Norm Van Eeden Petersman  0:06  

Hello and welcome to this Bottom-Up Short. I'm Norm with Strong Towns, and I'm super excited to be able to introduce you to people like Mary Coddington. Strong Towns members in various communities all across the world are taking notice of the things going on in their communities and trying to work together to create consensus at a neighborhood level, at a block level, at the city level, and even beyond, as we'll hear from Mary, in doing those small things to build stronger, more resilient communities. Our guest today is Mary Coddington. You have such a diverse background, Mary, having worked as a flight attendant and having moved through various urban environments all across the country. Mary currently lives in Denver and has pursued her master's in urban and regional planning from CU Denver. She is the principal at Twelve Inc, an affordable housing consulting firm that's based in Colorado and primarily works in Colorado, though I would imagine much of your work also ends up crossing borders as well. Her focus areas are around what makes a development feasible. There's a core question there that so many people often grapple with, so providing guidance and insight on that, project management, housing strategies, things like resilient site design, taking into account land use policies, all of those types of things. And she and her family live in Denver. Mary, welcome to Bottom-Up Shorts.

Mary Coddington  1:31  

Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  1:34  

First, you're somebody that works on statewide projects and initiatives but also is involved at the city level and then at the neighborhood level. What is it to work at the local level in your place, and what are some of the things that guide you in that task?

Mary Coddington  1:53  

In Denver, we have a process called the Neighborhood Planning Initiative. Denver is a pretty big city, so in addition to having a citywide plan, we also do neighborhood plans that group together four and six different neighborhood statistical areas in our city, and we work together to set forth a vision for what we want the neighborhood to look like. The last neighborhood plan for my area was done in the 1980s, so we're really excited to update where we want to go as a community, and we're really looking forward to that process. We had to advocate pretty hard. It's fairly competitive because there are a lot of neighborhoods in the city that are waiting for their turn, but we have some pretty big opportunities, land wise, and have had some big investment in recent years, and it's time to be intentional about how we want to move forward as a neighborhood.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  2:46  

You've learned a lot about these types of things, but as you're working at the neighborhood level, you probably are encountering others that are learning as they go. What are some of the things that you see about how their perspective, as well as your own, are shaped by this process?

Mary Coddington  3:03  

Fortunately, our neighborhood has a lot of capacity in terms of neighbors that have experience as developers and as planners. There's a high level of engagement from that group, which is really helpful, but we still have a lot of challenges. There are language barriers within the neighborhood. It's a neighborhood that is changing demographically, so I think the biggest focus that we have going into this process is figuring out how to bring all the voices into the conversation. How to make sure that that everyone in the neighborhood is really informing that process and getting involved and feeling like they're empowered to get involved in the process.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  3:44  

One of the things that I love about Strong Towns members is that we are inclined to have a positive vision of what we want to see our community be, rather than just a negative fear of change or loss. As you help others and perhaps yourself articulate this, what is your positive vision for your neighborhood?

Mary Coddington  4:04  

It kind of ties into where the city is going as a whole. Denver is working through a process that the city is calling Unlocking Housing Choices. It is our effort to examine the areas of town that have experienced exclusionary zoning for years and are restricted to single family homes, and looking at what opportunities there are to increase that. At the same time, there's a lot of concern about investment dollars coming in. Denver has faced a lot of displacement over the last 10 to 15 years, and trying to find a way to take this important step that we need to take as a city, from a regulatory perspective, to increase the opportunities for housing that we have in the community, but how we can do that in a way that can keep the money in the community, keep the people in the community. I think there are opportunities to work with homeowners in parts of the city that are vulnerable to displacement and look at the example of other areas, like Muskegon, which has been talked about in Strong Towns. They've used tax increment finance. Statutorily, that's not allowed here, but I think there are other mechanisms that we can find to help people be their own incremental developers on their property. I'm really excited about how that is going to play out citywide, how it will play out in my neighborhood and the neighborhoods around mine as well.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  5:29  

Maybe one of those elements is resilient site design. Can you describe that a little bit and what maybe the implications for local communities are? So we think of a Strong Towns axiom, which is "no neighborhood should be subject to radical change, and also, no neighborhood should be exempt from change." When we can bring that together, it does require, at the lot by lot basis, the unlocking of what is possible without simply unleashing the trouble that everybody fears in our communities.

Mary Coddington  5:58  

Yeah. I'm really glad that you brought that up. With the resilient aspect in my work, I was lucky enough to take a permaculture design certificate course last summer, and it really shaped how I set up my business. It was just really exciting to me. There are 12 principles in permaculture design. That's actually where the name of my business comes from. I want to run it in line with those 12 principles. Some of those were really reflected so strongly to me when I was reading the actual Strong Towns book. So thinking about how to create an environment that is adaptable and not frozen in amber. So there's that regulatory piece of allowing that. Also coming around to the displacement piece, I think it's so important that it is just that next step and not the step beyond it. Because when you start entitling so far above where a place currently is, it really offers a very high yield for outside investors, and it's very motivating to the global wall of currency to come in and and find a yield there. We can keep that yield in the hands of the people who are living in the community, and strengthen the community in a way that addresses the need of increasing a city's tax base, but it also stabilizes that individual household. So it's really coming at it from multiple layers.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  7:28  

Yeah, and it's grappling with the reality. Sometimes you'll hear "All growth is good growth," and the reality is, some growth is cancer. However, that often resembles a very rapid sort of development, without returning value, without capturing those things. I think the connection between permaculture and what we're trying to do is so important. I grew up on a dairy farm, and one of the things that we recognized is that we need to retain water in the soil, and that rapid movement of water, much like the rapid movement of money through a neighborhood, is a way of actually stripping away nutrients, stripping away capacity. You can either try to always be adding more of that stuff on top, or you say, "How do we build that healthy, vital soil?" And the equivalence of that in our neighborhoods. This touches on what you're seeking to do in your city-wide capacity as well. Do you want to share a little bit about that? Because you're doing the work of building from the bottom up, doing things at the local level, but also involved at the city level.

Mary Coddington  8:33  

Yeah. A few years ago, I happened to come across an opening on our city's planning board. I applied for that, and was lucky enough to get it. I just started my second three-year term. So I have been involved with that for a long time. Getting to be a part of the conversations around city initiatives like Unlocking Housing Choices and the different neighborhood planning initiatives all the way down to specific rezoning applications, it has been such an amazing way to stay in touch with what's happening at the city level. You mentioned in the intro that I was a flight attendant. I had no idea what was going on in the cities that I lived in. I was just sort of moving through life. So I think finding opportunities like that, whether it's a board of adjustment, or planning board, or some other connection to what's happening at the city level, is just really helpful to get to that point of, "I'm not a customer of the city. I'm a collaborator in helping to make the place," which is a really great feeling.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  9:44  

Did you just apply? Or was there a process to go through? Or did you have to be picked out of a hat?

Mary Coddington  9:51  

Technically, in Denver, it is a mayoral appointee. I've never met the mayor, so I think it came on the recommendation of planning staff. Prior to joining the planning board, I had done some advocacy work when the city was looking to amend its policy around the number of unrelated adults who could live together. At the time, there was a pretty strict limit around that, and the city was pushing for expanding that to make it more possible for people to find places to live legally. That seemed like really important work, so I had done a few public testimonies that I think put me on the radar of the planning staff who had worked on it, which was a great boon when I decided to apply for the planning board.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  10:39  

Yeah. Your story resonates with so many that I've heard, which is, "I just started to speak up, and all of a sudden there were additional opportunities." There was recognition, but also the opportunity that would just emerge because you've taken part, you've participated in some of these rituals. It will vary. Some people will sit on the sidelines for a long time, and others are almost like, "Wow, I just got thrown onto a committee. What do I do now?" We actually did a Strong Towns resource session on that, like, "I just got put on a committee, now what?" Trying to give guidance, because it's a very common occurrence, and it's something I definitely want to commend. If you're listening to this, much like Mary, if you begin that process of speaking out and just articulating that vision of what you want to see in your community, people will find that compelling and want you to participate more and be a part of bringing that together. Mary, with Twelve Inc, you also have a role at the state level. Do you want to share how, perhaps, Strong Towns principles have helped you as you work across different population sizes, different municipalities' structures, all of those different types of things. There are, I think, some common features that have emerged. Can you share about that?

Mary Coddington  11:50  

I was lucky enough to win a contract with our State Housing and Finance Authority. They have a program that they've set up to provide technical assistance to small scale development in rural communities across the state. So I feel really fortunate to have been able to go spend time in all of the corners of Colorado and everywhere in between. Through that process, I discovered this deep love of our rural communities. I've gotten to work in rural resort places like Aspen, and then also communities out on the eastern plains that are AG towns, whose economies are a lot slower than what they used to be, so they're facing a different set of challenges. Understanding the different values, I guess to some extent, in different places. There are similarities that I think we discount too much, but there are also differences in places. So figuring out, 1) what is valuable and how to relate and make recommendations in those places. That's been really amazing. One example is in the town of Bennett, which is sort of an AG, exurban community. It's about 30 to 40 minutes east of Denver and Aurora. They have grown a lot. 30% of their housing stock has been built within the last five years, which is just absolutely crazy. It's very much in the housing mono culture. It's been a great place for single-family home builders to come in. They're serving a need. There's a price point that can't be met in Denver and Aurora anymore, and so people are driving out to Bennett, and they're able to purchase a single-family home there. But it's not serving the people who actually work within the town. So being able to have conversations about the challenges that large developers have in building a duplex or building a quadplex, and if the goal of the town is housing variety -- which they focused on a lot, on having that gentle density mixed in -- what does it actually take to get there? You can allow it in your code. That doesn't mean that it's going to get built. So what are the other systems that they can set up in place to help achieve that? So just really listening to what the priorities are in different places. So much that I've learned from different Strong Towns materials in the last year to 18 months is really showing up in my work in a lot of ways.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  14:31  

As we pivot to who you are and how this became your work, do you want to share part of your journey? I find that that can be so inspiring or interesting to a lot of folks that are listening.

Mary Coddington  14:45  

It really started when I was a flight attendant. It was a wonderful job, I'm very glad that I did it, but it was a very lonely job. It highlighted the importance of community for me, because I was always on the go and I wasn't with my people very often. I learned about the field of urban planning through a book that I had read, "Happy City" by Charles Montgomery. I got really interested in that and decided in my mid 30s that I wanted to go back to school and study urban planning. I was really focused on community spaces when I started school. As I learned about housing and the different pathways in life that are open to us depending on what our housing options are as we're young, that became the issue that I wanted to focus on. So after graduating, I joined a different consulting firm, and I focused on affordable housing for a long time. I think that subsidized affordable housing is really important, and it will continue to play a role in our communities for a long time, but there's so fewer resources available than the scale of the need. So it's hard work to be in because it doesn't feel systemic. It's incredibly important for the families and households that benefit from it, but there are 10 for every one that is able to access an affordable unit. So figuring out things like, when I was reading "Escaping the Housing Trap," just the idea of not a scalable solution, but a replicable solution, was really exciting.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  16:29  

That's awesome. I love that. You know, if somebody works at the state lottery, their expectation is not to actually serve everybody that's buying a ticket. But when we talk about subsidized affordable housing, it feels almost like we end up having to give some people a ticket, and then everybody else is just left discouraged and on the sidelines. There can be that real need to, I think, find longer-term patterns that are going to be replicable. Love that language. Instead of necessarily trying to say, "How do we scale this up?" No. "How do we unleash that pattern of local, small scale development to make these types of things a lot more feasible?" Can you share, as we start to wrap up, some tips or suggestions that you have for others that might consider walking in a path similar to yours?

Mary Coddington  17:12  

I certainly don't think that you have to go to school to become an urban planner to be part of this work. It's a questionable choice in terms of return on investment, to be honest, but kudos to anybody who does. I think just really plugging in with your local elected leaders, paying attention to what's being voted on at city council, and learning more about the conversation that's happening around you. One of the things that was just incredible to me in my career switch was the built environment in the world around me doesn't just happen. It's based on a series of choices that people are making, and you can be part of that conversation. One of the easiest ways to do that is to get involved with your local government.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  17:57  

And to be part of that ecosystem. It's interesting, your experience in the airlines, where everything is a very mechanical system, and if a part begins to break, there's knock-on consequences. Then you look at more of the organic ways of understanding our community, to realize there's resilience, there's accounting for fragility built into what we try to do. I love that. So definitely, for folks that are interested, connect with Mary at Twelve Inc. It's an affordable housing consulting firm based in Colorado. I definitely recommend go check it out. I actually want to go learn what the 12 principles of permaculture are, because I should know them by now. Mary, as we close, what is it that gives you hope as you carry on this work?

Mary Coddington  18:41  

I think that we are experiencing an inflection point in a period of change and disruption, probably worldwide, really. The fact that, out of those moments of transition, something new can be created and something better. So just really looking for opportunities to take the moment that we're living in as a reset and figuring out how we can build something stronger and more resilient out of it.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  19:12  

Oh, that's a great point to end on. Thank you, Mary. Really appreciate you joining us here on Bottom-Up Shorts. As you listen, definitely take note. Where are those areas where you're beginning to see the the opening of a window, the creating of opportunity in your community to get involved at the local level and continue to influence and impact your life, but also truly the lives of those who are still to come? Thanks for listening to this Bottom-Up Short. Take care and take care of your places.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  19:35  

This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a nonprofit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at strongtowns.org/membership.