Urban Three in Huntington

A couple of years ago I was invited to give a lecture in Huntington, West Virginia. I really enjoyed the place and felt it overflowed with unrealized potential. And there were a lot of smart people there who realized it as well and were working to builder a stronger Huntington.

Sadly, two of their former mayors were not in that group. I did a rather comical radio interview with them before my talk. Let's just say that they did not lack confidence in their knowledge of urban design and development. It is really the only time I've been attacked on a radio show and, while I wasn't angry over their ignorance, it did endear to me the people who were working there for change.

To support the changes underway, I made a video out of some of the interview clips. I've been informed that these two former mayors no longer have a radio show. Little steps.

It was delighted, then when Joe Minicozzi and his team at Urban Three were invited to town to do an analysis and move the conversation a little further. Josh McCarty sent me this amazing video which logs their development pattern -- in terms of financial productivity -- over time. You can see the exact effect I was speaking about in the video: the pre-Depression wealth was created slowly and incrementally while the 1950's began the process of spreading wealth over an enormous -- and impossibly expensive to sustain -- area.