Housing as Economic Development

“The solution to the housing problem is more housing. Getting there is the hard part.” So says my friend Dennis Strait, now retired Principal of multistudio in Kansas City. Dennis is a planner, architect, landscape architect, civic volunteer and frequently wise counsel on all matters related to city-building.

Dennis has been lately working on his notion of housing as an economic development strategy. That sounds logical - entirely too logical. But it’s often not how people in the world of economic development think. In particular, for modest-cost cities like Kansas City and much of the Midwest, affordability in housing has long been a value proposition. How do we retain that as times change, and as we grow? We discuss this, as well as working to improve disinvested parts of our city, and explore the notion of whether or not our urban core is actually growing.

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Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.

Intro: “Why Be Friends”

Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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