16 / Building gentle density & beautiful neighborhoods / with developer Coby Lefkowitz

Coby Lefkowitz — developer, writer, urbanist, and tweeter — is in good traffic to discuss the longstanding distrust of the big, bad developer in the urbanism conversation, and how partnership (versus vilification) is the pathway to building better places.

Coby is the Founder of Backyard — a development group focused on gentle density in great American cities.

We discuss:

• 01:43 Getting into urban development as a twenty-something.


• 06:57 Contextualizing the role of developers in urban planning.


• 16:45 What is ‘gentle density?’


• 17:03 Coby’s blossoming operation: Backyard.


• 21:41 The importance of simple beauty in the built environment.


• 25:23 Successful examples of gentle density and missing middle housing development across the U.S.


• 30:56 The art of creating simple beauty in urban planning and real estate development.


• 36:27 The challenge of housing affordability.


• 41:31 On upzoning.

Further context:

• Backyard (Coby's operation).


• Gentle density and optimism in Charleston, SC.

Connecting with Coby:

• On Twitter.


• Coby's homepage.

Connecting with me, Brad:

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠On Instagram.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠


• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠On TikTok⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠


• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠On LinkedIn⁠⁠.