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The Hidden Reason Families Are Leaving Cities with Alicia Pederson · Building Better Cities

• Kate Gasparro: Walk through any great American city and you'll see coffee shops, boutique fitness studios, and great public spaces. But what you won't see are kids, children running around outside, because families have chosen for the most part to move outside of cities. And that's not an accident, it's a design problem. Our cities have prioritized narrow, deep lots that force buildings to be tall, dark, and inward facing. Meanwhile, in cities across the continent of Europe, A different model took hold, the courtyard block. Wide, shallow parcels that allow buildings to share a green interior, making it easier for your kids to just go outside and play. The gap between those two worlds is what today's guest has made it her mission to close. Alicia Pederson is the courtyard urbanist, a researcher, writer, and entrepreneur with a growing platform that's become a hub for a new generation of urbanism. She came to this not through a planning degree, but through the lived frustration of watching her friends move to the suburbs of Chicago. Not because they wanted to go, but because the city gave them no real choice. We're talking today about what it would actually take to build for families in cities and why the answer might be closer than you think. I'm Kate Gasparrow and this is Building Better Cities. I wanna say it looks like San Francisco. You know, it's got like that same sort of height, like the four story height, and everything is close together. There's no setback between the buildings. But it's like if you were to share all your backyards together. Is that like the right way to think about a courtyard block? I think that's close and you can have courtyard blocks like that. And I've actually spoken to residents in San Francisco where they have that and they live in a block where It's a it's a perimeter block. So the buildings have been built wall to wall, right up to the f front property line. And in some cases, apparently, there are blocks where they've kind of like opened up their backyards and so like the kids can kind of play and go around. And so it is it does approximate a courtyard block ⁓ condition. But the ones like the kind of platonic ideal of the courtyard block that you find in Copenhagen and Stockholm and Prague, and these are the great you know, perimeter blocks that came up in the late 19th century. There's a specific building type that differs from the building types in San Francisco and really anywhere that is in the United States except for Jackson Heights in Queens. And so this is really important because so when ⁓ our cities were built out, we did a parcel or plat ⁓ standard that was more like the English cities. So that's very narrow. parcels. So like twenty-five feet wide, thirty feet foot wide. And that kind of forces a smaller building and it forces a building mass ⁓ deeper into the lot to get the floor area. And it also means that you have the window walls are on the short side of the box rather than the long side. Long side. Yeah. So now with if you go and walk around Stockholm or Berlin or Prague. You notice that the buildings are much wider. There's like a 60 feet or 70 feet wide parcels. And they're much shallower. They're like two rooms deep or two and a half rooms deep. So they're like 40 feet ⁓ deep. And sometimes with longer wings extending to the courtyard if there's a long big enough flop. But this means that the window walls are on the long side of the box rather than the short side. So you get these amazing window walls and these apartments that are just like drenched in light and incredible ventilation. It means that you just have better floor plans too. I live in a a nineteen eleven like town home in Chicago basically and it's like this kind of long shotgun, like very narrow, long, not very great lighting, and the the layout's really bad. Like in these if you've been to these ⁓ apartments in in in Paris and Prague and Berlin and whatever, you can get these amazing apartments that just have a much more natural and elegant layout, not because it's like a super expensive build, it's just the design of it is because you get these wide and shallow buildings and they're two rooms deep instead of like six rooms deep. And it's just it allows for better layouts. ⁓ but the other consequence of this design is that you have much more room in the back for a courtyard because when you have the it's it kind of shoves the building mass up to the edge or the perimeter of the block. And they go up a little bit taller. So there may be five or six stories. And so you can get blocks that have much greater density. At the same time they're greener. And and it's just like it's just amazing. And and also because they're more, they're larger apartment buildings, you can get a better unit mix. And so you will have buildings that have you know, four bedroom apartments for the the upper and middle class families, but you can also have like one bedrooms and studios all above like a cafe and a little storage area. So you can get a really nice social mix and kind of natural ⁓ income diversity just through this apartment building style. So it's interesting to think that like the parcel drives the building. And the building drives how we behave, or like the type of mix that we get out of that and the uses on the site. And you came to this because you were interested in a more family friendly design architecture. Can you sort of talk about your evolution? Because I know you have a PhD in literature, and that seems like ⁓ helpful contextually, but not a direct pathway to being an urbanist advocate. Yeah, so I I'd have my PhD in English with a specialization in Renaissance English and Italian literature. And I was gonna be a Shakespeare professor. And like halfway through my dissertation, I got married, and then I had three kids in four years, and the third kid came as COVID was happening, and it was just like I was I paused my academic career because of of everything that was going on and I was ⁓ a staying at home mom in Chicago in this great like pre war neighborhood and we've got this great ⁓ I mean it's it's a g it's a nice nice house and a great walk-wall neighborhood. And as my kids were aging into elementary school, I noticed that ⁓ a lot of our friends were having to move to the suburbs, not because they preferred suburban living, but they couldn't find a house with a yard. And it and so they would be like in a two-bedroom condo and expecting their third kid. And they're like, We cannot, we cannot do this. We have to move. We need more space. And we need we need a yard. Because like and then people, people don't under they don't remember what it's like to be a kid or they just don't and they forget. And it's like when you're when you're five or six, like you want to just like run around outside. You don't want to be like inside and All day just like reading or playing a game or watching and doing an iPad. We've created a situation where we don't have good places for kids to easily play with other kids outside. And so parents then have to like schedule all these after-school activities and do all this helicopter parenting because there's like nothing for your kids to do. They're they're just rot inside, or you know, be iPad kids, or you need to like sign them up for all these activities. And know, back in and back in the day, you know, you could just like send your kids outside. And this is why people move to the suburbs, because they can be like, go play outside, go find your friends and play outside. But you can't do that in the city because there's no place to play. And so in Chic Chicago is an alley block ⁓ city. And Chicagoans get so mad at me for dissing alley blocks because they're so proud of proud of our alleys. Because Be ⁓ this is like a New York Chicago thing, but like New York is so disgusting because they have the trash on the streets and Chicago is so civilized because we put our trash in alleys. Yes, there are public parks, but when you have like a five or six year old, you can't tell your five or six year old to go cross, you know, fourth streets to go play at a public park with their friends because they're they're too little. And typically the age at which parents allow their children to go meet friends at a park is like eight to ten. And but if you've got a couple of kids. there's a really long time that you have a kid that's younger than eight or ten in your house and you have to like figure out what to do with them. So anyway, I I was ref just noticing this and what was going on with my friends and this this stress of like trying to figure out what to do figure out housing, really needing to house the yard and then thinking about like, well, when I had traveled in Europe in my twenties Lived in Italy for two years and like travel over. And I lived, I lived in a courtyard block in Florence because when I was an all-parent for a family, I was 22. And they had the most amazing lifestyle because they they had this like 4,000 square foot apartment. It was huge. It was like this ridiculous. ⁓ but they shared this land with a like 10 other households and a late-night cafe. So it was very productive land. And then on the inside they of the block, they had access to this great. courtyard where they could like send their kids to go out and play and it was and they could play with other kids and it was it was fantastic. So they had like the best of the city and all the conveniences and amenities and walkability of the city, but they also had a big house with a yard. And and and but they were also sharing the land. The big house in the yard was not a detached single family home with a private yard. It was an apartment with a shared courtyard. And I just became obsessed with like why this is so the I don't want a private yard. I want a yard where that shared yard where my kids can play with other kids. I don't even want a detached home. I just want like a low maintenance home in but I really want a walkable neighborhood and so I can have access to like the city. And it just kind of blew my mind that we didn't have this here. And then can you look and see the buildings that are developed now, if they're just nothing that works for families at all. And nothing that really improves the urban environment at all. I I just thought it was so fascinating. We bring on a lot of practitioners in this space who are doing development differently. So they are trying to think about how does the built environment influence the ways we interact with each other that makes cities more more thriving and also more sustainable. And I was curious if we could just spend a little bit of time talking about the courtyard block and what it means to be a family living in a courtyard block and Why can't your alley block become a courtyard block? Just sort of, you know, take us through that ⁓ thought process and and why courtyard urbanists has been so successful or influential in the space and trying to get people to think differently about cities. Like well with a house, a house has a front and a back. It has a side that faces the public street and it has a side that has a backyard. And and so what's important about the courtyard block buildings is that they are in small multifamily buildings where units are accessed off of a central stair. And I'm not saying single stair for a reason because and that's a whole discussion. But usually typically there there's a central stair core. There can be an elevator. Sometimes that's it. There's not a secondary egress. Sometimes there is a secondary stair that's off the back. And so it can be consistent with a dual egress re code requirement, but it doesn't have to. And then you might you might be sharing a building with like a dozen other households instead of hundreds. And that social scale is really important because when you're sharing an apartment building with hundreds of other people, the chance that you get to know any one of those is very small. And the probability of having a like a relationship and being socially accountable and recognizing them is just decreases the more neighbors you have. But if you're in a building with, you know, 10 other households, then you will get to know them and you will be socially accountable and you will feel comfortable letting your kids in the common areas. and and so that's kind of like the the the small multifamily advantage. ⁓ okay. And so and you can also have these larger units with a front and a back. And that's important because you you want to be able to see like what's happening on the front street, like the the public street. But then you also need to be able to see what's happening in the courtyard. Because as a parent, you want to be able to say, go play outside. And you send your kids outside, and you're getting stuff done inside. And you can like go and check on them. And you need to you need to have that visual, be able to see, see the kids in the courtyard. so, but importantly, even though it's a small multifamily. you might have 10 to 20 of these side to side around a block. And so you can have the same density or even more than your five over one over a parking podium. ⁓ but it the density is chunked into many small buildings. And and so you get better units, you get better social scale. You also get like better development economics because like You know, the number of developer actors who can develop a huge parcel in a building with hundreds of units, I mean that takes serious institutional capital. and so it it really limits the kind of developers who could do it. But if you have a bunch of small, you know, these are like twenty thousand square foot buildings or thirty thousand square foot buildings, you could have like in they're building these now in in Amsterdam, where they have like collective self-build. And so like 10 households will get together and they'll be like, we're going to get this parcel and we're going to build our courtyard building. And they're not, it's not that speculative development where there's a developer who's doing it and then selling it to the it's it, but there's a collective self-build. So it can be it's by chunking the density into many smaller pieces, you can get a just a dramatically different socioeconomic ⁓ situation that leads to a real neighborhood. You can be where you can have you can have house, you can have units that build to families, but so not every unit in the in the building is going to be a four bedroom, free bath. I mean some of them are going to be studios and some of them are going to be one bedrooms and two bedrooms. And and this allows for the building to accommodate households across the life cycle. Which is great because at some point your kids are gonna leave and you're gonna want to downsize and you don't want to leave necessarily leave the neighborhood. You can stay in the neighborhood and just move into a smaller, a smaller unit. ⁓ Yeah. Well, you are now consulting and working with developers or even public agencies that are interested in furthering this courtyard approach. What has been their initial reaction to it? And then how has it evolved through your conversations with them? It's incredibly motivating and inspiring because they they come to me and they're like, We want to figure out how to do this. We wanna figure out how to do this and we want to ⁓ like understand what are the regulatory barriers to doing it now and change things so that we can make implementation possible. Because there's the the the people who get me to come and talk to these agencies and these groups, they're like We want to raise our children in this situation. We want to re have grandchildren. I mean, there's just like it's such a such a an affinity for this ⁓ model and and it's very motivating. And that's why I'm so optimistic because there's there are people at all levels who understand the value of this. It's just like I just need to make the changes. But there are there's like so many barriers to it. And so it's it's like a work in progress. And Like the the big one is zoning. I mean, that's like the the the hardest one in a way. ⁓ I I was talking been by talking to HUD. HUD is very interested in in figuring out from a federal level how to make courtyard block urbanism happen. ⁓ and they're like, you know, what what can the federal government do? Like, well, there there are some things that the federal government can do related to accessibility and building code, but really like the biggest barrier, unfortunately, is like local, because it's a zoning. I mean, most of the ⁓ parcels in Chicago are zoned single family. And and so there's there's zoning, but even if you flip if if we go like I've had cases where aldermen come to me and they're like, we've got this great parcel. Al aldermen are like ⁓ like the little mini mayors in Chicago. So the little ⁓ ward leaders. And they're like, Alicia, we've got this great parcel in my ward. I'd love to see it become a part your courtyard block. What do you think? And we we as soon as they dig down in the zoning, it's ⁓ so it's it'll be zoned for an FAR for area ratio of like one point five. And so that's like, you know, not gonna work. And so but the the aldermen like little mini kings and they can ⁓ they can change zoning. They're okay, well, we'll just change the zoning so we can be it can be zoned with smalltifamily, we can get an FAR of you know four, whatever you want. But the moment that we get the variance, the zoning, then it triggers the affordable, ⁓ the affordable requirement. And that means that 20% of the units need to be affordable housing, and that makes it not pencil. ⁓ and so that's been a problem, but we've been talking about. fixes for that. These are fixes that would have to be passed along. Like for for right now, for a lot of these affordable housing ⁓ requirements, 20% of the units in a given in in every individual building have to be affordable. But in like in the Dutch model, you could have 20% of the buildings on a block. And so like in I think even better model, you could have ⁓ you have your courtyard block a number of them are going to be market rate and those market rate developers or the self belt p self build developers, they don't have to provide affordable housing units. But then you let the other, you know, set aside twenty percent of the parcels for the affordable housing developers and let them do the four boss in there. And then you can have it at the level of the block instead of the level of the building. So that's I think that's needs to be the goal for the affordable component. Yeah. ⁓ I know that you were recently invited to the state of the state with Governor Pritzker in Illinois, and he has put forth a build plan. And I was wondering if you could sort of talk about how the build plan in in the same line of conversation around regulations is trying to address some of the obstacles to allow courtyard buildings to be ⁓ a pathway towards better urbanism. Like how do those two things come together? Yeah, and the the build plan is is Very strong. It's great. It's not enough in itself to make courtyard blocks legal, but it's a really good step. And so basically it's like a middle housing legislation package. And so it's like every anywhere where you have like a 2,000 square foot lot, you can do a duplex. If you've got a 3,000 square foot, you can do what's I mean, I'm simplifying it, but it's like it provides a path for for gently upzoning and it's It's a state level bill that would basically preempt local control. So right now ⁓ the local like Chicago can say, Well, ⁓ you property owner, yes, you have this huge lot, you ⁓ but you cannot build a ⁓ a four-flat audit because it's zoned single family. And and this this ⁓ bill would say no ⁓ local government in Chicago, you cannot deny people the right to build a four flat if if some of them this size. And so that's that's a really great thing about it, in part because it's it's getting people to stop thinking of like small multifamily as categorically different than single family homes. ⁓ I mean they they are it there's a g it's different, but it's like anywhere where you can build a single family home. What is the reason for not letting a person build a duplex or a triplex or a four flat where they can build a single family home? And the reasons are often really bad because they're be they'll they'll be like, Well, ⁓ you know, apartment housing is a nuisance or apartment housing is, you know, brings in sectioning or whatever. Then it's like, well, you know, those are separate issues. I mean, just like you know, setting those aside, ⁓ then you can have market rate housing, be legal. I mean you can you you can deal with those separately, but what is the reason for denying people the right to to build a duplex on a on a a parcel with the available single family? And then and there's not really great reasons. It comes down to like, you know, concerns about affordability or section eight, public housing and concerns about ⁓ parking. Of course. That's that's what's of course. I know that Minneapolis has gotten rid of single family housing zoning. And so if cities were to move forward with that and we sort of get over the hurdle of land use and zoning when it comes to building a courtyard block, can you talk about some of the spatial constraints? Like what is the size of parcel that you need at a minimum level to move forward with a courtyard block? And then we started off talking about the alleys in Chicago and the operational utility that they have in a city. So where does the trash go? Where Would you park in a courtyard block? ⁓ can you sort of talk about those two aspects as maybe further barriers to seeing the land around ourselves or where listeners live as potential courtyard blocks? I don't think that courtyard blocks should be like the only only thing that people should be able to build, but I think that if you want to have courtyard blocks, you are going to need to have, you know, areas in the city where there's a new kind of zoning overlay that requires that developers follow certain geometries and rules because that that's how these form these get formed. So like in the 19th century when these were built out, these these were these were the product of a very specific code. And like the basically the code was this. They're like you can you can build up to the front property line, you can build up to the side if you build with masonry because of fire. ⁓ And you can go up six stories, but you can only have 50% lot coverage. And so that kind of pushes the building mass, you know, high and to the sides. And sometimes like you'll have a wing extending in, but it really like it it kind of pushes the building to the perimeter, the building mass to the perimeter. And and it makes these these great courtyards. And so I think that ⁓ and that also is all enabled, as we spoke before, about the the parcel size and it's kind of starting with a wider parcel. ⁓ and so if we wanted to go to Minneapolis and I haven't talked to people in Minneapolis, like I think the first thing we would have to do is create some kind of like subdivision. Like if you've got a site, okay, first we're going to subdivide it into the appropriate size parcels. And then and this is how they do it in Amsterdam. And I think this system is is brilliant. And I would like to we're we're on our platform that we are developing. We're trying to create a platform that would allow cities and developers ⁓ to to do exactly what ⁓ Amsterdam is doing. So they they subdivide the land into the appropriate size per parcels and then they put each parcel becomes a project that goes on their website. And like so some of them are flagged as affordable housing and some of them are market rate and some of them are ⁓ some of them are specifically for self-build and some of them are specifically set aside for ⁓ professional developers. And then they all have rules that basically force the geometry. Like you can you have you have to make the building meet the street. There's no front setback. There's no side setback. You have to build with masonry and ⁓ you can go up six stories and but 50% lock coverage. And then they put these projects on the website and then ⁓ there can be there are groups or individuals or developers can browse and see what parcels are available. And and then they can ⁓ bid on them or claim them and and then they build them out. ⁓ and so I think that is has got to be the model for courtyard blocks going forward. It could be done where there's a developer, ⁓ like a traditional developer going in and doing the whole thing. That will be a more expensive way of doing it. ⁓ and you won't have fun diversity too. Like w one of the like the great things about these courtyard blocks. Is that they are many buildings, one block. And and so when you go in Stockholm, they all they're all like kind of have the same grammar, but they all have their own different, you know, voice because they they were built by a different developer. The same developer didn't do the all them. They were they liked they were all built differently. Hmm. Yeah, it's interesting because it does require some sort of scale, it seems, especially. If we want to talk about like the operational side of it. And then I wanna go back to one other point that you made about like it being more expensive to have one developer do the entire courtyard block. Can you sort of expand on that? Because it would it seems to me that like having multiple developers develop would increase the prices because everyone has their own overhead instead of achieving this economies of scale with one developer. Yeah. I think I'm comparing that to a self-build situation, although With a developer going in, whether it's many small ones or one large one, they are taking a ton of risk. They are ⁓ spending a lot ⁓ you know, soft costs, hard costs, they're there's a lot of time anyway, and and they are compensated that by ⁓ with the uplift in and ⁓ the the sales when they when they sell them. ⁓ I'm g that can be contrasted with the self-build model, which is what they're doing now increasingly. in these ⁓ these fine grained courtyard block new districts in in amsterdam and that is where like you you don't hire a professional de ⁓ like a developer's not buying this the properties and then developing them and selling them. People who want to live in the buildings will hire a builder to build it for them. And so and sometimes ⁓ so you might get ten families that form like they're they make it easy to form like a collective. Like they find, okay, there we know that the here's a parcel, it can become an apartment building. ⁓ you can register to be one with ten families. You could go in and put in the, you know, down payment to get a construction loan to hire a builder to what is that for you. And so that that that's a much more affordable way to build a property if you're doing yourself and hiring the builder yourself than buying something the developer has already done. I I just published this article this morning, but it's it's fascinating. There's this new it's an article on this new artificial island off of Amsterdam. So like in because they don't want to like build out into farmland, they don't want to sprawl anymore. They're for they're creating new courtyard block neighborhoods by on artificial islands. So they're they're they're making artificial islands And they're connecting them to Amsterdam with ⁓ you know, roads and trains and transit, whatever. And then they are they're putting down the roadways and then they're subdividing into the appropriate size parcels and they're putting up these parcels up on their website. And it's like 70% self-build. And so 70% are people that are like either as a collective or as individuals that are buying it and doing it themselves rather than a professional developer. But what's crazy, because I sh in this article, I'm showing images of Google Earth. of like the satellite imagery and you can see these blocks cut like incrementally be built out. And it looks it looks crazy because you'll have you get you can't even tell that it's gonna be a block yet. You'll have like two buildings kind of like they're facing what will be the street, but it's not it's not there yet. And but people are able to move in and live in these homes as the rest of the the block is being built out. Our built environment shapes how we live, and for a century we've been building in a way that quietly pushes families out. That's not inevitable. It's a choice we made and a choice we can unmake. If you're a city developer or just someone obsessed with getting this right, reach out to Alicia directly at projects at courtyardurbanist.com. She's actively working with cities across the country and clearly the appetite is there. If this episode made you look at your own block a little differently, share it with someone who should hear it as well. And as always, until next time, let's keep building better cities together.