My New Years Resolution Is To Get You Off The Sidelines.

And I mean ALOT of you.

Have I told you about my architect friend Marilyn W. Moedinger?

Brilliant is not too strong a word. Whether it’s her lectures at prestigious universities, dazzling fellowships, or equally dazzling designs, she manages to create spaces that feel surprising and yet inevitable - as if they had been there all along — just waiting to be uncovered.

My phone pinged the other day, and I caught part of a quick conversation she was having on Twitter as she waited for a plane in Boston.

And honestly, I almost fell out of my seat.

Marilyn wanted to build? What?! Okay. She had my attention. Tesho wanted to know what was stopping her, though. So did I!

Honestly, when I think about Marilyn, the word “hurdle” doesn’t even come to mind, mostly because I imagine her effortlessly transcending momentary obstacles through sheer talent.

Of course, this is my blind spot because I should know better than anyone that sometimes even the simplest skills, like creating a pro forma, can seem like magic or are, at the very least, steeped in mystery. But the truth is, there’s nothing mysterious about real estate development. It’s simply the right steps, in the right order, at the right time.

The world needs buildings designed by Marilyn because we all need diversity in, as she says, the “built environment.” The sad fact is that at this very moment in the US, we are short at least 6.5 million homes. Annie Lowrey writes in the Atlantic that we need more housing “than almost anyone can imagine” in order to live “productive, prosperous, and happy lives.” How often does someone tell you there’s a problem so large that the solution is perhaps unimaginable?

Yikes.

Clearly, we need more homes. And we need more developers with their unique vision of what constitutes a house AND a home. We need folks who want to change the actual physical environment of their neighborhood to create more dynamic spaces.

And we need more people to know that this is possible. That they, too, can build.

Because…look. What’s the alternative?

If we can’t get folks off the sidelines, the built world around us risks being fashioned by too few people. Which leads to too few surprises. Too few insights. A landscape that begins to feel…well…stale.

So, my goal in 2024, with a lot of cheerleading, a bucket of insights, and quite a few tutorials, is to get as many of you off the sidelines as possible and one day pull up to the curb in front of your new development.

If you see my friend @mwmoedinger on Twitter, tell her to go build something. We need it. Tell her Sean wants to help.

Happy New Year, folks. Next week we’re continuing with our virtual build!