This episode, with guest, Jason Jordan, APA's Public Affairs Director, promises to equip you with actionable strategies from the Housing Supply Accelerator Playbook, a groundbreaking resource designed to unite planners, developers, realtors, and banking officials. Learn how this playbook can empower local leaders to create diverse, attainable, and equitable housing options, fostering civil dialogue among stakeholders to address pressing housing challenges.
We'll also tackle the pivotal issue of skilled labor shortages and the transformative power of training and apprenticeship programs. Hear insights from Montana Governor Gianforte as we explore the complex interplay between housing policies and broader social and economic issues. This episode sheds light on innovative approaches beyond traditional zoning and land-use regulations, providing a holistic view of how communities can collaboratively overcome housing hurdles.
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This episode, with guest, Jason Jordan, APA's Public Affairs Director, promises to equip you with actionable strategies from the Housing Supply Accelerator Playbook, a groundbreaking resource designed to unite planners, developers, realtors, and banking officials. Learn how this playbook can empower local leaders to create diverse, attainable, and equitable housing options, fostering civil dialogue among stakeholders to address pressing housing challenges.
We'll also tackle the pivotal issue of skilled labor shortages and the transformative power of training and apprenticeship programs. Hear insights from Montana Governor Gianforte as we explore the complex interplay between housing policies and broader social and economic issues. This episode sheds light on innovative approaches beyond traditional zoning and land-use regulations, providing a holistic view of how communities can collaboratively overcome housing hurdles.
Show Notes:
Follow us on social media for more content related to each episode:
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Stephanie Rouse:You're listening to the Booked on Planning podcast, a project of the Nebraska chapter of the American Planning Association. In each episode, we dive into how cities function by talking with authors on housing, transportation and everything in between. Join us as we get Booked On Planning. Welcome back, bookworms, to another episode of Booked on Planning. In this episode, we talk with Jason Jordan, apa's Public Affairs Director, to talk about the Housing Supply Accelerator Playbook. The playbook is actually the opposite of a typical book, in that it's not meant to be read front to back, but instead it's a choose-your-own-adventure format, allowing you to flip through to the sections that are most relevant to your own work or concerns.
Jennifer Hiatt:The APA did a great job bringing representatives from multiple professions touching housing, including planners, developers, realtors and banking officials, to make sure that every perspective was represented. I think this kind of collaboration is so meaningful because each of these recommendations actually seems like it's something that would be doable.
Stephanie Rouse:Yes, and the way you can tell that it's doable is also one of the things that I think makes this resource so valuable is all the time and effort they put into the case studies to ensure that there's examples from across the geographical, political and community type spectrum. We all know how much easier it is to propose a new idea if you can point to another community that's already tried it, especially when that community resembles your own.
Jennifer Hiatt:So let's get into our conversation with Jason Jordan on the Housing Supply Accelerator Playbook.
Stephanie Rouse:Well, Jason, thank you for joining us again on the podcast to talk about the Housing Supply Accelerator Playbook. Can you start off by giving us a little background as to how and why this playbook came together?
Jason Jordan:Yes, stephanie, thanks for inviting me to be on the podcast. Well, I think this really came about in part as a recognition of something we all know, which is that the nation confronts a housing crisis, and we were very much aware that there was a growing national conversation around the intersection of housing crisis. And we were very much aware that there was a growing national conversation around the intersection of that crisis with planning. You know, when zoning breaks through to popular books and conversations and media, you know something is new and different in the land, and so we felt compelled to begin thinking about some ways to approach this differently. And you know, my own thinking is that, when we looked around, there was just a lot of commentary on the diagnosis and that's really helpful because it focuses the attention on the problem, but there was really little in the way of prescriptions for the patient, like how do we get better, and so we wanted to bring together some partners who represent various pieces of the pipeline of housing supply.
Jason Jordan:You know, elected officials are involved on the politics, planners do the planning and the regulation, somebody has to build it, somebody has to sell it and somebody's got to finance it.
Jason Jordan:Pull those players together, most of whom you know have had a rocky relationship over the years, to be candid about it. To try to think creatively about supply, so distinct from all the demand side interventions that are important, but really to focus on what can we do to improve supply and then to define supply in a very specific way. So we really wanted to hone in on housing that would be diverse in terms of the options and the types of housing attainable and affordable, you know, focusing on ensuring that, whatever price point you are at, there's a range of options available to you and, of course, equitable, recognizing the history of exclusionary practices in the past and, frankly, even still today. Very practical, very solutions-oriented. And to focus on what locals could do right now, as opposed to aspirationally thinking about what states and the federal government might be able to contribute. But really, what can we do today to make a dent in the problem?
Jennifer Hiatt:I work with developers every day in my professional capacity and I was surprised to see such a lovely civil conversation between planners and developers happening surprised to see such a lovely civil conversation between planners and developers happening Well, 100%.
Jason Jordan:One of the things that we were pleasantly surprised by, frankly, is the ability and willingness of all these parties, who have different perspectives, to come together and to actually acknowledge that. You know, a lot of the conversations that they have are either about individual projects and they're mired in a controversy, or they're about big pieces of pending legislative remedies or other kinds of policy changes. So there was really no kind of in-between space to just open up and say you know, this is a problem and maybe there are some opportunities for us to fix it. And beyond anything else that the playbook or the partnership has accomplished, I think just creating a different sort of dialogue and levels of awareness is a win.
Jennifer Hiatt:And now that we've covered the how and the why, building on that, who do you envision using this playbook and how do you recommend they approach actually using it?
Jason Jordan:recommend they approach actually using it. I think we really see this as aimed at local communities and regions, right? So this is for leaders, city leaders, of whatever stripe, whether they're elected officials, whether they're planners, whether they're, you know, local, influential voices on housing. That this, you know, we hope, will give them some ideas on housing. That this, you know, we hope, will give them some ideas. And the book was written not to be read like a book necessarily. You know you don't start on page one and read to page 90. It's intended to be something that you can jump into, based on your local circumstances and what you're focused on, what your needs are.
Jason Jordan:We recognize that communities are very different in terms of their market, in terms of their market, in terms of their politics, in terms of the development climate. So it needed to be adaptable. We tried to identify kind of four key pillars, right? So there's the partnership and collaboration, there's development and construction, there's finance and then there's land use and regulation and then, within those, there's strategies and options. So it's not prescriptive, you know. We do think there are a lot of jumping off points for where policymakers could look at these solutions and say maybe there's a better policy framework to wrap around them. But it's adaptable and again I think it comes back to it's sort of a conversation starter. We hope whether communities take the examples and the recommendations explicitly and adapt them, or whether they use them as the jumping off point for their own innovation.
Stephanie Rouse:That's kind of what we're hoping to catalyze with this product prepared for this conversation, but as I was flipping through it I thought about how easy it was to just pick up. This is my challenge or problem in my community. I'll click this and it hyperlinks right to the page and you can. There's a lot of interactivity, I think, within the document. That is super helpful for a community looking to solve a specific issue in this environment.
Jason Jordan:Yeah, we know that people engage with the content in different ways, and so if you're coming at it with a specific problem, then you can jump right to that conversation. If you are thinking just more broadly, coming to a page that lists a dozen or so strategies might help drive your thinking a little bit. So, yeah, we were pleased with the way it came together and the ability to put it out in the public digitally to allow exactly that kind of navigation. I think will be a benefit.
Stephanie Rouse:Yeah, and you identify that engagement and partnerships are the first step to addressing the housing problem locally. And this project has had a lot of work at the national level between APA, mortgage bankers, national Association of Home Builders, national Association of Home Builders, national Association of Realtors, and all of these groups have local level representation. So what is the basic steps to applying this housing accelerator model locally?
Jason Jordan:Yeah, I think first and foremost we wanted to sort of model good behavior, if you will right.
Jason Jordan:I think there's something in being able to point to the fact that the national organizations were willing to engage in this fashion and were able to, you know, have productive conversations, reach some common ground and some common recommendations, so that maybe that sets a model for a state, a region or a community. I will say that there were just some surprising moments in the convenings that we held, so a year plus worth of meetings around the country, kind of informed, the playbook and there were just these moments in those dialogues where it was so interesting to recognize that there hadn't been these kinds of conversations, that folks in the finance community, just to pick one example, were bringing ideas, problems from their perspective to the table that local officials hadn't really grappled with because they don't live in that space, and really just beginning to understand each other's approach to the work was huge. So I think, in terms of what we would hope to see locals do, I think you first have to create the space and it has to be a space that isn't completely owned by any one party but is kind of collectively owned and then commit to the dialogue. Don't presume a product. We did not start this conversation saying, well, we're going to have a playbook and we're going to do training. We let that evolve organically as we talk to people and try to figure out where is a space that we can make a legitimate contribution, and I think that applies at the local level too.
Jason Jordan:It's a mistake probably to come in presuming the problem that you're trying to solve. Now. A lot of communities have been having this debate on a lot of the specific remedies, so it's not like conversations haven't been happening. But I think if we start from a place of collectively, where are we with housing in our region or our community? What do we collectively want to accomplish, and then how do we get there?
Jason Jordan:When we start with how we get there first, we inevitably end up in a debate about the specific policy changes. So I think there's some opportunity to start from a different place and then hopefully end with that common ground identified and I guess the last thing I would say on this point is invite others right. So we think these partners were really valuable for what we were trying to accomplish, but we definitely recognize there are other stakeholders in the housing ecosystem that need to be involved when you have these conversations from, you know, yimby advocates to low-income housing advocates, people who are focused on other facets of planning, transportation advocates and so on. So I think you know, once you create that kind of space, there's an opportunity to bring people in and have the same kind of convening conversations that we had.
Jennifer Hiatt:I know one of the conversations we've been having locally and one of the aspects of housing shortage that I didn't think that a lot of people were thinking about until I read the playbook and realized they were is the shortage of skilled labor actually needed to build homes. So even in the prefabricated housing solutions that the playbook talks about, that still requires skilled workers to assemble the house ultimately, and how is the issue identified in your guys' conversations and what steps can communities take to help fill that gap?
Jason Jordan:Yeah, you know it was interesting. I think when we started this process we had a generalized sense that labor issues were part of the overall challenge, but I don't think any of us knew exactly how prominent that challenge would be and how often it would surface in conversations. And I have to say it was one of the areas of the easiest common ground right, because I think everyone wanted to try to contribute ideas. For what do we do with this problem? We had an opportunity to interview Montana Governor Gianforte, who led statewide reforms there, and he made a comment to us that there aren't enough plumbers, electricians and carpenters in the state of Montana to build anywhere close to what they want to build and that really any reform has to start there. How do we attract and equip the labor force? Certainly, that was very much the perspective of the building community, one of their big struggles In terms of what can be done. It's difficult because I think one of the things we discovered is that there is no short-term solve, that when you're talking about labor force challenges, it tends to be more of a longitudinal thing, where you have to engage with people early in order to get the skills at the back end. That said, there are a lot of things going on around the country. They're training in apprenticeship programs, where we're seeing the corporate sector and the philanthropic sector partner with local government, whether that's in a nonprofit setting or whether it's in a formal educational setting. A lot of local governments and regional bodies have pre-existing workforce development programs already. So part of the issue is how do we bring the building trade needs and perspectives into the programs that are already existing.
Jason Jordan:So I think there's an opportunity there, you know, but it is a challenge and when you think about the drivers of housing costs, labor is clearly one of them.
Jason Jordan:I mean, we tend to focus more on the land and the law side of those challenges, but understanding that the labor piece is equally important was was one of the kind of keys here, and one of the things that occurred to me is that this is another example where housing supply and housing policy is sort of a hack for so many other social and economic problems that the country faces social and economic problems that the country faces.
Jason Jordan:And so when you start trying to solve this problem, you very quickly find yourself tackling challenges that weren't top of mind when you began, like economic inequality or education and training and those kinds of challenges just sort of naturally bubble up. And so I think that's another one of the reasons why, you know, this housing question is so compelling right now to so many different perspectives and organizations, because it touches so many different things. I think for planners, we tend to think about it in one particular way, but when we open up our thinking, you know, you see, these points of intersection and labor and workforce are definitely you mentioned, planners tend to think in one specific way.
Stephanie Rouse:That tends to be land use regulations and zoning, which are some obvious tools that we can use to address the housing supply issue. But what are other ways that planners should be and actually have been, successful at being involved in addressing the housing issue at the local level?
Jason Jordan:a ton of time thinking about the regulatory side of this and modernizing zoning and dealing with building codes and all the things that planners are, you know that's right in their strike zone. I really think that if we step back from that just a little bit, I've been thinking a lot about the fact that there's sort of a built-in contradiction in our current system. When we plan, we plan for what we want to see in our community right, what's our vision, and housing is, of course, a big part of that but when we regulate, we tend to regulate for what we don't want. So there's this disconnect between thinking about and planning for what you want and then, when you're actually getting into implementation and code development, you're focused on all the things you don't want, and I think planners are in a perfect position to sort of bring those pieces together. So I think they're critical to creating common understanding. I think they're essential for getting people focused on a conversation about how do we solve the problem, not necessarily how do we litigate every individual project.
Jason Jordan:Planners are unique in that they bring this sort of constellation of skills. You know they have a very data-driven process where they understand deep trends that are happening in the community. They understand the assets that are on the ground, they have particular insight into the needs and they combine that with long-term vision, right Like where are we going in a five, 10-year time horizon? What does our plan say about our values as a community? And then a very critical personal skill of helping people navigate change, I think, an area where planners play an absolutely vital role. We were really pleased that there was a sort of immediate recognition by the other partners that planning wasn't sort of on the side or just the regulatory space for this problem problem, but that they were. They are essential partners, no matter whether you're coming as the builder or whether you're, you know, the mayor or city council trying to push forward the change in your community. So I really think planners are the kind of essential professionals in solving these problems and a lot of that happens before we ever get to regulation.
Jennifer Hiatt:Dang straight. We're essential. So when I was reading through it, one of the things that I was actually surprised didn't make the list is a lack of available land to build on. Maybe this is just somewhat of an agricultural situation, but I know plenty of communities have an abundance of vacant properties within their corporate limits and that's addressed. But many of the communities that I have worked with actually have the opposite issue limited amounts of infill lots or restrictions on boundary growth for one reason or another, be it like an actual boundary growth or in the communities I've worked, the situation is more that there's just one large land owner who owns the majority of the land surrounding a community who either won't subdivide, or they won't sell, or they're only subdivide for single family homes in an effort to keep valuations high. So I was just curious did this actually come up in any of your conversations?
Jason Jordan:Yeah, it did come up and you make an excellent point about the different needs of a community based on their geography, right? So small towns, more rural areas, have different challenges. We experienced this a lot when we looked at sort of fast growing markets versus slow or no growth markets. Interestingly, they all have housing challenges. They just look and feel a little bit different, which is one of the challenges, I think, when you talk about policy prescriptions, because it's easy to start writing to one type of community and leave another to the side. So we tried to avoid that as as best we could community and leave another to the side. So we tried to avoid that as best we could. You know, I think part of this issue about land availability begins and we talk about this in the book with a really thorough assessment at the outset to really understand not just kind of where your aspirations are, but if you really want to pursue multifamily housing or missing middle housing, what land is available to you, what are the options, and then figure out your other finance and regulatory shifts with an understanding of that landscape, because I think that leads to focus and it's easy, I think, to lose focus when you're talking about large-scale changes in a code we're really talking about in some respects trying to facilitate exactly the kind of housing production that's desired in different settings. All that said, you know I feel compelled to say that regulatory reform here is critical to unlocking land opportunity.
Jason Jordan:Regardless of community right, we still confront the fact that at least 75% of land in this country is still single family exclusive zoned, which means there are options even in the most land constrained places by re-legalizing options.
Jason Jordan:You know that gets us back into the zoning reform conversation and also right sizing standards right.
Jason Jordan:I mean, one of the ways to deal with infill challenges is simply to allow people to build on smaller lots, and I know that's complex and controversial in some places, but it's just one of the tools to try to allow us to be a little more creative with the land that is available to us.
Jason Jordan:I think we also found that, you know, on the finance side and on the political side there's a lot of appetite for infill strategies. You know, what can we do with different kinds of financial incentives to support and encourage that kind of development when you are in a place where you're land constrained, but it's a real problem. Obviously we can't just make more land, but I do think one of the through lines in this is that we have allowed a regulatory structure in many places to become outdated in terms of what it is that we need to accomplish with the resources we currently have, and that's where our view is that locally led reform that's underpinned by a common understanding of what kinds of housing production is valuable in that community can really help overcome some of those land availability obstacles.
Stephanie Rouse:Yeah, in our community I always struggle with our lot size minimums and I would love to see those overhauled, but I know that's going to take a much bigger conversation. One of my favorite strategies in this document was the pre-approved building plan. We, like many other communities, have design standards for our urban neighborhoods to ensure that the construction does fit in with the area, and we often get complaints from developers that are trying to exclude elements like any sort of fenestration or entrances on a front facade because they're trying to slip into these smaller lots. And I think having kind of a pre-approved plan that shows that, yes, you can have a good design that also works for these smaller urban lots and addresses some of the housing issues, a really smart way to streamline the approval process. What is one or two strategies that stood out to you while doing this research and pulling the document together?
Jason Jordan:Yeah, I just want to say for a second I love the pre-approved plans too. I think, you know, it's one of those small things that accomplishes so much, both in terms of helping the developers understand you know how to solve a problem, but also expediting the permitting and review process on the back end for communities. In the course of doing the work here, we discovered that Canada is actually moving forward with a national program on this very topic, Revisiting a post-World War II initiative that helped build out the country as soldiers came back from the war, and so they're revisiting that idea, modernizing it, of course, but I think there's a lot there for communities of all types really, and it's a critical tool when we think about missing middle houses. Zoning reform is kind of a necessary but not sufficient condition. When we start getting into design solutions and streamlining the permitting process, then I think we actually can start seeing the production numbers change.
Jason Jordan:In terms of a couple of other ideas, it's really hard, you know, after spending a lot of time with this, I feel like they're all my children, but I'll throw out a few. There's a series of time with this. I feel like they're all my children, but I'll throw out a few. There's a series of low-hanging fruit options. I say they're low-hanging fruit even though I know they're politically difficult but things like parking minimums, lot sizes and accessory dwelling units all are being experimented with at scale all across the country. So there are tons of models out there and lots of opportunity to do something relatively small in your code that could have an outsized change. So that whole bundle of things.
Jason Jordan:Another one that's sort of a hidden issue at times is on the building code side, and it is finding ways to have the residential building code apply to sort of mid-sized, small to mid-sized multifamily properties, so quadplex up to about six stories.
Jason Jordan:You really change the financing structure if you apply the full commercial building code to those properties, and I think there's a lot of innovation happening on the design and safety side to allow that to happen. The last thing I'll mention, just to throw out one, is there is so much experimentation happening in the adaptive reuse space that I think is going to be an important new horizon as we think about downtowns in a post-pandemic world and commercial conversions and all sorts of things. That's another, I think, exciting area of work. But you know, no matter which of these strategies you choose and love and think is a cool idea. From a planning perspective, I think it's important to keep coming back to this idea that leadership and conversation are going to be essential to moving any of those cool strategies forward, right? Because they often require change, they often require people to shift their mindsets, and so that's going to be a piece that applies no matter which policy it is you're trying to try to implement.
Jennifer Hiatt:So Stephanie might have read this like a book, but I actually have to admit I jumped immediately to financing first. That's my job. Stephanie comes up with plans and projects, I help finance them, and it's, of course, always an issue when it comes to affordable housing. So there were some really unique financing schemes that are presented Well I say scheme not in a bad way A whole setup scheme, not in a bad way, a whole setup, it's okay.
Jason Jordan:I spent time in the UK and worked with analog organization of the American Planning Association over there and they use scheme in a completely different way than we use scheme with no negative connotations and forever you know when I would hear that word I'd be like, oh, is it really a scheme? You know thinking of like dark rooms and you know all of that. But I'm totally with you. I understand.
Jennifer Hiatt:Yes, my state and local financing professor was actually from the UK. A whole interesting thing of a UK person trying to teach United States state and local financing, but whatever. So that's why I say scheme too. That's so funny. So what were some of your more favorite or like forward thinking financing schemes that were available in the playbook?
Jason Jordan:Yeah, you know, we had a convening specifically focused on finance in Tacoma, washington, and we brought in a lot of different kinds of financial institutions and it was really remarkable the degree to which the finance piece is really poorly understood outside of financial institutions and I don't see that as criticism of planners or elected officials or realtors or anybody else, it's just that it's a very sort of separate professional space and just the ability to go through a pro forma and understand the different drivers of cost and what the financing implications were, I think was eye-opening for a lot of people. Those conversations, I think again, are essential. Some of the stuff that I was really intrigued by are some of the approaches to create financing options for ADUs and missing middle housing. You know, I think the California experience is really instructive, where you can change your codes and permit a lot of things, but there's still obstacles out there, and one of the obstacles in that space was you typically don't have large scale developers who are the ones building these projects. It could be an individual homeowner or certainly a small scale builder at most, and so things like just helping them navigate the financing space, creating local loan funds or renovation funds, I think was really an important tool in driving the actual production. So again it sort of goes back in my mind to that necessary but not sufficient right.
Jason Jordan:The necessary change was to make them illegal, but the other condition was, you know, we got to provide the tools.
Jason Jordan:Secondly, the emerging role of CDFIs, particularly in the adaptive reuse space, I think is really an interesting new approach.
Jason Jordan:Cdfis have been around a long time but the way that they're being used and the potential to sort of spur their activities with some of the new federal resources that are available, really exciting. We were also really interested in some of the infill credit programs that are referenced in the guide and this idea of even beyond sort of ADU universe but financing support for small-scale developers this is something that came up over and over in the conversation is that we tend to think often of the development community as a monolith Right. The reality is that different developers have very different needs and requirements and sort of being able to differentiate a nonprofit developer versus a small scale developer versus, you know, somebody who's operating at large scale projects hugely important in terms of the tools that they need. So you know that's not a startling new insight but I do think it changes the way you think about sort of policy recommendations. So we were pleased to be able to put in, you know, a number of case studies that we hope will give people a sense of what can be done out there.
Jennifer Hiatt:Yeah, I actually not to speak poorly of the planning academic world by any means here. I'm very grateful for my education, but the first time that I actually had to deal with a capital stack whatsoever is when I was handed a client's capital stack when I was an associate at a private law firm and asked to review it for conformance for closing documents, and I was just like I don't even know. What do you mean? What's a capital stack? I don't understand, didn't learn it in any of my education. So certainly something that we should probably be thinking a little more about.
Jason Jordan:I agree.
Jason Jordan:So, beyond the scope of this playbook, that has been something that has been a real learning, I think, for us is that it is a gap in a lot of people's professional training, and it's not so much that you need that expertise because you're going to go in and work on the development side or you're going to be on the finance side, but really to be influential in the process requires a certain baseline level of understanding of what they're dealing with, and the lack of that, I think, is where a lot of the conflict tends to arise just misunderstandings about what will and won't work and where flexibility can and can't be created.
Jason Jordan:The other thing we learned is that lending standards play a big role in all of this, and so a government can make a lot of reforms on their end, but if you can't get lending without meeting certain standards that are still there on their end, you're back to square one in terms of the impact of that requirement. So we were thrilled to have MBA, the Mortgage Bankers Association, come to the table. They brought us a lot of opportunities to engage with partners in the finance sector. I think there's a lot more work to be done there, and we're excited about leveraging this relationship to drive some deeper work with those kinds of partners.
Stephanie Rouse:And one of the main things that I thought was so helpful with this playbook was all of the different case studies and the community examples for each of the different strategies, and I'm sure there were a lot of other case studies that didn't make the cut. So I'm curious how'd you go about deciding what got included in this playbook?
Jason Jordan:Yeah, you're right, there's a ton of success stories out there and they couldn't all be referenced. I find it very encouraging that there's so many success stories out there. I find it very encouraging that there's so many success stories out there and even more than just success stories, but just the willingness to experiment and innovate. There's just a lot happening right now.
Jason Jordan:One of the challenges that we had when we selected case studies is that we didn't want to load up on any one part of the country, any one type of community. It would have been easy to pick case studies and have them cluster in high-cost metros, for instance, because there's a lot happening in those places, but that's not helpful. At the end of the day, if you're in a slower growth community or a suburban community or any other kind of community, you need places that look like you. So one of the things we did is we assembled out this list of case studies and matched them up to the different strategies that you see in the playbook. But then we went through and said do we have geographic diversity here? Do we have market diversity here? And so there might've been three or four good case studies from the same state and we simply said, no, we're not going to have that many from any one place, so that we would be as inclusive as possible of the challenges that people face out there.
Jason Jordan:But we still have those case studies and we are going to be using those in other ways because the playbook is, it's a foundation. It's not an end point for this work, right? So we absolutely, as a partnership not just APA, but all the partners are committed to building toward. You know, how can we play a technical assistance role? How can we take the playbook ideas and infuse it in training? How can we bring the perspectives that led to the playbook into conversations in other areas? I know that many of those great examples are going to come forward in other ways.
Jennifer Hiatt:Always our final question. We released our episode on the book Brave New Home earlier this month, which so many of the things that we've talked about here are actually discussed there too. My favorite is learning the difference between how the US housing market responded from the World Wars versus European housing markets. It's very cool. Came up here too. My favorite is learning the difference between how the US housing market responded from the World Wars versus European housing markets. It's very cool. Came up here too. Anyway, what other book suggestions do you have for our readers?
Jason Jordan:Yeah, you know it's quite a time for books about housing planning and zoning, isn't it? It's remarkable. I feel sure that Oprah is going to have a zoning title on her club at some point soon. In terms of some that I've been reading lately, there's a book called Excluded by Richard Kallenberg that I think is really great. It's written for a broad audience. It's not necessarily written for the expert audience, but it's really good on the history of the challenge challenge and, in particular, you know, he focuses on this issue that a lot of people are reluctant to discuss, which is that some of our most exclusionary policies that need reform are in some very progressive places and sort of the dynamic that is at play there and how to cope with that. So it's a great book, one that I just finished that I know has been out for a while, so a lot of people have read. It is called Paid Paradise, which you know is really great, another kind of popular audience oriented book, but really talks, you know, about the role of parking and how it's kind of this hidden variable in so much of what goes on in communities. So that's a terrific book and certainly, you know, if you're looking for inspiration to tackle those parking mandates, it'll get your juices flowing.
Jason Jordan:A less well-known book I think that I just finished that I would recommend is a book that is in the international context.
Jason Jordan:It's called Emergent Tokyo Designing the Spontaneous City, and it focuses on the Japanese model for zoning and land use. It's written by an architect, so it has a lot of kind of design orientations there, but it begins to talk about sort of their approach. That goes back to that contradiction I was talking of earlier, where their regulatory system is aimed at trying to unlock creativity in the building sector, but defining what you want in a place. Unlock creativity in the building sector, but defining what you want in a place. And while obviously you know I think it's unlikely that we're going to import the Tokyo model to very many US cities in the near term, it does raise this interesting idea of what does an approach of emergence look like from a planning perspective and how do you create a framework that allows that stuff to emerge, as opposed to be mandated or dictated or regulated. So it's kind of fun, I think, to get outside of the US context once in a while and look around the globe for other models. So it's a fun book.
Stephanie Rouse:Yeah, that one sounds very interesting and I like when we get some diverse topics for our listeners to check out. But, jason, thank you so much for joining us today on Booked on Planning to talk about the Housing Supply Accelerator.
Jason Jordan:My absolute pleasure. Hope folks will go out and download it today.
Stephanie Rouse:Yep, we'll link it in the show notes so it's easy to get to.
Jason Jordan:Fantastic. Thanks so much.
Jennifer Hiatt:We hope you enjoyed this conversation with Jason Jordan to talk about the Housing Supply Accelerator Playbook. You can download your free copy at planningorg. Remember to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts and please rate, review and share the show, thank you.