a word from Mike.

season 1, ep. 7

listen.

episode notes.

The underview is an exploration of the development of our Communal Theology of Place viewed through the medium of bikes, land, and people to discover community wholeness.

A quick word from Mike on episodes to follow.

episode transcription.

[00:00:00] mike.: You're listening to the underview, an exploration of the shaping of our place. My name is Mike Rusch. And before we start this next episode, I want to provide some context to our path ahead.

In our previous episodes and definitely in the news over the past few months, the topic of affordable housing continues to rise the top of the list of challenges for our region. And you may keep asking why do we keep coming back to this.

And frankly, that's a legitimate question.

As we move forward, you're going to hear more about this topic, but I want to be really, really careful. Because if we approach this conversation, that includes the topic of affordable housing as a technical administrative government function or just a symptom of some abstract city land use plan or city zoning policy that doesn't really concern our daily lives.

We're going to miss something really big behind all of this.

This issue is rooted in one basic question that we have to answer about our community.

"Who is, or will be included in our community?"

Of course, when we make decisions about who will be included, we're also making decisions about who will be excluded from our community. And we need to make sure we understand both sides of this question.

Remember, this is an exploration of the shaping of our place. This is about how we create a common belief about the things we believe about where we live. You know that word I used before…a theology of sorts.

Unfortunately, this question in our country has a long, complicated, and sometimes frankly, terrible history about the inclusion or exclusion of people and their ability to thrive in a community.

Side note, you can revisit episode two, the invitation for a little insight into that history here in Northwest Arkansas.

These conversations, while rooted in Northwest Arkansas, are definitely not unique to Northwest Arkansas. These are the same stories working out just about every community across the country. However, we live here in Northwest Arkansas. And so we all have the opportunity to be a part of answering these questions in our own community.

So for the next few episodes, we're going to try and begin to understand how our communities are currently answering this question.

Are we building cities and communities that serve everyone or only specific populations?

Now, there may be some technical things we walk through in the coming episodes, but we need to understand these because they're a part of making these decisions about how our communities are created for how they are shaped, and how they're formed.

So here's our path forward.

Our next episode is with Megan Brown. She is with the Northwest Arkansas Council of the Urban Land Institute.

This conversation is a part of trying to gain a better understanding of the current ways that our cities and developers are thinking about what actually gets built where, but this discussion isn't about buildings. This discussion is about how those decisions actually shape our communities, shape the people that live in these spaces, and ultimately shape how people connect or don't connect with the places where we live and work.

After that, we're going to be talking with Rod Sanders and Jonathan Curth.

Rod is a member of the Bentonville Planning Commission, and Jonathan is the Director of Development Services for the City of Fayetteville.

These two discussions work together to provide some incredible insight into how land use plans and zoning really work and the values that drive them.

Please listen to both of these episodes, because these are two great examples from two different cities, from two different people, in two different roles about the process.

Then we're going to talk with some people in Northwest Arkansas. I've been working closely with our cities to build communities and find solutions to this affordable housing issue. Actually, they're trying to find solutions to how we include people in our communities.

So that's the path ahead in the next few episodes, I'm going to ask that you lean in and listen closely to understand something that may sound rather complicated, but realize the big question behind it is around how our communities are being built to serve the people that live here or could live here, or maybe haven't had the chance yet.

So thank you again for participating and following along with these conversations. They've been rich, and what's ahead will build on these conversations as we continue exploring the shaping of our place.