A High-Growth Region Work to PivotDevelopment to New Urbanism

Вот отформатированный транскрипт вебинара: Rob Studeville: So, welcome to "On the Park Bench," a public square conversation brought to you by the Congress for the New Urbanism. "On the Park Bench" presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in new urbanism and allied fields related to the built environment. And today we have "A High-Growth Region Pivots Toward New Urbanism" with Ward Davis, Duke McClarty, and John McCurdy, and moderated by myself, Rob Studeville. And first, a couple of notes. Please join us for CNU 34. CNU 34 will be in Northwest Arkansas, May 12th through 16th. Northwest Arkansas is an epicenter of innovative regional planning ideas. Multiple downtowns are being rebuilt and linked together. Important planning efforts are seeking more rational growth. It's an exciting place that you should see and learn from. Go to cnu.org/cnu34. Consider getting CNU accredited. Sign up for CNUA. It provides a marketable credential to employers and clients, a CNU accredited professional certificate and listing on cnu.org public member directory as CNU accredited. And today we are going to talk about a region that represents the cutting edge in new urbanism in many ways: Northwest Arkansas. That's a region that until a few decades ago was mostly a part of the state with small towns. Now it's one of the fastest growing regions in the country, yet it retains this small city, small town character with the Ozark Mountains nearby. It has the Razorback Greenway, a new bike-ped spine that is linking the region's cities together. The infill development in the four main cities is remarkable. The region is still experiencing a good deal of sprawl, however, but it is using the tools of the new urbanism to manage that growth. CNU is bringing its annual Congress to Northwest Arkansas in a couple of months. We're going to find out more about how NWA is managing its growth, and why the region is optimistic about its future, and what other regions can learn from Northwest Arkansas. We have an amazing panel today. Ward Davis is founding partner of High Street Real Estate and Development in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a real estate company focused on urban and new urban properties in vibrant, growing cities and towns. He formerly served as the CEO of The Village at Hendricks, a 112-acre traditional neighborhood development in Conway, Arkansas. He led the acquisition team for Medical Properties Trust, a real estate investment trust, and formerly served as president of the National Town Builders Association. Duke McClarty is Executive Director of Groundwork, where he works with community partners across Arkansas to develop and advocate for innovative housing solutions. He previously served as Senior Director of Government Affairs and Community Relations for AIR Communities, a national real estate investment trust based in Denver. And prior to that, Duke had held several roles at the US HUD and FHA, focusing on government-sponsored lending programs, large-scale urban and multifamily development, and distressed asset disposition. Duke served in the White House prior to his time at HUD. Excuse me. Well, I'll get back to that, but. John McCurdy is director of community development for the city of Rogers, Arkansas, where he oversees planning, engineering, and growth management with a focus on practical regulation, infill development, and the need for stronger tools such as urban growth boundaries. So I'm going to turn this over to the panelists for presentations, brief presentations. Then we're going to have a discussion, and followed by Q&A from the audience. Please use the Q&A function of Zoom to ask your questions as they occur to you. We'll get them more or less in the order they are asked. Thank you very much, and uh... And Duke, if you want to share your screen. Duke McClarty: Sure, thank you for that wonderful introduction, Rob. It's great to be with you all today. I'm going to be very quick. I'm just going to kind of set the stage for the region. I know many of you on the call today probably are familiar with the region, but I think we think it's important to highlight. The challenges that much larger markets have been facing for some time are found right here in smaller communities throughout the US. So, just a couple of slides real quick. Here's where we are. Our growth has been discovered. We've been discovered. Our current population is nearing 600,000. That's in a two-county region, and we gain roughly 40 new people a day. Um, so we are actively grappling with this amazing quality of life that we've created. But now, how do we house these folks? How do we plan for the sustained growth? With growth comes some anti-growth sentiment. This is also alive and well throughout our region. It's one of the focus areas of my organization's work as we think about best policies, as we think about re-regulating our development and housing systems here. We also think about how to educate our region so NIMBYs aren't coaxed by these arguments, and they can, at a minimum, remain neutral, if not be a supporter of our smart growth. Here's a graph that just shows the average sale prices of homes in our region. You'll see that in Benton County home prices are 73% higher than they were just five years ago. That number is actually 75% higher in Washington County. Um, so massive appreciation has been underfoot. Ward actually sent this slide over to me to include in this. Ward, do you want to briefly just share kind of how you all are looking at this, and what's represented on this slide? Ward Davis: Yeah, this shows, this we show to investors, we show to people that don't know Northwest Arkansas that well, and it really kind of, on one hand, it tells a really positive story, you know. Um, the green shows growth in Northwest Arkansas normalized to the year 2000. The lighter color shows the US during that same time period. So Northwest Arkansas has experienced both tremendous population growth and tremendous growth in income per capita. In fact, Northwest Arkansas was at a deficit relative to the rest of the country of about $4,000 a year in per capita income in the year 2000, and now we're about $11,000 premium. But that doesn't tell the whole story. This is great for my business and shows that we, you know, have a lot of positive tailwinds when you're trying to develop real estate. But what it doesn't necessarily say is that a lot of that income growth has come from people moving to our region, and we, you know, you hate for the growth to come at the expense of the people that live there already. So there are two sides to this positive story. Right. Duke McClarty: That's right. Thanks for that. Just two more slides here I want to share. We don't just think about the housing burden in our region, you know, as it's going to be focused on today's discussion. How do we mitigate or make our outward pressures better than they would be if left to the market? You can see here where we combine both housing and transportation costs. We are not performing very well. We always use this to try to make an impact on folks and and share. You know, many of these markets that we would expect to be much worse performing on this metric are actually better than us. So there's obviously work to do there with with the placement of placemaking. Finally, my organization formalized some of these policy recommendations that we worked with municipalities on. We worked with our state on. These are broad policies. I don't think any of them will surprise most urbanists on this call. But I thought I'd just highlight that as something if you want to scan the QR code and give it a look. With that, I'll stop the share and look forward to the discussion. John McCurdy: They want me to go and start, Rob? Rob Studeville: Yeah, please share your screen. Your team. John McCurdy: All right. Yeah. And thank you again for the great introduction. So I've been doing this for about 10 years, and when I started doing this job as a retired Air Force colonel, I was pretty mission-focused and began by trying to determine the best way to tackle the job of city planning and infrastructure planning. And I, you know, eventually came across CNU and smart growth and some of the organizations that are doing some really great work and thinking about this holistically. And what do best practices actually look like? And then we set about doing them. And so I think that Rogers has done just about everything that the experts would say we should be doing. We're looking at regulate. We really instituted a complete regulation effort where we shredded our development code, which was very Euclidean, and adopted a new transect-based land use plan with a form-based code. And we've gone to ministerial approval of all new development, including subdivisions. So, we do have public hearings for re-zones. And really, I'd say that that is one of the greatest friction points, is that you can have a wonderful transect-based land use plan that has smooth transitions, but we still run into NIMBYism that upsets that pattern. We've invested over the last decade about $250 million in bond projects, capital improvement projects, just in the city of Rogers, and for a city of 70,000, that's, I think, that's pretty good. And looking back on it, it turns out that all of these projects are about placemaking and making walkable complete streets, connecting neighborhoods with bike routes, and then the city itself to the broader regional bicycle network. And then also we're doing some great work with establishing green corridors around streams and doing natural stream design and restoration and. And really just protecting the green spaces within the city that are not developable. And then the outcomes of all this has been that we've done a lot of investment in our two downtown areas. We have Uptown Rogers, which is spanning the interstate and really amounts to a mixed-use office park sort of a region. Um, but bringing more walkability and adding bicycle lanes and paths to that part of town. That part of town is bifurcated by the interstate, so we've constructed three overpasses with side paths that are protected and bike lanes across those bridges to connect those two neighborhoods and to at least provide some means to be able to get from one side of the interstate to the other without going through an interchange. Really doubling down on the regional trail network, and I could do an entire presentation on that, and then focusing on infill and mixed-use development. But with all that, I can switch. I mentioned NIMBYism. I mean, that's that has been a significant challenge to execute the plans that we do a lot of public engagement on, and have what we think is a lot of buy-in. But then those plans tend to run straight into NIMBYism. We also, you know, we continue to see unconstrained regional sprawl on the regional level. Rogers established urban growth boundaries, but nobody else in Northwest Arkansas has. Fayetteville, I think, effectively has to a large degree, but that continues to be a major issue is just consuming rural land, and then sprawling out to mostly to the West, and then just the development momentum towards really bad stuff. There is such a huge industry built around strip malls and single-family subdivisions and things that consume an awful lot of land. And we haven't really gotten our arms around that. So what's the next fight look like? I'd like to move the public engagement even more upstream so that we have a lot more focus on planning at a more granular level, and get buy-in early on. And then find some way to do some sort of hybrid ministerial approval of re-zonings, which, strangely enough, is legal in Arkansas. I don't think that many cities have actually instituted this, but the state legislature gave city councils the authority to implement ministerial approval of re-zones. I think that we need to become a lot more regional in our governance. Right now, we have gotten to where we are right now through cooperation, but at some point, I think you need to move beyond cooperation and bring some standardization into things like floodplain management, the development of our intercity roadways, and ownership of our bike network. Um, and then just work harder to change the development trajectory. I don't think that we're ever going to have Nirvana. Um, I think that we will always continue to have non-urbanist-type development, and actually, I think there's a lot of work that could be done to just recognize that reality. And I, you know, I'm not picking a fight with the transect purists, but think about the transect in more local terms and how a proper transect can interact with improper, if you will, growth patterns. I think that that's an area that could use a little bit of thought and work. Now, if I can get out of this... here we go. Ward Davis: Wonderful. And then from my perspective, I really don't have slides, but from my perspective, a lot of this conversation is a lot of the reason that we're, um... have CNU coming to Northwest Arkansas this year is Northwest Arkansas is pretty unique in a couple of ways. One, it's a quick growing region, which is not entirely unique, but it's one of the fastest growing areas of the country right now. But what makes it unique is two other things. One is, we are a region, a metropolitan region that has four relatively small independent towns. The largest is about 100,000 people. So Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers, and Bentonville, um, you'll get to see all of those during CNU. Um, uh, so it's got decentralized leadership, and in addition to those four towns, there are 28 other small municipalities that are figuring out how they're going to handle growth as well. So, um, we have decentralized leadership in Northwest Arkansas. The other thing, and this is the piece that's really interesting for CNU, is Northwest Arkansas probably has more new urbanists than anywhere in the country. In fact, I can't think of anywhere else that has more new urbanists, and that covers a wide range. I've been going to CNU for over 20 years. I'm a Lifcom member of CNU. Legend has it that a very cool party is going to be announced soon for CNU lifetime members. So if you're not a lifetime member, become a lifetime member. But there are new urbanists at every level. There's government, philanthropic with the Walton Family Foundation, which is very supportive of, um, of urban and new urban initiatives. Developers like myself, lots of architects that are involved with the Urban Guild, planners involved with Eat Dev, developers involved with... Oh, I think Dove, I'm the former president of the National Town Builders Association. So there are a lot of new urbanists in Northwest Arkansas. We also have, again, strong philanthropic support. We have strong municipal leadership. So we have the best tools available to grow well. And yet I'm still terrified, and probably the most likely outcome is in the next 10 to 15 years, I'll do well as a developer, and won't want to live in Northwest Arkansas anymore, because we haven't grown well. One thing that kind of keeps coming to my mind as we think about pushback from NIMBYs is, I mean, to some degree, they're right to push back. Of course, I'm a developer, so maybe these are my sworn enemy, but the outcomes in other places around the country have not been great. You know, Austin has not grown well. Denver has not grown well. Let's go to the one. Nashville has not grown well. They've grown a lot, but they have not improved the quality of life, I would say, for a lot of people that live there. In Northwest Arkansas, really, I'd really like us to change that trajectory. And so we're spending a lot of time just on a regional plan in Northwest Arkansas led by DPZ and Placemakers. We have folks like John McCurdy in the city of Rogers that have a true citywide form-based code. Bentonville is following suit right now as well. So we have a lot of the high-level pieces in place, and there is a lot of discussion about regional growth right now. But there is an enormous amount of inertia in the universe that pushes back against that. And I suppose that's a lot of what our discussion today is going to center around. Thank you. Rob Studeville: Oh, great. Thank you, Ward. So it's just, I would just note that this discussion is going to be posted on the CNU website, or the video will be tomorrow for anybody who wants to see this again, um, or view it in its entirety. And just let people know that, uh, you know, ask your questions at the Q&A function of Zoom, and we'll get this discussion going. I'm just, you know, curious as to why Northwest Arkansas has so many new urbanists, and, uh, you know, what does that mean for the region now? And is it something that other regions can duplicate? Um. John McCurdy: Well, you know, there's a, I think the kind of just the objectively true answer to that question of why there are so many is because mostly the third generation of the Walton family. There are members of that third generation, and through their foundation they have, they have funded a lot of people to attend CNU conferences. When I first took this job, one of the first things that happened to me was I got a grant to go to Seattle to a CNU conference, um, and so I'm one of many. At last year's CNU, we had over 70 people from Northwest Arkansas attend CNU, uh, which is incredible, and most of those people were going on philanthropically paid grants. And so we've just had a lot of philanthropic interest in new urbanism, and I think that that's because there are wealthy people in Northwest Arkansas who are very concerned about the same things that we're concerned about. That they want Northwest Arkansas to retain its charm and its livability. Um, they want, they enjoy the great outdoors that we have, and the entertainment and recreation opportunities, and they're trying to preserve that. And so, that's kind of, um, that's kind of the simple answer. I think the more complex response is that new urbanism makes a lot of sense. And so it links with smart growth to make a very compelling argument, and that the more people are exposed to the argument, the more we see consensus around these basic ideas of small walkable communities and small investments and all that. Of course, there is some irony in all this, that from Walmart, we have the Walmart wealth and foundation through the Walton family. But it's also not completely unexpected, I think, if you really think it through. Rob Studeville: Yeah, one of one of the positive stories has been the redevelopment of the four major downtowns in Northwest Arkansas. And what have been the keys to that success? And what are the remaining challenges? Duke. Duke McClarty: I can chime in. I would add just to the first question before I get to the second, I think that infusion of people coming to the region from places that are built in a more urban way has also led to that. I think folks who've grown up in bigger markets have experienced an urban life, come here, and they don't really know that they're an urbanist, and suddenly they're able to put a label and put a name on kind of how they feel and how they choose to live. I think the downtowns have also benefited tremendously, you know, from exposure to CNU. Um, there has been a focus on those planning departments in particular, attending these conferences, learning these principles. And, you know, I think each of those downtowns, each of the political leadership in those towns have made the conscious decision and really played a very active leadership role in focusing on those areas first. I think they've come to the realization that that's financially good for their city coffers. I think they also have had the realization that it really just provides a better quality of life, um, for the residents, and I think it's also the residents demanding that, you know, showing up and saying, "This is what we need. This is how we want to live." But I welcome others thoughts on that. Rob Studeville: Ward, thoughts on on these questions? Ward Davis: I mean, notice what started as always, you know, I mean, we, it's, it's got a great quality of life right now. It feels like four small towns. It's, you know, a lot of times as urbanists in the US, we focus too much on downtown versus suburbia, and Leon Krier focused on multinodal houses and cities as being, you know, a higher, higher aspiration. And so Northwest Arkansas, we have the basis of that, and people really enjoy that when they get here. They enjoy that it feels in some ways it feels larger than it is, because we're really punch above our weight with, um, um, with, you know, public, you know, opportunities, you know, outdoors and with, um, with live music and that sort of thing. But we, but it also still has the tight-knit feel of smaller communities, and we want to build on that, not, not, not harm it as we as we grow. What's really amazing, though, is that all of these four cities have all moved in the same direction. I mean, you know, it's hard to imagine another region where there you might have one or two of these cities moving towards new urbanism. But to have, you know, all four of them kind of, like, looking at reforming their codes and and, um, you know, instituting, uh, um, you know, more infill development and so forth is pretty amazing. So anyway, I mean. Rob Studeville: You have the primary cities in the small towns, but even if you have walkable urbanism built in these cities, you know, what do you do about the development, you know, in the towns and to, uh, to get those to go along as well? Ward Davis: Well, the current, the current situation in the small towns is great. Typically, they're, it's the classic pre-1925, you know, design of a town that was built to be walkable. These are small towns, and they're rural towns. I think the challenge for us is, as these, as these town towns begin to absorb some of the population growth in the region, you're seeing national home builders come in and purchase large amounts of land and and put in just, you know, sprawling kind of suburban development. And then, for a small town in Arkansas, they have to generate sales tax. We, cities don't really have any benefit from significant benefit from property tax in Arkansas, which creates a real challenge. And so, you know, every, if you're a small town, every Dollar General or Sonic or McDonald's or, you know, all that stuff is a ribbon cutting because those are all cash registers that help to support that small town. So I think that that's a real challenge that they're going to face, and we'll continue to chase, and I don't face, and I don't really think there's an easy solution to that other than to become more astute about how they look at their future pro forma, and start thinking more in Urban3 type terms about land use. But that's going to be the challenge. These are walkable small towns today. They're charming. They have a little Main Street, I mean, a little square, and I think the bigger challenge is that there's sort of this, this list of national fast food chains and outlets and and every and Walmart, and all this stuff that you have to have to be a successful town. And we, the concern would be that that just homogenizes the entire region, and it's just this, you know, expansive of that type of highway, strip mall type development. Yeah. John McCurdy: Well, the tax code strongly encourages that for these small towns. I mean, we have, we are a sales tax state. Property taxes, the vast majority of property taxes go to school districts. So you basically lose money on residential as a city. So to make financials work, you've got to, you've got to attract, yeah, yeah, you know, retail sales. And so the, the lowest hanging fruit for that is going to be, you know, first, the Dollar General, and then you kind of work your way up to Taco Bell, you know. And it's an, it is a tough argument to tell these folks that they got to turn away money, you know. Ward Davis: Yeah, just the other day I, I won't divulge who said this, but somebody was talking about another smaller town in Northwest Arkansas that I won't divulge, and the comment was, "Oh man, they're, they're really growing. They've already got a Taco Bell and a McDonald's. They're about to get a Supercenter." I mean, it's a success, right? And so, but I, financially, there's truth to that. They will not survive if they can't capture cash registers and sales tax, and that's cooked into the, the, that's cooked into the system here. I mean, you have. Rob Studeville: Oh, go ahead. Duke McClarty: Oh, sorry, Rob. I was just going to say, I mean, I think, you know, a lot of the work that my organization does is, you know, we used the word "node" earlier, you know, highlighting the opportunity and educating in these outlying communities. You know, that they in many ways already are a node. And, you know, it's, it's time to have a conversation within their town, you know, prompt that discussion around what they want that town's identity to be. And, um, you know, get some agreement and and move toward it. And, you know, there's, I think it's unrealistic to think there's not going to be some layer of Dollar General and Taco Bell in these communities. But at a very minimum, you can preserve that, that downtown and start to focus the attention around that downtown in a way that that our larger four cities have done as well. Rob Studeville: I think it was mentioned the inertia that's, that's creating this, this sprawl has been, you know, it's been the dominant form of development for a long, long time. And it's, it's all backed by there's the subsidies, subsidizing of sprawl and and a system that's craving sprawl. So, uh, how, how do you stop subsidizing sprawl and and how do you break the inertia of 70 years of automobile-oriented development? Ward Davis: I can dive in first. There are, there are two big pieces there. You know, I'm a developer, so I'm looking at, I probably have less, you know, gravitas on this topic than John and Duke. But as I see it, there are kind of two primary pieces. One, a lot of the inertia comes from the commercial side. We spend a lot of time talking about NIMBYs opposing density and that sort of thing in our city centers, and and that sort of stuff. But I view the hardship to turn commercial interests. We have, um, we have done a very good job of teaching commercial, you know, there's a wide variety of businesses how to operate exceptionally well in the arterial collector system that cities are, how cities are designed. In other words, and the way it really manifests itself in Northwest Arkansas is we're really good at, at, you know, businesses are really good at how to orient along the state highway when it gets plunked into an area. Um, so that's, that's one piece. The other way we subsidize, the other, other big one, and this is particularly important in Northwest Arkansas, because it's an acute problem, but it's also an acute opportunity, and that is infrastructure. And in particular, sewer and water, particularly sanitary sewer. We are in a lot of the region, we have capacity issues for sewer. And this is an opportunity to choose how we want to grow. But at the same time, it's hard to tell cities that they should turn down revenue when, when, when, you know, kind of more sprawl users come, come knocking and they don't have a vibrant downtown yet. We also shouldn't require the utilities to just really take it on the chin with a development pattern that is incredibly consumptive of miles of sewer pipe. Um, and we should not, we should use this as an opportunity to reward financially productive development when it comes to infrastructure and and and not reward and not subsidize less financially productive development. Rob Studeville: Duke or John, you want to chime in? John McCurdy: I'll jump in. Yeah, I just would add to that a little bit, I guess. The subsidization of sprawl really does boil down, at least in this world, where the three of us are, really does come down to the allocation of water and sewer. I think that there's not an example in the world that I'm aware of of really good urbanism occurring in an unconstrained environment, that it's either regulatorily constrained, or it's constrained by access to resources, or it's physically constrained by being on an island like Manhattan or something like that. But where you see true urbanism, there is some reason that sprawl couldn't occur. And so I think just from a very big picture policy perspective, um, new urbanists need to be concerned about that, and really thinking about, um, how do you constrain sprawl? And I can't think of a more practical way of doing that other than to link access to infrastructure to at least being able to demonstrate that you have a smart plan for growth. And so it's, you know, it's one thing to say, "Well, the outlying cities are out of luck, they can't grow. You know, we're going to bring it all into the core and not allow it to happen," which you could, that same, that same design would apply to a place like Oklahoma City or anywhere, Denver, which Ward mentioned. But but it's another to say that you must demonstrate that you have a financially responsible plan to manage growth, and for us, that means mixed-use compact development. That you're not, you're not building so many linear miles of everything that you can't possibly pay for it when the bills come due to begin replacing infrastructure in 40 or 50 years. And so I think that that's the key, is just being fiscally responsible. And, you know, I mean, this is where we should be able to, this is where our, this is where our Venn diagram comes together, I think, is that there are, there are social reasons, there are financial reasons for new urbanism, and that we should all be able to find common ground and advocate for policies and rules and laws that support that. Rob Studeville: So is it all about water and sewer? Is it about streets? Is it about form-based codes? Your thoughts on that? John McCurdy: Well, for sprawl, I think it's about restricting sprawl, and so for, for whether an area is entitled to access to infrastructure that has to do with how they're managing the growth in that area. And so that's form-based codes and and things like that. And Duke, you're about to say something. Duke McClarty: The only thing I would add to that is, you know, as I mentioned, we do a lot of communicating throughout the region. And one of the points we make, we've done polling on this and it demonstrates this, is the affinity for the outdoor green and natural space. I mean, really, if there's a calling card for Northwest Arkansas, that's at the center of it. And, you know, offering an alternative to the, to a sprawly development pattern as a different pattern that that preserves that. And, you know, this is an issue. Again, we've done polling on this. It spans political lines, um, it spans throughout our region, and, you know, highlighting what's at risk and what we're going to lose if we don't change the development pattern. We have found a very receptive audience with. Ward Davis: Well, you have the green. Yeah. Duke's slide that was looking at H plus T, that T in Northwest Arkansas is really bad, and it's, it's only going to get worse if, if we don't wrap our, our arms around this problem of expansion. John McCurdy: Rob, do you mind if I just jump back in real quick, because I'm looking at the questions that people have sent in. There's several that are kind of, you know, they're stick-oriented in the carrot and stick piece. And one question that kind of covers a couple of folks is, "Do any of the cities have urban design guidelines in place?" Like I mentioned earlier, Rogers, Arkansas has a comprehensive entire code rewrite that is, that is, that is truly form-based. The city of Bentonville is in the process of doing one, and then the other two cities, Springdale and Fayetteville, have form-based codes in specific areas of their cities. And "How adept is a local architecture community on urbanism?" More in-depth than anywhere else in the country. We have more true urbanists in the architectural community in Northwest Arkansas than anywhere I've been in the country. So we have the folks that can make it happen. And then, you know, kind of flipping further down this list of questions, you know, we hit one that's like, "You know, have you managed to implement new urbanist design standards with national retail developers?" Again, that's a stick. We're not going to win the sticks. I got news for you. We're not going to be able to beat the folks that we have taught to make money in this sprawl world. We're not going to be able to beat them to death. We've got to find a way, and we've got to be able to show that new urbanism is financially productive for those folks. There will be winners and losers, you know, there'll be some drive-to uses that aren't going to do well. Okay. But we need to have winners to fill in the gaps for the losers because we're not going to just be able to cram down our standards on, on folks that this is not how we have taught them to operate in the United States of America. We've got to, we gotta focus on the carrot side as well, and gotta show that they can, that they can be more successful in an urban environment. Rob Studeville: Oh, there's a good question here. "What constitutes growing well in Northwest Arkansas? Can you define that? A vision for growing well." Duke McClarty: That was Ward's phrase. I'm going to let him do that. I'm done. I'm dying to. Ward Davis: It means it needs leveraging our, what makes the region great, and continuing to build on that, as opposed to dilute the heck out of it. You know, to me, both Nashville and Austin stand out as, and Denver as well, stand out as areas that really diluted what made them interesting to begin with. Northwest Arkansas, we've hit on, we've hit on the high points a couple of times. The interest in the outdoors, um, it's huge. We are making, you know, and really the Walton family has made unbelievable investments in the outdoors and our trail system, and then we're just so close to the Ozarks and great rivers and lakes. Um, so that's a, that's a big piece, preserving, preserving those and preserving access to those at every level from a very fine-grained level. I can jump on my bike this afternoon and be very in very cool places, too. I can go, you know, make a day trip and and really experience, you know, being in the middle of nowhere. And then the second, the second piece of what we have that's special that I think, really, we can build on is the fact that we are multinodal. It's one of our biggest obstacles to growing well is the fact that we have so many cities and we have to have buy-in from so many folks. But the flip side is, all of these communities have something to build off of, and as soon as they can identify that, what makes this place special? And if we can kind of keep growing on that and really kind of view each of these places as a contributory piece to the overall Northwest Arkansas experience, they can grow thoughtfully around that. It's where the thought in this can get in folks' minds and really and really be negative. It's where the thought is, "We've got to get ours." Because the region is growing, that's when we get kind of homogenized negative growth. But if we can continue to grow these nodes well, and because of the four downtowns are all in various stages of doing great, and that's not something that could have been said 20 years ago. There was one good downtown 20 years ago, and now there are four great downtowns. And then a lot of smaller ones on their way. But if we can continue to focus on this multi-nodal piece and really enhance, enhance these areas, we can, we can, we can grow well and it naturally inhibits, it naturally inhibits sprawl also. Rob Studeville: Okay. Um. And we've had, you know, the, the Greenway, which is unique to Northwest Arkansas, and that links the, the four cities together. Is that a structure around which the region can grow and make a multimodal future for itself? What do you think about that? John McCurdy: Yeah, I think for sure. For sure it could, and and it actually, it goes down to Bella Vista, which is, it goes through, gosh, Fayetteville, Johnson, Lowell, Springdale, Rogers, Bentonville, Bella Vista. So it already captures a lot of downtowns. And the thing about the Greenway is it provides sort of like this intercity major, like bicycle highway where you can really cover some distance. And it also is the anchor point for a growing network of loops that attach to that Greenway and then circle through neighborhoods and towns and schools and places of employment. You know, early on, I got to spend some time with, with a guy from Seville who had worked on this, the, the bicycle network plan for Seville. And he said, you know, that it was a tremendously risky thing to do something like that in Spain. There wasn't a bicycle culture. People thought the weather was bad, and that only, you know, that real people didn't ride bikes. That was for little kids, and all this kind of stuff. And they just built a complete system, and it turned out that it worked really well. We have a pretty complete system, and it turns out that it's working pretty well. So that's a, that's an important piece. And then, you know, you mentioned as a framework for absorbing growth. Recently, uh, y'all might know Matthew Petty and Matt Hoffman. They did a study showing that within a quarter mile of the Razorback Greenway, only looking at undeveloped property and going no, no bulkier than three stories, we could absorb all of our future growth between now and 2050 on that strip. And so, it just goes to show you that there's plenty of greenfield available within the urban core of Northwest Arkansas to absorb our growth if we can somehow limit the sprawl at the edges. Rob Studeville: Mm-hmm. And develop in that quarter, you know, that by the Greenway. There's a question: "How will population growth in general be accomplished if there is an urban boundary? And can cities coordinate so that sprawl can decelerate in the region?" So if there is an urban growth boundary, I don't know how you have an urban. If that's even a possibility for Northwest Arkansas or what that looks like. Maybe Ward and. Can you accommodate the growth? Okay. Hmm. John McCurdy: Well, I think that that was my point, so I'll jump in on this. I, this is not a, this can quickly become a black and white issue. You know, either you have zero expansion, or you have unfettered expansion. So I think it's a more nuanced problem to solve. But just within the city of Rogers, for example, we have nearly a third of the area within the city of Rogers is greenfield, and most of that's large greenfield. It's not just infill. And so in Rogers is typical of the other cities in Northwest Arkansas, we have plenty of space within the existing cities to absorb growth. And we mentioned the Greenway already. The traditional highway that linked the cities was Highway 71. And so along 71B is almost all strip mall autocentric development with a whole lot of acres of parking lot. They can fairly easily be converted, not easily, but somewhat easily be converted into multifamily housing and other uses, and also provides a transit corridor. And so transit doesn't work, though, if you don't have that concentration and critical mass of population. And so, there are things that we can do to encourage growth within the core without just being completely negative on expansion. All I'm suggesting is that it's in the smaller city's best interest to manage their growth very carefully, because if all they're doing is saying yes to KB Homes and other national builders to come in and just expand those smaller towns, um, they're not getting the tax revenue to support that growth when those roads begin to crumble in 40 or 50 years. So, I think it just behooves us all to be very careful about saying yes to expansion before we establish a long-term viable, financially viable and sustainable core. Rob Studeville: We get a question: "Does anybody have any thoughts for the most effective method for engaging city and county planning agencies and forward-looking smart growth planning?" Duke. Duke McClarty: Um, you know, it's, I think, I am such a firm believer in relationship building. You know, I don't think the right approach is showing up and telling these folks how to do their jobs, but I think it's about building trust and relationship over time that you're, you're consistent with that messaging. You're consistent with, you know, the suggestions you have, and you stick to those, those principles when you have the opportunities to communicate with them. But I think it's a lot of slow, methodical education. If I could go back, Rob, just very quickly about, you know, kind of the Greenway and the bike culture that's here, and something that I think is, has been invaluable to the trajectory of the region. Is, uh, and we touched on this briefly, but an idea around regionalism. You know that this, this idea was set in motion, you know, in the late nineties, or I'm sorry, early nineties, you know, by primarily our corporate entities that were here at the time. At that time, all of these small towns were very much separate and apart. But some visionaries at those companies at that time, when they were all committing to make this their corporate home, understood that there needed to be regional stewardship of what makes the place special. And I think it's created a culture that, you know, we can all, we can all thrive individually. Each community can thrive as the region thrives. It's not to say there's not healthy competition, you know, to the earlier discussion about the downtowns and, you know, 25 years ago, there was really one meaningful downtown, and now there's, there's four and potentially five. I think that is healthy competition. But, um, there is certainly an understanding at all levels of government and civic engagement that a rising tide has lifted all boats here, and I expect that to continue for generations. Rob Studeville: Is there, I mean, thinking about how other regions could, could learn from Northwest Arkansas. Is there a, a way, uh, that, uh, that, that, how do other regions like duplicate that, that kind of thinking? You know, is there other, other ways that, that, uh, um, you know, is there a way that other regions could, you know, could have those same sort of forces in place that they could achieve a consensus for growth, you know, and and do it similar to what Northwest Arkansas has done? Duke McClarty: I'm happy to, since I made the comment about the regionalism. You know, I think in each community, I mean, there are folks who play an outsized role in, in how those communities operate. It doesn't have to be political leadership. It can be business, it can be civic, other. But I think it has to be led with intentionality, and you know, a few of those prominent leaders need to get together and and decide that that is going to be a priority of theirs. And then engage others and tell the story of their region. Maybe hire someone to do a master plan for the region or just create some vision that you can build around. But I think you just need a handful of committed leaders in, in a region to to really start moving the ball. Rob Studeville: We haven't talked much about public transportation, and could you talk a little bit about transit and how that fits into the plans for the region, alternatives to driving? We had a question on, on what role does public transportation play in achieving these goals? John McCurdy: Well, I'm on the regional transit board. And so I, I think about this a lot. We have a long way to go when it comes to public transportation in Northwest Arkansas. I mean, we've talked about our bike and and non-vehicular transportation assets, and I think that we're very strong in that area. We're just getting started when it comes to public transportation. There is very, very strong public support for building a better transit system here. But the transit system that currently exists, and I'm trying not to make this too wordy because it's complex, but the, the system as it exists today, basically, there's a regional transportation authority that contracts with each individual city to provide bus service within that city. And so there's not really a truly regional transit network, although last year Rogers and Bentonville, we managed to, to connect our fixed routes to provide regional transit within Benton County. But that's disconnected from Springdale, which is disconnected from Fayetteville. So it's a big need that we have. Our spending per capita is around $9 to $11 on public transit, and it needs to be north of $100 to be competitive. And so we're not spending nearly enough, we don't have dedicated funding for transit. But we're at that point right now where I think it's an increasingly recognized need. I mentioned 71B. We recently conducted a transit alternative study that determined that bus rapid transit on 71B was the most viable form of public transportation for the region, and we're beginning to pursue that by simply connecting the intra-city routes into an intercity system, and then putting in the hardware to allow traffic signal preemption and things like that by buses. So, we're on the road, I think, but it gets back to, we've got about as far as we can go on cooperation, and we really lack a legitimate regional authority that can start to tackle some of these regional issues, like stormwater and sewer, intercity road connections and transit. Rob Studeville: Can you create urbanism without that strong, you know, public transit network to begin with? I mean, is it the chicken and egg problem? John McCurdy: This reminds me of one of the questions in the chat that I said that I saw, which was, "Did, you know, which came first, the bike network or the bike culture?" It's chicken and egg. You know, you've got to have the, you've got to have the urbanism to support the transit. You have to have the transit to support the urbanism. And so I think that you can, we need to be doing all these things kind of simultaneously. But but really focusing, this is public investment. And in general, I think that this gets back to kind of a common theme throughout this discussion, which is, where do you subsidize things? I think you subsidize things where they're sustainable. And along that urban core, we see sustainability. And so that's where we need to focus our investment in transit and transit-oriented development and multimodal transportation infrastructure and all these things. So, um, just always thinking about where is, where is growth sustainable? And that's where the, that's where the overlap in the Venn diagram is. That's how you build regionalism. You find the common ground, because we have, you know, politically, we're, we're like a lot of the rest of the country. We're probably a lot more to the right than other parts of the country. And so, you've got to find ways that you can make, um, very strong, compelling, logical arguments about sustainability, financial sustainability, long-term cost of ownership for the government, and things like that to control taxes. And you can do that, you know, very effectively using new urbanist principles. Rob Studeville: Ward, you're creating urbanism, like, both in the city and outside, and what is required for that? Ward Davis: Uh, give you a little more specific, Rob, for what is required for which? I mean. Rob Studeville: I mean, for, you know, you're actually building walkable places outside the city, and you're doing it without necessarily, you know, strong public transit or. You're doing it in places that don't necessarily have the urbanism in place yet. And so, I mean, what is enabling you to do that? Ward Davis: Yeah, yeah, so, I mean, there are a couple of elements there. Yes, we do our building a couple of greenfield kind of traditional neighborhood development type projects. They are generally in Northwest Arkansas in transit-ready locations. For instance, um, kind of two of the three large projects that we have or are working on are along the, the current rail line. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's not a passenger rail line, but but could be at some point in time, and all three of them are essentially adjacent to the interstate. So they are close to right-of-ways that can be, that can be leveraged. They can be immediately leveraged for rapid bus transit. So they are, you know, I wouldn't say they're fully transit-ready, but they're moderately transit-ready. They could, they could adjust there. At the very least, they're again along the interstate, you know, people can get to jobs for where, um, where our neighborhoods are, and they can, you know, they can take care of a lot of their daily needs and a lot of their daily wants, because they, um, they're great places to hang out in our town center projects, but they can also very quickly and efficiently get to, um, other jobs around the area, you know, more so than, than a lot of the subdivisions that are kind of spread off, off of the interstate system. So we've got a, they're kind of, you know, quasi-infill locations. You know, but you know, I'll be the first to admit they never, they never will be as good as a great downtown. They're great, but they're not as great as a great downtown. Rob Studeville: An interesting question: "Northwest Arkansas seems to be pretty strong economically now. Can a new urbanism approach to smart growth be implemented in less economically vibrant regions around the United States?" And Duke, you work across the state. Can you speak to that? Duke McClarty: Sure, I'm happy to, and I answered some of this in a question I typed out. You know, the Sun Belt in general, housing expense, housing challenges is new. You know, many of the principles that, that, you know, have, have been the center of CNU for years, um, are new concepts and to much of the South and much of our state. A year ago, we worked with some state legislators on enacting a statewide ADU allowance bill. This allows for a homeowner to, to put an ADU on any lot in the state that is zoned for single-family housing. This was a bit of a trial for us to see how receptive that audience would be at the state. And I've been encouraged by, you know, state legislators that are proactively reaching out to me now, asking kind of what else can be done? What else should be done? Um, you know, the, the political reality is also that there's not going to be huge sums of money to subsidize this work, whether it's, it's housing, whether it's transit. You know, we really are focused. My organization is focused on kind of the re-regulation of the development process, but it's not expected that there's going to be huge budgetary commitments to that. So, you know, engaging the private development market, engaging, you know, the, the regulatory environment that would, would lead to private sector solutions is, is really the approach that we've had to take. And I think the one that politically is most palatable in the state. Hope I answered the question, Rob. Not sure I did. Rob Studeville: Well, it's difficult. It's certainly a difficult question. But, you know, I think that how this can transfer to other places, you know, that people can learn from. We had another question about how, you know, the, uh, the various groups, the public health environmental groups, educational institutions, how they could be involved in, in changing a region. And Northwest Arkansas does seem to have a lot of cooperation among different groups: the regional authority, which is that distributes transportation funds to the regional, that organization, the various cities, the Walton Family Foundation. There might be others. Do you have any thoughts on how these organizations can cooperate, uh, based on your experience? Maybe John, or. John McCurdy: I, I just think they do, but at the heart of it is the, the truth is, it's a very affluent area. It's economically a very successful area. That's why we're growing. It's an increasingly cosmopolitan area. I was riding on the Greenway recently on my bicycle, and I came across a cricket match going on, you know, and it's folks from Pakistan and India, and I mean, this was, this was a change since when I grew up here as a kid. And so that, that is about having a Fortune, well, I think, I think we're still Fortune One right here in Northwest Arkansas, plus, you know, Tyson Foods is here, and JB Hunt Trucking, University of Arkansas is a big employer. It's not just a single company town, but it's very successful. And then you, you drive across the rest of the state, and it's a different story. So can, can new urbanism exist in a, in a non-affluent area? I don't know. A lot of towns are just fighting to survive. I still go back to my, my belief at this point that I'm looking for someone to refute that new urbanism happens where it has to happen. First of all, and if you look at, at places like the Netherlands and and and even Germany, where it's more about regulatory constraint and things like that. But it's about preservation of the land that you don't want to turn into developed land, you know, or the inability to develop outside places like Charlotte, North Carolina, for example. So I think that that's, that's, that is the prerequisite to me for good new urbanism at a large scale. School neighborhoods. Rob Studeville: Oh, so was all this in, was this inevitable? All this, you know, good planning in Northwest Arkansas, was it inevitable or to what extent is this, you know, the result of ideas taking hold and people taking a different approach to planning and development? John McCurdy: Well, let me, let me keep yakking, because I've got a great story. Our mayor, Greg Hines, I think he was elected to city council when he was like four or something like that. But he's, he's been in city government his whole life since a young age, and he's been the mayor for several terms. And at one point he was involved with the Planning Commission, and of course, as a city council member, he was weighing in on, on, on re-zones and and all this stuff. And he was a, he was a dyed-in-the-wool Euclidean kind of guy. He believed there was no, no good street that wasn't going to be better if you made it wider. I mean, all these things. And he went to a CNU conference, and he came back. I completely changed. He said, "I saw the light," you know. And yes, ideas are incredibly important. It's all about ideas. And, and I just think that, at the end of the day, that's the strength of new urbanism is that we're creating space for ideas to intertwine, and our culture is based on the notion that we can get together in a pluralistic space and we can become, we can be neighbors with people that were different from and still be neighborly. I think a lot of what has happened in the United States, and the problems that we're facing today, stem from this, this growth of wealth that led to gated communities and segmenting society where success meant that you didn't have to be part of the community anymore. You got to, you know, be part of your own enclave. And at its core, new urbanism is about creating spaces where people can intermingle. And to me, that's a super powerful idea. It's the central idea, I believe, in, in classical liberalism, in our form of government, going all the way back to the Enlightenment. And so reclaiming that is an important concept. It's a liberal concept, it's a conservative concept, it's an American concept. And so, yes, I think the idea and the ideals of new urbanism are at the heart of what could possibly be the most important thing we could be doing right now. Ward Davis: I want to build on something you said about Mayor Hines attending CNU, and this is, you know, this has come up several times in the comments and the and the questions that have been that I've been kind of watching from the, from folks listening right now that kind of revolve around, um, you know, our local leaders, you know, well-versed in new urbanism and that sort of thing. Um, I want to emphasize that if you can get someone to come to CNU, it only takes once, you know. The Congress is incredibly powerful, and I've been going, you know, to most of them since 2005, but what's much more important than me going to another CNU is somebody coming to CNU for the first time, particularly if they have a, uh, if they're on a planning commission, or if they're on a city council, or if they're a key member of staff. Nobody comes away unaffected from their, their first CNU. And over and over and over in Northwest Arkansas, I can think of Mayor Chris Keaney in Johnson, where we have Johnson Square. I can think of you, John McCurdy, who is now co-chair of CNU in Northwest Arkansas. You mentioned Mayor Hines, and we can just laundry list the number of people that it took one, and several of them have only been to one. He's a presenter. He's going to be a presenter. But it doesn't matter. The fire chief in Fayetteville last year, you know, I mean, he's, you know, I mean, it's, it's huge. They're huge, huge pieces. So, you know, you know, we, part of the reason that we've got strong support in Northwest Arkansas this year for CNU is to have a lot of local folks attend. But, you know, it's been incredibly successful for us. Other regions, that's, that's one of the lowest cost, highest impact ways you can, you can have to influence the growth in your region is just get leaders here once, you know. This could be a particularly good one, so you gotta come to this one. Rob Studeville: Do, what, what are people going to learn from coming to Northwest Arkansas? You know, I say this. Duke McClarty: With, with all due respect to larger markets, more sophisticated markets, more of the country looks like kind of this legacy-built Northwest Arkansas than it doesn't. Um, I think, you know, these issues have not been grappled with in, in many of the regions. I mentioned the Sun Belt earlier. And now they're having to grapple with it. I think this moment in time where, you know, growth challenges, urban design challenges, housing challenges are acute in virtually every community, um, we are grappling with, and I think we're at the tip of the spear for regions our size and at our stage of growth. So I think someone that attends and maybe comes from an area that looks similar to Northwest Arkansas is going to walk away with a lot of good ideas. You know, there's always more to learn, and and I attended several Congresses myself and always leave with something valuable. But, um, I think those that come and attend here in Northwest Arkansas are going to get some real valuable ideas, some, some, you know, thoughts on regionalism, some thoughts on some issues that maybe they have not thought about introducing to their community. So please take the time and and join us here in Northwest Arkansas in May. Rob Studeville: Okay, we can, we can end it there. Thank you very much. That's excellent. Thanks, everybody who participated in this, and this will be, again, the video will be posted on cnu.org probably tomorrow. And everybody have a great day, and I look forward to seeing everybody in Northwest Arkansas in May. Ward Davis: You see, Rob, I wish I could see everybody else here, too. Thanks for, thanks for joining us. Duke McClarty: Thank you, Rob.