Why LA Is Still Struggling To Rebuild 6 Months After Wildfires

In January 2025, wildfires swept across Los Angeles with record-breaking destruction. To encourage swift rebuilding, Governor Newsom suspended environmental regulations. But six months later, only a fraction of homeowners have even received permits, let alone started the rebuilding process. Chuck is joined by Edward Erfurt, Strong Towns’ chief technical advisor, to talk about why, as well as the deeper challenges of rebuilding in fire-prone areas.

• Click here for a transcript. (Lightly edited for readability.)

  Abby Newsham 0:04

  This is Abby, and you are listening to Upzoned.

  Chuck Marohn 0:18

  In January 2025, wildfires swept across Los Angeles with record breaking destruction and really heartbreaking consequence. There were nearly 48,000 acres burned, over 16,000 structures damaged or destroyed, and 1000s of families left displaced. If you were like me, this is a horrible thing to watch. In the immediate aftermath, Governor Newsom responded by suspending environmental regulations, hoping to speed up the rebuilding process. We're now six months later, and only a fraction of homeowners have even received permits, let alone started the rebuilding process. Today, on Upzoned, we're going to talk about an article in Vox titled "Why it's taking LA so long to rebuild." The article looks at loosening environmental laws like CEQA and how that didn't necessarily produce the swift recovery people were hoping for, and what this all says about the deeper challenges of rebuilding places in fire prone areas. I'm Chuck Marohn. I'm filling in for Abby this week. I am joined by Edward Erfurt. He's our director of community action here at Strong Towns, Edward, welcome to Upzoned.

  Edward Erfurt 1:33

  Hey, thanks Chuck. It's a pleasure to be with you today, and I'm sad Abby is missing out on this opportunity.

  Chuck Marohn 1:40

  Well, this is not usually a podcast with two dudes chatting. So we'll try to vibe, maybe the different side of ourselves. Two technical geeks talking about environmental laws. We'll do our best.

  Edward Erfurt 1:57

  Well, usually when Abby's on, we get to geek out on zoning and planning stuff. So, this will be good.

  Chuck Marohn 2:03

  That's true. She does bring all of that. I read this article and I'm like, "Okay, what's the real bottleneck?" You know, the article was kind of critical of the idea that CEQA would solve everything. Do you want to start by talking about that gut reaction and why that was the response? And maybe what people were thinking of here, like, "Let's just repeal environmental laws, and that will make things better"? What's missing in that? Or maybe what was the thought, and why didn't it work?

  Edward Erfurt 2:39

  I saw this happen too in my time in Florida. Florida has passed laws and to bypass some of the development requirements after hurricanes. So when you have 1000s of homes that are damaged and you want to get people back into these homes, it would make sense to provide relief on the environmental areas, because this isn't virgin land. We have houses that already exist. The roads already exist. We just need to put the houses back. If I'm thinking about this from a top-down approach, what could a governor do? Well, let's look at our state requirements that would hinder local development. So that's the one thing that a governor could peel back with doing that. So that all makes a lot of sense in this process. In the article, it gets muddy because all of our housing advocates, all of our YIMBY advocates in California are saying, "Well, if it works here, why not other places where there is an environmental crisis?" At that point, a well-intentioned relief to a policy becomes highly political, and it adds more confusion to this process. In one of the states that has the biggest housing crisis, there's like 16,000 homes lost that you need to replace, and you're bogging it down. But yeah, I could see this at a zoning desk or a building department desk, where you would be waiting on the building permit. You'd have the utility letter and your impact fee letter, you'd be waiting for this environmental letter to come from the state agency to say, "Oh yeah, it meets all of that." So that's one less thing on the checklist at a local level, but it doesn't actually address the local level review process of getting homes out for permit.

  Chuck Marohn 4:42

  I feel like with CEQA, with environmental rules in general -- and I hope people hear this with a generous mind and spirit -- I've always felt like we had two kind of absurdities built into really all environmental laws when it comes to land use and building and permitting and that kind of regulation. The first one is that, in urban areas, in existing cities and existing places where we can look on the ground and say, "There are houses here, there are roads here, there are people here, there is environmental impact here," we tend to apply environmental regulations to those places in a way that is over regulatory and over burdensome without any real environmental upside to it. In other words, we're not getting great environmental outcomes by requiring the houses across the street from my office here to go through six months or 12 months of environmental reviews -- or if in California, even more and then lawsuits and what have you -- to build a simple apartment building. To me, these things didn't apply in those areas. But then if I go out to a true undeveloped area,where you were in southern Florida, when you worked for Martin County. You know, you get out past the highway and all of a sudden you're into the Everglades. We were doing permitting 20 years ago around here. I was working on places where they were tearing down 40 acres of forest and building homes. In those places, I found the environmental review process to be almost laughably lenient. In other words, "Okay, we've got a forest here. We want to deal with A, B and C. Here's the process you go through to tear down this forest. Here's the process you go through to deal with the storm water. Here's the process you go through to deal with all this negative environmental impact." In one place we were overly concerned about no impact, and in the place, where we should have had lots of concern for the impact, we apply the same thing, which was just a process to screw things up. Am I way off base? Is that your experience as well?

  Edward Erfurt 7:11

  Yeah. When you think about these applications on a tiny site, let's say just a three acre site, to fulfill all of your preserve area management, to mark out wherever the environmental things are at. It's way harder to do that on those small sites, but it's way easier on really big sites. So basically, you just push everything off to a corner, and you do the worst suburban sprawl, the things that stretch out all of our utilities the furthest. Or even worse, on those big parcels, they'll encourage clustering. So you've clustered a bunch of homes all in one area, but you have to drive all of your utilities and roads another mile to the next cluster, just spreading that out. None of that ever made sense to me. Even on some of the environmental review, imagine in these neighborhoods if every single house has to do this. It's kind of like a traffic study. It's almost going to be the same application for every single home in this neighborhood. Nobody has really looked at this as the impact of the entire neighborhood at one phase. So we get really good professionals that know how to fill out the form to make us feel good. But it actually doesn't result in those things that would make our environment cleaner and more resilient.

  Chuck Marohn 8:45

  I remember working on a project up in the little city of Emily in Minnesota here. We had done, as part of their comprehensive planning, some mapping of their forest system. And when you look at a forest network, you have what's called deep forest or inner forest, and then you have outer forest or edge forest. There are actually different species that require inner forest and edge forest. If you think of like a deer, a deer wants to be on the edge of the forest because they're going to go out in the field and eat grass and then retreat back to the forest for safety. But if you think of like a bear, a bear is going to want inner forest. In other words, inner forest where they have 1000 feet of forest around them at any time. If you look at them as like two species. There's a whole bunch of an ecosystem there of birds and rodents and what have you that thrive in inner forest and thrive in edge forest. We had this whole system worked out in the city. They were very environmentally conscious. They had created zoning regulations that aligned with this. So we were going to actually protect our inner forest . And the county came in and wanted to build a road. Because they wanted to log, they were going to build a big road and then open up for development right through the middle of one of these inner forests. The environmental rules actually just facilitated that happening. It was like, "Okay, let's do this. Let's go make this happen. Here's the process, here's the public hearing you would have, here's the investigation you would need to do, here's the mitigation that would need to happen." But the end result is no inner forest anymore. Like, we literally destroyed this habitat.

  Edward Erfurt 10:35

  Yeah, I've seen that too, where it's like, "Oh, we're going to mitigate it." So we're going to get another piece of land that doesn't have that, and we're going to create a planting plan to try to recreate aged forests on old farmland. But none of that-

  Chuck Marohn 10:52

  None of that makes sense. No, but, this is the way the environmental law is written. Here in Brainerd, we have a brownfield site. And, yes, obviously there's cleanup things we need to do with the brownfield site. We don't want people living on places with creosote, you know, there's stuff that needs to happen. But the idea that we would open up and study 1000 things and have a three or four year permitting process to address this brownfield site before we were able to do anything with it, to me, always was like, "Why do we make it easy to build the stuff that, from an environmental standpoint, is environmentally destructive, and we make it really hard to build and use the stuff that isn't." And I feel like what I saw going on in California after the forest fires was- I'm going to say this and push back. I feel like you saw decades of pent up frustration with environmental laws and an opportunity to, in a sense, stab Caesar in the back when he was weak and not looking because you had this emergency going on. In other words, this is something that we would have done a long time ago if it was not an environmental law that could be villainized, but was something else that people weren't as emotionally attached to.

  Edward Erfurt 12:26

  Yeah. It emerges in a different way. These communities are like, "Oh my gosh, we built for years in an area that was fire prone. So now, we're going to use the environmental laws to determine which which lots we're not going to allow building on, so we can accommodate fire breaks or we can hold water in a location in the event there's a future fire. I saw this on the Gulf Coast after Katrina and Rita. There are many communities that were washed away, far inland, the hit storm surge. When the planners would come through, it was like, "Look, this is an area that's going to be a high disaster. What if we just tell people they can't move back to their neighborhood and we'll build them something nice and new, up on raised ground somewhere else." This is not

  Chuck Marohn 13:20

  "We'll make them whole. We'll help." Yeah.

  Edward Erfurt 13:23

  Yeah. But it's hard to tell somebody that the home that they grew up in is suddenly the sacrificial lamb to protect the other 200 homes in the block. A lot of it's well intentioned, but these are communities that have actually gone through quite a bit of time. I mean, these are some of the oldest neighborhoods in the LA area that have lasted the test of time. It's unfortunate that these disasters hit, but it could have hit anywhere. I don't think we could write an environmental ordinance or state law that would put a bubble that would stop all of that risk.

  Chuck Marohn 14:10

  What do you think when you read the line in this article that says 800 homeowners? We've got 16,000 structures that need, ostensibly, rebuilding permits. 800 people have applied for that. But the question that I've got for you is, what do you see when it says 800 have applied and only 200 have gotten permits so far, and the average time to issue that has been 55 days?

  Edward Erfurt 14:39

  That's in the city, it's it's over 100 in the county.

  Chuck Marohn 14:43

  Oh, really? Okay.

  Edward Erfurt 14:44

  Yeah. So, like, there are so many emotions to that. So just imagine a municipality. Every municipality across North America right now, if you go to their permanent office, they're overwhelmed. They're not enough inspectors. They're not enough people at planning desks. So we put in ordinances, and we try to narrow this down, to speed up the process. What we miss on that? Like I get it, I get staff is overwhelmed, and now, all sudden, an influx of double or triple of what your normal cycle is. It's a it's really hard to get through that. And after a disaster? Well, in a lot of these municipalities, the folks that are reviewing the permits have also been impacted by the disaster. They've lost their homes. They know family members. These are cities they serve. So this is an emotional bit, and you want to be sure on these reviews that you're doing the very best you can. You're going to double check everything to make sure that these buildings are going to be built back stronger and more resilient. But when I look at all of that, and I think about efficiencies of that, what are we checking, what are we reviewing that's resulting in that many days for that permitting, where could we be more efficient? Or what are the things that we don't need to look at? If somebody, just on their honor, is going to build on an existing footprint, could we cut zoning out? Like we're going to assume the setbacks, we're going to build on that. If you don't have building inspectors do all this stuff. Well, could we use the federal things? Could we go and suggest modular? Like, if you pick the modular unit, it goes on the site, and in 24 hours, we can do an inspection and be done. Those are the things. I just can't imagine the volume of stuff and the depths of paper that they're in right now.

  Chuck Marohn 16:44

  I was thinking about myself like utility connections. Oftentimes, we see struggles when people want to put in a backyard cottage or put in an infill unit, or what have you, because the utility people get all bureaucratic on you. They're like, "Okay, where's the sewer connection, where's the water connection? I want to come out and see it." It sits on their desk for 45 days while they compare it to as-built plans that they've got from the 1980s. These are all places that had sewer and water. These are all places that had, like, connections. Do we really need to have that level and time of review in order to get these things approved and out the door? I feel like hiring five people to do on-site work when the plumber is there would be a way better way to move this along than have a permitting process where you had to, in a sense, review on paper how they're going to do it.

  Edward Erfurt 17:40

  I would do like in an emergency situation. And this is what I thought was happening with the the cities and the county taking over the removal of debris on the properties. They wanted to go street by street. When you have a disaster like this, the meters are damaged, the hydrants are damaged. You have open pipes, you don't know where the valves are. So if you were building a block, you turn the water on for the block, you're going to have a dozen of the homes where you can see water squirting up in the yard. I can tell you from somebody that worked in a city with the utility department, no matter what the engineers show, no matter what's on the drawings, when you get in the field, it's not what's in the ground.

  Edward Erfurt 17:47

  Right.

  Edward Erfurt 18:03

  Inspectors and utilities, they would complain about engineers, because whatever the standard was, that's not what they wanted. That's not what worked for this site. It was the archeology of digging up and figuring out where all this stuff was in the field. Yeah, I mean, in a disaster like this, I would beef up my team that's in the field. I'd have trucks with all the pipes and fittings and valves. I'd have the equipment in the neighborhoods, and just say, "We're gonna go down the street and when water squirts up, we're going to go out there and cap it off. And somebody's going to give us a phone calls or do something in the computer to tell us they're working on this. And we're going to be already in the neighborhood doing work. We're going to field observe that as it gets put in. And if there's a legal thing to it, the residents can write a form that they're going to wave away liability of a yard flooding or basement flooding, because we're going to deal with the urgency of getting people into housing." That would be getting everybody out of the office and fixing the pipes. That's where I would be focused.

  Chuck Marohn 19:38

  Yeah, yeah. And even when I was listening to you say that, you know, basement flooding and all this, there's always this- I'm going to say this, and again I want people to be generous with me. Oftentimes we design these codes and these regulations and these processes based on the one in 10,000 thing that happened that we never want to have happen again. And, you know, I get that, I do. But then I watch things like, you know, fire codes that have built up over time that were were basically designed to prevent the Great Chicago Fire, where you had tenements with no separation between them and lots of units stacked on top of each other with one staircase and no exterior windows. And you apply that kind of mentality then to urban homes that are 10 feet apart, have like a natural fire break between them because they don't have shared walls and they have spacing and all this stuff. And you're still applying the same kind of rigor and response. I don't think we're saying "Do this and a certain number of homes will have sewer backups" or "Do this, and a certain number of homes will burn down." I think what we're saying is that a lot of this tedium of care is the result. Let me put it this way. I almost feel like this is -- and I think this is what you see with CEQA -- a good time to reset some of the barnacles of regulation that have built up over years of kind of reactionary regulation. "Oh my gosh. We never want that to happen again. So let's write a 20 step process to ensure that that weird, strange outcome never occurs." And oh, sure, that adds 15 days to the permitting process. But in times of plenty, who cares? In times of emergency, this is where you can rethink some of those things and clear some of those things out. You've been on the other side of this more than I have is, is this reactionary barnacle creating something that I'm just making up. Or does this actually occur?

  Edward Erfurt 21:43

  It actually occurs. I've yet to meet a building official or a fire marshal that does building review that isn't, in the back of their mind, trying to review for a building that will never burn and never collapse. That is the bar that they're at. When I think about places like Oklahoma that deals with natural disasters, we cannot build a house that can withstand 250 mile per hour winds in a tornado. There's a level of understanding and acceptance that there is a chance that a tornado will come through your community in Oklahoma and cause great damage. They offset that by creating shelter to withstand the storm so that you could survive that tornado blowing over your house. There's an acceptance that your house may not stand. The likelihood of a fire coming back through this area, or the likelihood of this type of disaster. We can even go back to the management of these areas, what could we learn beyond just a building that's going to be fireproof? What do we need to do from a land management side to deal with that? Are there additional fire prevention things we need to include? Do we need additional fire trucks? Do we need more hydrants? These are things that we could think about at a larger scale through that. But yeah, we layer all this on because we want buildings that will never collapse and never burn. We want structures and neighborhoods that are dealing with everything. They're dealing with Jimmy from 1970, that wild wiring. We don't want any more asbestos, because we learn from that. The Chinese drywall, we don't want to import that again. We've layered on all of these pieces. And we have to sit back and realize that the way that our construction techniques are today, our building scientists, our builders, the engineers, the architects, we're at a building system today that uses the least amount of material, that is the highest energy efficiency, and can be built in the shortest amount of time, right? And through that, we've made compromises. We've thinned down every piece of wood, every piece of window and insulation, so we can do stuff quickly. These are buildings that, unfortunately, they're not going to be like the Romans and last forever. It's not going to be like a Pompeii.

  Chuck Marohn 24:29

  Let me ask you this last thing, because I do feel like one of the one of the side effects, and I think we can see this now in Southern California. But I'm going to even back up further and say I remember when we passed the big infrastructure bill in the last administration, and the answer was, "Hey, we're going to go build all this stuff now." And my question was, "Who's going to build this?" Okay, we're going to go build a bunch of bridges, because we got a trillion dollars now money for infrastructure. And it's like, Well, okay. You're going to surge the existing system. In case you haven't noticed, the existing construction system costs rise at multiples of inflation every year for the last 50 years, because we don't have enough people here, and we're essentially having the same dollars chase fewer people. If you are building a concrete bridge, you're not building a concrete nuclear power plant or, like, name your other facility that you're building. So like, again, what is our overall priority as a society? If you say we got to build 16,000 homes in Southern California now to replace the ones that are there. How do you do that without importing a ton of labor? How do you do that without importing a ton of people? And then, if you do that, you already have a housing shortage. Where do those people live? How do those people perform? To me, this is just a recipe for, in a sense, like accelerating costs across the spectrum. And I guess I'm not surprised that no homes are getting built.

  Edward Erfurt 26:04

  Well, just think about front doors. Where do you get a supply of 16,000 front doors? So this is what happens in Florida when these hurricanes come through. It's not just the labor force, it's the material. So every time the big storms come through, there are groups. And I know people that have done this. They ran a U haul truck somewhere in Georgia. They go to a Home Depot, and they fill it with as much supplies-

  Chuck Marohn 26:34

  Plywood and whatever, yeah.

  Edward Erfurt 26:36

  And they drive south to the first house that's damaged, and they fix that house. Then they drive north to the first Home Depot that has supplies. They fill it up, and they go back. They're importing these pieces, so it's an importing and they're sleeping in the trucks because there aren't hotel rooms. The hotel rooms are filled with the displaced individuals. You don't have the materials, you don't have the resources. When the infrastructure bill came out, I was in municipal government. We had all the projects we wanted to have done. I got phone calls from contractors, and they they saw what we were eligible for in the funding for these projects, and they said, "Hey, that project on page six of your capital improvement plan, I can build that. Guess what? It's the exact amount of money that you're getting awarded from the federal government." And it's like, "Well, we did a budget analysis of it. It's half that price." And they said, "That's fine. Go find contractors that'll accept that." The very next day after that bill was adopted, all of our contracted work went up 40% overnight because the contractors knew they had a corner on the market. When it comes to housing, and we're seeing this in every disaster area that this occurs, how do we get people back into housing? And more importantly, on housing on their property. In Florida in 1992 when Hurricane Andrew came in and blew away Miami and Homestead, they brought in those FEMA trailers, the white FEMA trailers. 15 years later, they were still there. That led after Katrina and Rita, changes in HUD and FEMA to allow for modular housing. The Katrina cottage, these cute looking small homes that can be built anywhere in the country and shipped in by boat or by truck to get people on their property. In a place like this, how do you do that? And why is that not an option there? When you look at a disaster, not only are there not people to build stuff, the prices have gone up because the scarcity of materials. Our insurance companies and most people's appraisals haven't kept up to that right? So you may only get 40% of the value of what it would cost to build your house today, or you might be in litigation for the next five years waiting for the insurance company to pay. What could we put on these properties immediately? But we're out paying for people just being displaced in rental and hotels. We could actually make an investment that adds value back to their neighborhood and get them back into the place they know.

  Chuck Marohn 29:39

  It was surreal. And I think this is an experience we all share. It was surreal watching the Palisades burn. And I don't say that from a gawking standpoint. It's one of those things where you statistically know, just like with Katrina, that this would happen, like the roll of the dice would come up in the wrong way at some point. Just this week, you and I are chatting. I was spending the night at a hotel this past week. And when I got there, late at night, I turned on the TV and it said, "Hey, there's been this 8.8 magnitude earthquake off of Russia." Which is a massive, massive earthquake. And there are the tsunami warnings all over. And then they had a live stream from Hawaii, where the tsunami is approaching. And then it was like a nothing. It was like a four foot wave. It was like not even noticeable. And you just realize that these natural disasters, if we just want to use that like umbrella term, are, in any one place, a statistical outlier in any year, but in aggregate as a country, are a statistical inevitability. And it continues to baffle me that we are so bad at responding to them, and so bad at helping move things along afterwards. I don't know if, before we go to the downzone, you have any final thoughts on that.

  Edward Erfurt 31:10

  Yeah. I mean, the Palisades are unique, because this is something people had hours of notice about. When you have a hurricane, you've got weeks of notice that this is coming. You have an awareness that this is occurring. We're really good, as the disaster is emerging in that first initial time. We get the National Guard out. Everybody does whatever they can. In every one of these types of areas I've been to, you hear about the camaraderie of neighbors coming together, working through that first survival, that first week or two. And then after that, we seem to abandon individuals. And this is what surreal to me. Here are these lots. People are still paying mortgages on houses and their properties. People are trying to sell them, and they aren't able to sell them because you can't get a permit for these sites. We're waiting for cleanup to occur. That's surreal. That's not the way that our grandparents and great grandparents built places. The work we did in the Community Action Lab up in Chisholm. Chisholm, Minnesota, had big fire and burnt to the ground. They rebuilt in the matter of months, and they decided, as a town, that they wanted to be fire resistant, so all the downtown buildings had to be made out of brick. It was a pact that they all were going to do. It was another 15 years until they could afford a fire brigade. Like the civic building built 15 years after the great fire was the fire department. In the past, we would go and help people, not just at the emergence of the disaster, but afterwards, to get them stabilized back in their community. After these disasters, these places traditionally look different, but they adapt to all of the things we've described.

  Chuck Marohn 33:08

  That's a really good example. The Chisholm story is great because they literally did say like, "All right, let's rebuild the sucker." And they got out and they did it, and they did it really quickly. Yeah.

  Edward Erfurt 33:23

  So we just need to get out of our own way and let people do these things. There's a lot of barnacles that need to come off, and now's the time to examine that, release it for the next year or six months, and see what gets built. There at least 800 people that are willing to get that started up. 16,000 homes, right? And let's observe what happens.

  Chuck Marohn 33:46

  Let's get them going. Yeah. Do you have anything for the downzone? I havenot been on Upzoned for a while, so I have a ton of stuff to share, but I picked out one for today. I'll let you go first if you've got something. I don't want to put you on the spot, but go for it.

  Edward Erfurt 34:00

  No, you start. You're super excited. Let's see what you've got.

  Chuck Marohn 34:03

  Okay. You know, I'm a book person. I came across this book. It was referenced in a different book I was reading, and I'm like, wait a sec, hang on. This book is called Dr Calhoun's Mousery: the strange tale of a celebrated scientist, a rodent dystopia, and the future of humanity. This was a guy, like an ecologist, who became fascinated with the behavior of animals in terms of, like, population scaling, and what he ultimately did. And the story is really fascinating, because, like, what got him to this point is a real interesting tale of, you know, you intersect the fear of Malthusian growth in society. This is the 70s and 60s and 70s. The Population Bomb, all these things. He wanted to look at, if you took a bunch of rats -- we've studied the social behavior of rats in different environments. If you created a utopia for rats, what kind of behavior would they have? So in other words, a place that was perfectly safe, perfect amounts of food, like everything that a rat needed to have. Their daily Maslow's hierarchy of needs met perfectly. What would evolve out of that? And the results are crazy, just nuts. And I did not understand, because I've never really took any courses on this, that Calhoun's experiments are a big part of sociology courses and psychology courses, and they've been disputed and and debated. He interpolates some things to humans that it's not clear that they do apply to humans. I mean, obviously humans have more complex societies than rats, but some of the behavior that you see out of rats wherethey don't need to fight. They do. They don't need to form packs. They do. Some check out completely, and like, go nuts. The population actually drops at some point and just kind of collapses, because there's no purpose to existing. I can understand the criticisms, because rats are not humans, and humans are more complex, and I get that, but it's also very surreal. And I don't fault this scientist for looking at this and saying, "I think you can draw some connections here to human society." As a book, it's a really kind of rip-roaring read. It's an interesting look at how science works and how scientists work, and then I think also how they maybe step out of their area of expertise and become evangelists for their work in ways that are less than helpful. But yeah, Dr Calhoun's Mousery, it came out just last month, so it's a rather new book. It is really, really good, really good. I It will be one of my top books for the year. The book came out in October of 2024, so it's been out almost a year. The audible version just came out last month, so.

  Edward Erfurt 37:11

  So we'll be hearing about rats and mice in a blog post? I love that. I've been bouncing around this summer. What happens is I go to our National Gathering, and all of our friends have all their latest books, and they have all the things. So I've got a pile of books on my desk that I'm trying to get through this summer, but one that somebody recommended to me that's been around for a long, long time is the Design of Everyday Things by Donald. When I draw and do stuff and try to explain what that design work occurs, that whole creative process, that black box you learn, you learn in architecture school, there have been only a couple of authors and scholars that have really captured what that design process is that I do. So this is one of those books that really explains, like observing, seeing how things work, adapting that and adjusting to fulfill those needs. The other series of books that kind of follow. This is the work of Christopher Alexander. It's a little more directed towards city building with Alexander's work. But I just found it fascinating because I just listened, and it was just like, Yeah, of course, yeah, of course. This is what you do. And it made me sit back and really understand the the all when I get markers out and draw and people like, well, how does that happen? Or how do you when, whenever you're an architect, or you identify that that's what you went to school for, people want input. They want a critique of where they live, which is the worst thing to do, because, like, people don't want any they want you to to give them all the superlatives about what they live not be critical, and architects are just overly critical. But I found it to be an incredible read to really outline that design thought process. So anybody that's out there thinking critically about the built world around them or just the objects around you, it helps to put into a thought process of what I would consider, what I would call design. And it really pulls back that black box so I know it's an old book. Lots of people have said, Oh, you should read it. I took the time really enjoyed it, and would encourage others to pick it up and give it a read.

  Chuck Marohn 39:41

  I know your wife does music, and I don't call myself a musician because I'm a percussionist. And there's an old joke there about, you know, drummers not being musicians, but I listen to music and I can pick up all the different percussion parts. But I found this Instagram channel where they actually. They, I think they use AI to split out different vocal tracks and harmonies and things, and then they show you what is going on underneath the music, the depth of it. And it's fascinating to me, because it's opened up songs for me that I knew really well in ways that I hadn't. I get that feeling every time you and I hang out and you draw something for me, or you point something out to me, because I feel like I'm, I'm a drummer in that I understand music. But a true musician can un unwrap things for you that you didn't see. I feel like, you know, I'm a planner, and I get some of this urban design stuff. But when you when you draw, when you show me stuff, it like is another level of unwrapping that I just have always appreciated. So, cool book, man.

  Edward Erfurt 40:48

  Yeah, somebody shared a cartoon out on LinkedIn, and I put it on my profile, and it is a husband and wife behind the wheel of-

  Chuck Marohn 40:57

  My wife sent me this!

  Edward Erfurt 41:00

  And they look kind of frustrated, and the wife goes, well, I mapped out all the places that Robert Moses built. So like, we're gonna have a nice vacation. This is what happens when I go out. Anybody's been in a walking audit with me, anybody that's read Michelle's blog post about being married to a new urbanist, you just see the world in different place. And it's unfortunate sometimes when I share that, because you can't unsee it. But there is that no matter where I go out, even though I think I've see everything, I'm usually blind to so many things. And walking out with folks like when you and I go out and look at things or kick the tires on stuff, it's two really unique perspectives. And I always catch something that I I wouldn't normally observe. But yeah, that's the whole idea of observation and experience. It just cannot be understated how important that is getting out from your desk, walking in the built environment, that that's part of my restlessness. But yeah, a lot of our vacations have been rerouted, and we don't go certain places because we just we need to enjoy where we're at and not be so critical of it.

  Chuck Marohn 42:20

  That is Edward Erfurt. I'm Chuck Marohn. You're listening to Upzoned. We're filling in for Abby this week. Ed, thanks for being here and chatting.

  Edward Erfurt 42:28

  Great. Thanks, Chuck. It's always a pleasure.

  Chuck Marohn 42:31

  Thanks everybody for listening and keep doing what You can to build a strong town. Take care.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

• “Why it’s taking LA so long to rebuild” by Umair Irfan, Vox (July 2025).

• Want to bring the conversation to your community? Book Chuck or Edward as a speaker.

• Abby Newsham (X/Twitter).

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.

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