Hayden Clarkin is known across the internet as The Transit Guy, and while he has plenty to say about transit I’ve seen that place, transit, and community are tightly connected. So I invited him on the podcast and we had a great conversation. (Watch here, or listen on Spotify here).
The genesis of our discussion was on the government - in light of Ezra Klein’s Abundance book tour, and the current state of governance in the US, I thought that government efficacy was a timely topic. But we came out of the conversation with so much more. A few of my takeaways:
Systems-level thinking is essential for changing our communities. This point might seem banal, but we’re at the stage with governance and our communities where large infrastructure projects, whether on transit or housing, are just too complex to think about in isolation from our regional neighbors.
Vision without examples is challenging. While it’s amazing as a citizen or traveler to be able to go to Europe, recognize familiar infrastructure in trains and public transit, and expect it to be simple, the expertise is not. America has lost much of its ability to build transit like trains simply, because we’ve invested most of our talent into developing other types of transit.
Housing still impacts everything. Community, transit, and city design are so connected to the challenges of approving, permitting, and building homes in the US. It’s a tremendous challenge, particularly for our largest coastal (and primarily Democrat-led) cities.
