HeyJaredThe Happy Urbanist
Tactical and practical ways to empower yourself and your community towards a better city.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
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- Sep 25, 2026
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- Jul 10, 2026
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The word of the day is Propinquity (opens the original)
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I’ve subtly begun choosing to invest in people who live nearby rather than just those who are like-minded. What I’ve found so far is: that I’ve grown in acquaintances, and it’s made my life both easier and more interesting.I now live near friends. I didn’t do this by convincing friends to move near me, but by convincing myself that the people who live nearby are, in fact, friendship material.And lastly, that real community isn’t best curated like a Spotify playlist.I want to touch on these three
It’s not good vs. Evil, it’s doing good vs. doing nothing. (opens the original)
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A friend recently posted about how Hollywood depictions of villains are becoming too sympathetic. His point is that we need villains because we need to know there’s real evil in the world.I pushed back on it.I think it’s good to know that there is no pure evil out there, totally separate from us. It’s regular people gone bad, not some separate species. Whatever bad is out there (gestures broadly) is also in here (points to self).There’s this thing called the fundamental attribution
Suburban repair (opens the original)
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One of the biggest challenges to creating a better world is the inability of some people to imagine something different. The imagination barrier is something I’ve touched on before, so I won’t spend much time on it. But it is real. People who see cars as the only means of access and think that if cars go away, accessibility will as well.People who like the status quo and think there is nothing for them in potential change.And people who long for change but assume there must be some major societa
More regular people riding bikes (opens the original)
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Imagine if the public face of every hobby was its most hardcore members. Like, if you tell people you enjoy camping and they automatically assume you’re in love with mountaineering and wanting to summit K2.This is sort of how cycling is. It’s aspirational in a way that the most visible idea of cycling are the people who look like they want to be in the Tour De France. Google the term cyclist and you’ll get images of the most intense version of cycling. Even taming the search term to “bicycle rid
You could do this cool thing and others will probably join you (opens the original)
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The Chattanooga Urbanist SocietyThe first thing you should know is that The Chattanooga Urbanist Society (CUS) is not a real org; it has more in common with three racoons in a trench coat. Instead, it’s a mutual aid group with no real hierarchy that takes on public works projects without any real budget or permission. I think next week I’ll tell more of the story of how the CUS got started, but today I want to share what I’ve learned from being part of a bench-building movement here.The short ve
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