Brian Wiesner

I spoke about how I didn’t agree with James Dean when he famously said Dream as if you’ll live forever, Live as if you’ll die today . I prefer to contemplate life as if you’ll live forever . To follow desires free from the conscious limitations of time.

There’s a famous—to urbanists—story about Amsterdam in the 1970s. Today, Amsterdam is the poster child, almost the byword, for a quiet, clean European city that makes lots of room for pedestrians and bike riders. When people talk about “Europe” in terms of land use, they often mean, or you imagine, Amsterdam.

To the extent that the average person... See more

Legalizing Dense Development is the Single Most Effective Solution to the Housing Crisis

We Now Have Clear Proof that Building Dramatically Really Does Lower Rents, and it Works Quickly

Better social nutrition

Social media feels like the “empty calories” of human connection. I’m filling my cup with connections, but they lack nutrition. They’re social donuts.

In its place, I’ve spent most of my social time in intimate and often vulnerable 1-1 conversations, usually while on walks in the woods.

I’ve been more present with my wife,... See more

This order created uncoordinated systems that worked, without staff, as if by magic. Such was Jacobs’s “Sidewalk Ballet.” With density, she argued, came “eyes on the street,” a community-based security system that required neither barbed wire nor an extensive police presence. With wide sidewalks comes trusted interactions, even with strangers—a... See more

If I look back at all the good things that have happened in my career in the last 3 years, they all come from writing. One little habit of writing 1,000 words a day revolutionized my career.

These two archetypes both embody a sense of superiority for their way of life. Morning cities love bragging about the integrity of early starts, which (in their minds) automatically make them better: more ambitious, virtuous. And maybe there’s some truth to that: scientists talk about the morning morality effect, which posits that people behave... See more

Even the sound of the word repels the smartest and most creative among us. You hear it and think, well that isn’t for me. Networking feels icky and so boring. It is something that a gel-haired sales bro does to fool people into buying what they’re selling. Not me.

It’s transactional. It feels daunting and unnatural. Plus, imagine mustering up the... See more

Henry James speaks of his deliberate consignment of an idea to the realm of the unconscious where it can be worked upon and realized: "I was charmed with my idea, which would take, however, much working out; and because it had so much to give, I think, must I have dropped it for the time into the deep well of unconscious cerebra-tion: not without... See more