Anthony Catania - Designing Vibrant Communities for PEOPLE

Austin Tunnell

Thanks everyone for tuning into the Building Culture Podcast. Today I have on a guest named Anthony Catania, who is both a friend and a colleague, a very talented architect and urban designer. And we get into quite a few things over the hour that we talk. We get into what it means to build for people. We talk about what gets in the way of that. Um, we talk about having a vision for your city and being for something, not just against something, uh, what politicians and city counselors can do and what you can ask of them to do. And it was a great conversation. Hope you enjoy it. Thanks for tuning in. All right. Well. Welcome to the building culture podcast. I'm your host Austin Tanell. And today I'm excited because I've got a friend and colleague, Anthony Catanion here, who is an architect, an urban designer who recently moved to Oklahoma city from DC. And, but I'll let you introduce yourself from there. If you can just give us a little bit of background of what you've done up to this point and some of the projects you've worked on, your background and also how in the heck you ended up in Oklahoma City from Washington DC and from Pittsburgh where your roots are. Yes, thanks Austin. I'm really happy to be here. So yeah, so I have quite a long story going all the way back to Pittsburgh, to the University of Notre Dame, to Washington DC, here to Oklahoma City. So I am professionally trained as an architect, I'm essentially an architect and an urban designer. I design buildings, but I also design towns, neighborhoods, cities. So I'm kind of involved in projects at a lot of different scales. So I started my career more or less in Washington, D.C., and I worked for a firm there doing a lot of larger apartment buildings and mixed-use projects, upwards of 200 units of apartments,

Austin Tunnell

urban infill kind of projects in Washington, D.C. And after working for that firm for a few years and concentrating solely on designing buildings, I went to work for a very small firm. And their focus was urban design and master planning, really large sites and creating new walkable communities. And so I was involved in a variety of roles within kind of the realm of urban design there from the actual master planning piece to writing urban and architectural design codes, to actually doing schematic architecture that would kind of fit into the context of these neighborhoods planning and reviewing architecture that other designers were proposing for these communities. We were in the town architect role where we were basically in charge of being sure all the architecture was cohesive and also that it was contributing to the overall design intent for the urbanism of the neighborhood. So very recently I moved to Oklahoma from Washington, D.C. about eight or nine months ago and involved in some really interesting work down here. You know, Oklahoma isn't known for having a great legacy of urban design. Definitely some great architecture, but certainly urban design and creating walkable places is something that's still fairly new to a lot of folks here in Oklahoma. But I think from the exposure that they've had to these kind of projects so far, I can tell there's definitely a need for good walkable projects, places designed around people here. And I think that it resonates with a lot of folks here and they actually want to see better development happen here than has been for many, many years, many decades.

Austin Tunnell

Yeah, you really have had a lot of experience working at, like you said, different scales, I think is a good way to say, you know, down to the individual building, zooming all the way out, you know, cause one of the things that's, you know, struck me is cause, cause we work together. So, but, uh, it's just like your level of nuance on things like curbs, streetscapes, light. pole placements, tree placements along sidewalks. Like how do you actually make these beautiful places that everyone loves, you know? And it turns out there's actually, it's not hard rules per se, like, oh, this is exactly how you do it, but there's a language, you know, and a lot of these repeatable things that even though you're designing in different contexts and different types of neighborhoods, it seems like you're able to kind of apply those consistent, what would you call it? Solutions across. different types of projects and scales and things like that. Yeah, and certainly when it comes down to some of the things you were just mentioning, like how to design a, with the proper. design for the curb of a street or the proper spacing of trees and things like that, it comes down to basically just going to great urban places and mainly they were places that were designed and built before the automobile and just observing how things were done and how those urban environments were created and just paying attention to those little details. A lot of people would assume that an architect is just looking at the buildings, but for go to great urban neighborhoods, I'm looking at how the street is designed from one side to the next, how they handle the curb, how they handle drainage, what kind of materials are used. And the common theme that you find in great urban neighborhoods, great towns and cities across the country and the world is that all of these little details are informed by how you design for people.

Austin Tunnell

these neighborhoods were built before cars. And so all of the aspects of how the site is designed, the street, public spaces, it was all designed around people. And we've, in this day and age, we've given over the design of all of those details to folks who are not focused on designing places for people. They're designing places for... everything but people. They're designing for vehicles, they're designing for fire access, they're designing for the utility providers, all kinds of other issues that don't really take into account what the final result is and how people will experience the place and how a space is scaled and designed for people. Yeah, no, that's a really good way to say it, that You know, you have to have these professions paying attention to the fire trucks, to the utilities, to cars and all that because, but it's like, we've still lost sight of the actual why the broader why, which is literally the human experience, like we're building the hardware that we're all having to live on and we didn't have anything. You know, I'm saying we being just citizens, normal people had nothing to do with it, had, had no say. Um, has that been like. What have been some of your challenges that you've seen, you know, just in your work on the urban design front from different departments and whether it's fire utilities or whatever, and how do you work through that? Well, in the, I'll approach that by, by saying in very general terms that, that a lot of this really comes down to spatial requirements. So. So all of these different agencies, organizations, you know, the utility companies, they all have their own spatial requirements for their systems. And it all really comes down to it's all about spatial minimums, minimum dimensions, minimum clearances. And designing for the human experience a lot of times is about is about a set of maximum dimensions. The street shouldn't be any wider than this.

Austin Tunnell

The public space should not be any wider than this. And so and so that that's usually where the where the conflict starts is you're trying to design a place that is scaled for the human being. And you're up against these the spatial requirements from the fire department, the trash service, the utility companies, building codes, zoning's setbacks, things like that. So then all of those things are all of those. All of those aspects of designing the built environment are based around minimum dimensions of XYZ. And really, I think we need to be starting to think about maximum dimensions. So that, in very general terms, that's where I'll start that conversation. It's all about space. I actually love that comparing the minimum versus maximum. I hadn't heard it quite like that before. But you're right, like, I mean, even just for people, you know, an example could be in the neighborhood I live in. We live in an old historic neighborhood in Oklahoma City. And the houses are what? Like, how far back do you think my house is from the front of the street? 30, 40 feet? The setback? Yeah, the setback, 35 feet. Is that what the standard is? Yeah, around there, around there. Somewhere there, but there's a minimum setback, essentially, where you have to put your house back from the street 35 feet and what? You know, you're saying what we see in urbanist communities all the time, successful ones, as they have the maximum setbacks where it's like, you have to be, you can't be any further than 10 feet from the street front. You know, you still have some play. Um, but you know, once again, it's paying attention to the scale and same with streets, you know, versus. It has to be at least this wide versus it can't be any wider than this because wide streets mean faster cars, you know, things like that. I like the way of, uh, you framed that. There's also an interesting thing that a lot of urbanists kind of relate to the idea of a maximum setback. And I've heard several folks in the kind of movement of new urbanism put it this way, but you really wanna have the house and ideally a house with a front porch. And you want that porch to be within conversation distance from the sidewalk. And when you do that, all of a sudden, the kind of social life of the neighborhood is completely different.

Austin Tunnell

It completely changes when you have that relationship between the front porch and the front door and the street. And you lose that in a lot of neighborhoods that we built over the many, many decades at this point, five, six, seven decades, because of those very deep minimum setbacks. And the idea that this big, large front lawn is a very American thing. It really actually doesn't go back very far in American history. There's a much longer legacy of building urban places that are scaled to human beings where the buildings are pulled up to the street and you have that kind of relationship and interaction happening between the private and the public. Yeah, it's a great way to say it. I want to talk and kind of ask you about too, what's your perspective on... where is the place for suburbs? And what I mean by that is whenever, you know, we start talking about this stuff, denser walk about urbanism, I think most people that are not familiar with it immediately start thinking of like Chicago or Manhattan or something and just think like, I don't want to live, you know, in apartment buildings, things like that. And one, I'll say, you know, that's not really what we're talking about. There's such a range of housing that we need. So how, one, where do suburbs fit into this conversation? And two, our suburbs, like, would you just do the suburbs differently? You know, like, can you talk about that some more? So I think I'll start off by saying, when we talk about a place that's urban, I think...

Austin Tunnell

in the mind of many folks who are not used to having conversations about cities and architecture and urban design, when you say urban, the word urban, I think a lot of people immediately think about Manhattan. They think about hyper dense environments. And then of course, I think urban also has some unfortunate kind of social connotations as well. But as far as the form of a place, can operate on a sliding scale from the very dense to actually very rural. Very rural. In fact, I was in Woodstock, Vermont a few weeks ago, and there's this great neighborhood that's right across the little river from where their main street and the core of the town is. And it's this great neighborhood, and it's literally a dirt street, a little planting strip with street trees and little granite bollards. And then it has a little just asphalt sidewalk along a dirt street. And it has picket fences kind of enclosing the front yards. It has houses that are pulled up. They're in that conversation distance from the street, but they have little gardens in front, front porches. And as I was walking down this street, it kind of struck me that this, even this is an urban environment. This is urban. And it's urban because even though it's not very dense, even though the houses sit on large lots, even though there are a lot of trees and there's a lot of nature present, it's a place that's designed with people in mind first, and cars and all of these other things, second, third, fourth, fifth, further down the line. And so I think it really comes down to designing a place for people first in order to be urban. So a place that is not very dense, that has large lots, that has big backyards, large homes can still be urban. And I think that should be the goal of, I hate to call them suburbs, but communities that are appropriately located and appropriate in their density, where low density is appropriate, should still be designed where people are.

Austin Tunnell

the number one objective. Yeah. I think that's such an important point to make. I think there are people out there that are a little bit intense on the urbanism stuff and just like everything should be urban, everything should be walkable, or at least it comes across that way. I think that's quite counterproductive to what, well, really the intent of what people are saying, because the urban transect, that idea of cities should have... denser cores and the transect out to all the way to rural and prairie. And I like to say that good urbanism actually makes for better suburbs because you can't build suburbs endlessly. You start ruining your city as things get farther and farther out and traffic gets worse and worse and worse. That eventually, where are you going to put all the people? I mean, if you're not in a growing city, okay, fine, it can work. But for any city that's growing, which, I mean, Oklahoma City is one of those cities, Houston, Dallas, Austin, I'm from... Texas myself, so I'm familiar with those cities. They don't scale well. Suburbia, suburban subdivision, kind of splitting everything off and siloing everything off does not scale well. It can seem convenient. And actually, I hear this a lot. People talk about how it's so convenient. And actually, I was speaking at something recently and someone kind of critiqued what I was saying and talking about, well, we like how we live because it's convenient. And it's interesting because it's... I don't know. I wouldn't think of suburbia as convenient, but there certainly is the perception of convenience. Like how would you respond to that? Like, yeah, that's, that's something I hear a lot as well. And I think that, that part of it is we become so used to, to a lifestyle where if you need, if you need a gallon of milk, you have to get in your car and, you know, drive five, 10, maybe even 15, 20 minutes to go to a store and buy milk. And I think that, that A lot of folks in America are in this day and age are, they also did not grow up in urban environments. And so they have a lifestyle that they've been used to. And so being able to get in your car and drive somewhere easy and find, easy access to free parking is considered convenience. And I think that when you actually live in an urban environment, particularly a good urban environment where you can walk,

Austin Tunnell

five minutes or less to a store and grab a gallon of milk, that that's another way of understanding convenience. And it's certainly when you start to think about all the costs involved in the convenient lifestyle that everyone thinks they have, you start to look at it a little bit differently. And those are costs that are dollar amounts, and then those are other costs like... the social costs of suburbia. So not having that, not having the interaction with your neighbors. There's the conversation about sustainability, which we all know about. So there are a lot of different ways to approach that, but I certainly, as you're kind of insinuating here, I think there's definitely a real challenge to the idea that the lifestyles that we become used to are really convenient. We're used to them, but are they really convenient? I'm just kept to kind of question the assumptions that people are making when they say that. Yeah, it's like, it's not necessarily convenient, but it's comfortable. And it's comfortable just in the sense that it's not unexpected. As in, like, it's not convenient to live in suburbia and have kids. It's just, I've never met anyone that said it was. When you're shuffling kids around to schools, to soccer games, to plays, to go see grandma, to their friend's house. to sleepovers, whatever, like it's not convenient. You'll just hear about like, I just drive my kids everywhere all the time. That is my life for a decade or more of my life. You know, and then, you know, I grew up in the suburbs of Houston. My dad, he commuted over, I think on the way to work, sometimes it would be like 45 minutes to an hour, but on the way home, it could be hour, hour 15. And it's not unusual at all in these big cities like Houston, Dallas that are suburban, but large and growing. to have commutes that are between an hour and two hours. I mean, that is like normal. And to say that that's convenient is actually crazy. I mean, I don't mean it like to say that to someone that says that I think, but once again, it comes back to just like, that's my experience. I feel safe in this. I'm in my car, nothing unexpected is gonna happen at work. I might, I don't have to wave to anyone. I don't have to talk to anyone. Like it just feels like you're in your zone, but I don't know, it reminds me of like convenience and this sense of comfort.

Austin Tunnell

But like almost to me, suburbia represents this ideal of comfort that never really manifested, like for real. Like the idea of the suburbs was quite nice in some ways, like get out of the dirty, disease-ridden, crime-ridden cities. Let's all live on prairies and pastures and things like that. But that never really happened. It certainly doesn't work for the masses, right? You've got some great suburbs that are expensive and nice and they're well-maintained and nice houses, whatever. But sorry, I'm kind of getting all trapped. My point is connecting, I don't know, convenience and comforts. And this thing sticks in my head. The ideal human temperature, like people being comfortable, is 76 degrees, which I know that sounds a little warm, but that's just, at least that's what I heard it. But maximum human pleasure, you could say, is not staying at a constant 76 degrees. It's actually arriving at 76 degrees. It's being cold and warming up by a fire to 76 degrees. It's being hot. and cooling off, you know, and that's actually the maximum, like human pleasure you could say. And it just, I use that saying a lot because it just, we as humans in particular as Americans tend to prioritize comfort above all else. So we try to build our houses, if you make money so big that you never have to leave it, you've got the pool, you've got the movie theater, you've got the sauna, you have everything. So you never have to go outside of your house and do anything or see anyone or have something unexpected happen, right? But it doesn't actually make people happy. like staying in a constant 76 degrees, like even scientifically, like just the way your brain and your chemicals and your body and your dopamine system works, humans aren't meant to stay in perpetual, like kind of discomfort. And that's in so many ways it's, it's the ideal of suburbia, but it doesn't even work to begin with. I don't know. I'm just, it's something I just think about. Well, certainly the, certainly the, the aspects of, of discomfort, I'll say. in experiencing your environment, and if, you know, specifically if you're talking about an urban environment, things that are unpleasant, actually teach you about what a lifestyle is like in an urban place. There are certain kind of discomforting things that end up, I think, probably being things that you appreciate if you actually live there.

Austin Tunnell

I'm not sure where I'm going with that, but yeah. Well, yeah. And I mean, my point wasn't to say like suburbs are about comfort and like city living is about not being comfortable. That, but I just mean like, it's more about the thinking of it, you know, and the idea of suburbia being this place where you're so. isolated that once again, I keep using it coming back the idea of nothing unexpected happens, right? And there's like, there's like a safety in that, but it's not thriving. It's surviving, but it's not thriving as human beings. Um, something you said earlier too, made me think about, uh, about the suburbs and, and sprawl, um, as really operating in such a way that, uh, that there's the ideal suburb, but the more people that arrive there, the more that the ideal. the ideal of the suburb kind of degrades. Absolutely. And with urban environments, they tend to be the opposite. And the more people that come, the more vibrant they are. Especially when you think about how in a walkable environment, it's really the critical mass of people that allow all kinds of institutions, commerce, things to happen within that human-scaled... area that is, you know, considered the neighborhood. Oh, that's really interesting, yeah. So, I think that's really an important distinction. Urban places thrive when more people arrive, and suburban places, they stagnate and they actually fail when more people arrive. You get more traffic, more pollution, less nature. All the things that people come there for, you get less of as more people arrive. And so that's why the suburbs are, they're kind of like the cartoon of nature, the cartoon of the American dream. They're an illusion. I see. I come back to that. It is an illusion. Because there are good suburbs out there. Like we both agree on that. We're not saying all suburbs are bad, right? But it's just that there's so many that are. And most of the stuff that gets built today are.

Austin Tunnell

Um, but I love, uh, that idea that the more people come, it gets better when you're talking about urban environments. And you're right. Like you're mentioning commerce and things and really it's culture that starts happening and it's this unique identity that starts to shape and form it. And it's not controlled, right? It's not some imposed thing. It's not some government thing. It's not some corporate thing. It's people, you know, people, it's the guy that's able to open a 200 square foot little. food stall and sell, I don't know, you know, some Turkish food because he emigrated from Turkey or something or it is some unique thing that's really hard to thrive in a suburban environment. And when suburbs, that's what's interesting that the more people come to urban things, a lot of times the smaller business, the more smaller businesses you will see. But with the suburbs, the more people come, it's just the more corporate it gets. It's actually like, not that there is a great rich culture, but I think like local identity and culture. I mean, if you were to just go take pictures, whether it's Oklahoma or Texas or Arizona or California, it doesn't matter. Just suburban, you know, kind of what's being built today in the past 20, 30, 40, 50 years, just suburban neighborhoods and the strip centers that service them that, by the way, just get increasingly bigger every year, right? Like the more housing, the more spread out our housing, the more centralized the businesses and services and schools that service all that. And then you're just also catering to the most amount of people. Like I use chilies as an example. And by the way, I like chilies. I'm not like bashing chilies or something like that. But does the world need more chilies? You know, I would say Oakland city probably does not need more chilies. And, you know, it's like, you've got this menu that, that fits every, there's something for everyone, there's tacos, there's Asian, there's Thai food, there's steak, there's like every possible, you know, different type of food to make everyone happy and there's a place for that. I'm not saying that's like just inherently bad or something, but it's also an interesting. It's also uninteresting that I can get the exact same thing in California that I am here or in New York. And maybe sometimes that's nice, but it's like, I want to know what Oklahoma City could be. I want to know what, and I want to go visit Austin, Texas and what could Austin be? What are the people there? What are the values that are being expressed? What are the type of people, the population mix, culture? And that's what's so crazy. I mean, culture is just so incredible because it's this self-perpetuating self-

Austin Tunnell

creating force. So what you're describing is the manifestation of the formulaic quality of the suburbs. There are a bunch of formulas that come together that basically yield suburban sprawl. And it's multifaceted. It's zoning, it's building codes, it's the way development is financed. All of these things come together and instead of expressing the culture of the people that live there, it's expressing the formula, the many formulas that really make up sprawl. And the interesting thing, like when you talk about small mom and pop businesses and how they have a difficult time surviving in the suburbs, it's because the formula wasn't written for them. And then a whole that really mean that it's very expensive to run a business in the suburbs. It's very expensive to develop a property into residential units in the suburbs, whether it happens to be apartments or single family homes. And because it's so formulaic, much far fewer corporations have become specialized in kind of working. working their way through that formula. And so you get the suburbs that are both developed by large corporations and those large corporations are the ones that know how to navigate, navigate opening up and operating businesses in the suburbs. And then of course the other thing too is that great mom and pop businesses, oftentimes the way that they, the way they thrive is just somebody walking by and, smelling the pizza or the cookies or the bread or seeing something really interesting in the store window and popping in. And you don't have that in the suburbs either because everything, every trip in the suburbs has to be pre-planned. You go somewhere specifically, you drive there specifically because you're certainly not going to catch the aroma of any kind of food driving by at 80 miles an hour or you're certainly not gonna see a cool knickknack in the window driving by at 80 miles an hour either.

Austin Tunnell

So a whole host of things come together that really mean that the suburbs aren't a manifestation of culture, a manifestation of other values that are not cultural values. And that's what's so interesting. I mean, I'm without saying which project it is, but we're working on a project where, I mean, this is so evident because we've got basically some conventional business, you could say, like that's trying to franchise and they're just like, that they like where our location is. And it's a very large location. So it's way more than just a building that's gonna go there. And they're like, here's our building that we've designed, put it right, you know, yeah, that's where it is. And of course on their design, it's just this tiny footprint of building surrounded by a sea of parking. So they can just like design their building and it's like boom, put it wherever they want. It can go anywhere. So it's so easy, right? Like it's so easy. It's just rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. But you know, because our urbanism is so much more dense, the urbanism and the architecture start getting intertwined. And what that means for businesses is you actually have to adapt your business to sometimes fit the space of whatever's just available. And that doesn't really work in corporate franchise and culture. That's not the point. The whole thing is only about efficiency. So you don't want differences. You don't want changes. It's like, this is the perfect footprint of our building. So every building is going to be exactly this. We're not going to go anywhere. It can't be. And so that, you know, it kind of forces the suburbs. It really is interesting that the suburbs in this. kind of corporate anti-culture, anti-human really go together because these things get designed off Excel spreadsheets, you know, actually not just designed off Excel spreadsheets, the locations are designed decided purely based on data, you know, it's not like someone visited there and has a, has a relationship. It's just some people in a corporate office somewhere that's evaluating a bunch of different locations based on data and then being like, there's a good place. And you bring up efficiency too, and that's a real loaded term because efficiency is one thing but there's a difference between efficiency and actually maximizing the potential of a business, a site. And it really comes down to understanding the context and designing, say, a commercial building with a particular business in mind so that it really maximizes the potential of that location.

Austin Tunnell

And it may be less efficient to work your way through the process to get to that point, but what you end up with is it can be a business, an institution, what have you, that is actually more successful for having been designed for that place and for that site. And certainly being designed for that site brings in the whole idea that... that you're creating a sense of place as well. And that's something that you also don't find in the suburbs because you literally can take the same design and stamp it out in Kansas, in New York state, in, in Washington state. It could be anywhere. And that's why, that's why the suburbs also kind of look the same everywhere. And you don't get the sense of where you are. Certainly no sense of place. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm curious. You've got a lot of experience. overseeing and designing what I would say is like just good pedestrian oriented urbanism. And that does not mean these are not super dense places I'm talking about. They're very comfortable neighborly. Lots of privacy. It's like privacy coupled with some vibrancy. But I'm not talking about hyper dense, you know, anything. I mean, there's houses and single family detached houses all over the place and the communities you're doing, but, you know, so I'm just trying to describe for context. These are not, you know, crazy. I don't know. apartment buildings or something that we're talking about. We're talking about single family detached housing and apartment buildings mixed together and some business mixed together in a really nice, beautiful way. What are, and we've already mentioned utilities and fire trucks a little bit, but you know, if you can just get into a little bit more of what are the actual main obstacles that get in the way every day of good development, whether it's you or just people you know even. Yes, so there are a number of them. I think- A lot has been said by folks that are part of this movement that zoning is one of the primary impediments to designing good places. So for many, many years, zoning has separated uses out, residential over here, commercial over here, industrial over here, and that's had a devastating effect on how we design places.

Austin Tunnell

Again, a lot has been said about that. I think what has received less attention are requirements that govern the design of streets, of utility services. All of these things, as I was saying earlier, that require a lot of space, they end up having, in some cases, even more of a devastating effect on the ability to create neighborhoods that are scaled to human beings. that have a great sense of place that can use both the combination of buildings and landscape to define space and give people the sense of enclosure that makes them feel comfortable. So all of these things make it very difficult, like I was saying, to design a human-scaled space. because all of the different specialties have their reasons why they need 20 feet here and 50 feet here, and that they're all different agencies, different folks in different silos, different specialties, it's difficult to kind of create a holistic vision for how to overhaul all of these requirements because everyone has their own. their own reason why they need this and that and a lot of times it's based on nothing more but convenience and There's no kind of there's no end goal in mind for well this is what we actually want the built result of this place to be and And that makes it that makes it very difficult So is that too general? Do we want to get into more specifics here? Probably we could get into I think yeah We could get into some specifics too, but actually to kind of touch on that with the it's interesting. I'll kind of It seems to me in my observations and even just hear things I hear and people I talk to that in a lot of ways The philosophical argument of what we're talking about has been like one you could say in like planning departments Now not everyone in planning departments and every city has a planning department. I think probably every city has a planning department I would think some smaller communities you'll find smaller communities certainly

Austin Tunnell

do not always have a planning department or anyone focused on planning at all. But what all communities do have, most communities, I shouldn't say all, most communities in the country do have a zoning code. Even if they don't have anyone who's really in charge of kind of administering it or being sure that it actually makes sense for their community. Very few communities are actually paying attention to whether zoning makes sense for their community. They all have this zoning code. And usually it's based on a bunch of kind of arbitrary requirements that were written into model zoning codes 50, 60, 70 years ago, and they were adopted all over the place. And oftentimes they have no kind of connection to what the needs of a particular community are, and they certainly do not have an end goal in mind for the type of development that is desirable for a place. Which is interesting because you're, you know, and this is actually something I've been thinking more about, but like, you're actually asking departments to have a, uh, a preference in some ways, cause they already have a preference. They just don't realize it. Um, but sometimes I think people think, Oh, they should just be like neutral arbiters, but it's like, if, if these people are in charge of building the human habitat that we all have to live in, don't you want them to have a vision? And it seems like most departments that I talked to, whether it's, you know, what I was saying is A lot of the philosophical stuff has been one on the planning side and, you know, planning department could be behind it, but then you go to the fire department and the utility department, the water and the electric and gas, and that's where things get killed. Um, and cause planning doesn't control them. And, and, and it seems like in these departments, I swear it's so bizarre because like, from a business standpoint, any business, any, any good business has a vision. has a mission statement. Now I'm not saying some, you know, stupid mission statement, that's not really a point. I mean, a reason for existing, what are we trying to do in the world? And hopefully, you know, good businesses, they're trying to do something good. Whether it's, you know, some supply chain business or what we're doing, where we say, you know, architecture is about human flourishing. Now, everything we do falls under that. But at these departments, it almost seems like there is no vision or the vision that it is, is like you said, what makes my job, or the vision is enforcing the existing codes.

Austin Tunnell

And what a lot of people don't realize is a lot of these departments have, you know, fairly, they have a lot of say in what they are, they're allowed to go against the stuff that's written, you know, they're allowed to use their own judgment, they're allowed to change things. But the safe thing is just to point to the point to this section two or three BC and say, no, not allowed. And by the way, I swear, I hate when code or people start quoting code sections to me in a meeting. That's like my first like red flag. Uh, but you have these people that are just like, I don't know. It's like there is no vision within a department. There is no why behind what they're doing. It's not just water. I mean, water is really important, right? But it's got to come back to people. I don't know. That's what I keep. Yeah, I think there's, as I kind of touched on earlier, there's not enough conversations going on about the extent to which all of these seemingly autonomous departments have when their requirements are all come together to actually affect the form of a place. What I tell my clients that I work with, particularly on projects where there are many buildings involved and we're designing maybe a whole block or a whole number of blocks, there are a lot of different consultants involved. Before we even get to Before we even get to deal with the jurisdiction where projects are located, there are already a lot of different specialties and a lot of different consultants involved in the design of a place, but there has to be one person who's kind of the orchestrator of the vision, as you were saying, and somebody that has to direct that orchestra of all the different consultants and be sure that every decision that's made, that the design intent of the place is still being carried out. and that we aren't getting away from that vision. And too often that's not happening. And certainly the hierarchy of our city governments, of our municipalities, they're typically not set up to provide the oversight that the utility service, the trash service, the fire department, and the code officials, they don't have the oversight to

Austin Tunnell

the kind of holistic thinking that a lot of places need to really incentivize good development and really even to allow good development in a lot of ways. You're right. And then actually just brainstorming because I've been thinking about this too of what do you actually do about it? Because you can change zoning. There's a lot of people going after changing zoning. And by the way, that's the fact you've got to get that. Until you fix that, it's really hard to do anything else. Just because you fix your zoning does not mean you're something going to start getting good development at not even close. You can, it's a step in the right direction must happen, but like what actually truly just brainstorming. If we were like, make a suggestion for how Oklahoma city should run, like what would you do? Like, does do, do utility departments fall under planning department? Does some other department come up above and, you know, everyone kind of ultimately answers to this, like what, what is it? Because I. You know, I'm self-employed, you're self-employed, we're both. don't like, I would say probably, unnecessary, stupid bureaucracy and regulation, but we're also aware you need good regulation too. Do you have any ideas for what you would do? Well, I'm going to start in a really obscure way and say that when you think about... So I'm going to talk politics here because I think political will is necessary to... wrangle all of these departments and get everyone in line and to really provide the holistic vision. So, think about how often do you think about the Roman Empire? But when you consider the Roman Empire, think of leaders in the Roman Empire in that era. Often they were known for things that they built. They may have been known

Austin Tunnell

occasionally for their social policies, but more often in the history books, great leaders were known for things that they built. And I think in this day and age, if we could focus politicians on... on the built form of their communities and the extent to which the built environment actually informs the way we live and the quality of life in community. I think they might be more focused on the finer details of how to actually execute and incentivize good places and good development. You know, it makes me think of South Bend, Indiana, for example, you know, Pete Buttigieg was the mayor there. And because he had a very specific vision of goals that he wanted to achieve that were actually related to the built physical form of the community, a lot of really good things happened during his administration there. And I think when you look at other communities where really good things happened very quickly, you'll probably find that there was some political will behind it, you know, at the very high levels. of that community because even though the planning department might not have any jurisdiction over the local utilities, over the fire marshal, if you're the mayor of that city or town, you may have influence, you do have influence and you may have more influence than you think over these other departments if you kind of put your mind to what this vision is. And I think too often the political leaders at the top. in our local governments, they don't have any vision for the built form of their community and the physical growth of their community. There are a lot of really important things that city councils and mayors are focused on, but too little are they focused on actual, the built environment in their community and how important that is, just in the quality of life of the people who live there.

Austin Tunnell

No, you've got a few good points there. I mean, one of them I like that you're talking about. They don't pay very much attention, at least most of the city council and mayors and things that I've interacted with. I mean, there's obviously occasionally some, but what's interesting is the built environment. You're right. There's, there's a lot of things that's important that they're dealing with that aren't all directly related to how we build or the built environment, but the built environment shapes touches so many of the things that they are responsible for. Whether it's homelessness or affordability or crime or good schools or tax base or the infrastructure projects, degrading infrastructure. I mean, there's like all the major things that city councilors deal with. It seems like, and maybe I shouldn't say all many of the things that city councilors deal with the built environment actually plays a huge role, but. Most of them aren't educated in that. And then two, I would say in a couple of just observations from my experience, once again, not applying to everyone, but I think there's almost a, I don't know, there's like this American, I think there's, people are actually a little bit afraid to have a vision of what a city could be because there's this idea that any kind of like centralized, I don't mean control, what would the word be? Just. Centralized vision is bad. Like everything should just be like super decentralized. By the way, I'm very much for like subsidiarity and bringing decisions down to a smaller scale, smaller level. But at the same time, you can't, you can't build a great city without a vision for it. And, and, and so the fact that you're saying you have to have political will, like I really do believe that. I think that's probably where it comes in. It's, it's not necessarily the utility departments, although you want those to change, it's really the city counselors and things that can affect that. change ultimately. And that's what's so cool though, I think, and so encouraging about this is there's so many problems out there that we can't do much about. You know, a lot of people talk about climate change, we can all make decisions and yada, yada to try to impact that. But ultimately that is you're relying on China and India and billions of other people to cooperate too versus our communities. Man, like that happens at the city council level. People don't understand how powerful city councilors are. They affect

Austin Tunnell

the way you live day to day more than representatives in the federal government in many cases, I would say, in most municipalities. Would you agree with that? Well, certainly I would, I would. And certainly when it comes down to the built form of our neighborhoods, local city councils have a lot of power in determining what regulations are or are not on the books. And and really a lot of aspects that go into how places are designed. A lot of them don't know they have this power, but they do. It's interesting too because when you mentioned earlier that we're kind of afraid to have this vision for what our neighborhoods could be like, it's ironic because conventional zoning itself is... In itself, it's sort of a vision that was unilaterally adopted in most communities across the country. And it kind of it goes back to this conversation where, you know, a lot of the, a lot of opponents of, let's say, recent efforts in lots of communities around the country at rewriting and overhauling their zoning code is that, is that is that what's happening is that you're having all of these additional regulations coming in and telling you how you actually have to design your neighborhood. And I talk about this a lot with people that the ironic part is that I think a lot of folks that are working to kind of solve the issues that both zoning and development codes, engineering requirements, a lot of these efforts are actually about rolling back regulations that have been on the books for many, many years, and things, very specific regulations that most people don't even know about, but they have everything to do with how places actually look, how they're built. And I think we kind of assume that what's been built out there, or many assume that what's been built is just kind of the inevitable, you know,

Austin Tunnell

inevitable timeline of progress and that that's what the suburbs are. And it couldn't be any further than from the truth because it was actually very carefully orchestrated through zoning, through engineering requirements, through the way that development is financed. All of these different things have come together with very specific and very onerous in terms of the amount of regulation that's there. That's come together to... Um, to, you know, to really result in, in the built form that we have. And part of undoing that is actually, I think, um, allowing more than is allowed now and not, uh, not prohibiting more, but actually allowing things that are not allowed. Yeah. No, that's a good way to say, I mean, the way we think about it as a suburbs in some ways is it's, it's exclusionary. It's nothing is allowed except for what is specifically allowed versus. what we're talking about is actually more options. It's everything is allowed unless it's specifically not allowed. And actually think about the, the suburbs, such a broad term. I almost, I wish we could find a different word than just saying urban versus suburbs, but cause I have something very specific in my head. When at the type of suburbs I'm talking about. Um, but, uh, you know, in a lot of ways it's, it's an anti vision because it is just like, what are we against? What are we against? But there's not really a vision of. What should life actually be like? What is it about this that helps people flourish? Like there isn't, I've never heard really anyone coherently describe what's the point of suburbia? Like why are we building this way? Like what does it do that improves people's lives, that you know, kids and communities and responsible spending? I just don't hear any of it. It's just, that's what the code says, you know? Or at least that's where we're at now. I'd be curious. 50, 60 years ago when this stuff was being formed. But another point to make is a lot of these, you mentioned people. Assume that because it exists today, essentially it's for a good reason that this is like the best idea went out. And I say this quite a bit, like the best ideas do not always win. And often they don't, there's so many reasons things happen. It can be luck. It can be money or lobbying. It could be, who knows what it could be. Um, but it's like, why do we have.

Austin Tunnell

Portland mortar in the United States versus lime mortar, like we originally did, and like most of Europe still builds with lime mortar. Why? I don't know. I've heard some pretty compelling stuff hearing that it's really the steel and concrete industry lobbying. Is that true? I don't know, I haven't dove into it enough. But there's so many stories like that. And I mean, a lot of these policies putting in place that we're forcing and mandating how we build today that are forcing suburbs and things. Came about at the same time as we were imposing redlining and urban renewal, which is a federal program that purposely destroyed inner cities, which were by the way, predominantly, uh, you know, filled with, with minorities, you know? So it's, it's like, and now we don't do those anymore. I mean, generally speaking, which is, which is good, but it's like, Hey, there's some other stuff involved that was happening at the same time, um, that we haven't addressed yet, but that's a hard one, you know, that, that. Because I think it's human nature. We want to assume that the world that we live in is the best world, or, you know, that the best, that progress is linear, that the world is as it is today because, but sometimes that because there is a because, but it's not a good because it is not actually a good reason why it is. There's a reason things are the way they are. But I don't know. That's, that's a hard one to contend with. Well, you know, there was, there was a whole cultural movement that, that probably began in the, the early 20th century. And, you know, my mind goes to modernism and architecture, and there was a certain kind of, you know, line of thought during that time that resonated from architecture into the design of cities. And there was this sense that what was happening at that time was something very new and that it was really an experiment in architecture, in urban design, and then in a lot of other aspects of life. and people talk about how the suburbs were an experiment, or are an experiment, and an experiment that many would say is a failing experiment. And there are a lot of ways to measure that. There are folks out there that very specifically can measure that urban sprawl is not...

Austin Tunnell

economically productive pattern of development. And that's one that can be documented very, very specifically and quantitatively that we also aren't talking about because to the average person, they don't have the long-term vision and they don't have the responsibility of orchestrating patterns of development across a large area, the same way that municipalities do. But I think certainly bringing decisions, you talked about redlining and you talked about a lot of other movements that affected the design of the built environment in unfortunate ways. And a lot of these were very, very high level, top-down policies. And I think kind of bringing the decision-making down to the most local level really a way to make sure that people are being heard, to make sure that there is a vision that the people can get behind. And so, you know, I do think it's about empowering local governments and city council, mayors, planning departments, just making them understand that their city is, you know, it's in business to think about that business's vision, as you were saying earlier. I mean, it really is as simple as that. And it is so important because politicians, including city councilors, are elected. And so they're there to represent people. But this is also, we live in a republic and they're representative in the sense like they're elected and then they're supposed to go out there and do what they think is best for the citizens. But that's not just like necessarily going with Whatever is 51%. And what I mean by that is I think, you know, I've seen going to planning commission meetings or city council meetings or something where, uh, there could be an overall vision for, for something or a city where people are saying they want this thing and someone is trying to express that with a development and it actually fits all the things that people say they want, but then 10, 20 loud people come to the, to the hearing and

Austin Tunnell

up in arms yelling and these city councils are sitting there with 20 people yelling at them angry like genuinely angry and you know no one you don't have another 20 people to offset it saying no we need this it's really hard because it stirs up the people that don't want it and so they end up just trying to like and I get it I don't agree with it but I get it where they just try to play the middle it's like they try not to make anyone mad right that's kind of the game of politicians a lot of times don't make anyone too mad just kind of play the middle but playing the

Austin Tunnell

Thanks, and I don't mean once again, I don't mean imposing things. So I think that is super dangerous. But I do think if you can actually understand and figure out what the collective vision for a city is, and then you as, you know, hopefully someone that's going to educate yourself on what that means and how, what you people want express, you know, for example, if people are saying like, we want more biking and we want more, we, we care about safety homelessness is a problem. We want better schools for our kids. We want kids, our kids to be able to walk to school. We want, you know, we're saying all these things. that are built environment effects. And so it's the job of city councilors to say like, okay, how is that those values? How is that expressed in urbanism and how do we do that? And I think that could give people more of a foundation to stand on rather than crumbling under the pressure of five, 10 angry people. When you're really talking about a million people and the other thing I worry about with this kind of stuff is a lot of the people that get upset are older people. And I don't mean, you know, it's cause they've lived the way they have for so long and they've grown up in that house or whatever it is. And whether they're 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 or 80, city building is a hundred, that's a century long vision. Like you need to be thinking at minimum a hundred years, I think when we're talking about city building. And I do not mean this to be ugly, but so many of the people that are upset about what's happening or going to happen or something, they're gonna be dead by the time it happens. And it's actually the young people that care a lot more that actually want the thing, but they don't have a political voice. They're not accustomed to how the city works. They don't want to city counselors. They're not showing up to meetings. They don't have the wealth and the resource and things, but it's what they want and the decisions we're making. It's really affecting them. And so if I think about who would I really be looking to for a vision to say, it's not like we don't have older people. There's wisdom in that too, but it is like, what are the 20 year olds want? What do the college students want? What do the 30 year olds want? What are the families, you know, like what do kids want even like that would be really interesting for me to. to hear more about the, I don't know. Well, you know, there's certainly, there is an art to community engagement. You know, I've dealt with this a lot in my profession. And I think that community engagement and outreach and the kind of obligation to ask the community what they think is very often completely derailed by the fact that the citizens don't have the information that they need.

Austin Tunnell

to make actual sophisticated decisions about what their vision might be for the community. This came up recently in a community where I'm working, a proposed change in the regulations was kind of was up for vote. And the city council asked the community what they thought about this resolution, but even the city council couldn't really explain what this was about. And so it was shot down very easily by the citizens because of the unknown, the fear of the unknown. And I think that if we handle community engagement in a different way, and we try to get everyone on the same page by providing them with lots of information, and with communities, it's also very important to provide them with lots of imagery, inspiration, especially when we're talking about designing places. We have to get everybody on the same page and make sure they understand what it is they're being asked to provide feedback on. And very often, both sides of the table, the local governments and the citizens, they're kind of at odds because they don't really know what each other, what each group is talking about. And we need just better, we need better information. better conversations, we need more data. We need more data that is unrefutable that can support different policies that lead to good development. Yeah, no, I think that's a great point. And better conversations. What time are we at? We just crossed an hour. Okay, cool. Well, I want to do a few rapid fire questions and not too rapid. But if... You were to tell people listening, what are, I don't know, some, some things that they could look out for as normal citizens, say they're not in the industry to be able, whether it's vote things to vote on things like that. What are like top, I don't know, three to five things be like, yeah, when that comes up, here's how I think about it. Here's what you do. Parking minimums would be a good one. You know, cause most people don't think about it. Sorry. I stole it. You know, it's like people like you're saying, don't, I mean, this is a very specialized industry. It's like, I don't know anything about rockets. Austin Tunnell (01:01:58.046) or like engineering a bridge or something. So I really need something to explain to me of why I should, you know, but parking minimums comes up as a first one of like, there's really no reason for them. But anyway, so if you want to expand on that and say a couple others. That was gonna be, well, that was gonna be my first one. And I'll just, you know, talk for one minute on that because this ties back to what I was just saying, that if you ask the general public, should we have parking requirements or shouldn't we have parking requirements? And you don't give them any information as to what the... what the consequences of one versus the other are, most people are going to think, well, I need somebody to, I need somewhere to park my car. So of course we want parking requirements. But when you really explain to them that, that most parking requirements are arbitrary, that it's in the best interest of developers to, to provide parking. So that, so that, so that they're, uh, I know that firsthand. We changed our plan because there's not enough parking. We can't find enough parking. So we literally built a smaller building. But parking requirements, when they're arbitrary, they tend to hurt, say, small businesses or small developers that may not need to provide that much parking. And can you say specifically what you mean by parking requirements? Hobby Lobby is going to build their store and what do you mean by parking requirements? So most model zoning codes have very abstract kind of parking requirements. So Hobby Lobby is a particular kind of business. and that particular kind of business, it might say that you have to have five parking spaces for every thousand square feet or something, a very arbitrary formula that doesn't really take into account the specific needs of any one business. And so when you remove parking requirements, a lot of things happen. But number one, a developer is going to provide the amount of parking that the market is going to demand. So removing parking requirements doesn't mean that all of a sudden there's going to be no parking. But what it what it tends to do is it incentivizes a more a smarter use of land. We have a lot of land in this country that's devoted to parking. I think I think the last time I checked it was like five parking spaces for every citizen in this nation. And how much of it sets empty like 95 percent of the time it's insane stat. I can't remember what exactly exactly. So. Austin Tunnell (01:04:19.038) So the first thing you can do is if there's a resolution that comes up to abolish parking minimums, you should support that if you support better patterns of development in your community. Yeah. No, I think that's a really good one. What's it like living in Oklahoma City? Oklahoma is very interesting. So I lived for 10 years in Washington, DC. And, you know, when you live on the East coast, It's an interesting phenomenon actually. So on the East Coast, there are lots of great cities and towns and neighborhoods, great environments, beautiful, that a lot of people that live there take for granted because there are so many of them in comparison to different parts of the country that developed later that had less people, more spread out, certainly like Oklahoma. But when I go to other parts of the country that don't have such a such a legacy of designing good places that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years, people have a different...they kind of look at the potential for new development in a different way. It's really hard to do cool, interesting development on the East Coast for a lot of reasons. Land is very expensive. Also, there's just a lot of good urbanism already on the East Coast. Austin Tunnell (01:05:43.778) There's not a lot of great urbanism here. There's some, not a lot of it, but there's a thirst for good places, good design, good urbanism, because there's so little of it here. And fortunately, I think it's in places like this where it's a little bit easier to get these things done because people want it. They realize that it's not here, and I think it's easier to convince people that Oklahoma City, for example, is a very car-oriented city. And even for folks that aren't used to having these kind of conversations, it's pretty easy to get them to agree that yes, Oklahoma City is a very car-oriented city. And if anyone has ever been outside of Oklahoma, to the East Coast, to Europe, to the West Coast, they can recognize the differences right away. Austin Tunnell (01:06:38.398) That's good. Top, some of your favorite book recommendations could be urban or completely not. Well, just the first one that popped in my head was the was James Howard Kunstler, Geography of Nowhere. It's kind of old now, early 90s, but it was the first. It was the first book that I ever read that really got me interested specifically in urbanism. I always wanted to be an architect since very young. But that was the first book that really got me thinking about a lot of the issues that we just talked about because that book, it really pulls apart the suburbs in a very deep and profound way, picks them apart, and it really gets you thinking about all of the aspects of life that we kind of take for granted in America and kind of rethinking them. Yeah, it's really impossible to read that book if you don't have prior knowledge of... stuff like this to read that book and not come away at least seeing things differently. It's actually for me, it was suburban nation was the very first book, but it was suburban nation, geography of nowhere, and then death and life of great Jane Jacobs. Absolutely. Those were the three books. And of course I've read more since then, but those were the three books that I kind of read back to back that was like, this is what I want to do with my life. Like this is a problem and I want to figure out how to, cause I grew up in the suburbs of Houston, actually you mentioned it before of suburbs get worse every time as more people come. And I meant to say this earlier, but I grew up in the suburbs where It was actually kind of a nice neighborhood and we biked everywhere. There was a bayou. We went 10 miles at a time. Like my parents let me in Texas, but by the time I graduated high school and was leaving, and then when I came home after college, like two years later, there literally was no land left. Everything that I grew up with the woods, the forest that we had paintball and we'd go biking in, it was nothing concrete jungle, as far as you can see, not safe to ride bikes, not safe to play, not a place for kids, completely different. It's like. That suburbs early on was actually kind of nice because there was land and woods around and then just gone. But anyway, that's a good one, that book. Let's see, what surprised you, something that surprised you about being self-employed because you went off on your own, what, two or three years ago? Yeah, about almost three years ago now. What surprised me? Oh gosh, well. Austin Tunnell (01:08:57.538) That's a tough one. You know, what surprised me is that, um, it's something I've been thinking about recently is that I really, I like not having any employees and I like being, I like being, being myself, making my own schedule and, uh, it's, it's nice having the, uh, nice having the autonomy. Yup. But I get to do a little bit of everything too, which, which is surprising. I didn't think I would like the. kind of business administration aspects of having a business. But I like that part too. I actually kind of do too. Yeah. Oh, it's fun. What is, and just two more, what's for you to describe your 10 year vision, like in 10 years, what are you doing? What kind of things you're working on? It could be that you could say the exact same thing, but just curious. Well, you know, I, I've always had a dream of getting into development myself. And I would love to, in 10 years from now, if I had this, the kind of ultimate dream would be to design and live in my own new town. That's probably not 10 years out. That's probably 20 or 30, 40 years out, but to design a new town and live in it. Yep, that's awesome. It's a good 10 year vision. And just lastly, how can people, you've got a really kind of prolific channel, at least on Instagram. Um, how can people follow you? Well, you post a lot. I love what you post. Um, yeah. How do people follow you? Where do people find you? Uh, uh, interesting, interesting. Um, precedent library. Yeah, so I started an account called the precedent library that folks in the architecture and urban world might know. And the precedent library was, I started that during the pandemic and it was actually, it was kind of an effort to start to organize my own photos in a coherent way and to post kind of thematic posts about specific things and finding the precedence that I had in these tens of thousands of photos. Austin Tunnell (01:11:06.654) and figuring out what this photo represented in terms of lessons learned in architecture and urban design. So you can find a lot of information on the precedent library. And the other thing I do in the precedent library is I have these highlights on my page that are kind of from my travels. I might have 20 or 30 photos from specific towns and cities and neighborhoods that I visited that... a whole bunch of them over the last few years that I have on my highlights. And so you can find me there and also my business Instagram, AMC underscore arc, ARCH, where I have some of my own work from my firm, my own design work and things that projects I've been involved in. Cool. Have a lot of interesting things on there, too. What does Oklahoma City do better than those places? Or if they if there's nothing. better, what's your favorite thing that you've found about Oklahoma City or Oklahoma in general? Well, one of the aspects of life here in Oklahoma City, even though this is, you know, the largest city in the state, right? And it's the, at least by land area, what, the seventh largest city in the United States. It's like a big, small town. And I really, I kind of enjoyed the close connections that people have. with one another here and it's social connections, it's connections kind of in our industry, in the building and design industry. And people are just really nice here too. So I enjoy that a lot. That's a good one. All right, well, Anthony, thanks for being on with us. For anyone listening, please. If you enjoyed listening, like, subscribe, share, and drop a comment. Shoot us a message on Instagram or YouTube or whatever it is and we monitor that and we'll respond. Thanks for listening and catch you guys next time.