection of individuals living on an agrarian

Economy I mean like hardly economy but like it’s agrarian right it’s not under gathers but it’s a hand so it’s a collection of small group people there’s security involved it’s it’s probably relatively tight in the the inner block or the the space between whatever the structures are and that’s probably

Largely because you’re ushering in animals in there at night or in times of danger but there’s an aspect of like you might even say Village like it might feel like a village right and so then like if you’re talking about settlement types like and this is just like historians have helped put these

Together Architects the Germans were fascinated by this um I’m going to blank on all the names but Douglas danani would always bring this up right like there are the books like all in German they’re all talking about the settlement types and how you can like you find this

Through archaeology but like okay well next let’s maybe talk about Village and I think that’s probably the ideal for most um American families and I saw create streets put out an image on Twitter something a day or two ago and it was that it was like the quintessential like Village Square with

The houses around it and there’s the school and the church or whatever else and it’s like this is what people are asking for right when you talked about like suburb or like Urban or whatever I think I think in terms of like these settlement types so like Village and in

Some sense is it Urban I would say it’s more urban than almost every anything it’s more urban than downtown Oklahoma City I would say it’s more urban than downtown Oklahoma City because it’s spatial def spaces identifiable in that like you have wall it’s it’s an outdoor room defined by buildings and walls and

Trees so like if I’m in the town scare of the village I know that I’m in the town scare of the village as opposed to like I’m on a street in downtown I’m going to I’m kind of harping at Oklahoma City not for any good reason could be

Anywhere but like I’m on a the middle of the street in downtown Oklahoma City and maybe there’s a building to my left on on one side of the street and maybe just like parking lot for like a whole half block on the other side so somebody

Might say well you’re on a 60 something foot wide Street and I would say I don’t care about the street bed like the cart way I’m measuring the distance between identifiable edges right building to building building to building or building to tree or building to wall or Building G yeah something that’s

Intentionally creating a sense of of space so Village I think is kind of the ideal that most people have and are looking for and so yeah that’s probably part of the push back when you when people think about Urban or or or or Suburban but Suburban is not Village and

Then like if you’re moving up in the settlement type usually get to like Market town what’s the difference between Village and Market Town well historically that’s largely that market towns like to have like so in England for example you were given like Market rights like the king would say like you

Village I will protect a market to be held every Saturday whatever and all of a sudden the economy was big enough that it could expand more right so like a village like if you go to the Netherlands see like Village village Village vill you can bike like you just

Start biking and like every like few minutes there’s another Village well part of that is that like back in the day obviously you limited to whatever farming you could do adjacent right so at to after a certain level it makes more sense to like okay we’re going to start the next Village as

Opposed to spreading the Farms out and they’re having to bring the produce in closer and so you have like I mean that’s one of the reasons but you have all these small villages well as soon as you have a Town Market the economy is different and it can do different things

So there are identifiable types to this right so like a maret Mar Street like that’s something that we can I see in again in England you can see that in Spain you can see that in Russia and so like these different settlement types have different like Urban spatial

Character like spaces that have certain characters like a Market Street is is like a type of the market town and then city is like you know another stuff so like back to England like very often the cities um you know uh the politics were tied with religion and so

It was often called a cathedral city so it’s like a market town that was also the seat of some kind of religious power and there was usually both you know secular and religious power but it was a cathedral city and that like it had the economic power to build that Cathedral

So that’s what I think of actually when I’m thinking about like the difference between them and so very often like maybe you’re in the middle of nowhere and so it seems very rural like like let’s say Carlton land and and but maybe you have like a a group of of

Buildings and homes that um are inward you know that that are adjacent to each other their values to proximity and and it it might feel rural but in some sense inside of there might actually be more urban than you know Oklahoma City I had a profess which way I feel like we need

More like better language because I don’t disag like I actually no I totally agree with you like that’s that’s kind of actually what I’m struggling with is like what is the because something about I know like subdivision for me means something kind of very I don’t know if

This is actually like factually accurate like in terms of you looked it up the definition which I guess we could do but you know for me subdivision kind of means two things it mean well I think two it means it’s protected quote unquote as in it’s disconnected is

Another way of saying that by protected as in there’s probably one or two entrances in you know so if a developer buys a plot of land they’re going to develop that whole thing and they will probably have some grand entrance saying know Pine Creek Forest Estates even

Though there’s no Pines or Creeks or forest or anything you know some you know quote you know kind of ugly or try to be pretty entrance and then you enter this subdivision of all houses in a very very very narrow range you know and and those are the kind of the two things

It’s disconnected um it’s isolated and it’s mon you know monolithic housing essentially you know kind of like a monocrop you know uh just a a field of soy and corn you know you’re not doing regenerative agriculture or anything um is that how you think about subdivisions uh yeah sure I mean like I

I I think of it like like the subdivision is is a reflection of policy and finance I think right like nobody designed it it’s a it’s just a reflection of codes zoning codes and uh Finance which comes with time frames right like it’s how do you take a chunk

Of land divide it up effectively and efficiently to put it back out in the market so in some sense like I didn’t like I don’t like engaging with it when like new urbanists talk about like we’re going to fix the suburbs they like we’re going to deal with the sub it’s like

That’s not even a it’s not even a type it’s like like what happens if you spit in a bunch of parameters to like like or what happens if you put parameters in Excel spreadsheet and like it spits out something like yeah okay so you have a form that’s called the suburbs two cares

Right it’s not a reflection of and if if that’s what suburb means you know like the whole cold to sack and like the the 1 acre sites and and whatever it it there’s very little uh reflection of like The Human Condition there right yeah no I’m not talking about fixing

Suburbs or something like that but I’m still trying to figure out like Lang and maybe I’m not providing enough context but you know we’re starting to talk a lot more at building culture and be louder about things and talking not just about building but critiquing you know

And in there’s so many people doing this like whether strong towns or wherever you just were you know ion or something um but but when you go to talk about those things outside of the specialized circles you know the language often doesn’t work very well um and that’s

That’s kind of what I mean is like how do we I was just trying to think if there was if you had any thoughts of of of other language to just be like Urban Suburban you know or is that just it you know I don’t know uh we should definitely

Brainstorm because language language is so powerful and it’s so important right and um I can tell it’s a barrier for people right now like when I’m talking and like people get hung up on something that I don’t even mean like they just assume I mean something because of the

Word that I use and I’m not I could actually mean the exact opposite and that’s what they think you know you’re like whoa that’s not what I meant right I think I think one of the issues is that uh we don’t have good precedent around us and to the you made earlier

About Spain like you have to be there to really understand it so I would be hesitant to do much in the way of like trying to like Wordsmith something because if you don’t have a reference point for it like I don’t try ever to like or not anymore to like convince

People of anything when it comes to like this stuff it’s like if you’re not interested in like the beautiful Villa or like like the project Town C that we’re working right now like I think that there’s a market that’s going to die for this um these kinds of spaces

And there are some people who are not going to want spaces and trying to convince them of one or the other like big and I think that’s part of the reasons why I’m more interested in smaller projects as opposed to like P it’s like oh first I was looking at like

Public transportation or whatever and that um I think the advocacy role has to be built up like like to the name of your company like it’s a culture project see that’s I was going to bring back like I think language is really important um and and um because what we

Are doing is building culture we’re trying to create a collective vision and I think Collective Vision requires like some advocacy and I don’t mean that’s our main thing but I mean you know we and I don’t think it’s everyone’s job I just mean I’m kind of thinking about it

From our perspective and what we deal with because we’re trying to actually make get policy changes locally so that we can actually do better projects and that does take getting people on board with an idea you know I just was talking I was in Michigan talking to a bunch of

Um City councilors uh like elected City officials throughout the the state and they came into this convention I happen to be speaking at it and the people that have been introduced to some of these ideas before I mean really I think from what I can tell and I don’t know all the

Feedback like I think a lot of those people really liked it you know and got things from it but the people that hadn’t even heard some of the language I was using before I think it was very offputting and threatening even because I I kind of jumped really into kind of

More advanced stuff you’re saying and and so like I’m trying to learn personally how do I kind of cuz just like building like I’ve been doing this for 10 years if I go to talk to someone that’s never built anything before even if I’m trying to talk to you know you

Don’t know anything I’m going to use words I’m gonna be like Gable the hip roof the Dormer and you’re GNA go what is a Gable what is a hip roof what is a dormer you mean that’s what I mean like yeah actually being I I don’t know so

Just just what I mean by I hear you and I think that’s I think it’s absolutely important and um as you know um I I I’ve been hitting my head up against the wall here in westest part of our har Mission finally after years uh got an Adu policy

Passed and um so I’m very aware of Um the need for dialogue but I I think more important like advocacy work can be done by building good examples and so like you know like Steve doesn’t didn’t Steve Job like famously like not bring in like outside people to like say like your you know he would say he would he would

Build it and then show you and then there’s market adoption and so I think um very similarly I’m queued in on so I was just uh in Charleston as you know so people Charleston is a tourist destination in the United States okay so site beautiful places in Charleston with photographs

You know if if I’m going to try to advocate for something I would hate to use words without photographs of places that people can respond but but why are we having this podcast though you know what I mean why do people write books like if you’re not trying to get a

Message out and Collective for me it’s not just collectively communicating something because it takes a conversation that other people need to be involved with because it’s not like I have all the answers it’s not like you have all the answers now we’re in this world but I feel like it takes

Conversation to actually get to the right idea and that right idea is not going to be the same everywhere by any means you know it could change you know that right idea is going to be different for Oklahoma City and different for Atlanta and different and within Oklahoma City there’s a million other

Differences between what is right for a certain area or not and and so I think it takes um a Common Language actually to be able to have to make progress on a vision because I think you know yes I I completely agree that it takes showing

People like I say that quite a bit in terms of that’s why it’s funny that I’m arguing with you on this but like I always say just show them a compelling alternative that’s you have to show them a compelling alternative although leville really good on board the people

That are against it right but there’s there’s a lot of people that are kind of like they just don’t know about it that are absolutely winnable with words and ideas like I get people all the time going oh my gosh I never thought of it like that that’s really interesting you

Know there’s and that’s actually the majority I would say more people are like that than than the ones that are just like ah you know so but want him to become yeah yeah I I would um I would say one of the things that’s most exciting to me about the

Concept of inner block development or the most exciting yeah the most exciting thing is uh it is a frontier in which the small developer will have the upper hand yeah and the homeowner will have the upper hand you know when I say small developer I just mean any

Individual um who wants to shape the world around them yeah and I intiation these conversations are really valuable the conversations you know about you know human flourishing and the bu envirment and all that and um they need to be had and and and yeah they’re very important but I think

Also um getting out there and and and and starting to shape and having many hands able to shape the world around them and that’s that was to me the most exciting thing about adus um similarly that’s in some sense the heart of of inblock development is opening

Up our our cities and our land to uh the individual to the small developer to uh the person be able to make a lot of small decisions about shaping shaping the world as their home which is interesting because that’s actually 100% a scale issue that we’re talking about

Too like in some way we’re talking about scale in buildings but here’s like the scale of the individual versus the scale of an institution and right you know I still remember reading Jane Jacobs who’s a a very famous author from the I don’t know when she wrote that book in the 70s

Uh political activists and stuff and very famous urban urban Urban book um and one of them I just remember the words uh she was just talking about cataclysmic Capital um where too much money is actually not a good thing like obviously you don’t want not money because then you can’t do anything but

Too much money can create huge problems and by the way if you look at Houston or Dallas or something like that which by the way I’m from and I feel totally fine criticizing um they had there’s too many people moving there too much money coming in it’s just like you know and um

Yep but I love and and and and I agree with you this inner block and the stuff that we’re most interested in is yeah I mean the instit institutional investors this is what’s crazy that most people don’t know like so much of what gets built today you know if you’re a middle income

Earner or higher you’re probably putting some money into some fund somewhere whether you’re buying an Real Estate Investment Trust you know from the stock market or you’ve got someone investing on your behalf or you’re doing some private placement investing a lot of that money though ends up with you know

I’m going to use a bigger example that everyone would know but you know like a a Bridgewater or you know black rock or something like that like money gets funel in those and then those institutions what their job is is to invest your money and make the most

Amount of return humanly possible when the scale gets that big and all the money gets funed into one centralized place and then that centralized place is deploying that Capital like capital is powerful like capital is is energy capital is doing things and all that Capital gets deployed from a centralized

Place to maximize returns of course you’re not going to get human flourishing on the other end like like right they do not care about Oklahoma City you know they might they’re gonna be scouring data on every it could be a Podunk Town it could be the New York

City it doesn’t matter where do the numbers that we think we can make the most money where can we put that apartment complex and and extract the most profit from that Community they might never have been there they don’t care about it it is line out I’m on a

Spreadsheet and that’s how our decisions are made and and that is a scale issue you know like things start breaking at scale whether it’s Suburbia or capital and I think capital is really broken and it’s overly centralized and I love part of the reason I love you know well

Talking to you and these ideas too is yeah how do you kind of bring that break that up some and Empower individuals because that’s how culture is made big institutions don’t make culture individuals and people and businesses and neighbors and community that makes culture that’s right and it’s so empowering I

Think when you go to your favorite town city in in Europe or the United States downtown and realize that you know we’re working in Edmond Oklahoma right yep that you know I I talked about the city of Rome in comparison to my town well okay the city of Rome fits into like a

Tiny little corner of Edmond so in a lot of ways like um that scale that we’re that that we’re working with in United United States and so if you’re if you’re you know a new urbanist or want to be new urbanist or want to be small developer and you’re thinking about like

You’re building up your your Monty Anderson or John Anderson farm and if your farm is the scale of Oklahoma City you’re taking on your shoulders you know the issues that are so out of scale with at least traditional uh settlement types and patterns like get smaller you know

Smaller is where you can start to have an impact on the on the world around you you know I like to think about like with new urbanness and like the inner block like what’s like the flower pot test you know very often like you get these like

Renderings or like plan drach from like new urbanist and like Green Field development and these buildings and the streets are still at a scale in which you would have to put so many flower pots out to make a difference I was just in Charleston you know as we were talking about walk

Around the traditional um they sometimes called alleys but really not developed as service alleys but service um but but really as these these secondary smaller streets and there you’ll walk down and a a beautiful pot of plants makes a huge difference right like build it a place

At a scale or or have some streets or squares whatever where when you put the plant out there it makes a difference in the it makes a difference right like how many pots of plants do you have to put on your front porch right now Austin to

Make a difference on your street you can’t yeah right because how how far is it from building face to building face and then like right are you from the sidewalk and everything else and there are some lovely aspects to that but I think that um when it comes to uh um you

Know places where you see yourself reflected and and building culture we also need to have these smaller grained places this smaller fabric where honestly the children and the elderly feel more at home more reflected and where your capital and your investment your time investment let’s say into doing something is so much um

You could do so much more with so much less if you’re G to pave you know something in Brick and it’s 18 foot wide or your like a little stoop or like that little sequence like I’m thinking of like all these places in Philadelphia or Charleston it’s actually not that much

Brick if you want to like up you know upgrade your your driveway go or just our streets in front of in our neighborhood it would be millions of dollars and that’s the urban three argument too in part like we’ve built an infrastructure which we can’t afford yeah that one is individual can’t afford

Right we build an infrastructure that probably requires that black rock it requires big Capital to address and you’ve sidelined intentionally you know it requires debt and growth and it’s really extracted because certain people are making profits out of and that might even be the homeowner owning it for the

Time right and I’m not like saying people shouldn’t make money off their houses of you know well I want to make money off my house but but when it’s leaving everything else worse off in the future that’s when I become like not okay with it and especially now you know

Having kids where you really start thinking about that like what world are my kids going to grow up in and and going okay if we can’t even like it doesn’t matter if people like it in some ways if we can’t afford it you know that there’s kind of a Simplicity there to me

That makes sense in my little CPA brain like the numbers have got to work or or you can’t it doesn’t make sense you know it’s not sustainable it’s not resilient and it’s not because I think we’re gonna have the next centuries going to be terrible and no growth whatsoever or

Something like that but um not that I can predict anything but I mean it does seem like there will be less growth than we’ve seen for the past 100 I mean the past hundred years is a blip in the of human history of how much Innovation and

Money has been created and it it is absolutely remarkable in so many ways now of course when Innovation and things are happening that quickly you also get a lot of things wrong which I think we have but we’ve also gotten a lot of things right I mean we’ve done some

Really amazing things as just a society and the culture um but I think what we’re gonna have to continue with because we’re so used to this high growth High money you can waste money is kind of the thing you know when when actually I was just reading this it

Might have been Steve no it might wasn’t Steve Jobs thing but I’m listening to this podcast that I really like called Founders by the way um and uh talks about well it it was a different book they were talking about like the most dangerous time in a

Company is as soon as they achieve extreme success like that’s when most companies end up failing because they actually have too many resources like if you don’t if you’re not really careful and self-disciplined and all that that they’ll actually destroy themselves um over time I just kind of think about

Like that’s what the American society has been like we’ve just been bloated with wealth for uh not all individuals right like I understand there are a lot of poor people in America but I mean just as a society and institutions bloated with wealth and it hasn’t led to

Great decisions and things are about to get more tight I would say where we have to actually make decisions based off numbers not assuming that we can just have infinite amounts of debt you know so if suburban sprawl subdivisions the numbers don’t pencil they don’t pencil

You know and I think we have to talk about that hey can I talk uh so while you’re were I think I think one thing that like uh goes well with what you just said is um couple different conversations that happened uh during this ion conference

Um love and Charleston and one of them is um so ion is uh it’s B lad is one of the best new urbanist developments um I want to say maybe 25 years ago by Vince and Jeff Graham and their dad and it’s in Mount Pleasant so it’s just across the inlet

From Downtown Charleston so I was staying in downtown and it took us like you know 10 minutes via car whatever to get there and one of the things that uh Vince said is he said so that was kind of if you if you think about that time frame

Like May was maybe was maybe it was even longer ago than that whatever it was like it was really early on in the kind of new urbanist kind of Greenfield neighborhood I mean it was yeah this essentially Greenfield development I think it was one of the early dpz things

And he said you couldn’t do this today and so the question you know from Aaron Aaron Lubeck is like okay so are you saying that despite all the work of the Congress for new urbanism whatever else it’s getting harder to do good new urbanist projects and I think Vince and

The general conversation in the room was yes it is harder to do new urbanist projects and probably the biggest reason I mean a number of reasons but one of the biggest reasons is finance so the way projects get financed today is different than the way real estate the

Way real estate gets financed today it’s different than it was even just say like 10 years ago and so without even looking at our current interest rates a boutique you know real estate or or you know development firm like the grams doing this beautiful development of ion found a way to get it

Done however many years you know 30 years ago whatever it was and they’re saying today we couldn’t do that there are other things now like the storm water and everything else but so then there was a there was a group of us younger people there and so Aaron is saying okay so

What are we saying to these younger people and there wasn’t really much going on after that you know obviously my whole thing is I’m not really interested in Greenfield right now anyway I don’t know any young people that are interested in Greenfield not and it’s not that they couldn’t be

Interested I mean I was when I first went in grad school it’s it’s that we just recognized that intuitively and we’re aware of the fact we have to get smaller we have to get leaner and infill is where that opportunity is I there are other reasons why I care more about

Infel okay so that that happened I think that’s that’s interesting later on I think the second day we got a tour of catfiddle and Reed bergus I’m probably butchering his last name he is uh I think the main developer on catfiddle you you know the pictures of catfiddle Street I’ve just messaged

Him a couple times we don’t know each other but we’ve messaged on like Instagram or something because I was salivating over what he was I was very impressed I couldn’t believe it was new construction in the United States uh he’s the he he’s the OG of inner block right like yeah man they

Were the first they were one of the first groups to um Embrace building at this tight human scale on essentially throwaway land put together a group of like you know two or three lots I can’t remember how small it is but it’s it’s not even it wouldn’t even measure on any

Developers like framework you know of land it’s like like a quarter acre or something like that that that they have to to build on so we’re over there getting a tour of this and I think they start in 2015 it’s maybe 20 homes or 21 homes

Each one has its own Adu it’s on land that was maybe by right they could have gotten like three homes on you know and it’s just like throwaway land that only like an incremental developer could love but it’s such a vision like the contrast between this like Vince Graham

Saying hey we can’t build iron anymore and like people in the room just saying like oh you know CNU hasn’t made it anywhere and I think yeah you’re right you you can’t play at this Green Field in the way you kind of could 30 years ago but you know

It’s really um a beautiful example of what you can do and what’s byacre a bit more successful and I wouldn’t be surprised if from just from an investment point of view actually you’re getting more out of it is catf Street and Vince said if I were to do it if and

Vince is working at capol and he said um now that’s the only kind of project that I’m interested in building it’s these tight Urban projects using land very efficiently um densely but building at a human scale and so it’s just an interesting so it’s cool well to follow up on that you’re talking

About catfiddle Street which you know this is a small how big is it Tom like do you know like but you said it’s an acre I don’t know yeah okay well anyway it’s not big we’ll put it that way you know I think it’s like point I think

It’s 0. n Acres or something like that right okay so you know our development that we are working on um called the Townsen that’s going to be in Edmund Oklahoma downtown Edmund Oklahoma that will’ll be starting construction on next year it’ll be about 20 something tow houses and 20,000 ft of commercial

But what’s been really cool and this is the first time I’m doing this but I’ve been and I’ve got a partner on this a business partner Matthew Myers who’s a C- developing this with me and he’s really the mentor like he’s he’s kind of the gray hair I mean he’s 50s you know

But he’s got experience what I mean doing this and raising money and stuff but he’s really brought me on to not just do the design and and construction you know as building culture but me personally as helping me become a developer which we’ve already dabbled in

That right we pulled off the bend and crawled the landing and some other small project but this is a you know this is a $ 25 $30 million project this is this is serious and so it’s great to have that um maturity there and experience but my

Point is you know as I’m in these investor meetings and I’m reaching out to people and and trying to raise money can I have $100,000 can I have $100,000 you know we’re trying to raise $3 million for this thing and what’s been really cool is everyone invested in it

Is local everyone invested in it is someone that is interested in the community almost even like not just uh oh that sounds like a good deal all do it and granted there’s probably going to be a few of those in there and that’s okay but but everyone in there right now

We’ve raised one in 1.6 million is like man this is cool I grew up here I want to see this happen or wow I never even thought this could happen in downtown and I can’t believe it’s happening here or they’re just like yeah this is a really neat project I’d love to like

Kind of be a part of it and I mean think about how different that is than some off centrally controlled Capital somewhere deploying it you know these are local people who care about their communities that are putting money into a deal that we can go build a deal and

Make their communities better and by the way make money and that’s a lot more fun than putting in the stock market or you know putting giving them to Black Rock or something I mean there’s a lot of power there at the small scale because to at 2530 million project we can raise

Money off of that too like as individuals I’m not a full-time syndicator I’m not going out you know professionally just managing people’s money but I can I can raise three million bucks you know locally especially if we you know it’ll get easier over time in a lot of ways

Too and that’s so cool a table uh during during one of these sessions with um it was Kobe who’s I can’t remember his last name yeah um what is his last name whatever and then bo uh was on the other side Bo Wright um from strong towns and uh most

Of the conversation had to do with capital and it had to do with uh small young small developers like us with the backdrop being this bigger conversation that you can’t build ion today but in the back of our minds we’re all thinking about cat fiddle yeah we’re

Not one of the things that we were talking about is the the need for um you know a developer’s fund to get over some of those initial hurdles of you know acquisition all that like there’s so many things that are stacked against good development so many things to the

Point you just made you could you like one of the reasons you can’t build ey on now is because of the way that Capital works today and like is is different right like like private equity and all that but really what what you know as part of like the culture project it’s

Kind of like pushing back on this I think is aligned capital and and some say like I leaned over and I was like don’t you dare get Capital that’s not aligned like yep it’s like make don’t have like have the return be lower make sure that it’s aligned Capital before

You accept it like just like plant your flag on that because in large part it’s like getting in bed with this oversized stuff right like we talk like the capital is what drives all these projects like that’s you know the form of suburban Suburbia or whatever like I

Don’t even engage like yeah okay that’s the form of a spreadsheet and and capital that’s not present so what ises capital being present look like and people that are actually um interested in uh human scaled turning the tide I think of you know um Leon Creer has this

Book choice or fate and I remember at one point he talks about like in the United States like we did more damage post World War II than than we could you know than Dresden that’s right that’s not quite true but um uh we we did bulldo our downtowns and I think we have

This moment of people recognizing among other things the inner block as this new opportunity you haven’t been able to build inside of there for for you know over 100 years now we haven’t built at a human scale in the United States except for like the occasional Acorn Street or the

Charleston Lanes or Philadelphia and people like Reed and uh you know and catfiddle and um and and Kenny craft like the amazing stuff that Kenny is doing is really kind of opening up our eyes at the same time that capital is pushing Us in that direction we can’t do

An ey on anymore yeah let’s let’s recognize that and let’s see the opportunities for whole lifetimes worth of work within spitting distance like you could spend as as a small incremental developer you could you could make your whole career oh out of a few neighboring blocks working absolutely I mean there’s a development

Which I’m not going to say what it is but you know that we’ve worked on together that’s pretty large I mean that could be a 30-year project you know yeah and presuma yeah right and would say hopefully it would be set in the stage for incrementally

Growing that’s what I mean by by like that’s what I mean by 30-year project because it it stuff like that needs to be incremental and it’s actually pretty small like it seems big to us but because it’s infill but it’s small it’s tiny though in terms of what usually

People are dealing with for a subdivision or not tiny per se but I mean um relatively y yeah I think the other cool thing about um which I’m just kind of thinking about this for the the first time but you know if you go off and and get money and go build a

Subdivision like yeah the people that live in that subdivision you could say even though we don’t like whatever they get to experience it and maybe they really love it okay and they get to have that but like it’s not really for the city you know like it doesn’t it’s it’s

Not additive a as a public realm as a place to share and I don’t mean everything is shared like home like you don’t own your home that’s not what I’m saying gosh there’s so many times people are like I’ve been repeated to because I’ll say something that sounds like new

Urbanism and they’ll be like oh you’ll you’ll own nothing and love it repeating the the the world economic Forum line or something and I’m like is not what I mean like if you hear anything we’re talking about we’re actually talking about bringing the scale down and stopping you know trying to anyway but

The infill stuff like for example this towns in development in downtown Edmund there’s people excited about it that are not going to live there like they’re literally never going to live there probably um because they want a little more space or because it’s too high price point or not in enough bedrooms

Whatever whatever it is but they’re like oh I just can’t wait to see this in Edmond it’s going to be so cool cool like I mean that’s unique when I’m realizing like you don’t you don’t see people getting excited about some subvision going in unless they’re planning on living

There okay so okay so let’s pause there for a second because I think that that’s so important and I think that that also allows us to distinguish um uh uh streets from spaces because in the United States we you know back in like so I’m not going to get on this because it’s

Going to take too long I know talk a while but essentially you know all of the property lines that we have are a reflection of effectively you know efficient efficiently essentially um um cutting up land west of the Ohio river and selling it off right yep and so part

Of that is platting cities but city streets are not platted so as to be spaces and definitely suburban sprawl is not trying to create public space public around places where people belong right well Town send is building public space even though that’s going to be private

Held you know land in inside the Block it’s semi-public semi-private and anybody who walks past that is going to feel themselves reflected by that and they’re gonna feel it’s an invitation oh that’s such a good way privately owned it is an invitation to every single person who walks past to walk through to

Look in to see these spaces that reflect the person real spaces right like when you’re in Spain and it’s like this is a street well when you have a street in the United States it’s apples and oranges like that like ter from a terminology point of view we need to

Start using other words because what you’re building in with streets and Courtyards and and little squares and Townson is not the same thing as the streets around the perimeter of that blck and I do think that anybody who sees that and experiences that will get that in a second right like there’s no

Kind of we don’t language can f i mean not to downgrade like it’s important language is important words or it’s important to choose as wisely but people will get that immediately as as they see it yeah boy I cannot wait to get going on this I can’t you’ll have to come down

Uh we actually are submitting our site plan today or tomorrow congratulations yeah we’ll have to we need to jump back on some architecture and stuff so we need to get together on that but we’re a little over we right at an hour so let’s uh wrap up here and we’ll just uh

Schedule again to to chat about other things so sounds good yeah thanks for coming on Tom yep and uh for all y’all listening if uh uh please like And subscribe and and share if you had anything uh that was helpful for you and see you guys next time