A Strong Towns View of the New SpaceX Company Town

(Source: Richard Schneider on Flickr. Image cropped.)

Residents of Boca Chica, Texas, have voted to turn their community into a new official city called Starbase. This new municipality is tightly controlled by SpaceX leadership and most residents are SpaceX employees, which has raised concerns about the reemergence of company towns.

In this Upzoned episode, Abby is joined by our Chief Technical Advisor Edward Erfurt to discuss the Strong Towns perspective on this story.

• Click here for a computer-generated transcript.

  Abby Newsham 0:18

  Hey, everyone, thanks for listening to another episode of upzoned, the show where we take a big story from the news each week that touches the strong towns conversation, and we upzone it. We talk about it in depth. I'm Abby Newsham, an urban planner in Kansas City, and today I am joined by Edward Erfurt, who is the Director of Community Action at strong towns. Thanks for joining me, Edward,

  Edward Erfurt 0:43

  great. I'm glad to be here today.

  Abby Newsham 0:47

  I'm glad to have you. So we're going to be talking about an article that you've been following a little bit. It is published in The Guardian, written by Nick Robbins early titled Elon Musk company town, SpaceX employees vote to create Starbase. So in this piece, we learned that residents, mostly SpaceX employees in Boca Chica Texas, have voted overwhelmingly to turn their unincorporated community into a new official city called Starbase. This new municipality is tightly controlled by SpaceX leadership, with a SpaceX VP elected unopposed as their mayor and most residents either working for the company or somehow connected to it. Starbase gives Elon Musk company more localized control over land use, especially for things like rocket launches and related logistics, but also raising some concerns about public access to land and kind of the RE emergence of the company town model that echoes the industrial era in the United States. So the article touches on some of the local pushback that they've been getting from environmental groups and indigenous communities that are worried about some of the beach access and broader implications for public space in this area. I think I want to start by just kind of touching on this notion of the company town, because strong towns highlights the dangers of mono industry places. And I wonder if you have any thoughts about what vulnerabilities kind of arise when a town is entirely tied to a single employer, not just economically, but also politically and socially too. How does starbase, I guess, compare to historical company towns, and what lessons have we learned from those models in the past?

  Edward Erfurt 2:55

  Yeah, I mean, I'm somebody that lives in West Virginia, so I'm learning a lot about company towns in the history of West Virginia, all these mining towns that came about in those early days, those company towns, everything was controlled by the company, like the mining company, the railroad company. So part of you would pay rent, but you would pay rent to the company that you worked for the head of the house. You had rights the house as an employee for the company, but if you got sick or injured, you no longer could rent that house. And even when they talk about going to the company store, you probably heard those little country songs, yeah, Appalachia that that was this idea that the companies would pay you in their own company dollars. So if you wanted flour or groceries, you weren't given green bills. You were given whatever the company credit was to go buy something at the store that the main company had gotten to supply. So the whole supply chain was all within that company. That's a really fragile system. I know there's lots of labor laws and different pieces that have been done to change that. I have seen this type of kind of company or employer based housing in some of the food processing facilities around the country, some of the agriculture, large agriculture areas where they, you know, build up a big housing piece and bring stuff in that that can be really fragile and that, you know, the company goes bad, you switch jobs, you're locked in it for Life. I think very few of us recognize that type of, I mean, very few people I know are saying I'm going to go get a job and work my entire career with one company, so that that stops that mobility, so that that is, that is a. Fear that is something to be doing. Think about from a dangerous standpoint. I think we've also seen all of those weird sci fi movies, you know, the the idealized, uh, whatever software company in the perfect town, only to find out that isn't that perfect, but you're locked into it because of your think about everybody you're going to work with. You also are now going home. You're you're walking across the street, and your private backyard is not that private, because you've got your co workers on either side of you enjoying Saturday barbecue like you are. So yeah, yeah, there's

  Abby Newsham 5:42

  definitely, I think, two questions here. One is about individual autonomy. So what happens, like you said, if, if you get fired or if you want to take on a different job? I mean, when you it's one thing to tie your health insurance to your employer, which is what many people do in this country, but tying you know where you live, your sense of community, everything to an employer seems kind of scary to me, especially when in this day and age when people are wanting to have more autonomy and not necessarily be tied to a job for the rest of their life. So there's a question of that, and then there's the other one, is societal resilience. So can a town actually sustain itself in the long term when it is tied to one company? And what are kind of the implications of that? Maybe there are models where that's worked out. And maybe if this company eventually evolves or moves or change, changes in some way, the town will persist. But I don't know there's this. There's also kind of this, this thing, in my mind, about kind of true local control, like, is star based really a form, I think they've pitched it as this form of local control, being able to, you know, bring people together and have some some ability to plan for the future of this place. But I kind of wonder if it also undermines the idea of, like, kind of democratic or community driven governance, which is what I think strong towns would advocate for. You know, how do we balance that idea of localism with concerns about corporate dominance and civic life?

  Edward Erfurt 7:34

  Yeah. I mean, when I look at this, this is not organic. This is, this is really not a place that, when you think about like traditional settlement that you would go to, this is literally at the edge of the United States. It it's on a it's on a border, it's in a waterway. It's in an area that really very difficult place that we wouldn't be the easiest or first place I would go to build a new town. When I look at the this type of layout, I think about what they're doing here. This is not much different to some of the master plan communities folks are doing. This is the model that you might see, you know, the edge of Phoenix. You know, again, same sort of, I don't know why you're building there, because we have to mechanic, have mechanisms to go and do things. And we're reliant, again, on whatever big factory or or new job creator, or new golf course that's come in to support that community. But I do like as I as I look at the development application, because I've seen these, and you've probably seen these two, like the annexation agreements and minor bound adjustments. When you look at this one, they strategically picked all the places that they had, like, all the rocket stuff, you know, all the launch pads, all the roads to get to fueling and launch locations. And then they've laid out some neighborhoods. I'm going to say their neighborhoods, they're kind of a grid of streets that they that they have control of. So, you know, building for future employees in this area, it's not it's not a nice, neat circle or square. It's like tracing what they had control of over this area. There's not a lot of ability to grow out from that, unless they go through another annexation. So I find that a little peculiar, and clearly they're like, this is people thinking about this, and not planners, not like urban designers, where we want nice, neat boundaries, or we wouldn't just pick a weird property line, like. Was cheese, we would kind of say, Okay, well, let's kind of go and pick up to the edge of some sort of natural boundary, or let's go all the way and pick up the beach in this none of that is included, but the pattern, and I think we'll find more as they start to incorporate and because very little is out about this, because this is all privately developed at this point, but most of the infrastructure is owned by the star base its own. It's owned by a private entity. And what I find really interesting here. The thing that is, like, my big takeaway, because this is kind of like what Disney would do or did for celebration. They realized that there is a way to benefit through incorporation as an operating city when dealing with the built environment, and they've strategically all the privately owned roads now are now being handed over to this new development corporation, aka city of star base. The management of the city is now no longer with the rocket scientists. It's with the managers of the rocket scientists that are now becoming managers of the built environment. When I think about incorporation, there are new ways to generate revenue. There all the things that we may have pause on that cities do to keep themselves afloat, they now can do that when as a private development they couldn't before, which I think is going to be a fascinating thing to watch.

  Abby Newsham 11:47

  Yeah, it is very fascinating. And it's a good point to bring up that this is a private company that has kind of built all this public infrastructure, the roads, utilities and services. And there is a question about long term stewardship. I mean, I wonder how their current, kind of privatized models will then now translate into I'm guessing it will. It will be truly public, because this is going to become a municipality. And so what are the implications of kind of changing from being a private master planned community to a true town and municipality and I guess going like they're going to have to deal with all the same issues that other municipalities deal with at the local level.

  Edward Erfurt 12:42

  Yeah. I mean, like, not just maintenance, just like somebody wants to put a pool in their backyard, yeah?

  Abby Newsham 12:48

  Like zoning? Are they going to have zoning?

  Edward Erfurt 12:52

  Yeah? And when I think about it, like most folks, when they do a development like this, they just say, Look, we're going to do a PUD we're going to create our own development rules of how we're going to get this stuff approved, and then from that point, we're going to create a homeowners association document, it'll be whatever, 1000 pages, and we're going to hire a company to deal with all the complaints and make sure all the grass gets mowed. Their approach and like these are, I'm gonna assume these are really smart people. You don't just become like a vice president of an operation successfully taking like, trying to get people to Mars like you don't just come out of that with no knowledge of management. So when you come into it, they've made the business decision that it is easier to create a charter for a city than it is to create HOA documents. Yeah. I mean,

  Abby Newsham 13:49

  so interesting. And I wonder if, if part of this has to do with the ability to like bond for infrastructure like I wonder. I wonder what led to them wanting to incorporate this area?

  Edward Erfurt 14:02

  Well, one of the articles I read, it had to do it with, I think, two pieces. One, it had to do with the Bucha Chica Boulevard. Like, whenever they want to launch a rocket, they have to close down a public road. Is it full that has to be closed? So imagine all anybody out there that has gone and tried to do a farmer's market on a Sunday morning on a city street, like that's the form you have to fill out, and if a clerk isn't available, or you fill it out wrong, or too many people show up to City Hall. It doesn't like it's not going to happen. And meanwhile, the farmers market, maybe you can move to the sidewalks or to a vacant parking lot next door, you have a limited window of when you can launch a rocket. So, like, that's a risk. The other piece is, when I think about the amount of building. That's occurring here, and the specialty to it all of the process that they have to go through today, through the county for permitting. So this is not like a county. It's probably like most municipal governments. There's not enough staff to do it. They've kind of in their ways of doing things. Your rocket Launchpad, on a deadline, is behind the six Deck And House permits that are in the system you're already paying, probably for the specialty inspectors for this so like from a business model, what if it was in house. What if you had control the management of those types of permits? So what I had read, it had to do with the road closing, and then just the capacity to be able to have their own destiny with whatever zoning approval, development approval, and then ultimately, the building review of these. So, yeah, move it in house. If I think about the revenue structure for cities, there are ways for them to there are ways from the recapture revenue that our cities can do. I've looked at texting them and financing in lots of places. Tax Agreement financing is the collection of the growth of property value off of a property over a certain time frame. Many of those, and I don't know how Texas is, I should, I should look this up, but in a lot of places, that tax is off of all the property tax that goes off of it. So sometimes it involves the schools, sometimes it involves the county, and then also involves the city, and all have to agree to it. Sometimes the school is separated out in all the different various pieces. But there are some places I know in Florida where you have county and city tax that's collected that both contribute to tax and rent finance. If you're an incorporated city, one of the mathematical tricks of TIF is that you can request the TIF on both the county and city revenue. So if you were in this friction fight with the county government, and you're a city, and you're like, well, the county is doing everything outside our city. They're just taking off of our economic engine. A TIFF is a good way to capture that and use it within a specific area which is being generated. So I'm I would think that all of the stuff here on the site would be quite valuable, and that may be another tool, in addition to the bonding tools and other redevelopment tools that are available in these places.

  Abby Newsham 17:53

  Yeah, I have to think that there's some benefit of having a municipality rather than it just being kind of a big private development. But your point about the fact that it looks like there's a state route that runs like Boca Chica Boulevard is Texas route four, so I'm assuming that they have to deal with Department of Transportation when they need to do something here, and there's kind of one way in, one way out, through that route to this town, and then later through Boca Chica state park all the way to the beach. So something that's been brought up, kind of along those lines, is some of the pushback local groups have been expressing over access to Boca Chica Beach, this kind of brings up a core strong towns value about public space and public space remaining truly public, and it seems like there's a lot at stake here when public spaces, maybe they remain technically public, but are affected effectively privatized, even if they're technically open and accessible to the public, that the operations here of the companies is going to be a barrier for people being able to use these spaces. So I wonder what, what ultimately happens with these spaces if they stay public state parks?

  Edward Erfurt 19:27

  Yeah, I mean, this is a lot like Cape Canaveral. You're dealing with that now Cape Canaveral, because it was NASA and a federal agency, they just created all of the land around it as a giant federal park, but it's in a military base, so, like, you can't get into it because of the environmental concerns, and you can't get into it because of the governmental security concerns. I This is a really tough site, because there is no way to get to that beach. And. That seashore by land, except through Starbase. There's no way to get around it. You have to go south into Mexico and then cross back into the border, which is not realistic. And to the north, there's a waterway that breaks it. So it is, and I think it it comes down to, you know, a lot of these really hard decisions about that land of, yeah, trying to get people out there in a safe way, especially with all the activities of rockets going off and fueling these things. But I would even think, you know the funny stories, if you ever go out to Cape Canaveral, and you go and you do the tour there, and you realize the history when early in American space flight, when rockets were being launched, they every time they launched a rocket, it was an experiment to See what would happen when the first of the rockets went off, the noise and the compression of the firing of the rockets were so great it blew out all of the windows of all the homes and businesses in Cocoa Beach. So like the and so that point they started moving people back and doing different things. This is like, they're building a town around these launch pads. So not only is it just the beach, but just within the community, like, I don't know. I mean, we need to see what happens on like, launch day. Does everybody have to, like, stay home? Is school closed. Button up, we launched the rocket, and then, okay, everybody can go outside now. So right,

  Abby Newsham 21:50

  no kidding. Like, forget the fights about zoning and Finn's colors and all those other things that people get frustrated with their neighbors about. But yeah, the noise of a rocket launch,

  Abby Newsham 22:04

  would you want to live next to that? I don't know.

  Edward Erfurt 22:07

  And you know, there's gonna be the person that says I had no idea this was gonna

  Abby Newsham 22:11

  I had no idea. Yeah, they're gonna show up to the city council meeting and say they had no idea what,

  Edward Erfurt 22:22

  seara, don't you? What's that shirt you have on? Oh, the SpaceX shirt. I'm not representing my company.

  Abby Newsham 22:29

  I mean, seriously, I wonder about that. Because I just wonder if, if the the SpaceX leadership that's running this town is ready for like, the realities of local government and,

  Edward Erfurt 22:45

  yeah, you go and run through those planning things. I mean, think about all the wonderful public hearings we've all been to. Yeah,

  Abby Newsham 22:55

  I hope they live stream these public hearings,

  Edward Erfurt 22:59

  because, like, as a as a government agency now, like an entity of government, they can rewrite lots of planning rules, and they can make a lot of stuff by right? But there's still, I'm sure, in Texas, there's still thresholds of public notice that have to occur,

  Abby Newsham 23:19

  yeah, by the state, requirements, yeah, yeah.

  Edward Erfurt 23:22

  And then you have to have, like, I mean, I, I watch all of the kind of SpaceX and the tell Tesla and, you know, all these corporations, they're very efficient, you know, they figured out how to do these things. They're really, really smart people, but they're dealing with people in the field they're passionate about, never gotten in front of somebody's front yard. So like just imagining all the awful things that happened. You know, the in a public hearing, they have now created that environment for this to happen and

  Abby Newsham 24:03

  well, and I wonder what that looks like when your boss's boss's boss is the mayor of the town. What kinds of incentives does that create, or disincentives to participate in a public hearing? Maybe if you're an employer or employee of the company, and that's technically your employer, like the leadership, the city council, the mayor, that creates some interesting power dynamics there. I'm trying to picture what it would be like for me to live in a little community with all of my co workers. Well,

  Edward Erfurt 24:41

  think about this, like, for the for a small town, and this is, like a tiny communities, yeah, it's a couple 100 people right now. I mean, like, and to have that type of voting of 97% or whatever it is, or almost 100% voted in favor of. This is just like unheard of. But think about it like these are not going to be full time city managers and and clerks and city council members. This is like part time positions, because they're not going to generate enough revenue for property tax, so they're still going to have SpaceX full time jobs. Okay, SpaceX comes in and they want to go and put a new facility up, and we've got to go through whatever process we've established, if everybody recuses themselves, like, like, you know, because they have some sort of stake in it, or they have stock, a stock option in this, or they've created the patent for these things,

  Abby Newsham 25:40

  yeah, how do you vote on these things if everyone has a conflict of interest? I

  Edward Erfurt 25:46

  almost wonder there in every every once in a while I come across a zoning code where somebody got really upset about the prolonged process of approval, and there's these type of clauses that are like, if the application isn't reviewed or Yes, I was just thinking it's like, by default is approved, yes,

  Abby Newsham 26:06

  so maybe they'll just have to not vote on it until it's just automatically approved over what is it like, six months? I don't know. Yeah, like

  Edward Erfurt 26:16

  the town's approved by default. So where they're at now in the process is they've gone and they've done the vote. They quickly went to the court judge that went and signed off on it. It's now off to the legislature to tell them that this has happened, and they now have to write their charter. This is going to be and I can't find because there's, you know, in our world, it's not that big of people that do that type of work that right? Zooni codes and master plans. I can't find anything. I even went and checked, is it Gork the or grok the the AI that is, that is funded through x like, just to see, like, Hey, who's doing this? Like, is somebody's is somebody that we know in that circle? Is there some plan with a name on it that somebody tweet about it? Yeah?

  Abby Newsham 27:04

  Like, it's DPZ coming in and doing a, yeah, a town

  Edward Erfurt 27:09

  plan code. Is it like Victor Cole or, or even some of the big, big conglomerates that do this stuff, yeah? Or anything like nothing, it's

  Abby Newsham 27:22

  like nothing, yeah? Who's their consultant?

  Edward Erfurt 27:25

  Yeah? Or even there must be some sort of advisory board, you know what? Like, these are folks that are there, so,

  Abby Newsham 27:33

  yeah, right. Like, these aren't dummies. They, they definitely have, you know, people advising them on these things. And so part of me wonders if the actual like town part of this is more so a second house for executives, because they're maybe at work, like working a lot, and they have a second house where they can just sleep there and then go back to work. I kind of wonder if people actually bring their families to this area. I mean, the first thing that comes to mind for me is, just like environmental concerns in terms of air quality and exposure to to rockets and some of the activities that they're doing, I don't, I don't have kids, but if I did, I don't think I would want them to live close to that so, but I don't know. Maybe it will be a truly like mix of residential and industrial uses in this area, and everything will work out perfectly.

  Edward Erfurt 28:36

  It well, yeah, I mean, this is like, this is not the way, the textbook way that planners in America would do planning right? We wouldn't put rocket fuel next to residential neighborhoods. We wouldn't put the town square next to a rocket manufacturing plant. All these things are generally separated out here. I mean, you'd have to really be kind of geeked out on this stuff for this to be your place to live. So there's probably some grace in that piece to it. But like, and I keep looking at Google Earth and trying to find photographs of this that they're trying all different types of housing pieces when I think about a place like this, there are a couple of different life cycles of folks that will need to be here at this location, you've got really specialized contractors. So I don't know if you've ever been around when they build, like a factory, it's usually three, like a three to four month cycle of really specialized contractors that come in, the specialized welders, steel workers, the pipe and fitting folks, then then whatever specialty equipment that comes in, that group comes in and not only install it, but stay there and make sure it all works when you press the button. Yes. So I'm sure there's 1000s of employees that are here building that stuff. So they're going to come for a time and rotate out. Then you've got the people that are setting this stuff up that are part of the teams. And this is like, where the first humans that are going to leave the earth to go to Mars you're supposed to, like, leave from so like, imagine building up that whole program of education and testing and figuring out how to launch the stuff and recapture it and refuel it, and shipping logistics and all of that. Like all those different people, have some sort of vested interest in coming here, and the issues we're seeing in every city is with housing today, they're going to have to face as a city as well, not only as a company, but as a city.

  Abby Newsham 30:58

  Well, looking at the housing. I mean, you can barely see stuff from Google Street View right now. You can see some stuff from just looking on Google Maps. But there is a lot of different types of housing. It looks like there's, there's houses of various sizes that are like conventional, you know, foundation sticks, construction, but then you have like, air streamers, like arranged in a courtyard,

  Edward Erfurt 31:30

  and little like Katrina cottages, manufactured home thing, yeah,

  Abby Newsham 31:33

  so, so they're Definitely leaning into affordable housing in a sense, by building all of these, like, kind of manufactured housing units and arranging them in a way that is kind of village like. It's kind of interesting. They they even have a pub. It looks like, although it says that it's private, if you look at it, it's a private club. So I don't think you can just go there unless you're an employee. But, yeah, it's an interesting little neighborhood that they're developing here, and it looks like they're not necessarily requiring, like, fully conventional housing. A lot of it looks like it's manufactured

  Edward Erfurt 32:22

  it really looks like they have gone along the design coast, like on the Florida Panhandle, and they've hit all the all the kind of newer Miss communities, and all the pop up type developments, and they've looked at all of these different things, because this is what that they've a little bit everything, everything that would be in our magazines today. The people we write it about temporary or housing options, they're they're trying it all. And these are data people, so I'm just, it'll be so interesting. What sticks with them to expand out like it's a because they do, they have every the thing I don't see here that's probably in some of their plans, is the multi family or, like, the apartment blocks, yeah,

  Abby Newsham 33:17

  yeah, that's really the only thing all of it looks like. It's like single unit, but yeah, ranging from mobile Airstream camper to mobile home to like, fully conventional house,

  Edward Erfurt 33:34

  as they migrate into from a private company where they can make decisions in the boardroom and not have to have public hearings, and they're not subject to FOIA requests, and all of the things that local government has to do, it'll be interesting what type of innovation they give up in that process, and what type of Speed they give up. Because, I mean, I guess that they own their own utility. They that really helps. But all all the other things of a all the workings of a city, the things that you don't think about until you get into city government, like making sure the roads are clear, making sure you have access with fire and police department, right?

  Abby Newsham 34:24

  Yeah, and it's, I mean, at the end of the day, it is, it's governance by committee. So it's, it running a municipality is different than running a business. I know we talk about some of the similarities at strong towns, but there are some distinct differences for how decisions get made, and maybe with this round of leadership, they're all on the same page, and things work out really well for a while. But you know, leadership turns over, staff turns over. I guess we haven't even talked about how staff is. If they'll have municipal staff, or, I don't know, maybe it'll all be on call, but there's a lot of questions that I'm interested in following to see how this ultimately works. I

  Edward Erfurt 35:13

  hope somebody that listens to you, Abby is out there and they hear this podcast and they're like, oh, yeah, I'm the one that does the zoning app or,

  Abby Newsham 35:21

  yeah, like I'm there. I'm their on call planner.

  Edward Erfurt 35:25

  I can't talk to you about it, but guess what's on my desk, like, last

  Abby Newsham 35:29

  two weeks. Yeah, because that they the planner will know everything that's going on so

  Edward Erfurt 35:36

  and if SpaceX is listening, I hope they know that this is the work you do, and they should, they should give you a call

  Abby Newsham 35:44

  because, oh, that would be cool.

  Edward Erfurt 35:47

  Like, here's, here's what's really it's really exciting when something new like this starts. And this is, like, a really extreme example, because you have this kind of, this really high tech company. It's doing things that nobody thought was possible. I mean, they shot a Tesla sports car into space, where catching rockets with chopsticks, you know, all of these types of things, not to mention all of the other science and technology products that are coming out of all this research like this is fascinating. This is what my parents and grandparents must have been thinking in the 60s and 70s, watching all those rocket launches to the moon. Like this. Is this new realm of things happening, and they're getting into something that, like we're both geeky about, like, town building, yeah, town building totally and, like, what? What is the innovation? Because it's not building a town. We've seen religious organizations do it. The Mormons are probably the best town planners. They've done more Town Planning across the US than anybody else. They've created lots and lots of places. We've seen that with colonization right along the east coast. We've seen this with what westward expansion,

  Abby Newsham 37:14

  yeah, railroad towns, yeah. So

  Edward Erfurt 37:17

  this is that, like next level, and they're bringing a really competent board room, innovative thought process. You know, when you study the stuff that's happening in Space X, their innovation aligns with some of the things that we talk about at strong towns, about taking small bets, that failure is an option, like when the first rockets blew up. You didn't hear about Elon Musk coming in, firing everybody. It was coming out of that software mentality. Okay, we broke it, or did we break it? What can we learn from that? Let's, let's try it again with changing some variables. Instead of starting over all of that, like taking that into local government, I think, is going to be a fascinating thing to watch. And hopefully in the near future, there's, like, a really good book or somebody speaking about this. It's in the trenches that, yeah, that

  Abby Newsham 38:12

  can write about this and document it. Yeah. The question is, are they ready to get emails about neighbors not cutting their grass and picking up their dog poop,

  Abby Newsham 38:25

  you know, all those little things that that cities, yeah, that that people who run cities deal with

  Edward Erfurt 38:32

  constituents, yeah, they're gonna have constituents, and then they're gonna have the people like even more so the neighbors outside the community that are gonna want their say in this all the decisions they make.

  Abby Newsham 38:44

  Yeah, fascinating. All right, well, we'll leave it there, because I'm running out of time. But before we finish, let's do the down zone, which is part of the show where we share anything that we've been up to these days. I'll put you on the spot. What is your down zone?

  Edward Erfurt 39:03

  So at storm towns, we're doing something really cool right now. We're reaching out to incremental developers all across North America. We are working on our second housing toolkit to help cities become housing ready. We want to know the things that incremental developers that they've seen from their cities that have made their projects possible, and also the things that cities do not so well, that make it difficult. So I'm going through right now with a bunch of focus groups, meeting with incredible folks from all over North America, sharing their stories they have. There are a lot more hero stories coming out of City Hall than I think most people want to admit. And so learning all of that, I hope to share that shortly. Keep your eyes and ears open for that coming from strong towns through our housing ready work. So that's really exciting for me.

  Abby Newsham 39:59

  That's. Very exciting stuff. And it reminds me that I think I owe you guys some names from Kansas City. There's some cool stuff happening here, and some great people doing great projects. So looking forward to seeing that for me, I guess I'll share that I'm going to Washington, DC for the first time and a couple of weeks to attend NACTO, which is the National Association of city transportation officials. I've never been to NACTO before, so I'm kind of excited about it. I was looking at some of the schedule items that they have, and they have, like, a lot of bike tours and opportunities to actually go out and see DC, which I'm excited about, because sometimes you go to conferences and you don't end up actually seeing much of the city unless you're very, very intentional about it. So excited to to actually get to go see DC, and I know I'll only be there for a few days, so it won't be nearly enough time to, like, take in everything and really experience the whole city, but it'll be a fun first trip.

  Edward Erfurt 41:13

  It is a fun city. It's up the road for me, so I'm happy to share some spots. Please

  Abby Newsham 41:19

  do. Yes, please do. And I guess anyone that's listening to this, if anyone happens to be going to NACTO, find me on, I don't know, LinkedIn or something, it'd be great to link up with people I again, I've never gone to NACTO. It's not exactly my my key area focus transportation, but it's something that I'm interested in, and I'm super lucky to get to go.

  Edward Erfurt 41:45

  That's great. They all have a lot of fun. There's a lot of great people working in that realm, and I love all their books. I read through them, the incredible graphics, and they help people really understand how they can make the streets within their cities much better and within the rules within what is there, just calibrating it slightly differently. Yeah,

  Abby Newsham 42:10

  just in, like my past planning work, I'm always going to the NACTO website. Their graphics are kind of an inspiration for me when I do like urban design illustrations, and they just have really great guideline books. So all of those resources they have online are pretty incredible. So yeah, big fan. Well, all right. Well, thank you, Edward, so much for joining me today. I know it was kind of last minute, but it's great that we were able to put this together and talk about something fun,

  Edward Erfurt 42:42

  I know, and we didn't even get to the aliens, so I know,

  Abby Newsham 42:46

  I know I'm next time. We'll talk about aliens next time.

  Edward Erfurt 42:51

  All right, Abby, it's always a lot of fun talking to you and being on the up zone.

  Abby Newsham 42:56

  Awesome. Well, we'll see you next time, and thanks everyone for listening to another episode of up zoned. Thanks, Edward.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

• “Elon Musk’s company town: SpaceX employees vote to create ‘Starbase’” by Nick Robins-Early, The Guardian (May 2025).

• Abby Newsham (X/Twitter).

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.

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