Austin Tunnell (00:01.622)
Alicia Peterson. It's really nice to have you on the podcast.

Alicia Pederson (00:05.337)
Hello, Austin. It is fantastic to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Austin Tunnell (00:08.526)
Well, this will be a fun conversation. think we met on Twitter, I don't know, a couple, a couple of years ago and then it popped on a phone call, maybe about a year ago as well. So I'm, I think this will be a fun conversation for the audience. And I wanted to start in kind of a, a more interesting place because you have a really interesting background, but you you wrote your dissertation on.

pastoral literature, you know, studying Shakespeare and Machiavelli who were studying the countryside as kind of a lens to critique the city and what's missing in the city. And now you were advocating for courtyard blocks where they really bring a piece of the country into the city. And I'm like, it seems like there's a really strong continuation there from, you know, your dissertation years and years ago to now. Am I right about that?

Alicia Pederson (01:06.229)
my gosh, Austin, you are so just amazing to bring that up and I appreciate it. Most, I don't often get to talk about that continuation between the work that I did for my dissertation and the work that I'm doing now. There absolutely is a connection. So yes, my, I have my PhD in English and my specializations in Renaissance English and Italian literature.

and my specific specialty in the pastoral literature of Renaissance England and Italy. And so like there's this whole pastoral tradition. It's not very popular now, although like there have been some modern interpretations. Like Philip Roth has American pastoral and there have been like there's been this genre that stretches back to antiquity where writers are contrasting the

the busyness, the commerce, the rush, the hubbub of the city with some kind of pastoral ideal. And this has gone back to Greek and Roman antiquity when Theocritus and Virgil were writing pastoral literature. And they often, they would imagine, they would take the identity of shepherds. Like they would have poems and they were in the person of a shepherd who was out in a field watching his flock and

and singing and coming up with poetry about how idyllic and independent his life was. And it was ultimately about like how the pastoral life created more independence and beauty and self-determination than could be had in the city where you were always dependent on business and patrons. And it was a way for these authors who were actually urban authors themselves.

to express a lot of their anxieties about being dependent on business relationships and on patrons and all these things. But it's a very, so there's like, there's that and they were expressing real frustrations and anxiety, but it's a very, it's like a deeply, deeply ironic genre. And a lot of the times they would use it to like suddenly praise the beauty and the splendor and the magnificence of what was being built in the cities.

Alicia Pederson (03:26.389)
in contrast to the kind of poverty and the destitution of these very rural areas where actual shepherds were watching flocks. And so it's a complex and ironic and fascinating genre that's doing all sorts of things. So Machiavelli wrote a lot of pastoral poetry. A lot of it was dedicated to the Medici princes. Machiavelli's living in Florence in the early 1500s.

The Medici princes are building up Florence and the 15th. I mean, this is a very, very urban, urban, like Renaissance society. And he's using this genre to praise them as urban builders, even though he's using this pastoral genre. And then Shakespeare too was often exploring the contrast between the city and the country.

And of course, in his own life, he was between Stratford, Von Avon, where he's from, Shakespeare's from the countryside, and his family, he had a wife and children that he left in the countryside, he didn't leave them, but they stayed in the country while he would come into London to work in the theater, and then he would return to them in Stratford. But he was often between the country and the city, and so he was very occupied with that contrast. At the time, the city in London was very dangerous because the plague was...

was raging and so the cities are always have been, some people talk about them kind of opening and shutting, opening and shutting. They've always attracted people, but I'll at least shut them out because with the density that makes them so, gives them so much opportunity and makes them so interesting, it can also bring like danger and disease. So anyway, yes, there's lots of continuations. I've been fascinated by cities.

all throughout my life. I think beginning since like when I was 12 growing up in a very ex-urban area in Michigan and reading literature that was set in cities and not knowing, understanding in rural Michigan that there was no city in Michigan that came close to the cities that I was reading about and like, you know, just in Dickens and Tolstoy or whatever.

Alicia Pederson (05:42.069)
and just being fascinated by this urban society that really wasn't available to me as I was coming of age. That was a lot, I'm sorry.

Austin Tunnell (05:49.418)
And that, no, I love it. I love the background. And because I've never actually read pastoral literature, you know, like I know what it is, but like, so, so, you know, how, well, maybe we'll come back to this in a second, because I think another key point is that, or at least I remember this from our conversation, you were an au pair and like a 16th century Palazzo in Florence and in your twenties, I, you know, I don't know if it was before college or after, but like,

How did that frame, how did that influence you? Like what was your experience there? How did it influence you? Do you remember what was going through your head as you were doing this? Was it years later that it kind of dawned on you that?

Alicia Pederson (06:24.693)
Yeah.

Alicia Pederson (06:35.96)
Yeah, you know, it was, blew my mind. so yeah, I went to undergrad, I grew up in Michigan, or we kind of were bounced around all over the place because my dad, my dad is a civil engineer and was the like executive of a large commercial construction company. So I kind of grew up in the world of construction, but he was doing the kind of construction that, you know, was very alien to what I was interested in. But mostly like went to middle school and high school in rural Michigan and

undergrad in rural small town Michigan and then didn't know really what to want what I wanted to do wanted to learn Italian because I want to read Dante in the original which I know is so weird but at the time like that was just how I was oriented and so I there was an opportunity and a lot of my friends at the time what to learn another language by being an au pair for a family in Europe and so there is I went online and there's a family that lived in

like downtown Florence, like in the historic center of Florence. And they wanted an au pair who was a native English speaker for their like four month old. So I was like, I was 22. I had just graduated with like, know, an English, I was an English major and went over there. I didn't speak a word of Italian and I au paired for them for two years. And so, yeah, so they were in, it's in the area, it's called Santo Spirito. It's one of like the very core centers of Florence. It's really near the Arno.

and they were in a ground floor unit of a 16th century palazzo. like, had, you would go on the street through like a door and into a vestibule and then their door was off to one side and then there was like another staircase and elevator for like the other units. But they shared this building with like maybe 10 other households.

and also like a late night cafe. Like most of their unit was oriented toward the back courtyard and the only like windows or they had a couple windows that were facing the street and a garage that was facing the street. But most of their house was oriented toward the courtyard. And so it was amazing. It was like a 4,000 square foot plot like unit mostly oriented toward this internal courtyard. And it was beautiful and quiet.

Alicia Pederson (08:58.948)
and but also in the midst of this busy, busy city and you could just step out the front door and you were steps from everything. And they, like the family had been, like they had relatives that had been living in, their family had been in Florence forever. And so they had not only like all the amazing amenities of Florence, but they had like their family network, like the grandmas and the aunts and uncles and the friends. And it was this kind of

I mean, it blown away by the architecture, but I think it was more blown away by just the concept of raising a family and having your community be within walking distance of you. I mean, never had seen that growing up. was just, my extended family was all over the United States. But then you kind of see how the architecture makes that possible. And that was where you begin to understand how

urban planning and architecture. And not just because the city's dense, but the kinds of apartments, the kinds of apartments that live like houses, so that you actually have apartments where people want to stay in the city and raise family. And there's apartments that work for large families, but also for small households, so that when a family, parents, the kids fly the nest and they are ready to downsize, they can move into a smaller condo in the same neighborhood.

And so people can age in place and still be around their extended family across all stages of life. And that really just blew my mind seeing how that worked there and how it had obviously worked for hundreds of years because these buildings were hundreds of years old.

Austin Tunnell (10:41.909)
And really thousands of years. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, you're describing like a lot of people love traveling or going to Florence or seeing pictures and it is beautiful. You can enjoy the food, but I think when you live there, like you did for two years, you experience a different level of what it means to build a little bit differently and how you're the urbanism and the architecture literally shaped the experience of everyday life. We all want more beauty in our life, like when you get the right kind of recipe and ingredients as well, like

Alicia Pederson (10:43.541)
Yes, yes.

Austin Tunnell (11:11.627)
kind of the magic of every day. I have a small anecdote. My, live in Wheeler district in Oklahoma city, walkable neighborhood here that's, that's growing. It's five years old, you know, a few hundred houses now and then a few hundred departments. Well, my sister and her brother-in-law who are older than me, they got a couple older kids. They, just closed on a house on Friday in this neighborhood. And then my parents, once they were moving here, my parents were like, well, why don't we move here too?

And they're in a condo flat in the same neighborhood. what's so what you're talking and it's we've lived across States most of our lives and I'm really good friends with my sister and brother-in-law and to have them literally in our neighborhood, like two blocks away. And then my parents as well is kind of mind blowing, like the little moments you get to have with people versus we're going to get together for Christmas for a week. then everyone's stressed because they're traveling and I don't know you catch up on the entire.

year while you're there, like, but actually living and then my business partner lives here. I've got a couple other business partners that live here at different stages of life. And I'm going, this is the only city in the entire Oklahoma city Metro where all of us could live because I'm younger. My parents, my sister has a bigger house and we do my parents really wanted a single level living. So that's why they got the condo, even though it's on the third floor with an elevator. And I'm like the improvement to the enrichment of my life, my wife's life, my kid's life is insane.

And, and, and it makes me, I'm so like happy about it. And it's not like it was hard for me to believe in this any more than I already do, except I do believe in it more than I did. But it also makes me so sad for that 99 % of people do not have this opportunity. But I feel like that that's part of like my life's mission and building cultures life's mission is to make this a possibility for people because we live in such isolated ways and we just.

We learned to get used to it, you know, like the human brain just kind of accepts reality for what it is. And it's a good survival mechanism, but like the amount of like human flourishing and thriving that we've kind of like stripped from our daily life. and then try to pack it into a weekend or pack it into a vacation. Can't make up for like actually living day to day in community with people, you know, with beauty around kids laughing in the background.

Alicia Pederson (13:35.127)
Oh, no. Yeah. No, no, I have so much to say and there are two, I'm gonna try to remember both of them. That's so cool. So it's the Wheeler, Wheeler is the city, Wheeler district and it's.

Austin Tunnell (13:36.055)
That's not a question, but...

Austin Tunnell (13:44.363)
Wheeler district. Yeah. Yeah. In Oklahoma city, if you ever visit, I'll take you through.

Alicia Pederson (13:49.591)
I'd like to see it. And how is it that there are multifamily, like, are there this leftover from an era of multifamily zoning or?

Austin Tunnell (13:57.728)
No, it's all new. It's all new. They did a PUD on it like 10 years ago and they've got 150 acres right by downtown. So this is not out somewhere. It's the old airstrip and the developer is very smart and taught urbanism. it's, know, if you want to call yourself a new urbanist, whatever, know, no one really, it's just that they prescribed the idea of built. So they've got homes that sell for $300,000 and $1.5 million.

Alicia Pederson (14:17.302)
Yeah.

Austin Tunnell (14:23.755)
And everything in between, they've got garage apartments. They've got three story live work units. I've got some townhomes. They've got 12 plexes and four plexes. And yeah, they have like a 250 unit multifamily building that just is about to open up, which is great. And mean, it adds like real density, you know, and things like that. And then they've got an actual neighborhood center with a coffee shop and taco shop and pizza shop and sushi restaurant and little shops and things like my wife gets her haircut here.

Alicia Pederson (14:36.81)
Yeah!

Alicia Pederson (14:40.148)
Yes, absolutely.

Alicia Pederson (14:48.503)
That is, that's great. I love to hear it. And no, it's, I mean, we, that's what we have here in the North side of Chicago, where I kind of landed and I'm raising my three kids. Um, and, but yeah, I, I like growing up in West Michigan and just knowing like traveling around and, knowing how it is everywhere else. mean, it is, you're right. It, most people do not have this. Most people don't even know.

what it's like to have this. the people who, among the people who know and would like to have it, most of them can't afford it. And that's what kind of got me into this is like, saw it grow, raising these three little kids in the North side of Chicago. We bought a house in 2017 when mortgage rates were still low and it was like still like feasible to buy property on the North side of Chicago. But then as our kids were aging into elementary school,

We had all these friends who were like in a two-bedroom condo with no yard and they were expecting their second or third kid and they're like, we cannot do this. We cannot, there's no place to have the kids play outside. We need more space. We cannot afford a million point $5 single family home. And so we have to move to the burbs and they wanted to stay. wanted, and they would have lived in a condo if there were bigger condos with yards. And that's when I started thinking about all like,

much better the multifamily is in Europe and they just have better apartments. they just have like not all apartments need to be like this, but you like if a city wants to have density that is broadly that works broadly across the life cycle, then they need to have some multifamily that works for families. And that means large apartments with direct yard access because parents need to be able to tell their kids to go play outside and the kid, you know, like they the kid

needs to be protected from the street, not be able to run into the street, and strangers should not be able to get into the yard. And so that's just like a basic failure of urban planning that we don't plan in a way to create multifamily that does it. Because the way that European cities were planned, and this is like the perimeter block where you build buildings right up to the front property line and to the side property line, so they've kind of formed out.

Alicia Pederson (17:12.181)
that wall, that street wall, and then you have some kind of lot coverage maximum. So you're not allowing every, and it doesn't need to be for every area of the city, but like there needs to be some areas where there are interior of the blocks, our gardens. But the way that these areas evolved in Europe is that they said, okay, you can build up the front,

property line, you can build it to the side, you can go up six stories, but you can only cover 50 % of the lot. And so that kind of drove the developers to go thin and tall at the front and the side of the lot. And that's what created the inner courtyard. And it also created this kind of like natural barrier around the perimeter edge of the block that served as this like protective wall.

It doesn't just keep strangers out and kids in, but it also, you go in the center of these courtyards and it's silent, the air quality's better, it almost has its own little microclimate. And it's just as a way of creating that garden or pastoral ideal in the city center that's so nice. But wait, I wanted you said, the family, having your family around and the...

The way that the built environment is like how that creates the conditions for having family and like multi-generational living is just so important and not understood. And Americans just are like in this attitude. Well, you know, when you're young, you go and live in the city and a, you know, lives like a hotel apartment. And then when you have kids, you move to a suburban single family home and then you retire, you do this. And we just like,

segregate all the stages of our life. we also have this very, like we're always moving all over the place. And it makes it really hard to, it makes it hard on kids and it makes it really hard on parents and it makes it harder than grandparents. And you're right, growing up and now my family's all in Michigan and I'm all in Chicago. And when we see them, it's just like on these holidays or these visits and it's very intense and kind of stressful. And there's always a lot of

Alicia Pederson (19:35.494)
arguing and it's not fun. I see, so in the North side of Chicago, there are some families that have been here for generations. And I have mom friends who have their parents that are living nearby, sometimes in the same building, because there's like in Chicago, there's a thing called the two flats or three flats. And so a family might have a multifamily. if the grandparents will live in one unit and the

family will occupy another unit. those parents have it, because they've got grand, they've got childcare in the building. And they, it's amazing the support they have. And just like the, I can't even, like it's so, I'm so envious. I hope that my kids, I'm imagining that my kids will stay, like I've got three of them, at least one of them will stay in Chicago and they can have this kind of life.

I hope.

Austin Tunnell (20:34.317)
Yeah, I can attest to we've got a six year old and a two year old, how utterly critical it is to have outdoor space for the kids. that, I did not appreciate that fully until having young kids and like literally like we need to get out of the house. Y'all need to get out of the house, but like it can't be just run through the neighborhood yet. And in a couple of years, we'll actually let her be able to do that more because it's small and people know each other. But you know, we've got this really small, it's probably 12.

14 by 14 outdoor courtyard in our backyard where the kids go, but also they just go in the front yard. Cause a lot of these are single family detached homes that are pretty close together. You know, they're almost like townhome typology, but they're detached and they look like homes, but they've got front porch on them, sidewalks, street trees, parallel parking. And you know, literally last night, my, both of my kids are just ran across the street to, you know, another house where there were just kids playing outside on the sidewalk and they just had a ball for an hour. And.

Alicia Pederson (21:15.743)
Yeah.

Alicia Pederson (21:30.934)
That's really nice.

Austin Tunnell (21:32.654)
That did not happen in our last neighborhood, nor would it have happened in any neighborhood that I grew up in, uh, which I grew up in the suburbs of Houston and, gosh, having that outdoor space, you know? And so I think like, like you're saying people, Americans tend to think urbanism density. When you're young, there is no outdoor space. It's unsafe, but so much of that is like a hardware issue of we built the suburbs quote unquote for families. Cause like the house maybe is for a family, but everything else.

About your daily life is not for families or really humans in general. feel like, but, I feel like this where you and me and Bobby Fijian really kind of align. can't think of there. There's a couple other people that really this idea of like. Build the city for families and like we've stopped building intentionally for families. And that's why the, you know, the city centers don't serve families anymore and why people are moving out. And that's really tragic because it's kind of destroys our cities. When you lose the families.

you lose your tax base, you lose the schools, you lose the kind of the civic life. And then everything kind of becomes like a midtown, you know, kind of cool, young hip. And there's nothing wrong with those areas, but like, man, these neighborhoods can be like family friendly, urban neighborhoods that just function so differently than what we typically think of when people are just putting in big multifamily apartment buildings off the street. And it's just not great to live in.

Alicia Pederson (22:56.698)
Yeah, yeah. No, think cities have increasingly become hostile to families. And it's because, like, there's different ways that hostility comes. it's the... we've seen these charts, but like, used to be that their apartments used to be the middle housing apartments. So you like the two flats to the, like, you know, anything that is less than maybe 20 units in a building. But now...

I mean, these apartment buildings are just massive and you've got like hundreds of units over a parking podium and they are very like the only studios and one bedrooms and two bedrooms off of the double loaded corridors. So you don't have like in the, in the central stair, like the small apartment buildings you have like at every floor there's a landing and you might have two or three doors that

have open up to units that have a front and a back. So they've got one wall that faces a street and one wall that faces like a back courtyard, hopefully, or some kind of like yard in the back. And so they kind of like live like a house and they can be big with that central stair core organization, that kind of circulation. But when you have the double loaded corridor apartment buildings,

you, it's like a hotel or dormitory experience and it's just like nobody wants to raise a family in that. I mean it's very, very few people want to. And in addition to like having very small units and a social scale that's kind of overwhelming because you're sharing like you know a building with hundreds of people, but you also don't have that direct access. Like you can't go down the stairs and right out to a yard. It's like you would go down a long hallway, down an elevator, where maybe there's a yard, probably not. There's no yard.

And then, but the urbanists will say, well, there's a public park down the street. And I'm like, you don't understand. You're 23, of course you don't understand. And of course, but let me explain to you because when you have a four-year-old, okay, imagine the situation. Your two-year-old's asleep. Your five-year-old and your six-year-old are fighting. You want to tell them to go outside. You cannot send them down the hallway, down the elevator and across

Alicia Pederson (25:14.733)
multiple streets to a public park. I mean, come on. This is just like, and this is like the reality of every, every mom. if you have more than a couple kids, you're having them within like a five or six year span. And you have a long time where you've got like kids that are under eight or under 10. And if you're in a city where the streets are kind of intense and there's high traffic streets, you can't let them cross the streets, these high traffic streets until they're like,

physically tall enough to be seen by drivers, but also like, know, developmentally mature enough to like be relied on to check both ways. And you just, don't let six-year-olds navigate free range in a neighborhood. Nobody does that. And so, but they go crazy and they fight and it's good for them to be able to exercise and play outside. And also they want to, and they just, they don't want to be cooped up inside. And they don't, and you don't want to be in the hook of having to like arrange these play dates to go and like,

take them to the park every time they want to play with friends. Not least because you might have a smaller child that's sleeping or you need to make dinner, but also like parents are busy. They have a ton of stuff to do. And so it's just, it's so much better if you can have a safe outdoor space, ideally where kids can play with other kids. but the, back to the hostility. Well, some people say like, well, in the suburbs where they, the way that the suburbs used to be set up,

could have that kind of community because there are all these families. And I think that that probably was the case. It may still be the case in some suburbs. But what's interesting is like how these new suburbs are so like you've seen these pictures like there's either like no yard or there's very very sprawled and there's like huge yards. But there's also the case where

household size is declining so much. And we're in a situation where we're spreading increasingly few children across these larger and larger geographical areas. And so the suburban model, which is just like this low, low density model is just going to fail families that really need that critical mass of families. And the only way, like I really like agree with Bobby and you that we just need to create

Alicia Pederson (27:37.755)
areas, you know, within cities or within small towns or whatever, where you can have a critical mass of families integrated within a larger community, because you want to have that, you know, diversity of age too, so you can have other households types. But once you get that critical mass of families, you're in such a sweet spot, because your kids have friends, you can have like enough people that are in your same like cohort to support the neighborhood school.

You can have activities happening in your neighborhood. Your kids can be friends with the kids that they go to school with and not, you know, there's just like all these wonderful things that happen when you have that critical mass. But that critical mass depends on like land use and architecture. And that's where we have so much work to do.

Austin Tunnell (28:26.465)
We really do. there's man, there's a lot I'd love to say there, but besides just, I'll just kind of agree. think you described kind of like life in the city with family very well there with very realistic things that happen daily, literally. and, the enrich being able to live around other families too, like you saying, have that critical mass of families is part of what has made our neighborhood now here. So magical is cause our kids, you have just little areas they can go to with, and there's just families outside, walk them by, they catch up and start riding bikes with them, you know,

It's just, it is so different than our old neighborhood, which was a cool historic neighborhood in the Oklahoma city, like urban core, but, but it didn't attract families or kind of the outdoor, play and things like that in the way that, this neighborhood does. But, you know, I wanted to.

Austin Tunnell (29:16.683)
What do you think? And I think you might've critiqued it before. I don't mean critique as in if it's bad, just not a complete picture of like, why is missing middle housing not taken off in your mind? Is it missing a piece of the puzzle? it just, cause the zoning codes aren't there yet, blah, blah, blah. Or, or do you see, you know, kind of what you're advocating for with courtyard urbanism as kind of an extension of missing middle housing, a replacement of what, know, how do you think about it and why hasn't it taken off in your mind?

Alicia Pederson (29:42.611)
Thank you.

Yeah, well, that's interesting. Yeah, so like there's that term missing middle, the opticos kind of popularized in the last decade. And I mean, they were a wearing us all to a real point. And that was that there used to be this whole genre typology of multifamily housing that, you know, this between a single family home and the very large apartment building that used to be built routinely a hundred years ago.

And now it's very rare to build it. And there are all sorts of reasons why. people understand, like the common reasons I agree with, I think they're true, although I would add something to that. And the common reasons are like we have the parking mandates that make it super expensive. And that's absolutely true. There's the egress laws. So you have to have, like, this is kind of complicated. So the egress laws, you have to have two,

means of egress from all the units. And it's not just that you have to have two, it's not enough to have like, like, so all the old Chicago buildings have two stairways. One of them is like enclosed in a big stairway. And then there's like an outdoor wooden one that is like low cost and is not compliant now. Like you could not build these now because they're not up to code now.

Now you have to have two enclosed and it has to be fire rated and it has to be sprinkled and it has to meet all these really expensive requirements that make it harder to build in this middle housing range. elevators are super expensive. There are all these fixed costs that make it expensive to do multifamily. And so it pushes developers to do bigger buildings because then they can spread those fixed costs across more units.

Alicia Pederson (31:36.286)
But I think, like this is my own take on it. I think that the middle housing in America has never been as good as it was, as it is in Europe. And it's because we never did the kind of building that makes up the courtyard blocks. With the exception of a couple of...

units or blocks in Queens, in Jackson Heights and Queens. And this is because it's actually driven primarily by lot geometry and lot coverage. so like in Anglophone countries, we tend to do narrow and long lots. And so we have narrow and long buildings that kind of eat up or consume a lot of the lot. So there's not kind of small backyards. And these are very charming.

Austin Tunnell (32:29.269)
You just posted a picture of that, by the way, like you just posted a picture of like an apartment building that was, you know, really deep. Yeah. Just the other day.

Alicia Pederson (32:35.188)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. so, they, right. And that's very, that's like, we're very common in England. And then we brought that model over here and that's like how we built out most of our cities. And I, it's a very efficient, it's very low cost. There are all sorts of advantages to that. But like the disadvantage is that you don't create very much yard and you get these long, narrow.

Like I live in one of these buildings. I live in a 1911 Chicago two flat that's very long and narrow. And it's kind of like you don't get great lighting and you get these like just weird layouts. the lots in continental Europe as opposed to England, the lots tend to be really wide. So like 50, 60 feet wide and they're deep. And so the buildings tend to be wider and shallower.

And that means, so like when you've got the long narrow lots, the main window walls are on the short side of the box. But when you've got the wide lots, you get these window walls that are on the long side of the box. And so you get these apartments in Europe with these amazing window walls and they are just drenched in sunlight. They have amazing ventilation and you can get just better floor plans because they're just, two units deep. And

I'm sorry, two rooms deep. And I think that they just create better multifamily with that geometry. And it also works better with doing attached housing because of the window walls being on the longer side rather than the shorter side. And so one of my theories, and there's no way of proving this, and know,

People can tell me I have no evidence that it's true. well, like part of the evidence is like Americans don't like living in apartments as much as continental Europeans do. And they've always had this kind of like allergy to multifamily living. I kind of agree. Like, I don't think that our apartment, our tradition of apartments is as good as it has been in the continent. I think part of the reason why people are much happier living in apartments in France and Germany and Italy and Spain is because they have better apartment buildings, because they are wide.

Alicia Pederson (34:55.984)
and shallow and tall rather than long and skinny and deep.

Austin Tunnell (35:01.759)
It is a very different experience. think Christopher Alexander talks about this in pattern, like, instead of a deep town home building, turn it sideways, you know, because then you get light, which I love the idea. If you're just building like one on the lot, you really can't do that. Cause the way our lots are, you'd have to kind of get a block or something. and then, wait, what was it going to say? Leon career. and then we stayed, I've stayed, I love Florence by the way. It's my favorite kind of city on earth and I haven't spent nearly enough time there.

We were last there in 2018. We stayed in a plot. know, like this thing, like exactly what you described where you kind of walk in, you have this beautiful vestibule. think it had light in from the ceiling and there was a couple of downstairs units and you just walk up the stair along kind of the perimeter and you'd have a landing and you know, a couple of doors and you know, it's five stories tall and it's just like an amazing experience. is so different than any apartment experience here. We're like, I literally could imagine living with my family in something.

Like that. I couldn't imagine unless I was forced to, it was just kind of like last option to live in a multifamily apartment building here because it's just such a different, gosh, it's a different experience. And, and so I really liked the attention that you're kind of bringing to it. think it's also been very smart. We talked about this the other day of just like, Hey, it's not like you're against other types of good urbanism and things like that, but kind of like honing in on what's the missing thing.

And, and really going after this courtyard urbanism and being known as a courtyard urbanism person, think has served you very, very well.

Alicia Pederson (36:34.868)
It's funny. I'm kind of surprised. Like this was an unexpected path to how it kind of blew up and it's super fun. It's fun. Look, the concept, the building typology has value. I am so convinced of that because it is a way of creating multifamily of apartment buildings in the city that work for families. these are like, these are...

I'm working now with architects and some developers to come up with the building designs and I'm hoping that we will start seeing these in Chicago and across the country soon. they're small, they're like $4 million of buildings, $2 to $4 million of buildings to build. They truly are the middle housing development. it is, I think that once we start learning to build middle housing again, it's gonna be great because it will

allow a lot more smaller developers to participate in building, and it will open up city living to a lot more families. And I think it'll be really exciting to have this middle housing option be on the menu. I don't think it should be the only option, but I just think it's an important, and you're like, yeah, you do need someone to just be like, look, this is my lane, and I'm gonna like, just.

focus on this because no one else is talking about this and there's a lot of value in it. And here I'm just going to focus on this so everybody can understand it really well.

Austin Tunnell (38:05.289)
Yeah, we, you know, I think, know you're aware of Townsend and we've got another project going with some partners in downtown of it's, it's very like, looks a lot like Townsend. If you're kind of looking at it from, you know, an aerial view, but it's, it's more like rental units, townhome units. But we've, my friend coined the term interblock urbanism, which is a very similar idea to the courtyard urban. It's kind of a different scale. You know, we've got one acre, and we're going two to three stories.

It wouldn't be quite big enough to do like courtyard apartments, but it's really the exact same com, concept with just slightly different building typologies because we're creating our own magical little green world where your front door walks out onto and like that's the space. And then you're also in an urban environment, but you're not just like off the street. could literally tell your kids to go, go outside, run around and it's a smaller scale, you know, but, it's funny that

Yeah, I think we're kind of reflecting the same kind of ideals in just some of the projects that we are doing. And I really, I really believe in it. One other interesting thing too, that's a connection that's just, I've never heard anyone, I've almost never heard anyone else advocate for stone and brick buildings again, which just really gets me excited. Cause we've been kind of like,

trying to ring this bell for a while. of course, Mike is out there, which is super exciting. But how did you get on that train of like, Hey, stone and brick masonry for courtyard urbanism or urbanism in general.

Alicia Pederson (39:42.289)
Okay, I was hoping you would bring this up because I was gonna be like, what are we gonna talk about masonry? I wanna talk about masonry. Yes, okay. So growing up in Michigan, everything's wood. There's nothing but wood. And for me, like wood is associated with detached standalone, low cost combustible buildings that can't be dense because they're combustible. Okay, that's the association, like the foundation.

Austin Tunnell (39:47.191)
Yeah.

Austin Tunnell (40:10.241)
That's a very good dessert. Every time I mentioned a wood building, I should just say combustible building now. Right. Right.

Alicia Pederson (40:14.964)
Well, that's what it is. That's what it's called in the construction types. It's type five combustible. That is the technical term for it. We're gonna build with combustible and we have to have all this expensive sprinklers and all this expensive treatment and detached because it is combustible. So then I moved to Florence and everything is super close together and it's all made of masonry. And when you walk inside these...

buildings in Florence and like every, not just the buildings, but like, you know, the streets themselves are made of stone and like everything is, either permeable surface, it's either green or it's stone. And it's like just fantastic. But you walk into the buildings and like part of it's because the streets are narrow. And so there's more shade, like there's that. But I remember like it being July and it's super hot.

but walking indoors to this ground floor unit, I know it gets hot upstairs, but in this ground floor unit, and it was cool without air conditioning. And the family, like they were like this, you know, very high net worth family. The dad was the CEO of Junty Editorie, who's like, you know, of a...

second largest publishing company. This family could have afforded to put air conditioning in this 15th century or the 16th century Palazzo, but they didn't because Italians have this thing about air conditioning, but also they didn't need it because they would open up the windows to the courtyard at night and it would bring all that cool air from the courtyard. was so refreshing. And then they would close it up when the sun hit that area during the day.

And like this, was just like very thermally, like the thermal efficiency and the thermal effect of the stone just kept that ground floor cool. It was amazing. I could not believe how cool it was. And then like the acoustics, it was so quiet. couldn't, like you were sharing, sharing this building with a bunch of other people. There was a late night cafe, like across the wall from my room. I never heard them.

Austin Tunnell (42:11.745)
Right.

Alicia Pederson (42:22.631)
there was just like these walls of stone. And it wasn't just stone, like some of them was stone, but there was also, I thought it was all stone, but then I did more research after the fact. And a lot of it was brick with stucco, and then there would be kind of some kind of stone base or rubble. Like a lot of it was, I don't know if there's some kind of rubble with then brick or like they used all kinds of stuff, but it was all masonry. It was all not combustible. And, this is super interesting.

When I was trying to understand what were the laws, the regulations that caused these European cities to be built at the way that they are. Because I'm like, why do they all look like this? Why do they all have these courtyard blocks in these areas? And so there was the lot lines, the 50 % lot coverage. But then there was a point in every European city where like,

everything had been built out of wood and it burned down. And like it just happened multiple times and finally they're like, enough. There's a law, everything has to be built with masonry because we're sick of everything burning down. And so it was just like built into the law and it was a way of like dealing with fire. And like, you know, we deal with fire risk differently now by requiring all these sprinklers and like, you know, all these chemicals that we soak the wood in and all these like separation, all these things that we do to deal with fire risk.

We have to have our roads super wide. We have to have fire departments with all this authoritarian control over our cities, all to deal with the fire risk. Back in the day, they just said, have to build things with non-combustible materials. And there are all these second order benefits to building that way. The buildings last forever. They look amazing. They have all these thermal efficiencies. There's just so many.

Austin Tunnell (44:14.003)
Less mold and mildew issues, no termite issues.

Alicia Pederson (44:17.586)
Yes, oh yes, that too. And it smells good, it feels good. Everything about it just feels good. I, like, like I knew about Michael and you were doing, I just have looked, like coming to Chicago was very...

Alicia Pederson (44:42.0)
I wanted to raise my kids in Chicago, only because of like it's dense, but also because of the masonry tradition. And we have this 1911 two flat and it's brick. And I've learned so much about brick, owning a two flat because, wait, is tuck pointing? Is that like a general term? Is that common term? Okay.

Austin Tunnell (45:01.293)
Uh, P I've found people do not know what that means, but you know, it's just the joint between the masonry where the mortar starts, you know, maybe breaking up and you need to tuck the mortar back in. it's basically masonry pair that happens, you know, every 50 something years.

Alicia Pederson (45:15.0)
Everybody in Chicago who owns a two flat knows what tuck pointing is because you have to get it to your, so we had to get our building tuck pointed and like there are the brickies around and what's interesting, I've been posting about it is like Chicago's starting to have like a little renaissance with masonry because we've been having more ever since the up zoning happened, like along commercial corridors, developers have been doing more middle housing, like five, six story apartment buildings, their condos.

Austin Tunnell (45:18.283)
Knows what tech pointing is. Yeah.

Alicia Pederson (45:43.338)
and they've been putting more attention into the brick veneer. So they usually do CMU block for the structure, concrete block for the structure, and then they'll do a brick veneer. But they're getting really beautiful, mean, not like your stuff at all, but by contemporary standards, they're doing really nice brick work and everybody's really excited about it. It's very motivating.

Austin Tunnell (46:10.647)
That's great. I mean, I, we're, think concrete block is great. I mean, it is literally a form of masonry, know, people think concrete block and they don't think masonry. is a masonry building. Now, if you do it wrong, you, know, cause you do have to put a lot of steel in it and stuff. you just need to be careful there that that steel is protected from water and it's not going to rust. I mean, those are great buildings. And what's even great about concrete block is you could stucco it without having a bunch of like.

freaking control joints and your stucco is going to look really good versus when you do it on a wood frame building, that wood frame buildings move. Like people don't get, they move in the wind, you know? And so like stucco is going to crack on something like that. That's why when you put up a brick veneer, you've got, your, your brick ties are actually like corrugated so that the building frame, the wood frame can move separate from your brick veneer because otherwise your brick will crack. they're usually not stiff, joints, anyway,

I love, you said so many positive things or things that I agree with about masonry and masonry based construction systems. And one of the things, mean, for example, what you're talking about that you lived in Florence and how most of Europe has been built, you know, things are changing, but, know, these mass wall, really do regulate temperature, not in really cold climates, but in most other climates and climate zone, like in the U S three below, like, I think you could actually build with mass wall.

And not worry about insulation. And when you do that, you have a really, really, really, really simple building rather than nine, 10, 11 layers that do different things in a very complex wall system. have like one thing brick or stone and that's it. And I call it like the building system that we've chosen in America is complex and vulnerable at the same time. I it's complex. It's got all these different layers that do all these different things.

And maybe if you made it in a factory, like a car that could work, but if you've been on a construction site and granted, if the construction project's big enough, yeah, you can get the quality control. But for 90 % of the construction out there, you've got a very complex thing that's, you know, being built outside over 12 plus months with hundreds of people's involved. It is not being, and then it's very vulnerable. So if any of those layers don't do exactly what they're supposed to do and don't keep all the water out and then they're in the installation.

Austin Tunnell (48:31.149)
You know, you're going to get major problems with rotten mold and mildew and all these other things. That's why I it's complex and vulnerable versus mass wall. I would call it like dumb and durable where it's, is really dumb. It is one little thing that kind of does all the different things. One material that is all the different things and it's very forgiving. It's durable. Okay. You didn't tuck point certain areas, right? A little more water got in the wall. It doesn't really do any damage unless you leave it there forever. And so that's why it's like, you know, how does a building last for a really long period of time?

How many points of vulnerabilities does it have? And it's weird. don't know if you get this, but one of the number one questions I get is, what about seismic? And it's usually said with kind of like an attitude. Sometimes it's a real question because there's just this correlation with, masonry. The reason we, the reason we moved away from masonry is seismic. I'm like, most of the world is built out of masonry. Most of the world, those buildings are still standing up the earthquakes and Kathmandu and Nepal and things like that. When you see them.

Those are 500, 200, 300, 400 year old buildings that have been cobbled together, not with like proper bonding or mortar. They don't have tension ties on them. And now I wouldn't advocate for a 20 story masonry building in California. For example, I don't know enough to be able to say, that would be possible. But when you're talking four to six story masonry buildings in most of the continental U S you could absolutely do it. part of, know, we talk about fire elevators, all of these things that are our problems, zoning parking minimums.

The other one that really is driving me crazy is the energy efficiency craze. It's not that I don't think energy efficiency is important. I just think that when you introduce having to insulate your buildings to a certain kind of criteria, you actually, you make your buildings really complex, more expensive, more vulnerable. And I just wonder if you, you know, if you built better urbanism out of masonry, you would be net.

Alicia Pederson (50:15.602)
Thank

Austin Tunnell (50:28.557)
positive on like energy consumption and carbon consumption easily. And so we just take such a narrow perspective. It's like we're doing the processed food of architecture with how we built rather than like whole foods, like whole buildings would be like mass wall buildings to me. And we do like the process and we're going to like, got food scientists and architects and all these things that break down a building to all these different things. We made it very complex. We put it back together. We're like, yeah, it's got, you know,

50 % vitamin A, it's healthy, you know, and you're like, no, it's not. I kind of went on a little bit of a rant there, but

Alicia Pederson (51:00.091)
Yeah. Yes. No, I completely agree. You're right. It's like the green washing or whatever. And it has some certification. There it has, you know, there's no gas. It's all electric. And so it's good for the environment. And it's just like, this is a really expensive building. It's not very durable. It's going to be really expensive and energy intensive to maintain and renovate over time. And there is nothing green about this. But like one thing,

I agree with you about the materials component of efficiency as being a dumb and durable solution for this, but also, and this is my angle, is the design. With the perimeter block, you have all these middle housing, mid-sized buildings that are built wall to wall. And so you only have two walls that are exposed.

to the elements and you have two walls that are, you know, party walls or that are blank. And so you have less exterior wall and that's like, that's much more energy efficient than a detached home. And just like apartment housing in general, when you're sharing the land and sharing a building with 10 to 15 other households, that is,

And if you can do that and make it work for middle income families and not just students in their 20s, then that's how you create a really sustainable society. It's not like what we're doing now, which is just like the suburban tract housing for all these families and then the high rise apartments that are, we these energy efficient apartments for all these 20 somethings.

Austin Tunnell (52:45.079)
but they're energy efficient, you know.

Austin Tunnell (52:52.171)
Yeah.

Well, I could keep going on, but I'd like to just get a little bit of update of where you are now and what you are currently working on.

Alicia Pederson (53:06.973)
my gosh, thank you. That is fun. let's see. So I had been doing like writing and advocacy for like since 2024 and then like last December, some architects and people were coming to me and like, hey, I think that this is a viable business. Let's work on some designs and some development strategies. And so.

I got some investment money and we're using that to develop the designs for these buildings. And it's exciting and it's fascinating and I can't wait to give sneak peeks of them because basically, I've been studying the floor plans for these buildings that are, the big Renaissance and courtyard urbanism, this form goes back to ancient Rome, but the big flowering of it was the last, the most recent flowering of it was between.

like 1850 and 1920. then nobody, even in Europe, they haven't really been doing it since then because they went into modernism and cars and crappy buildings too. And so I've been looking, studying floor plans of the buildings from like hundred years ago and trying to like Americanize them and modernize them. So it's like a lot more four bedrooms and a lot more just like...

Good layouts that I think are going to blow people's minds for how family life can look like in the city. And we're working with developers to make sure that they're financeable and that they pencil. And we're working with some technologists and platform developers to think about interesting solutions for financing them and validating demand.

So we've got a lot of interesting platform developments coming with Courtyard Urbanist that's the name of my company. And I'm hoping that we will be able to start building these soon. We've got a lot of developers that are studying sites and working on plans. And I expect that we'll have some announcements soon.

Austin Tunnell (55:21.611)
That is super exciting. Yeah. You've come a long ways just in a year from when I was talking to you, real quick question. How big of a lot do you need, whether dimensionally or what to kind of like be big enough to, to, look at a product type like this from what you're kind of creating right now.

Alicia Pederson (55:37.137)
Well, for an enclosed block where you might have 10 buildings, you want about two acres for an enclosed block. But a lot of the people I talk to don't want to do an entire block, of course. They want to do the palazzo. They want to build an urban palazzo and they want it to be wide and shallow and they want it to be right up to the front and side property lines. That's a 50 foot by 100 foot lot.

you know, or 50 by 70. And if you do it, you do it wide and shallow or another common design that we're working on is like the L shape. So you're wide and shallow at the front of the lot and then with a wing that extends the back. And so that allows you to have like at the front, you can have like nice retail space and like a small garage. And then you can have your beautiful like courtyard facing ground floor unit with the go play outside unit, as I call it, at facing the courtyard and the bath.

Austin Tunnell (56:06.113)
Mm-hmm.

Austin Tunnell (56:31.585)
Yeah.

Well, this is cool. would love to, when you start sharing these things, I'll keep an eye out because I would be very interested to see, you know, floor plans and things like that. If we could ever, bring something like that to Oklahoma city. Like I said, we're already speaking the same language. It would just be a slightly larger typology, which we're wanting to do anyway. So as we keep kind of building in these walkable areas.

Alicia Pederson (56:52.89)
Do you have?

Alicia Pederson (56:56.302)
Yeah, that would be great. I would love to see that.

Austin Tunnell (56:59.105)
Well, Alicia, how can people follow your work?

Alicia Pederson (57:03.958)
Well, if they're on Twitter or X, they can follow me at Urban Courtyard. And then my sub stack is courtyardurbanist.com. And yeah, those are the two main sites. So courtyardurbanist.com and that's like my website slash sub stack and the Twitter account.

Austin Tunnell (57:29.101)
Well, it's been great to talk to you. I'm really excited about the work you're doing and just kind of your voice in the space. It's obviously having a real impact. mean, you were just in some op-ed article in, I don't know, the Chicago Tribune or something in 2012. I can't remember what it was. So I think we literally need voice out there, but I also love that you're raising some investor dollars and putting design together and working with developers. I think that's how all of this ends up shifting is just...

people deciding to do something about it. And your voice has definitely gotten more powerful over time just since I've been watching. So thank you for the work you're putting in and I look forward to staying in touch and seeing what you do and hopefully collaborating at some point in the future with, with Micah. We'll get, you know, courtyard urbanism with Micah's stone and yeah, it'll be great.

Alicia Pederson (58:17.082)
That would be the dream. We're gonna make it happen.

Austin Tunnell (58:19.339)
Yeah. All right, Alicia banks.

Alicia Pederson (58:21.84)
All right, thank you so much, Austin. It's been fantastic talking to you.