If you’re like me, as you’ve driven along the Mississippi River, or even around the country, you’ve noticed communities that aren’t doing too well. Many of these are older urban areas, but I see plenty of small towns struggling, too. What’s going on? Isn’t this just the free market at work? To dig into this issue, I invited my brother, Kevin Klinkenberg, onto the podcast. Kevin is an architect and planner who has spent much of his career working to improve communities. In this episode, we talk about what makes cities and towns good places to live. Kevin describes the traditional way that cities and towns developed and how we upended all that in the United States. Kevin briefly details some of the policies that transformed development patterns and the consequences of those policies. We finish by looking at two Mississippi River towns—one that is doing well and one that isn’t. Kevin emphasizes that there are no silver bullets to magically turn places around, but communities aren’t helpless, either.
In the Mississippi Minute, the American Queen has been in the news, but for all the wrong reasons. The company went bankrupt, and a rival bought their boats in the bankruptcy auction. Will the American Queen return to river cruising? We don’t know, yet, but you can let the company know you’d like to see that happen.
Show Notes
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Transcript
40. Kevin Klinkenberg on Cities and Towns
Mon, May 13, 2024 8:51AM • 1:07:32
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
cities, places, towns, happened, small towns, live, neighborhoods, river, maps, podcast, mississippi, paris, community, people, walk, change, street, books, create, experience
SPEAKERS
Kevin Klinkenberg, Dean Klinkenberg
Kevin Klinkenberg 00:00
And that’s happened with zoning, we’ve locked a lot of places in amber, that then could not adapt when market conditions changed and social forces changed. And so people couldn’t make adjustments to their properties and do what they needed to do to have stable neighborhoods. And so people just leave and they go to the next neighborhood. And then those places that couldn’t change end up withering and declining and in a really awful way.
Dean Klinkenberg 00:49
Welcome to the Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast. I’m Dean Klinkenberg. And I’ve been exploring the deep history and rich culture of the people and places along America’s greatest river, the Mississippi, since 2007. Join me as I go deep into the characters and places along the river and occasionally wander into other stories from the Midwest and other rivers. Read the episode show notes and get more information on the Mississippi at MississippiValleyTraveler.com. Let’s get going.
Dean Klinkenberg 01:22
Welcome to Episode 40 of the Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast. Well, that’s a round number that feels like a milestone. I missed last week. Wasn’t able to get an episode out. Things have been crazy busy here lately, but I’m gonna make it up to you with episodes in back to back weeks. So look for a new episode again a week after this one drops. I’ve been really busy working on updating my travel guide “Road Tripping the Great River Road” for the Upper Mississippi. The third edition should be available as this episode goes live. So at the very least the print book will be out. I’m still doing some tinkering on the ebook. But uh, hopefully that’ll be out this week too. I spent a fair amount of time visiting places and getting back out on the road to do the update. So I’m sure you’d be looking forward to getting a new copy of that. Also, just a reminder, my new book, “The Wild Mississippi: A State-by-State Guide to the River’s Natural Wonders”, releases into the world on May 21st. You can still pre-order in all the usual places now. You could go down to your local independent bookstore and pre-order a copy now if you so desired. And if you happen to be in the St. Louis area, we’re going to throw a release party for this new book on Thursday, May 23rd, at the Schlafly tap room near downtown St. Louis from 6 to 8pm. So come on down, I’ll have books for sale there. And we’re going to do door prizes and and maybe share a river story or two.
Dean Klinkenberg 02:51
Now for this episode, I wanted to do something a little bit different. If you drive along the Mississippi much at all, it doesn’t take much time to find a town that is really struggling. In fact, even the towns that look like they’re doing well usually are still facing some pretty significant challenges. So what’s going on? What can communities do to turn things around? I figured those are questions a lot of us have. And if you’re like me, your assumptions about the causes and solutions may turn out to be entirely wrong. So to dig into the issues of what’s going on with our cities and small towns, I invited my brother onto the podcast. Kevin Klinkenberg. He’s an architect and planner in Kansas City with a wealth of experience who balances studying the problems of city and town development, with getting his hands dirty and making things happen. In this episode, we talk a little bit about how he got interested in cities, and what makes cities good places to live in. He has a couple of observations, surprising observations about how city life can actually be less stressful than life in other types of communities. We talked about how cities developed historically and what we did differently in the United States and what the impact of that has been. And we take a quick look at some of the policies that really drove those changes in the United States. And then we look at a couple of river towns, one that’s thriving and one that’s struggling and we talk a little bit about maybe what they’re doing right and what they might be able to do next. It’s an interesting discussion. That’s just the first step in this direction. I’m open to doing more episodes like this. If you like it, then drop me a note or drop a note in the comment section at MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast. As always, if you’re a Patreon supporter, thank you, thank you, thank you. Your support not only makes me feel good, it keeps this podcast alive. If you want to join that community, go to patreon.com/DeanKlinkenberg and you can join there. If Patreon is not your thing, hey, buy me a coffee. I drink plenty of that. And that’s another way to show some support and show me some love. To find out how to do that, also just go to MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast. And at that same site, you’ll also find the show notes for this episode and all the other episodes. And now on with the interview.
Dean Klinkenberg 05:23
Well, my guest today is someone I know pretty well, someone who I’ve been around for more years than I can say out loud. Talking with him is a bit of a departure for this podcast. So he’s not a river rat or an ecologist. But he does love food, so that would count. He spent his career as an architect, planner and urban designer. He’s a city guy like me, and also a proud Midwesterner. Although he moved away for a few years and lived in gorgeous Savannah, Georgia. He sometimes describes himself as an optimistic cynic, which gives us a few things to argue about. Because otherwise, we generally see the world in a pretty similar way. In 2014, he wrote a book called “Why I Walk”, the book that goes deep into the joys that come from using your feet to get from place to place. Today, he’s the executive director of Midtown KC Now, an organization that advocates for development in midtown Kansas City. And like me, he hosts a podcast, although his is called The Messy City. He’s also the father of my nieces, and my brother, Kevin Klinkenberg. Welcome to the podcast, Kevin.
Kevin Klinkenberg 06:31
Hey, Dean. This’ll be fun. We we did it once on my podcast, and now I can return the favor.
Dean Klinkenberg 06:39
Absolutely. This may be a habit like we may kind of do these things from time to time. Just because it’s fun for us to talk. And I think you have a lot to share that would be of interest to the folks who listen to the Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast. I like I think one of the things you and I share in common is we sort of like to think a little more deeply about why things are the way they are, instead of just looking at the world and saying, “Oh, this is this way, because that’s what people wanted”, or something of that side. We try to pull the curtain back a little bit and look at things a little bit deeper. And that’s why I’m excited to talk with you today. To do that with cities and how cities and towns develop. But I have a very important question to ask you first. What’s the best flavor of ice cream?
Kevin Klinkenberg 07:27
Oh, my God. I mean, there’s just no question. It’s chocolate chip.
Dean Klinkenberg 07:31
Chocolate chip? We do have more to disagree on that. So our father was, well, could we say he was a connoisseur, an ice cream connoisseur?
Kevin Klinkenberg 07:39
Yes. We could say that. Every time we went over, he had at least three or four different flavors in the freezer.
Dean Klinkenberg 07:46
And I’m certainly doing my part to keep that tradition going. But I cannot have ice cream every night like he did. I would weigh 50 pounds more than I do now if I did. But that’s one of the the joys I think that he passed on to us the pleasures of enjoying that frozen treat.
Kevin Klinkenberg 08:03
Yes. And you’ll be happy to know that my daughters mentioned to me the other day that whenever grandpa babysat that he always gave them ice cream. Which I’m sure is no surprise to anybody who knew him well.
Dean Klinkenberg 08:17
Right. Which I think is probably their way of saying how come you’re not doing the same?
Kevin Klinkenberg 08:21
It was exactly that. Yeah.
Dean Klinkenberg 08:26
All right, well, okay. So now that we have that, the important question out of the way, none of the rest of this really matters, because it really was the only question that really mattered. Now, one of the things that’s different. Well, more so for you than for me, I think you you essentially grew up in small towns, as you pointed out, I was more of a suburban kid, although a little bit of small town life when we moved to Albert Lea, how is it that you got interested in cities?
Kevin Klinkenberg 08:54
I think it was probably an outgrowth of all of the crazy road trips that the family trips that we did, when we were kids. Mom and Dad would throw us all in the car when they had the chance for vacation. And we take these two week road trips all over the country. And I think just the exposure to that was, was interesting to me. And then there was just something about the nature of driving through like a lot of big cities that just excited me. And it was kind of hard to describe, but I just I think I always liked the energy that came from being in big cities. I remember one time when we were kids when we lived in Minnesota, and we were taking one of those trips. And one of our first stops was in Chicago. And we actually stayed downtown in The Loop in Chicago. And I just thought that was like the coolest thing ever. And when I was a kid, and so I think that was it. And then, you know, the other thing that you’ll probably remember is I don’t know what what age, but at some point, I became a real aficiando of maps. And just, uh, you know, reading maps, and I, I would collect maps. And even to this day, I can kind of sit down and look at a map and just almost like read a map for an hour or more. And there was a weird combination of that love for map reading. And then the experience of traveling a lot. Those were trips that I think, drew me in that direction of cities and architecture.
Dean Klinkenberg 10:33
What was it about maps that you found so fascinating at that time? What did you, what was the experience like looking at those maps?
Kevin Klinkenberg 10:40
I mean, I don’t know you’re the psychologist, you could tell me. I don’t know, it was I, there was just something really interesting about how everything how our world was represented on a piece of paper. And I could sit down and study and look at the cities and the geography and the lines. And there was just so there’s so so much information on on a good map, that, I think if you enjoy looking at them, it feels like you can, you can just really study them and understand a whole lot more about a place. And so I’ve just always had that love for it. In fact, you may remember at one point when I was at when we’re living in Minnesota, this was obviously way before the internet, but I actually wrote letters to every state in the country, like whatever bureau it was that that put out their state maps. And I requested that they mail me a map of their state. And I also included like a list of a whole bunch of cities that I wanted maps up to. And most of the states sent me maps. And so I had this huge collection of state and city maps from all over the country that I just thought was really fun.
Dean Klinkenberg 12:03
I do remember that. I remember like how excited you were with a every day to check the mail and see what new maps came in. One of the things I think that’s fun with maps, like so you can learn a lot about places from studying them but most of those were places you’d never been.
Kevin Klinkenberg 12:19
Right.
Dean Klinkenberg 12:20
So I think it also maybe fires up the imagination or that desire to go and see new places that curiosity.
Kevin Klinkenberg 12:26
Yeah, yeah, I think that definitely was true. And so I loved when we would take those trips, I would love to just kind of map out where we were going and what we might see along the way. And I guess I always had a weird ability when we were driving on those trips that I could sit and follow along on the map while we’re going along. And I know that actually makes like some people sick to their stomach when they try to read a map or something when they’re driving, but it never really affected me. And I don’t know why. But I loved, I still love, like following along on a map wherever we are, and having an idea or a curiosity of what’s nearby and what might be a few miles away or, or those sorts of things.
Dean Klinkenberg 13:11
So when you were in college, you got to spend a few weeks in Paris. A summer architecture program, right?
Kevin Klinkenberg 13:18
Yep.
Dean Klinkenberg 13:18
How did those weeks in Paris shape the way you think about cities?
Kevin Klinkenberg 13:23
Well, it was it was huge. It was a six week program in Paris through the School of Architecture. It was before my final year of school. And I often tell people, I felt like just the experience of being there. I learned as much in those six weeks as I did, you know, in easily a couple of years of school. Because we would walk the city every day. And then because we were architecture students, we would get together and we would draw things. And we would talk about what we saw with our professor. And we would just experience a lot of different things. And it really, I think being in Paris really helped me cement. I always had already had an interest that that was actually it was my second trip to Europe because I did another one in high school when when I was 17. That was kind of a whirlwind tour of European countries. So it was my second trip overseas. But it kind of cemented in me this this interest that I had in living someplace where you primarily walked around to everything. And where you didn’t really need a car to get around because that was obviously our experience growing up. You know, we, I think, we probably are old enough that we walked to school or rode a bike to school a lot, but not all the time. But certainly most of the places we live to really get anywhere do much of anything you’re getting in a car or to go somewhere. And so that experience of being in Paris for that time period really cemented that idea of how much I loved the notion. You know, it wasn’t like hating on cars or anything, it’s just that it felt very freeing to be able to walk outside your door and use your body to get around and get whatever it is that you needed that day or whatever you wanted to do.
Dean Klinkenberg 15:18
Right? Plus nobody honks at you if you slow down or stop to look at some things.
Kevin Klinkenberg 15:23
That’s right, yeah. Yeah.
Dean Klinkenberg 15:26
Yeah, I remember well, in Overland Park, we lived right across the street from the grade school. So that was an easy walk. In Albert Lea, the junior high was just down the street. So I got to walk to that every day, which wasn’t always fun in Minnesota in January but it was walkable.
Kevin Klinkenberg 15:43
It wasn’t that fun.
Dean Klinkenberg 15:47
But, you know, now I look at a lot of schools, there’s a private Catholic school in our neighborhood. And every day, around two-thirty, three o’clock, there’s a humongous line of cars, blocking the street for two blocks for parents to go and pick up their kids. And it’s a very different lifestyle, relying on cars. And I can’t imagine that’s a very satisfactory experience for the parents that have to live like that. But you drive your kids to school.
Kevin Klinkenberg 16:20
We do. And the school is not all that far away. But it is common now for parents to to drive their kids just to chauffer them to school and pick them up afterwards. And that that’s definitely an experience that’s changed for kids. If anybody who’s like our age or older, chances are you walked to school, or at least you walk to elementary school. And anybody younger than us, chances are good that you didn’t walk to school is a massive change and how we have planned our educational facilities, the design and construction of those. And there’s there’s a lot of kind of background, educational theory that actually went into that, that most people don’t realize, but it was, it’s really unfortunate, because there’s a loss of that sense of independence that I think we had. And even like when we went to Comanche Elementary, even though it was right across the street, it was just like, you get up and you just go and you just want, you know, cross look carefully crossing the street, and then you’re there. But it’s a huge change. And we we struggle with that a lot. We’re trying to figure out ways to be able to, you know, ride our bikes, or have the kids ride their bikes to school. But it’s it’s different. I think, you know, I was thinking about this this morning, in response to something I saw that somebody else wrote, and like one of the major differences, there’s a lot of differences, obviously, that we could talk about, about school design in particular, but one of the major differences like the experience as a kid, when we were younger, the typical vehicle on the road would have been like a sedan. Now, the typical vehicle on the road is an SUV or a truck that is driven by somebody who’s looking at their phone. And so, the, there are lots of very distracted drivers, in large vehicles. And as the parent of as small children, it’s, that’s a little frightening. And it does, it just gives us it probably gives me more probably more pause than we should, we’re probably overly concerned about it. Something we talk about a lot, you know, how do we give them more independence. Because we want them to have that independence. But there’s parts of that that are that are just different. And they are a little a little scarier as a parent to conceive of.
Dean Klinkenberg 16:34
Absolutely. And you know, the there are still a significant number of drivers who believe the roads only you know, are theirs only and bicycles shouldn’t be on them. So yeah, bicyclists are a little bit higher risk from those drivers as well. We could really go down that rabbit hole for a while too. But I want to come back to Paris.
Kevin Klinkenberg 19:13
Sure.
Dean Klinkenberg 19:13
And I want to I want to hear a little bit more about what you learned about the possibilities of city life. So yeah, Paris, of course. One of the things that we’ll probably talk about later is that cities always change. You know, cities are not the static entities that get built and never never changed at all. And Paris is going through some changes again now where they’re looking for ways to really reduce the number of cars and maybe even close some streets to auto traffic altogether. But what did you learn about the possibilities of city living from your six weeks in Paris?
Kevin Klinkenberg 19:47
Well, there’s probably there’s probably a lot that I can’t even fully remember even communicate. Because your daily experience is just so different. And Paris is not like a lot of other big cities, a lot of really large cities in the world are not terribly livable and walkable. I think Paris is arguably the most livable large city in the world. And I’ve been to quite a few of them. And it really has a human scale to it most anywhere you go in the city. And so I think as a college kid, just the the notion that I had that we could get up every day, and like our professor could say, okay, meet us at this location somewhere in the city. And we just walked and we would take the metro, and just get there on our own and find what we were doing. And then we’d spend the whole day walking around, you know, we, we were on student budgets, so we ate cheap street food, we knew where to go for that. And just that whole experience of walking around. And I do remember one thing that was really kind of funny, when, when I came home back to the United States, after being away that summer, I think I had lost like 15 pounds. Even though we ate, we ate what we felt like was a lot. But you’re just you’re using your body to get around, which is natural, that’s what our bodies want to do. That’s the way we naturally want to live. And it’s a way we lived in cities for 1000s of years. And so when you do that, you you just kind of feel a little bit better, you feel a little healthier, you’re a little bit more in touch with the outdoor world. You see other human beings as human beings on the street, you interact with them. Now the French don’t really smile much. They’re not like, they’re not Midwesterners, right?
Dean Klinkenberg 21:56
We’re the aberration I think on that. The world doesn’t smile.
Kevin Klinkenberg 22:01
They don’t smile, and say, “Hey, how you doing?” when you’re walking down the street.
Dean Klinkenberg 22:05
I love that about us. But yes.
Kevin Klinkenberg 22:07
But still you are seeing other people as as people, and not as like enemies in a vehicle to try to get around. And so that was just all a different thing. You know, the fact that we just like walked to the we figured out where the supermarket was the grocery store, we just walk there and got what we needed. And, you know, the parks and wonderful neighborhood space and a drink from a bottle of wine and have a baguette or whatever, and a little bit of cheese. And that was just a really great human experience. And sit and people watch, which is, you know, never ending and fascinating. So that should those just aren’t day to day experiences you get in unfortunate in a lot of our American cities these days. So those are things that I really remember. You know, the science fiction author, Ray Bradbury, wrote a lot about cities as well. And he, he had some really amazing quotes about like life in Paris, he wrote a little book called Yestermorrow, which was like a collection of short stories, where he talked a number of them were set in cities, and he talked about city life. And he,, if I am going to try to remember the quote, try not to butcher it. But he said something like, “In Paris, in in lousy weather, people gathered by the 1000s to sit and stare because sitting and staring is one of the great occupations of life.” And, and I think there’s a lot of truth to that. It’s just enjoyable to sit and people watch.
Dean Klinkenberg 23:56
Yeah, there’s a lot of that in Paris. And I know we’re talking Paris here, but you know, there are a lot of cities around the world that have similar characteristics. Like as you’re talking what I’m hearing, you know, I’m hearing you describe choice. Like cities, good cities give you choices, choices, and how to get around, you know, a lot into one particular way. You have choices for where to eat from places that are really inexpensive, and in Paris, of course, you could spend a lot of money on a meal if you wanted to. Choices to how you spend your time whether it’s people watching or you sitting around people watching or, or going out and biking or visiting an art museum or whatever their their choices. And, and I also hear like, in spite of maybe what some people think, like, it sounds like you’re kind of suggesting maybe the stress levels of living in a city like that might actually be lower than other lifestyles that are more typical of Americans.
Kevin Klinkenberg 24:58
I mean, I think there’s a lot of truth to that, I think when there there was, you know, the the traditional, what we were like in the urban planning world, what we kind of refer to as, like the traditional human settlement was really built around neighborhoods and neighborhoods where you walked to most of your daily needs. And when things were within that kind of a distance, it’s not that there weren’t stresses, but you know, you’re, it’s a different attitude that you might have towards, oh, I’ve got to run out and get, you know, a gallon of milk. Or, oh, my kids, you know, want an ice cream cone. It doesn’t involve getting in a vehicle, navigating busy streets with 1000s of other vehicles. And really seeing kind of the worst of human behavior, it’s really more about you just pop outside your door, and within five or 10 minutes, you’re wherever you need to get. And that’s indicative of how we lived for a very, very long time, until we decided to kind of radically transform our cities, with what our friend Chuck Marohn calls “The suburban experiment.” And, you know, I think there’s a lot to be said, for what feels natural and doesn’t feel natural as a human being. I mean, I think you you notice this a lot with just your experience with being along the river and out in nature, and how good that feels to experience that and how it resonates with you as a as a person. And we used to have, that used to not be that all uncommon to have that kind of feeling just living in a neighborhood.
Dean Klinkenberg 26:49
Hey, Dean Klinkenberg, here, interrupting myself. Just wanted to remind you that if you’d like to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books, I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler Guide Books for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series that is set in places along the Mississippi, my newest book, “The Wild Mississippi” goes deep into the world of Old Man River, learn about the varied and complex ecosystems supported by the Mississippi, the plant and animal life that depends on them. And where you can go to experience it all. Find any of these wherever books are sold?
Dean Klinkenberg 27:29
Well, so let’s talk about what happened. So like the you don’t have to dig very deep in Facebook to find a group of like, Kansas City from 1900, or, you know, old St. Louis photos. And I find them mostly depressing to look at those photos, especially since they’re often side by side with what our places look like today. We today, you know, majority of Americans live in the suburbs. So I think a lot of people believe that this was just the free market that people were voting with their dollars, and we have we’ve chosen this lifestyle willingly and because of the free market. So how accurate is that?
Kevin Klinkenberg 28:11
Yeah, it’s not accurate at all. And, you know, as somebody who’s a big believer of the free market, I think the free market is generally very, very good and a natural thing for humans to a great way to live and exchange with others. But we went through a bold experiment, starting really in the 1920s to completely reshape our cities and towns all over North America. And there’s there are many, many books that have been written about this. But really, probably the best way that I like to think about it is like the advance of industrialization caused a shock to the system for cities, and a lifestyle that humans had kind of existed in for a long time. So the rapid industrialization that happened really caused a lot of change in the early part of the 20th century. And some of that change was the technology itself. So we had mass production of cars, for example, which gave people the ability to get in a machine and go clear across town or across the country in ways they couldn’t before without assistance or without getting on a train. So it individualized that but then also, we created a whole new radical way to administer our cities that we had never done before. Up until, you know, the nineteen-teens, basically, hardly any place in the country had so much as a planning commission, or, or city elected board that actually voted on projects or decided infrastructure projects, those things were were handled in, I guess the the best way to say it would be more of a laissez faire fashion, up until that point. And then we decided to change all that, along with a whole lot of other things along with the technology of the car coming in. And we put in place, new systems that we call zoning, and the city planning apparatus that we have today. And we dramatically changed how we fund and build infrastructure. And all of that, combined to create a platform for the kind of suburban development that we see today. That didn’t, you know, and a lot of that didn’t take place immediately, it took years for that really to show itself. You know, partially because we had the Great Depression and World War Two, that interrupted most building in America for about 20 years. But after World War Two, when we had a flood of wealth in our country, because we were the only country left standing, the only industrial power left standing. We spent all that wealth on the systems we’d created before World War Two, with mass production of housing, subdivisions, freeways, infrastructure, cars. And it just dramatically changed how we live in places to the point where anybody who grew up in the pre World War Two world could not even recognize how we live today, it’s so dramatically different. That I guess that’s my, that’s the shortest way I can describe it.
Dean Klinkenberg 31:53
So there were a lot of different factors there. But in fairness to maybe in part, because of that shock from industrialization, there were a lot of cities around 1900, that were not really pleasant places to live. In a lot of neighborhoods, we had horrible air pollution in St. Louis in the 1920s, where it would be black as night in the middle of the day, our crown jewel, the Missouri Botanical Garden seriously considered relocating out of the city, because the pollution was so bad, it was hard for them to grow plants. And if you know if it’s hard for plants, you can imagine what the air is like for people that are breathing that. So there were conditions in the cities at that time, that were fairly horrible for a lot of people.
Kevin Klinkenberg 32:36
Yeah, the, in fact, the first sort of bits of regulation that happened in that era really targeted industrial uses. And so the first zoning ordinances were conceived of to really create light and air as a response to mass industrialization. And so it I guess, the short version that we might like to make jokes about today was the the initial notion was to like separate industrial uses from residential areas so that you didn’t have that kind of pollution. And now it’s gotten to the point where zoning ordinances just exploded, to the fact that now you can’t possibly have like a $300,000 house next to a $400,000 house because like chaos will erupt.
Dean Klinkenberg 33:26
Right, right, because one of the things that happened with the previous style of development, I can see this in some city neighborhoods, still like in St. Louis and the Soulard neighborhood, you can see a tenement in old tenement house or row houses next to a mansion.
Kevin Klinkenberg 33:41
Yes, yeah.
Dean Klinkenberg 33:42
Which would not happen today for new construction.
Kevin Klinkenberg 33:44
No, and that, you know, what you described was really the common way that neighborhoods evolved forever and ever. And it’s hard for us to think about it this way today. I mean, our minds have been so warped by everything that’s happened in the last 100 years. We, it’s hard for us to imagine, you know, a lot of those types of things. But it was very, very natural for a long time for a very wealthy people and very poor people to live very close to each other. And, and that was, again, because people lived in neighborhoods, and you needed each other. You know, that there was a need to have people close by who will have all different strata of society. And so there generally was a place for that. And that what changed is when we started doing mass production of everything, and even we started doing mass production of neighborhoods and housing types. So St. Louis has some of this, but certainly other eastern industrial cities started having like mass production of row house neighborhoods that were basically all the same. And that was kind of the first version of that way if that later led to essentially mass production of like single family detached houses in the suburban areas.
Dean Klinkenberg 35:00
So we, it’s hard to separate us. Okay, I guess one of the take home messages from this, I think for me, one of the things that I’ve learned from talking with you and following some of the folks that you follow, is, I think accepting sort of that fundamental idea that we live the way we do today, not because we made all these free will choices, but because there are specific policies in place that made these things happen for us. And our choices are, are within a very narrow band of what they might have been in decades prior. I think the world looks the way it does today because of policy choices, not because of the free market.
Kevin Klinkenberg 35:43
Yeah, I think it’s very fair to say that there would have been some version of suburban suburbanization, no matter what, no matter what the policy was, because there was a desire for it, there was definitely a market desire to buy cars and to buy houses. And as people have more money, they want those things that’s very natural. What was unnatural, was the policy choices that we created the this particular type of zoning that we created in the United States, which is very different from a lot of parts of the world, and the way they regulate land use, that has very strict separation of uses, and even micro separation of uses, you know, of residential types. And then the absolute flood of money, that we had to be able to build infrastructure, like the freeway system, and roadways and everything else, that that all came, you know, from federal, state and local governments basically. One little tidbit about that, that I always find fascinating that we, we forget was before, we had that flood of infrastructure spending, public transit systems like street and the transit systems were obviously ubiquitous in not just big cities, but small towns too. A lot of small towns had street cars. They were all privately owned operations, and often very profitable operations. And it’s hard for us to even conceive of that now. Because what happened is, you know, like, we destroyed the market value of those operations with all the massive infrastructure spending. So now in order to have public transit, we’re generally have to subsidize it with another public operation. And it was just it was a very different approach 100 years ago, not and, you know, like we said, there were reasons for it. Some of those reasons were really good. Some of them were probably not so good. But the idea that it was all just driven by, you know, free market choices is just, it’s just not accurate.
Dean Klinkenberg 37:50
Yeah. So with the zoning, then, my, my guess is that older cities might have rolled some of this stuff in over time, but because they were already built, it didn’t fundamentally change many cities for a long time. Maybe as you know, neighborhoods got, you know, torn down and redeveloped. And you might see things being remade at that point. But the newer places that were developing at the end of the roads, then probably have these stricter zoning ordinances on the books from the beginning.
Kevin Klinkenberg 38:22
Yes, yes, that’s absolutely true. So, because what happened, again, was you had, essentially, after World War Two, the, the majority of the investment, almost all the investment was in new construction, which was also partially policy driven, because those VA loans that the returning vets from World War Two could get, you could get a VA loan to build a brand new house, but you could not get one to rehab, the old house your family had had for two generations. So the policy choices on the financing side were similar in the sense that they drove the flood of money towards new construction of single family detached homes. So you’re absolutely right. I think and I think that’s one of the quandaries that a lot of cities have had the last two or three decades as, as we’ve had people starting to return to cities to older cities and had an interest in them. There’s been a realization that “Oh, my God, the zoning is really a problem.” It’s really getting in the way of redevelopment of cities. But but places didn’t have to, didn’t have to wrestle with that for decades, because all the new growth was on on the edge. That’s where all the development was.
Dean Klinkenberg 39:37
So people love living in single family houses. So what’s wrong with zoning that limits development to single family neighborhoods?
Kevin Klinkenberg 39:48
Well, I think if people want to have that limitation, there are ways to do it. And it doesn’t necessarily involve you know, having your city government determine that choice for you forever and ever. And there are a lot of consequences to just locking something in amber. And I understand why people like neighborhoods where there, it’s just homeowners, especially people who have kids, you know, you get in that situation where it’s kind of nice to live around other families who all have kids. But the reality of things, whenever you try to lock something in amber, you’re basically sowing the seeds for its own demise, because it can’t change and adapt over time. And the way I’ve kind of always thought about that, as you know, you know, human beings, we change and adapt over time, we’re never static, we have to, we have to roll with the changes that happen in life, whether we like them or not. And cities are just nothing more than collections of human beings. And they’re always changing. And whenever you try to really lock that, or prevent that change out, you’re gonna, you’re going to end up causing six other problems that you don’t even really realize or think about. And that’s happened with zoning. We’ve locked a lot of places in amber, that then could not adapt when market conditions changed and social forces changed. And so people couldn’t make adjustments to their properties and, and do what they needed to do to have stable neighborhoods. And so people just leave and they go to the next neighborhood, and then those places that couldn’t change end up withering and declining and in a really awful way. And that’s really just not the natural condition for cities, the natural condition is to be able to adapt and do what needs needs to be done. And so I mean, I think like in our own family, we had family members a couple generations before, who lived in, you know, duplexes, or rented a room out and just adjusted as they needed to. And I think we probably know more about that, like on mom’s side, in Syracuse. But that was, that was typical, that’s how people ordinarily lived. And we have unfortunately regulated all of that out of existence, which, which really ends up causing the decline of places.
Dean Klinkenberg 42:23
And, now a starter home is, you know, a four bedroom 2500 square foot house out in the burbs somewhere, right?
Kevin Klinkenberg 42:32
Yeah. So like, how big was our house in Omaha?
Dean Klinkenberg 42:38
I barely remember that. I mean, I was older than you. Obviously. You were born in Omaha. I remember it being a fairly tiny ranch house.
Kevin Klinkenberg 42:46
Yeah, I think it was probably three bedrooms.
Dean Klinkenberg 42:49
Probably, if that.We were lucky if it was three bedrooms.
Kevin Klinkenberg 42:51
Yeah. And we had six of us living there. And, you know, those, those original Cape Cod, postwar Cape Cod starter homes, a lot of them were like 800 to 1200 square feet. And you’re exactly right now a starter home is 2000 square feet minimum. And, you know, that’s just sort of our lifestyle expectations have changed. And it has to have a whole bunch of like features inside and outside the house that we have to have, or we just can’t be happy there.
Dean Klinkenberg 43:25
And then people complain they can’t afford to buy a house.
Kevin Klinkenberg 43:28
Right. And then so you’ve got that problem. And then you’ve got, you know, the pre-war neighborhoods, you had the ability to add a cottage in your backyard, a rental unit, maybe a rent, maybe a rental unit over a garage, off an alley, that perhaps a family member could live there. Or maybe you rented that room out to make some money off of it to help pay the mortgage. And we basically zoned that out of existence for almost 100 years. And now the tide has turned. And that’s I think a lot of people realize that some of those things were big mistakes. And we’ve policy changes have started to happen in in cities and states around the country. But it’s a very slow recognition of the fact that people used to have much more choice and diversity in their own neighborhoods than what we allow for today.
Dean Klinkenberg 44:23
So this is the Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast, not the urban podcast. So let’s kind of shift over to the river a little bit. You know, there there are certainly urban centers along the Mississippi. But by far most of the communities are small towns, or medium sized small, medium sized cities. The things that we’re talking about that make a community a great place to live aren’t restricted to a big city. So you’ve been to Galena, Illinois. What was your take on Galena? And it’s it’s an exception in many ways, because they do so well on the tourist side of things. And probably that’s the major focus of their economy, tourism dollars. But why do people like going to Galena? What does it have to offer? Why do people want to live there?
Kevin Klinkenberg 45:15
Well, it’s just a really cool town. And I think Galena is one of those places that has like a classic American Main Street, that is very enjoyable to just stroll down the street, at a leisurely pace. And, you know, go in the shops, stop somewhere, have a bite to eat. It’s beautiful. It really engages all the senses in a way that our we don’t have enough of in our day to day life. And it’s really a funny thing, how, in the age of building a lot of suburbanization that the these classic American small towns that that have survived that some of them have become tourist attractions, because they just have the qualities of what every place he used to have, but we just don’t have much of anymore. And Galena is certainly one example of that, near me on the Missouri River, or what used to be on the Missouri River as Weston, Missouri, which used to be a river town until the river moved, decided to move itself.
Dean Klinkenberg 46:28
Those unruly rivers.
Kevin Klinkenberg 46:29
Over 100 years ago, and it’s like five miles away now. And, you know, I have often said about Weston, which is really a tiny town, that it’s a great example of like, if you just have like two good blocks, you know, on your downtown, like that’s enough to become a tourist attraction anymore. And so those those kinds of qualities, I think, are really important from a tourist standpoint, if that’s if that’s the goal.
Dean Klinkenberg 47:00
Right. And part of I think what makes Galena stand out a little bit, too, is along that Main Street, that’s almost entirely locally owned businesses. They’re not corporate chains. So there’s a some uniqueness to what’s happening there. And then, of course, you know, the the money, more of the money spent stays in the community. And I forgot what the other point there was. But yeah, that’s one of the things I think that makes a big difference. Now, in that there was a period of time in the early 70s, when there was a proposal to level some of those historic buildings, a couple blocks worth and build parking lots and strip mall. So in this case, the locals rebelled and stopped it from happening. But those kinds of decisions happen all the time around the country with tearing things down and rebuilding something smaller, surrounded by parking spaces.
Kevin Klinkenberg 48:02
Yeah, yeah. I remember years ago, I did some work in Chillicothe, Missouri, which is a little county seat town in North Central Missouri. And they had a bank that bought, they had a classic courthouse square, you know, great, charming little courthouse square, that a local bank, bought one side of the square, tore everything down, built a new bank, perpendicular to the square, with a giant parking lot in front. And it was just, it was an abomination. And it you couldn’t help but go through there and feel like they had ripped out some of the soul of their own community. And those decisions, unfortunately have happened like over and over and over with too many small towns all over the country. And some of that’s really just downstream of it’s really just downstream of how people in big cities thought about development, you know, for a long time.
Dean Klinkenberg 49:01
Right, right. I’ll hold that question. So let’s go to the other side of the of the coin here, then, not far from Galena, really Keokuk, Iowa, is on the Mississippi and if you look at pictures of Keokuk, even from the 1930s and 40s, it’s a bustling small town, beautiful three and four story brick buildings lining the Main Street. Pretty robust economy at the time, 14 or 15,000 residents, so it’s not a tiny town, but it’s certainly not a big city by any stretch either. And if you drive through there today, it looks kind of abandoned. A lot of those old buildings are still there, but many of them are unoccupied. What can a city like that do to begin to turn things around?
Kevin Klinkenberg 49:54
Well, that’s I mean, that’s kind of the million dollar question for a lot of places and I think there are no silver bullets. There are things to there are some things to work on, I think I think the work of Strong Towns has been really helpful in this regard to help people begin to instead of thinking about like maybe moonshot projects that can immediately revise a place to really think about what are all the small things that can be done by people who live there to begin to fix the small problems that are that they encounter every day. And I do think there is, there is absolutely a portion of the marketplace that loves the classic small town ideal, whether that exists or not. But they like the ideal of the charming small town and the places that can create that help reinforce that image of a place where it’s the classic Main Street, where you can walk around, and there’s local stores, and you see your neighbors and you talk to people. I think there there is a percentage of the population that wants that. It’s a little bit easier to do today, because of remote work, though not, it’s still hard, but it’s a little easier. So there’s an element of it that’s aesthetic, and it’s about, and it’s idealistic, I guess, but it’s looking for those small things that you can do. I think the bigger challenge that a lot of places have is that. And we kind of talked about this before, but you know, all of these places, especially these small, these rural communities, they used to coexist alongside with an agricultural economy that was local. And what has happened over the course of 100 years, also through, you know, through some policy decisions not strictly because of market decisions, but some big policy changes, is that now most of these places have just become outposts of the national economy or the international economy. And they have lost that connection with their local, the land that surrounds the towns and the people who grow things and, and there’s just fewer people needed to grow those things than we used to need 100 years ago. And so they thrived when they had many more people living around them who came to town for market and for goods and other things. And that doesn’t exist as much anymore. Because now you know, so many Midwestern small towns are just little outposts for commodity agriculture. First of all, soybeans and corn, and, and wheat and like, that’s it. And, you know, my, my feeling has always been, there’s no quick fix to that there’s no overnight change. But if there are ways for communities to lean into anything at all that is unique to their area, especially an agricultural product that they they could grow. And that could be an attraction to people could be a tourist attraction, or could just be like, it’s not corn and soybeans, it’s like, something that is a little has a little higher value to it. Then that is the way to begin to create more of a local economy again, where you actually need humans to be there. Otherwise, it’s really hard to just attract remote workers, like every other town in America wants to do,
Dean Klinkenberg 53:41
Right. I mean, that’s fundamentally like to attract people to live there, you have to have something to offer to attract in the first place. Right. So you need places to eat, you know, something interesting to do when you’re not working. Yeah, it’s almost easier for me to think about things that some of these towns shouldn’t be doing, as well. There are so many places, I think, where the local political leadership believes the fix has to be some big new federal program or federal money coming in to help out. I see a lot of communities that think the answer is annexation grabbing more land and building a new subdivision out on the perimeter. What’s wrong with those kinds of approaches?
Kevin Klinkenberg 54:25
Well, I mean, I think most of those honestly are just doubling down on ideas that we’ve tried for 60, 70 years that just haven’t really worked or moved the needle in any of these places. I remember once looking at, I looked at all of the I think there’s 100 counties in the state of Missouri, and I just did a little survey of all the towns in those 100 counties, the smaller towns, and their population change since like 1900. And unless you were on an interstate highway, they basically all declined over that period of time, and some of them dramatic declines. And that was because again, at the shift towards a more global agricultural economy. And the one, the only ones that benefited, happened to be like directly in the path, you know, on the interstate highway, which, generally speaking, that meant they were within commute range of like Kansas City or St. Louis. And so all the other things that these cities tried, and many of them tried those things, they did highway bypasses, they did industrial parks, they went out and got federal grants to do big projects, you know, almost all that just doesn’t really work. You have to really figure out how to tap into something that’s unique to your own community to your own mini, like part of the world. And, and make that something that people really care to invest in or live in. Because otherwise, why be there? It’s like 100 other places.
Dean Klinkenberg 56:09
Right, exactly. And right now, that’s pretty much the case. A lot of these communities, especially on the perimeter look like every other place.
Kevin Klinkenberg 56:17
Yeah. And, and then the river, it’s especially, I guess, it’s even a little more stark, sometimes, just because the river itself is such an incredible asset. And, you know, we don’t have, we don’t have an ocean, in the middle of the country. But we have these amazing big rivers, which, once you get outside, like the industrial parts of the big cities are just stunning, beautiful environments. And that that is an opportunity for communities to just find whatever small ways they can to reconnect to that, to that asset, which, you know, other places just don’t have.
Dean Klinkenberg 56:58
Right, right. So yes, I mean, it’s easy to talk in generalities, with this stuff, especially on a podcast where we have limited time. But you know, part of the answer is you got to figure out what what’s unique, what you have to build on in the first place. And then focus your efforts on the parts of your community that already exist, building, you know, building up or rebuilding those parts of the community that are already there, rather than trying to stretch out new areas.
Kevin Klinkenberg 57:25
Yeah. And if you’re stretching out, you’re probably just adding more liabilities in reality, so it’s not really necessarily aiding you from an asset standpoint, it’s just creating more of a financial liability.
Dean Klinkenberg 57:39
Right? I’m mindful of the time that we’re kind of getting up there close to that hour.
Kevin Klinkenberg 57:45
People can tell people can tell that we enjoy talking to each other. We can go on a long time.
Dean Klinkenberg 57:50
Because we still have so much more to talk about at some point like we could we could go deeper into the financial productivity ends of things, the Strong Towns angle. I’ll post the link in the show notes to Strong Towns so people can follow up with that. But your podcast is called The Messy City.
Kevin Klinkenberg 58:05
Yes.
Dean Klinkenberg 58:06
Why?
Kevin Klinkenberg 58:09
Well, I think I think there’s a a pinned post on on the on the site that explains what a messy city is, which of course is like how I always am, it’s way too wordy and long.
Dean Klinkenberg 58:22
You need a good editor.
Kevin Klinkenberg 58:23
I do. I think when I think of what that term means, it’s just about the a lot of the randomness and diversity that happens in unplanned ways, in cities. And it’s kind of a reaction to we’ve had decades and decades of thinking that we can plan every detail of human existence in cities. And it’s pretty obvious to look around and see how that has failed us. And instead, what the places that we seem to naturally be drawn to as humans are just not that way. There may actually have been a plan and in many cases there like was a plan, but the execution of it over many years or decades was there. It probably wasn’t really like random, but it seems random. And, and that presents a lot of pleasure to us when we go to those places. And so that’s, that’s kind of what it’s trying to get to.
Dean Klinkenberg 59:34
All right. Right, because like in terms of those messy places that developed over time and change some like, I remember Prague and walking around yeah, that’s another great city. And I’m amazed at how different it could be from neighborhood to neighborhood, reflecting different architectural styles as the city built new buildings across time, but sometimes you’d see a mix of styles in the same neighborhood. Hard to imagine that happening in many American cities right now.
Kevin Klinkenberg 1:00:04
Not now. And it’s very difficult to imagine we had it historically. And, and again, part of it was like the pace of development. Development was more incremental and a little slower. And it was before we had mass production and the ability to finance mass production. So it had a different feel. You know, Prague is interesting, because it was, as you know, it was like one of the only cities in Central Europe that wasn’t bombed to smithereens. So you can actually see all the layers of different eras, which is really cool.
Dean Klinkenberg 1:00:36
Absolutely. Yeah. I think Krakow was the same way. I think it escaped a lot of damage in World War Two. And you can tell walking around. What are you trying to do with the podcast? Like, who do you imagine your most your audience really is for that? Would river rats be interested in The Messy City podcast?
Kevin Klinkenberg 1:00:54
I mean, I hope so. I think that’s it’s a good question. What I really like to focus on more than anything, is I like to talk to people who are doing things, who are really actively trying to work in their communities, to actually to make things happen. So I do talk to quite a few developers, they tend to be like smaller, on the smaller side of being developers. I talked to city planners, architects, and engineers and others. People who are impacting the built environment, but who I who, in my opinion, are doing so in a very interesting way, or have interesting ideas to share, and are really kind of outside of the norm of how, how we have been developing cities for the last 100 years. So but I really do enjoy talking to people who have taken steps in their own life to try to, even if it’s so much as like building one building, just to figure out how to make that happen.
Dean Klinkenberg 1:02:01
Right, and one of the things that I like about the work that you’re doing and others in, in that in your world, too. It’s so easy to be cynical and feel hopeless, that like nothing can ever change, and you and your podcast and all the work that you’re doing, you provide examples of small steps that you can take these things that you can assume some control over and make some positive changes in the community around you. And I think we need more of that. I think we need folks to assume, to fight through that helplessness, and find what needs to feel a little more empowered to do some things to make life better.
Kevin Klinkenberg 1:02:45
Yeah, definitely. And now that you and I are not like spring chickens anymore, I think one of the things that I would really like to do and I try to do is try to see if I can connect with younger people and provide some open guidance to them, and give them something to latch on to that they can do in the future.
Dean Klinkenberg 1:03:09
Awesome. I think I’m more of a stewing chicken at this point in my life.
Dean Klinkenberg 1:03:17
Well, how can people follow your work? Where would be a good place for them to go?
Kevin Klinkenberg 1:03:22
Or you just @KevinKlinkenberg on X, Twitter.
Kevin Klinkenberg 1:03:22
I have, I’m on substack. It’s called The Messy City on substack. And then the podcast is available there. But it’s also available on all the usual podcast platforms. And then I am occasionally on social media. So on X, or Twitter or whatever you want to call it. And that’s that’s I probably do more there than anywhere else.
Kevin Klinkenberg 1:03:41
I think it, I think it’s actually @KevinKlink.
Dean Klinkenberg 1:03:54
Klinkenberg is a lot to have to spell out so.
Kevin Klinkenberg 1:03:56
It is. It really is.
Dean Klinkenberg 1:03:59
All right on by the way, the best ice cream is just a really good quality vanilla. So sorry. There’s nothing more special than that.
Kevin Klinkenberg 1:04:08
I do love a really good vanilla.
Dean Klinkenberg 1:04:12
Kevin, thank you so much for your time. It’s been a pleasure. We’ll have to do this again. I’ll check back in maybe we can carve outs maybe we can fix the problems in some other river towns.
Kevin Klinkenberg 1:04:21
That sounds great. I’d love to. Thanks for having me on.
Dean Klinkenberg 1:04:34
And now it’s time for the Mississippi Minute. A few years ago I had the chance to be a guest lecturer on the American Queen Steamboat and what a terrific experience that was. She’s a gorgeous boat to really built to evoke the memories of the peak of elegant steamboat travel on the Mississippi or perhaps if you were lucky enough to be one of the first class or cabin passengers, to evoke that era of steamboat travel. Everywhere you looked there were gorgeous decorative details. The food was terrific. The people who worked on the boat were friendly and very attentive. I really thought it was a terrific experience overall, you may have heard that the company that owns the American Queen Steamboat went under this spring and they are no longer around, they went bankrupt, and they sold off through bankruptcy, all of their assets, including the American Queen and their other boats. American Cruise Lines ended up buying all those boats at the bankruptcy auction. Nobody’s quite sure yet what their plans are for those boats. But there is some rumor going around that maybe they’ll scrap some and keep others I have no inside information on this. I don’t really know what’s going on. Right now I do know there is a petition going around that will be sent to the executives of American Cruise Lines, asking that they at least do all they can to bring the American Queen back into service. If you’re interested in such things, I’ll post a link in the show notes to the petition, you can go there and add your voice. And otherwise, I would say just kind of keep your ears to the news that if you hear something that suggests the the American Queen might be scuttled, then maybe that’s a good time to leap into action too and let the company know, you’d really like to see that boat back on the water.
Dean Klinkenberg 1:06:32
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the series on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss out on future episodes. I offer the podcast for free but when you support the show with a few bucks through Patreon, you helped keep the program going. Just go to patreon.com/DeanKlinkenberg. If you want to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler Guide Books for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series, set at certain places along the river. Find them wherever books are sold. The Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast is written and produced by me, Dean Klinkenberg. Original Music by Noah Fence. See you next time.
