When Your City Feels Like Housing Musical Chairs

About this episode

The episode discusses the fragility of housing stability in booming cities and the impact of zoning on the housing market.

What happens when the American Dream stops meaning “doing better than your parents” and starts meaning “just not falling behind”? Norm Van Eeden Petersman sits down with Andrew Burleson and Ryan Puzycki to untangle why stability feels so fragile, even in “booming” cities. They trace how zoning turns housing into a rigged game of musical chairs, how some places face strangling exclusion while others slide into rolling blight, and how missing bottom rungs on the housing ladder and remote work push rising costs — and workers — farther out. They connect these pressures to a new American Dream: finding a stable home that won’t vanish with the next lease. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES "The American Dream Meant Upward Mobility. Now, it Means Stability." by Rachel Barber and Veronica Bravo, USAToday.com (March 2026) Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) Andrew Burleson (LinkedIn) Ryan Puzycki (LinkedIn) Articles Mentioned and Downzone: Adaptive Code (Article) Remote Isn't Working (Article) The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien (Audiobook) The Social House Will Not Reopen (Article) Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast (Site) Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom. This podcast is made possible by Strong…

People in this episode

Guests: Norm Van Eeden Petersman, Andrew Burleson, Ryan Puzycki

Topics covered

• housing stability
• zoning
• American Dream
• urban development
• remote work
• housing market

Keywords

• housing
• zoning
• stability
• American Dream
• costs
• exclusion
• blight

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Strong Towns, USAToday.com, Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

Books & works: The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien

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