Matt HildebrandJune 14, 2023 at 12:00 AM33 min read

E69: NIMBYism and the Importance of Community Engagement

Our guest today is a city planner by trade and has valuable insights into NIMBYism (Not In My Backyard) and what is and isn’t working in terms of community engagement in the real estate development world. Karin Brandt is the CEO and Founder of coUrbanize and, in this episode, she schools us on the importance of community engagement and how technology has evolved the way developers are engaging with communities. We discover why the younger “asset-less class” is less inclined to get involved in local politics and how coUrbanize aims to change that, by getting more diverse community-representative voices on approvals boards throughout the US. Karin breaks down how increased community engagement benefits not only the community but real estate owners too and explains how best to address NMBYism fundamentally. Tune in to find out where developers and policy-makers are going wrong in their attempts to engage with communities and what needs to change as well as what can be learned from the homeless crisis in San Francisco.

Key Points From This Episode:

The mission behind coUrbanize and what inspired Karin to start the company.
Why community engagement is so essential in real estate development today.
Challenges faced by developers when trying to engage with communities.
Why the younger “asset-less class” is less inclined to get involved in local politics.
How coUrbanize lowers the bar to participation and builds relationships within communities.
Strategies developers should consider when engaging with communities.
How technology has evolved the way developers are engaging with communities.
What NIMBYism is and how it relates to real estate development.
Common reasons for NIMBYism and community opposition to development projects.
Examples of notable NIMBYism cases and their outcomes.
The importance of data in getting board approvals for developments.
Regulatory changes that could alleviate NIMBYism and streamline the development process.
The risk in development and the cost of delays from community opposition.
How community engagement benefits real estate owners.
What we can learn from the homeless crisis in San Francisco.
How COVID brought into question the traditional way of carrying out community engagement.
The findings of Boston University’s study on neighborhood defenders.
What Karin considers to be the best way to fundamentally address NIMBYism.
Examples of interesting community engagement approaches, globally.
Karin predicts the evolution of community engagement.
What should be included in the curricula for future city planners.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Karin Brandt on LinkedIn
coUrbanize
Rentsync
Sync or Swim Podcast
Sync or Swim Email

Listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

Episode Transcript

“The big challenge that we have, not unlike the political process, is how do we reach more people? That's what drives us at coUrbanize is lowering the bar to participation, to make it easier for more people to learn about and influence local development and planning projects” - Karin Brandt

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:15] ANNOUNCER: Hello, and welcome to Sync or Swim, a weekly podcast brought to you by Rentsync, where we take a deep dive into the prop tech, multifamily, and rental housing industry. In each episode, we uncover the technologies and strategies used to help overcome operational challenges and increase the value of your multifamily investments. Let's get into our conversation today.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:39] MH: Welcome back to another episode of Sync or Swim, the podcast where we take a deep dive into the prop tech, multifamily, and rental housing industry. I'm your host, Matt Hildebrand. Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Karin Brandt, CEO, and Founder of coUrbanize. Karin, thank you so much for joining me today.

[0:00:55] KB: Thanks for having me.

[0:00:56] MH: Now, as a city planner by trade, we're very excited to get your thoughts, your opinions on a bunch of topics. It's been a while since we've had a city planner on the podcast. Before we jump into all the topics we want to cover, why don't we start with more of an introduction into coUrbanize? Tell us a little bit about the business and what inspired you to start coUrbanize.

[0:01:18] KB: Yeah, absolutely. I'll start by what inspired me to start coUrbanize. I'm really driven by impacting changing communities. I grew up in a lot of different types of communities, cities, large towns, tiny towns. Really, what I saw and what's part of my story, what drives me, is the geography of opportunity. In the US, the zip code that you're born into, it's actually the strongest predictor of your economic opportunities.

When I was in high school, I lived in a town of 300 people my senior year, and I didn't know city planning existed. I didn't know anyone who'd ever been to MIT. Eventually, I fell in love with cities. I fell in love with the connection to people, the ideas, the opportunities, and eventually went to MIT to study cities as a city planner.

What I saw afterwards is really the driver of cities is large-scale real estate development. The process by which large-scale real estate development comes to being is through a broken community engagement process. That's where I dug in. That's where I wanted to create change because I saw it, if I could change how these real estate developers work and what they decide to build, that that would fundamentally change the built environment and community members in communities. That's what drives me and why I started coUrbanize.

At coUrbanize, our mission is about building better communities. We do that by providing a community engagement platform for real estate developers and planners by driving equitable and meaningful engagement. Really, what that means is we give people a way to share feedback without going to a public meeting in their own language, by posting a comment online, or by text message.

[0:02:57] MH: That's very interesting. Staying on that topic for a little bit, the importance of effective community engagements. From your experience, why is community engagement so essential in real estate development in today's age?

[0:03:11] KB: Well, it's a little bit of planning 101. This idea that the people who are in a place, who are on the ground, who live there, who work there, who spend time there, actually have the best ideas about a space and what will make it successful. That's at the core of planning. What I've seen in this industry is that the best projects evolve with community engagement that is equitable and meaningful. The ideas are actually incorporated into plans and the places become better. The people who live there have more opportunities and better outcomes. That's what success looks like.

[0:03:45] MH: If that's what success looks like, to flip it a little bit, what are some of the challenges developers face when trying to engage with the communities?

[0:03:53] KB: I would say, across the board, too often, developers engage the wrong people at the wrong time about the wrong things. Typically, what happens is there's a major community hearing, and most people may be hearing about it for the first time. The way that these hearings are often framed is the developer does a presentation and then they open it up to Q&A. Whoever grabs the mic can really weigh in on whether or not a project should move forward or not. Most of the time, the project's design and planning phase has already been going on for a long time. Any big meaningful changes are just too expensive to be made at that time.

The way that the questions are framed, it's not very inspiring. Then the other issue is that these meetings are usually held on a Tuesday at 7 or 8.00. Most people can't attend. People who have young kids, people who have second jobs, people whose first language is not English, or the language of that place. The data shows that the people who attend meetings are older, richer, and whiter than the communities they represent and that they're overwhelmingly opposed to new development. Fundamentally, it's just not effective.

[0:05:04] MH: I'm sure that's really been amplified over the past few years with the pandemic and less in-person hearings and these hearings being less accessible to people. I'm sure you've noticed that as well.

[0:05:16] KB: I think even before the pandemic, in the US particularly, the broader political debates that we have have been increasingly contentious. As we see inequality increase, these conversations have become more heated. I would say, the other thing is that because there's more inequality, younger people are more likely to be renters than homeowners, which means we actually call them more of an asset-less class. You don't have a big asset like a home. You might not have kids as well. Those are two big reasons why people start participating in the local political process, and that's not happening until much later. That also ties in line with that trend, where the people who are participating are older, richer, and whiter.

The big challenge that we have, not unlike the political process, is how do we reach more people. That's what drives us at coUrbanize is lowering the bar to participation to make it easier for more people to learn about and influence local development and planning projects.

[0:06:15] MH: That's a really good point. I mean, you're calling in from the States, but in Toronto, specifically, we're experiencing a mayoral race right now that's very heated from the political standpoint. The rental housing industry is a very large platform with rental rates becoming so high. You're right. Many young people are just renters and the asset-less class, and they're a big part in this. You mentioned there the challenges and how your company is trying to break down those walls and build more relationships within the communities. What are some ways and practices that you're trying to achieve this?

[0:06:55] KB: What we really do is try to flip this process on its head. I mentioned that too often, engagement is the wrong people at the wrong time with the wrong questions. What we do is we help real estate teams engage a broader audience, a different audience very early on about more visionary questions. What that looks like is asking people in a neighborhood, what's great? What could be better? Other questions, one of my favorites is often, how can we celebrate the history and the culture of this place?

The result is that people aren't hearing about a new project when the cranes come in, or when it's on Facebook, or God forbid next door. They're hearing about it directly from the development team, asking them and inviting them to be visionary together. It starts to elicit more positivity. Then when the plans are released, the development team has been able to say, “Hey, we've heard these three themes. We've incorporated them into our plans here. Thanks so much. We hope to see you at our meeting and support this project moving forward.” You have a completely different dynamic.

This oppositional relationship that currently exists between the big, bad capitalist developer and the community, you've been actually working together and you have the opportunity to build trust and earn support.

[0:08:13] MH: I'm hoping some developers are listening to this at home. Those are some really good key strategies. Are there any other strategies developers really should consider when engaging with the communities?

[0:08:23] KB: I think the biggest thing when developers are engaging different communities is, I think that people are very afraid because their lived experience with community engagement is inherently negativity. It's getting yelled at. The thing that I hear over and over again from our newest clients and I just heard it today is, wow, these comments are positive. Have you ever seen as many constructive comments on a project before? I think, just reframing this process, reaching a different audience, people who are really eager about change, you get a different result. That's, I think, just a fundamental shift in how being more open, going to different people, being strategic, having an actual plan about ways that people can meaningfully influence your project, it works.

What teams often do is they find elements of their projects that is open for opportunity. Maybe it's some of the retail plan. Maybe it's a place-making aspect. Maybe it's something as simple as some of the art that's going to be part of the plan.

[0:09:28] MH: Going back to what you mentioned a little bit earlier, your company's platform and the technology. Have you noticed that the use of the language model that you mentioned earlier, has technology evolved the way developers are engaging with communities and have you noticed a positive shift?

[0:09:45] KB: Absolutely. Even 10 years ago, I think most of the conversations about development projects happened at the meetings. Developers were able to control it at the meetings. Once things started moving online with social media, developers didn't know what to do, especially developers, often, aren't very tech savvy, as a self-identified how they characterize themselves. Now I think they can get much more sophisticated in how they leverage technology to reach people to activate them to ultimately reach their support.

Specifically, one of my favourite coUrbanize features is text message. I love it because everybody has it. You don't have to download anything. It's right there. I always say that people have the best ideas about a space when they're in that physical place. What this looks like is one of our largest clients is Boston Properties. They were doing a big mixed-use redevelopment in Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Google's there. There's a big subway station there. MIT is across the street. There's lots of different offices there.

We worked with them and we created these signs that were sandwich boards by the plaza. As people were walking by, they would see these signs asking them a fun question about the retail and the programming that they wanted to see there. They could just take out their phone and text in an answer. It connected them to the coUrbanize platform, where they got a message thanking them, asking them more ideas and connecting them into the process to get updates and information so that they could easily add their support to making this plan a reality.

[0:11:18] MH: That's a really cool idea. Do you have any other success stories or examples of projects where examples like that have facilitated successful community engagement?

[0:11:27] KB: Sure. I'll share two interesting projects. One is in New York City. It's Innovation Queens. The two-billion-dollar plan to revitalize an underutilized five-block area in Astoria with affordable housing, market-rate housing. It's a project team of three owners, Silverstein Properties, Kaufman Historia Studios, and Bedrock Capital Partners. We worked with them to reach more than 30,000 residents in nine languages and get over 1,600 comments and thousands of letters of support.

What was most surprising is this is an area where Amazon HQ2 was shut down. There were a lot of very controversial projects that were overtaken by NIMBYism. This team came to us and said, “We're next, but we don't want to be next.” We want to appear very different from the other developers, how do we do that. We help them take a very different approach to being much more open and to being more, like I said, visionary; getting people's feedback early in the process. The results were that 94% of the comments were positive or neutral. They had overwhelming support and they were able to use that to get their final approval.

[0:12:34] MH: You mentioned something there. Definitely, we've been bearing the lead a little bit. It's going to be in the title of this podcast and that's the idea of NIMBYism. Really, the main reason we wanted to have you on, I know it's a hot bun topic anywhere that is experiencing lack of supply, or a “housing crisis” right now. In Toronto, Vancouver, a few other major Canadian cities, there's been a big lack of supply. NIMBYism is a factor into it. As a city planner and trying to foster community engagements, it's probably something that really frustrates you at the core.

[0:13:10] KB: Absolutely. It's very personal.

[0:13:14] MH: Yeah, very personal. I'm sure it is. I'm hoping you can just explain to the listeners a little bit about what NIMBYism is. For those, it's an acronym for Not In My Backyard and how does NIMBYism relate to real estate development?

[0:13:26] KB: Yeah. NIMBYism is essentially when existing residents of a community are opposed to new development. Typically, that means they might cite concerns around traffic, density, shadows, lighting. There's all sorts of reasons, sometimes even environmental concerns. But it's really about an opposition to development and change. It's usually wrapped up in a lot of misinformation. I think, especially what's driving a lot of the housing crises across the US and Canada, NIMBYism is what's behind it. It is the biggest barrier to new housing development. I think a lot of that is also, with unconscious bias and racial motivations.

[0:14:04] MH: Now leading up to this topic, we've been talking about how community engagements can be a really good thing, as you mentioned very early on. People in the community typically know what they want, their great voices for the developers to speak to. This is really the opposite, the flip side of things. What are some common reasons behind NIMBYism and community opposition to development projects? Why are they so reluctant to engage in initiatives?

[0:14:33] KB: I think one of the biggest reasons behind it is the fear that people's property values will be impacted or the fear of traffic congestion. I think those are two of the biggest things that are cited. Again, I do think that a lot of it is a desire to maintain the status quo, a fear of change, and the unconscious bias and racial motivations that can fuel that.

[0:14:55] MH: Now your company has footprints in major American cities, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or to that many would point to, as they have homelessness issues, very, very high rental rates. Other than those two, I mean, we can definitely talk about those two, but I'm hoping you can provide some examples of notable NIMBYism cases and their outcomes.

[0:15:15] KB: Yeah. I think, in the US, San Francisco is the poster child. The NIMBY policies prevented new housing from being built during the tech boom. In the early 2000s, I think the city added over 300,000 jobs but permitted just 60,000 housing units. There's a huge deficit. The result is extremely high housing prices, a rise in homelessness. They have the number of homelessness, our homeless individuals in the Bay Area has increased dramatically. I think it's 35% since 2019. They have some of the lowest rates of home ownership in the US. They're not alone. I think a lot of other cities look to them and say, “We're on that path. How do we stop it?”

[MESSAGE]

[0:16:00] ANNOUNCER: Like what you hear so far? Make sure you never miss an episode by clicking the subscribe button now. This podcast is made possible by listeners like you. Thank you for your support. Now, let's get back to the show.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]

[0:16:14] KB: One success story that I think is really interesting is a project we're working on called the Maryland McCormick redevelopment. It's actually based in my city. It's in South Boston. It's over a thousand units of affordable housing. It's public housing that has been under-invested in for over 40 years, maybe even much longer than that. This new project will create 2,000 new middle-income and market-rate apartments in addition to the one-to-one replacement of all of the existing public housing units.

The team has taken such an interesting approach to engaging the existing residents, understanding what they should continue to preserve about the existing community, what needs to be changed, working with the surrounding community as well, and really integrating what has been public housing that can super under-invested in and not safe.

[0:17:07] MH: Would you say that a lack of data is maybe an issue that some developers have come across when they're trying to build developments in communities that that community just isn't interested in? You mentioned the research that this project's done, creating townhomes. Would you say, that maybe more data, more transparency with data, more data accessibility would help some of these developers create community engagement and projects that the community is actually desiring?

[0:17:36] KB: Yeah. I think, ultimately, it does come down to data to get approvals. What the approval boards are looking for are largely two things. One is that they show that the engagement was meaningful, that the development team actually listen to people and incorporated some of their feedback to evolve the plans. That's step one. Step two is I hear this over and over again from people who sit on approval boards across the US, and it's the same in Canada, is that it comes down to a tally. How many speak for? How many speak against?

What coUrbanize really seeks to do is equip those teams with data, so that they can rationalize and justify their decisions to approve a project. For example, if the same 25 people who show up at every town meeting are at that meeting, but the approval board has this report from the development team from coUrbanize that shows how there's thousands of comments from all of these community members who are using real names and participating in this process, that gives them the evidence that they need to move projects forward.

[0:18:41] MH: Now, just moving on a little bit more and getting back into the whole NIMBYism battle, and we're talking a lot about hearings and approvals, are there any policy or regulatory changes that you believe in that can help alleviate some of the NIMBYism and streamline the development process?

[0:18:59] KB: Yes, definitely. I think that a couple of the interesting trends we're seeing, at least in the US, are around the city of Minneapolis, where they charge around the end to single-family zoning. This was driven by the city in response to a lot of the long-term racial inequities there. California has also passed a number of bills in a similar way. Other cities are following. I think that's a fantastic step forward. The other issue is that there's just a lot of outdated, legal policy requirements around public hearings and meeting laws that are just outdated. There's a lot of also, policies where one person can sue. Sometimes it's spending as little as $50 or $100 to file a lawsuit that can delay a project.

This can prevent much-needed housing units from getting delivered to market. It's incredibly inequitable. I think that there's a lot of opportunity for technology and community engagement. There's also a lot of opportunity for policy. How I approach it is policy game is very long. We have to absolutely act on that, but I want to equip every real estate team that's on the front lines, bringing new development projects to have the best chance of getting them approved. What slows projects down is time is money. There's so much risk in development. You never know who's going to show up at a meeting, what they're going to say.

I always ask developers about what's the cost of a month of delay from community opposition. What I hear is it's hundreds of thousands of dollars, to sometimes close to a million dollars a month. It's really hard to quantify across all projects because sometimes concessions are made and a project is reduced to 10 stories. That's a lot of units, you no longer are going to make a profit on in the long term. We might not be able to make the numbers pencil as well.

It's really hard, but I think the best real estate owners really understand that community engagement is not a nice-to-have. It's not checking the box, but there's incredible ROI to doing it well. It can actually help your project be much more profitable, especially those owners that are going to stay in that neighbourhood and are going to be long-term neighbours.

[0:21:12] MH: Yeah, couldn't agree more. It's all about striking the balance, whether it's communication, technology like you mentioned. We're seeing many examples, like you just mentioned in Canada right now, projects that 10 stories get knocked down and then five stories get knocked down and it's a delay process. Typical development right now in the GTA from planning to moving is roughly 100 months. It's a very, very long time. With immigration numbers on the rise, our population is on the rise. We're just nowhere near meeting some of these housing targets that were set out. I mean, that's one example of lack of shortage, but long-term effects of NIMBYism and housing affordability and urban development. I'm sure you have a lot of thoughts on that as well.

[0:21:59] KB: Absolutely. I think, again, in the case of California, what's happening in San Francisco is a warning to the rest of us, to not get so behind in the housing production, that you have this exodus of people. You have an economic crisis. There's a homeless crisis there. It's really untenable.

[0:22:17] MH: Now, you mentioned Boston, not wanting to be the next San Francisco. Toronto, Vancouver, we're not at that level just yet. But again, they are, you mentioned before the poster child of how lack of supply and NIMBYism can really create a very difficult place to live and afford to buy a home. What would your advice be to some of these people that are coming to you and being like, “We don't want to be the next San Francisco”? How are you starting that conversation with them?

[0:22:46] KB: I think that there's many conversations that have to be had. In Boston, we're having a lot of them. In the last 10 years, what we've done is we've put into place a master plan. I think the goal was to then streamline development moving forward. For example, in New York City, there's so much has of right, or by right development that can be done. It's very unusual for real estate in New York to have to go through what they call the ULERT process, where it has to go through a much more extensive entitlement and approvals process.

Whereas, in places like Boston, San Francisco, LA, nearly everything has to go through a robust approvals process, building by building. It's very expensive. I think that's one important thing. Streamlining the process internally with the city and how many meetings they have, how they conduct engagement. I think a lot of people have really looked at community engagement since COVID and rethought it. COVID tremendously accelerated a lot of the changes that were already underway with community engagement. What it really did was make people question, was the way that we were doing community engagement with in-person public meetings and hearings actually effective? Was it inclusive? Was it working? The answer is no, and it was very expensive and time-intensive.

People aren't going to go back to the traditional in-person. It's never going to go back to the same way it was. My cautionary warning there is I think a lot of people say, “Oh, we can just do it on Zoom.” What's interesting is some professors from Boston University have done this really interesting study on what they call neighbourhood defenders, which is another term for NIMBYs.

[0:24:19] MH: A little bit of a nicer term, maybe.

[0:24:20] KB: It's a little bit of a nicer term for NIMBYs. They looked at public meeting minutes to see who attends meetings. They're the ones who really put data behind the fact that the people who show up are older, richer, and wider, and 85% opposed to development. After COVID and all of the meetings got moved to Zoom, they went and did the research again. What they found was that it's actually more of the same. Zoom has not fundamentally changed the demographics of who participates. This is a long way of saying, the only way I believe to fundamentally address NIMBYism is to bring more people into the process.

I think that there's a vocal minority, who are the loudest, and they have outside control on the in-person or the Zoom meetings. They're largely single-family homeowners. It's very hard to change the hearts and minds of that crowd. It's very, very hard. At coUrbanize, again, what we do is we look at how do we reach all of the other people who aren't at City Hall, Tuesday at 7.00? How do we make it easy for them to take five minutes out of their day and participate?

[0:25:22] MH: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. It's a very good point. You're not going to change the opinions of most of these people. Instead of wasting your time and energy of trying to change some of these opinions, bring more people in, create more of a communication around the issues there. We've been talking about Toronto, Vancouver, North American cities. Are there any other examples, maybe even international that you've come across that have effectively tackled NIMBYism and can maybe serve as a model to other regions?

[0:25:52] KB: It's an interesting question. I think New Zealand has done a lot with interesting community engagement approaches. They started up zoning in 2016 in their capital and had made a lot of those zoning reforms nationally. A lot of development is done more as a right, or by right. I think that's a very interesting model. I think some of the Northern European cases are also interesting, but it's hard for places like Canada, or the US to really replicate them.

[0:26:20] MH: Yeah, it's a little bit different there, but there are some success stories out there. I mean, you mentioned the future a little bit ago, looking to the future, community engagement is obviously going to be a very, very impactful part of the future of the rental housing industry for both of our countries. How do you really see community engagement evolving in the future? Or where would you like to see it go?

[0:26:43] KB: Yeah. I think what I've seen, especially since COVID, before COVID, we used to tell developers why they needed to go online. Since COVID developers have started coming to us asking, “How do we go online and how do we do engagement inclusively?” Which is music to our ears. I think that people are really asking, how can we do engagement strategically and in a way that can have impact on our bottom line? That it's no longer just a nice-to-have. That's where I see it continuing to evolve. That it's not just a marketing exercise, it's not a check-the-box, but this is really fundamentally a strategic part of the plans and the designs to accelerate timelines and improve a better project.

[0:27:24] MH: You mentioned getting them online more. Are there any other emerging technologies that you believe will even further enhance community engagement?

[0:27:32] KB: That's a really interesting question. It's something that we talk about a lot. I already mentioned Zoom and why I think it's not changing things.

[0:27:40] MH: It's not working.

[0:27:42] KB: The biggest opportunity I see is really around asynchronous opportunities to participate. People are really busy and especially the types of people that we're trying to reach. There are so many efforts around community engagement approaches that are all about, how can we get more people to one particular place at one particular time That just fundamentally doesn't work. I think the asynchronous opportunities, I mentioned text message. I think that there's so much more there. Then this isn't exactly tech, but two areas where I see a lot of opportunity are the policy evolutions and the political process that we just talked about.

The second is actually training the next generation in our industry. Something that I reflected on as a trained planner is that we're just not trained actually for this type of NIMBYism. How do you facilitate actual, meaningful community engagement amidst this dynamic? Something I actually did this past semester is I taught a graduate course at Boston University to future city planners any means to really equip them about how do you deal with community engagement? And was able to bring a lot of our clients who do best practice community engagement to talk about it. It's just, again, surprising. So many of them said, “This was my experience getting yelled at. I'd never been trained. I didn't know how to handle it. I didn't know what to do.” I think it starts with equipping people with the skills to do engagement that's strategic and effective.

[0:29:06] MH: I think that's really good advice. NIMBYism. A lot of people are not used to it, especially if you're like yourself that grew up in a town of 300 people and then moved to a larger city, and then you're hit with it when you're trying as a city planner to foster productive developments and increase engagement. Something you're probably not trained for. Starting early is, I think, really, really good advice there.

Now, your company's been on quite a big journey. You talked about a bunch of different topics. Hoping you can maybe share as our final send-off here, maybe some of your lessons that you've learned, maybe some memorable experience, insights gained from working with different communities and developers, and how all these lessons and insights are creating your company's mission, hopefully solving some of this NIMBYism that we're experiencing.

[0:29:55] KB: The valuable lesson that I always come back to is really staying close to our customers and really, deeply understanding their problems and needs. It's one of our co-values is to be customer-centric and instill confidence. We can only instill confidence when we are really connected to them. One of the ways that we do that is just like our platform, we ask for feedback a lot that we can improve.

In terms of memorable experiences, one that it was a while ago, but I had the opportunity to be more closely involved with the project team was with JBG Smith. We worked with them for a number of years. Through that trajectory, we were able to see their company go from the JBG companies to JBG Smith. They merged with Tornado. They became a publicly traded company. Then the project that we were working with them on became part of the Amazon HQ2 campus. It was just really fun that team cared so much and we were able to have a front-row seat to help move that forward.

[0:30:52] MH: It's a really cool project to be a part of. Toronto was battling for that Amazon HQ. Didn't get it. Happy you could be a part of that in some capacity there. As we're wrapping up here, I know we've talked a lot about NIMBYism and how it's quite a big issue. I think we're both in agreement that transparency, communication, bringing more people into the discussion is really the first way of trying to fight this issue. It's like a positive ending here. I'm hoping you are as optimistic as I hope to be, but what are your hopes and future for community engagement and real estate development over the next five to 10 years?

[0:31:30] KB: I mean, my big hope, like I said, is that more people, particularly more young people, more diverse people who aren't currently in the political process with community engagement, are activated and influencing transforming their communities so that we can address this housing crisis so that more people have access to opportunities.

[0:31:49] MH: Yeah, I hope we can get to that point, too. All right, Karin, well, thank you so much for joining us today. As mentioned, you're a city planner by trade. It's very interesting to hear a perspective of somebody who's talking with the community, talking with developers, really getting a hands-on glimpse of NIMBYism and some of these housing crises that we're experiencing today. For anyone who's interested in learning more about coUrbanize, definitely check out their website. They have a lot of really, really cool projects in Canada specifically. They've worked with Cadillac Fairview. Many people know the Eden Center and the Sherwood Gardens and the Redo Center, so definitely check them out. They're doing a lot of great work. Their platform is really, really innovating, community engagements, and they're really taking the right steps forward in solving a lot of the issues that we're facing. Again, thank you so much for joining us today.

[0:32:38] KB: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[0:32:39] MH: No problem. Have a great day, everyone.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

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