The Building Culture Podcast

About The Building Culture Podcast

Fusing the liberal arts with architecture, construction and real estate to build a more beautiful, resilient, and thriving world for PEOPLE. I believe a more thriving world is possible through restoring our built environment. But today's hyper-segregated, financialized building industry is not conducive to solving complex problems or creating dynamic places for human flourishing. I interview a wide range of guests involved with crafting the built world: developers, architects, urban designers, builders, investors, inventors & officials, exploring holistic solutions to a better human habitat.

Publisher

Austin Tunnell

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

29 Sept 2023

Latest episode

23 Jul 2026

Latest episodes

4 of 51 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   23 Jul 2026TRANSCRIPT

   #50: Alexandra Vondeling: The Neighborhood IS the amenity

   Host Austin Tunell interviews Alexandra Vondeling, Principal at Opticos Design, about building missing middle housing and how the neighborhood itself serves as the ultimate amenity.

2. 

   26 May 2026TRANSCRIPT

   #49 Alicia Pederson: How We Designed Families Out of the City

   Host Austin Tunnell interviews Courtyard Urbanist founder Alicia Pederson about designing cities that welcome families by reviving the courtyard block typology.

3. 

   5 May 2026TRANSCRIPT

   #48 Mike Hathorne: The Great Housing Reversal - It's not a housing shortage, but a mismatch.

   Mike Hathorne spent 30 years in real estate and development trying to understand why the industry keeps building the wrong thing. His answer is in his book, The Great Housing Reversal.It's not a housing shortage. It's a housing mismatch. 64% of American households are one or two people. Over half the housing stock has three or more bedrooms. Mike walks through the three simultaneous trends reshaping who needs a home in America, why the development industry hasn't caught up, and what the neighborhoods people actually want look like.We also talk about the LDS ward study that revealed what happens to communities built on monolithic housing over time, the Harvard research showing that access across socioeconomic lines raises lifetime earnings by 20%, and what it looks like when a developer finally builds the kind of place the data has been pointing toward for decades.Mike recently relocated to Northwest Arkansas to join High Street, a traditional neighborhood development firm. He's also one of the clearest thinkers I've met on the relationship between how we build neighborhoods and how we live in them.Chapters00:00 Introduction00:44 Mike's background: 30 years in development and the path that led to the book03:10 Housing mismatch, not shortage05:00 The numbers: 64% of households are 1-2 people vs. 54% of homes with 3+ bedrooms07:33 Three simultaneous disruptors: fertility rates, marriage rates, and an aging population14:43 Zoning: 75% of residential land locked into single-family20:07 The comps problem: why real estate financing runs backwards from innovation27:29 Placemaking takes longer: lessons from Wheeler District32:28 What supply that matches the market actually looks like36:35 Connectedness is the new luxury42:45 The LDS ward study: why diverse housing makes resilient neighborhoods49:00 When communities can't support themselves, government fills the gap53:47 Personal stories: when mixed neighborhoods change lives57:18 Finding your tribe: Mike's move to Northwest Arkansas and CNU 34CONNECT WITH MIKE HATHORNEhttps://www.amazon.com/Great-Housing-Reversal-American-Dream/dp/B0G1FG4PXN greathousingreversal.substack.com linkedin.com/in/hathorneCNU 34, Northwest Arkansas (May 12-16): cnu.org/cnu-34CONNECT WITH AUSTIN TUNNELLNewsletter: https://playbook.buildingculture.com/ / austintunnell / austin-tunnell-2a41894a / austintunnell CONNECT WITH BUILDING CULTUREhttps://www.buildingculture.com/ / buildingculture / build_culture / buildculture

Inside a recent episode

#50: Alexandra Vondeling: The Neighborhood IS the amenity

Published 23 Jul 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] And I also think about it as, you know, missing middle housing is just ingredients within a complete neighborhood, if we think about building and building complete neighborhoods, I think the large majority of the bell curve should be missing middle housing. And that's not, you know, a hard rule. I'm just kind of saying, generally speaking, versus right now, all we know how to build is multifamily apartment buildings, and, and horizontal sprawl, low density horizontal sprawl. And then we make up for that low density with the multifamily apartment buildings. And that's like all we build and like maybe at the very tail end of the bell curves, you get some missing middle housing. […]

Who has been a guest on The Building Culture Podcast

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Alexandra Vondeling
• Alex Vondeling
• Alicia Pederson
• Ann Sussman
• Kelsey Bradley

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

61 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

145 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 59 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

72

Social presence

94

YouTube

0

Engagement

67

Contact The Building Culture Podcast

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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Questions about The Building Culture Podcast