Building Optimism - Rethinking Cities, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Design

Every two weeks, I’ll share bite-sized highlights and cliff notes from the latest episodes of The Building Culture Podcast. It’s an easy way to stay inspired and catch up on conversations about crafting a more beautiful, resilient, and thriving world.

Episode #34 with Coby Lefkowitz

Building Optimism in a Pessimistic Age

The world sometimes feels like it’s unraveling—cities are sprawling out, ugliness bombards our daily lives, homeownership feels unattainable, and every headline screams catastrophe. But what if we’re missing the bigger picture? What if we’re on the edge of something great?

That’s the argument Coby Lefkowitz makes in his new book, Building Optimism. He’s a developer, writer, and urbanist who believes we’re at an inflection point in city-building—not in decline, but at the dawn of a new era. 

As a side note, Coby first joined the podcast on episode #10, which is one of our most popular episodes.  Since then, we’ve gotten to know each other even more, and recently got to meet up IRL in New York – it was so much fun! 

A few key ideas from our conversation:

• The world isn’t doomed. The places we love—Paris, Charleston, Kyoto—weren’t built in a day. We’ve spent decades skating along the bottom of a broken system, but there’s a moment when change accelerates. “The development patterns of the last century were bad,” Coby says, “but it’s not a fantasy to hope for something better—it’s already happening.”

• Great places don’t happen by accident. Urbanism is more than just buildings or density—it’s spatial; the act of creating coherent space that makes people comfortable. You can create ‘urbanism’ with a hedge, a brick wall, a row of trees. Suburbia isn’t bad because it’s low density – it’s bad because it’s so poorly designed and anti-spatial.  “What matters isn’t just the style of architecture. It’s the way buildings shape the human experience.”

• The missing piece: Better financing. We talk about how most great urban projects die in the spreadsheets. Capital wants five-year flips, but real places take time. That’s why we’re exploring a new model—one that lets us hold and steward places long-term, rather than squeezing them for short-term returns.

• His new project: A tiny-but-mighty neighborhood in Kingston, NY. 36 homes on three-quarters of an acre. Walkable, intimate, designed with care. Not a giant apartment complex, but a human-scaled neighborhood woven into an existing city. “This kind of development is possible,” Coby says, “if we just give it the right conditions to flourish.”  It’s interesting: Coby’s project is a very similar scale to our Townsend project, but is a rental community and focused on affordability. It’s a wonderful model and I’m so excited for his project to unfold. In real estate speak, it’s ultimately a build-to-rent model, but with traditional neighborhood design. Just check out this beautiful plan! Look at the coherent, human-scaled spaces it creates:

This was a rich conversation, full of thoughtful critiques and big ideas. If you’re tired of the doom loop and want to see how we can actually build something better, I highly recommend listening.

You can stream the full episode on Desktop, Spotify, Apple and Youtube.

Also, follow Coby on X and on Substack—and be sure to check out his new book.

Until next time!

Austin

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