If you present information on the nuts and bolts of what it take to develop smaller-scale, incremental projects and the audience includes elected officials, municipal staffers, and local activists, they will ask you "What can our town do to encourage building differently?"  It is not so much what a municipality can do, but what the individual leaders in a town are willing to do.  Here is my list for those leaders.

1. Stop trying to guess how much parking is needed. Eliminate off-street parking minimums from your regulations.

2. Manage the supply of public parking with rational pricing. Convenient on-street parking should cost more than a space on the top floor of a parking deck two blocks away.

3. Get serious about streets as public spaces. Narrow lanes to 10 feet. Convert dumb Stroads to boulevards. Put on-street parking everywhere. Install better bike infrastructure like buffered bike lanes. Replace unwarranted traffic signals with stop signs.  Don't wait for your Public Works Director to lead this effort.  (Believe me, he's had plenty of time).

4. Stop letting your fire marshal design the town. Direct the Fire Department to figure out how to provide good emergency services on a network of connected low speed streets.

5. Overhaul your zoning. Get rid of minimum lot area and minimum lot width. Dump the silly maximum lot coverage percentage. The best incentives for incremental development support a clear vision and a reasonable process.  Your Comprehensive Plan may contain something resembling a clear vision, but do your zoning reg's and development standards screw up your chances for getting it delivered?

6. Think Small and Think Local. Encourage the small operators you have in your town and don't worry about convincing large developers to come from out of the area to fix your town.  They are probably not coming.  If they do, agree to come and build in your town, the results are rarely what you had in mind.

7. Dig deep. Cowboy up. Find some allies.  Making any of these thing a reality in your town will stir up some shit.  Ask yourself if how much political risk or career risk you are willing to take to make a difference.  Figure out what your Plan B is in case you lose the election, get demoted, or get fired.  Once you have your downside covered, find some serious people to work with and make some changes.

  Louisville, Kentucky has a lot of excellent smaller scale buildings.  My favorites are the great 3 bay mixed use buildings like the one above.  They are all over the place at 2, 3, and sometime 4 stories. Attached in the more urban parts of town, and typically freestanding out in the neighborhoods.  These are very flexible buildings "just right" for their settings.  Very cool.

When I hear the question "How Do I get Started as a Developer?"  it is usually followed by a string of questions which amount to "Can you draw me a map that will guide me through every detailed step to becoming a developer?"

People who are interested in this line of work come from a wide range of starting points.  A lot of them already have a fair amount of skill in one aspect or another of the built environment.  They may be very accomplished in one or more specialized areas as a contractor, broker, planner, activist, architect, or property manager.  They know enough about how things work to recognize that they have a lot to learn outside of the field that originally led them to development.

So let's group the skills a developer needs into 7 groups:

1. Urban Design, Site Selection, Site Planning and Civil Engineering.
2. Building Design.
3. Deal Architecture, Pro Formas and Finance.
4. Entitlements.
5. Construction and Construction Management.
6. Marketing, Sales, Leasing and Property Management.
7. Communication and Follow Through.

Very few people master all of those skills.  If you start with small projects, you can gain an overview, and understanding when they are needed at the various stages of a project.  You get a sense of the basics for each skill set.  If you don't have the skill which the project requires, you can't go without.  So you should borrow or rent the needed skill.  Look for people who are genuinely interested in your project and who are actually happy to teach you about their specialty.  I figure a developer does not have to know everything, but they should have a good idea who to call before it is too late.

After a number of Small Developer Boot Camp (calendar here) Jim Kumon and Gracen Johnson have put together the graphic above which has three types of skills and activities allocated over 5 phases of a development project.  I think it is a substantial improvement over the list of 7 skills because it give the reader a sense of when they need to know what, or when they have to find help as they move their first project from idea into an actual building.  This is a work in process, so comments and critiques are welcome and needed.  What do you think?