New and Old #263
Pokémon and cities, Christians and cities, apartments vs. ADUs, and a delightful little waste of time
What Pokemon Can Teach City Builders About Place, The Urbaneer, Michael Natelli, April 1, 2026
Just like with most cities, the basic building blocks of every Pokemon game are basically the same. But the unique characteristics of each place open up whole new worlds and experiences (and Pokemon, of course), even when the basic frameworks are essentially or literally copied and pasted.
Even in towns that feel similar to previous ones, the minor shifts that make them somehow entirely different are in a lot of ways just as interesting as the places that are entirely new.
Pokemon, perhaps more so than any other IP, has mastered the art of effective copy/pasting in its world building. It’s something city builders can learn from.
I love these games and how they capture both the cyclical, day-in-the-life feel of something like Harvest Moon, along with the adventuring elements of something like the early Zelda games (although I don’t have much time for them anymore). And I also love articles that discuss video game design elements in the context of urbanism. (I did that here once.)
I wish I’d written this one. There’s a lot more that what I quoted. Read the whole thing.
Can Christians Live in Cities?, Jeremy Bugh, April 1, 2026
I’ll just say up front that it’s insane that this is a question anyone has to ask or answer. But this piece is pushing back against this weird Christian-veneered anti-urbanism.
He starts with a fascinating point, implying that anti-urbanism is a form of the sin of pride:
It’s much easier to blame a city than a person (or people), maybe because that would be to admit the presence of original sin. Instead, we can just blame it on small form variation, trust that if people weren’t in the city they wouldn’t be so bad, and go on living our rural or at least suburban lives.
He’s also responding to Paul Kingsnorth, who I don’t think I can characterize, and who appears to conflate “the city” with consumerism and the worship of technology. As Bugh goes on to explain, that’s weird. One reason it’s weird is that cities are about living in community with other people. If that’s not what they’re about now, we’re doing them wrong. The idea of the city is communitarian, inter-reliant, together.
I also want to pull this bit:
I believe that well-intentioned Christians who enjoy a more rural lifestyle have accidentally led a subset of the Christian culture to believe that the only way to live faithfully is to live on a farm. Now, that might sound ridiculous, but I think the vines of this worldview have grown into the lives of many mainstream Christians. They may not go that far, and they may not live on a farm, but they would if they could.
If you aren’t swimming in the deep end of Christian Substack, you might not even know what I’m referring to (and good for you). Basically what I’m describing could also be called the Wendell Berry syndrome. We read a Wendell Berry book and suddenly we long to live on a farm in Kentucky.
You see a lot of this on the internet: a handful of, basically, nuts whose ideas get diluted and mainstreamed and gain some amount of currency with normal people who have no idea how nuts the undiluted idea is. In fact, this explains a lot about our politics and information environment.
You should read the whole thing, but one more bit:
The Christian life is one focused significantly on being faithful where we are planted. But, it is not focused exclusively on that. There’s this little thing called the Great Commission. If we are to go and make disciples of all nations, we should go where the nations populate.
To that I’ll also add, heaven is imagined as the City of God in Christian thought.
Alchemy of ADUs: Why America’s Most Expensive Housing Unit Is the Only One That Scales, Governance Cybernetics, Dave Deek, March 31, 2026
Wild statistics on homebuilding here:
California permitted 1,269 ADUs in 2016. By 2019: 14,702. By 2023, Los Angeles County alone permitted more than 45,000. One in three homes now permitted in the city of LA is an ADU, in neighborhoods where apartments hadn’t been built in forty years. Meanwhile, national multifamily production has been stuck at roughly 350,000 units a year for four decades. Through booms and busts, through low rates and high. The line barely moves.
So the expensive, inefficient option is the one that’s actually scaling, while the cheap industrial product can’t get out of its own way. Understanding how this trick works is the key to understanding how housing actually gets built in America. And the YIMBYs reading this (who have spent years fighting zoning battles and are understandably impatient) may find the mechanism delightfully underhanded.
Some of why this is:
The key question: What does it actually take to get a unit built, occupied, and on the market?
Ask that, and something interesting happens (as we see in real life). A $300,000 ADU where the homeowner already owns the land, already has equity to finance it, and can get a ministerial permit in 60 days has a total cost to the system that is far lower than a $200,000-per-unit apartment that took 3 years to entitle, 12 months to secure a construction loan, 24 months to build, and required $50 million in institutional capital. The ADU’s construction cost premium is the price of bypassing every bottleneck that makes housing expensive to produce in America.
A little bit of a policy-wonk read, but worth it if this interests you.
I love a little pointless diversion. Don’t read this if you don’t want a tune stuck in your head for (at least) the rest of the day.)
Related Reading:
The "Wendell Berry Syndrome." Yes.