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The Housing Trap, with Daniel Herriges
Daniel Herriges has been one of my favorite reads on the Strong Towns site for many years. He has thoughtful, in-depth pieces on many subjects, notably housing. Now, he has co-authored a new book with Chuck Marohn called “Escaping the Housing Trap.” We discuss the book, and much more, including my guest appearance in the book.
New feature: transcript below
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Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”
Kevin K (00:02.704)
Welcome back to the Messy City podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg. Thanks for listening. I've got a special guest here today, somebody who has been one of my favorite reads for many years now. Daniel Herrigus is here joining us. And Daniel, it's great to see you.
Daniel Herriges (00:24.11)
Great to be here, Kevin. Thank you.
Kevin K (00:25.85)
We're going to talk a lot about housing today and housing itself is obviously, it's probably one of the most, been one of the most talked about topics nationally inside the urban planning and development world and outside that world as well, probably for at least a decade as housing costs have really exploded in a lot of places in the country. So it's a very, very common conversation piece.
And a lot of it is often frustrating and confusing to talk about. So into this, Daniel Steps, he's actually been writing about this for some time on the Strong Towns website and writing really great pieces. And now he is the co -author of a new book with Chuck Marrone called Escaping the Housing Trap, which comes out, when does it come out Daniel?
Daniel Herriges (01:21.494)
April, April 23rd.
Kevin K (01:23.152)
April 23rd, okay. So I'm really, really looking forward to this. I think Daniel and I have probably learned from each other quite a bit in things that we've talked about and written about. And so I'm really, I'm excited to have this conversation and kind of dive deeper a little bit into the general topic of housing and his perspective and the book's perspective on it.
So Daniel was kind enough to share with me a little bit of the introduction. And I say that just because I've marked a few notes to help me direct the conversation a little bit. Housing is so broad as a topic. There's about a thousand different places you can go. And I really like how you laid it out here in the beginning. But I do want to start with just kind of one piece that I think is really fundamental that I just highlighted here a couple of sentences.
And I know probably for strong towns readers, this will sound familiar, but I just think it's important to emphasize this and repeat it because, and have you expand on it. But you talk about central to this approach is that recognition that cities are complex systems. They are shaped by countless decisions made by millions of individuals over time with interconnections that are challenging to trace or fully grasp. When attempts are made to simplify.
or ignore this inherent complexity in organizing urban life, challenges and disruptions arise. I wonder if you could expand a little bit on that and why do you think that's so fundamental to this conversation?
Daniel Herriges (03:04.526)
Yeah, well, it's something that's been it's been fundamental to the Strong Towns conversation for a long time, as I think anybody who's read the blog and is familiar with our
Published on 1 year, 11 months ago