National Town Builders Association

01/07/2026

As a follow-up to the latest episode of the Townbuilders podcast, we wanted to give a big congratulations to NTBA member Mike Hathorne on his new book: The Great Housing Reversal and the New American Dream

“As America enters a post-Boomer era, the very DNA of housing is mutating. In The Great Housing Reversal and the New American Dream, urban strategist Mike Hathorne dismantles the myth of a nationwide housing shortage and reframes it as a structural mismatch between yesterday’s suburban blueprint and today’s demographic reality. Drawing from decades in community planning, Hathorne reveals how aging Baby Boomers, single-person households, and diverse younger generations are redefining what it means to live
well. He shows how this shift will reorder real estate markets, reshape zoning, and demand new models of walkable, intergenerational, mixed-use neighborhoods that build connection rather than isolation.”

Available now on Amazon: https://a.co/d/9NsbZOX

30/06/2026

SEASON 4, EPISODE 3 - OUT NOW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKz1mLIRCT8

Join our host, Levi, as he sits down for a chat with Mike Hathorne, urban strategist and author of The Great Housing Reversal. Mike's new book argues that America's housing crisis isn't a shortage problem; it's a misalignment problem: we're still building for a 1970s household in a 2020s world. They discuss what the demographic data is actually showing, why the systems keep us locked into building the wrong product, and why the market is screaming for walkable, community-oriented developments.

Also available for listening on:
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/1BP7pRKjQWG1bfkkjc5b5z
Apple - https://apple.co/3TaemC1

Podcast Episode · Townbuilders · June 30 · 59m

16/06/2026

At our 2025 Spring Roundtable just over a year ago, we got an inside look at Eastdale Village, a beautiful new town center in the Hudson Valley, NY. Fast forward to today, and we are thrilled to share some incredible news: a new piazza in the heart of the village has been named in honor of NTBA member Giovanni Palladino, the Director of Architecture for the project!

Giovanni took a moment to share some of the background about the new Piazza Palladino with us: “We realized last summer that the south side of the project need activation and was lacking a public gathering space. With a new restaurant nearing completion, we made the decision to remove a perfectly good street (part of our Main Street) and convert it to a public gathering space modeled after Italian Piazzas. We added a small pavilion for music which also provided a termination for Eastdale Ave. As you can imagine, the cost of this modification was significant but within a couple weeks of its opening, the change to that side of Eastdale has been unbelievable, and it’s surpassed our expectations. The businesses have also seen a tremendous benefit in traffic and sales.”

This is what townbuilding is all about!

11/06/2026

SEASON 4, EPISODE 2 - OUT NOW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJkGoYDY3RQ

In the latest episode of the Townbuilders Podcast, Levi sits down with Scott Snodgrass—farmer, entrepreneur, and founder of Agmenity—to talk about what it really means to build an agrihood. Scott came to real estate by way of the farm. After getting drawn into consulting for a neighborhood regenerative farm, Scott started a business consulting for developers looking to create agricultural amenities, before eventually starting Meristem Communities and taking on a development himself. Today, Indigo is a 235-acre walkable, mixed-use community on the outskirts of Houston built around a working farm at its center. Scott is one of the leading voices in the nation when it comes to developing agrihoods and is a wealth of knowledge on the subject. A big thank you to our sponsors: James Hardie, Bret Jones P.A. and Townright Studio!

Also available for listening on:
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/5oXIf1WLFbQmob2uB7qfUm
Apple - https://apple.co/4xnJRsa

In this episode, Levi sits down with Scott Snodgrass — farmer, entr...

04/06/2026

The last day of the NTBA international trip took place in Querétaro, where the Laws of the Indies could be read less as a static grid and more as a durable civic framework: connected plazas, promenades, religious and civic landmarks, and streets scaled for public life. The city’s 18th-century aqueduct—74 monumental arches that remain the defining symbol of Querétaro—offered a powerful lesson in how infrastructure can become identity, beauty, and urban legibility all at once. After a day studying colonial architecture, modernity, and city design, the group returned to San Miguel de Allende for a festive closing dinner, overlooking the city’s rooftops and towers.

02/06/2026

Day 3 in Mexico! The NTBA contingent travelled from Atotonilco’s sacred architecture into the urban core of San Miguel de Allende, where the lessons shifted from monument and landscape to streets, plazas, blocks, and building types. Seen through the lens of the Laws of the Indies tradition, San Miguel offered a powerful study in civic space, walkable urbanism, and the courtyard typology — where buildings turn inward for shade, privacy, craft, and social life while still shaping a continuous public realm at the street. For town builders, developers, architects, and urban designers, the day revealed how preservation, human-scaled frontages, mixed uses, and enduring architectural patterns can keep a historic city both beautiful and alive.

01/06/2026

Day 2 of this year's international trip opened with a roundtable on lessons from Guanajuato—how terrain, civic space, tunnels, alleys, and small-scale retail can work together to make a city memorable, walkable, and economically alive. Before leaving, the NTBA contingent climbed to Monumento de Pípila for a final bird’s-eye view, reading the city as builders, developers, architects, and urban designers: plazas, roofs, streets, and hillsides interlocked into one extraordinary urban fabric. Then it was on to San Miguel de Allende—starting with a memorable dinner in the city center to begin the next chapter of the Mexico Immersion.

28/05/2026

Building on the success of NTBA’s 2024 International Immersion Trip to England, the 2026 Mexico Immersion began this week in Guanajuato – a World Heritage city and living case study in town-building, architecture, and urban design. From its plazas and courtyards to its winding hillside streets and remarkable underground river-and-tunnel network, Guanajuato shows how topography, infrastructure, culture, and civic life can shape an unforgettable urban experience. Just as instructive is the city’s fine-grained pattern of micro-retail and small storefronts, showing how lean, neighborhood-scaled commercial uses can animate daily life and strengthen the walkable urban fabric.

21/05/2026

SEASON 4, EPISODE 1 - OUT NOW: https://youtu.be/oCKeP2-CgZI?si=DYpCvi9rFumCIGgj

We're thrilled to announce that the Townbuilders podcast is back! In this season's inaugural episode, host Levi Wintz sits down with Jan Sramek, CEO and founder of California Forever—one of the most ambitious development projects in the United States today. The plan is to build a new walkable city for more than 400,000 residents in Solano County, northeast of San Francisco, anchored by a world-class manufacturing park and the largest shipyard in America. In this conversation, Levi and Jan discuss how he raised a billion dollars and quietly assembled 70,000 acres, how the traditional urbanism of American cities like Charleston and Savannah has inspired the design, and what phase one of building a city from scratch actually looks like. Check it out, and we can't wait to share the rest of the season with all of you over the coming months!

Also available for listening on:
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/1RCyEER8Vj3bAABbnNdCTJ
Apple - https://apple.co/4fDWskn