Aspiring real estate developer. Product designer. Urbanist. Mostly on the other place. 🦋

Spokane, WA
Joined April 2009
I am an "all of the above" housing guy at this point. But it needs to be said: No one builds "affordable cars". Used cars are just new cars that got old. Same goes for housing. We don't have affordable housing today, because we didn't build market rate housing yesterday.
We’re working to solve California’s housing crisis. It was a pleasure to join Assemblymember @BuffyWicks, labor, local elected officials, and community members who are turning this site in El Cerrito into housing: public land next to a BART station, a 100% affordable building, homes built in a factory, and union labor on the job. It’s the first phase of a plan to turn BART parking lots into 743 homes. This is what building housing the right way looks like. Every Californian deserves a home they can afford, close to where they work.
30
43
3
419
8,725
Big news: Hannah and I are starting a small nonprofit. We’re calling it Inland Discovery Trails, and the purpose is to brand, map, promote, and place wayfinding signs on paved and dirt trails in the inland northwest.
1
7
140
Yesterday, we won a pitch contest at a lovely community event called Spokane SOUP. We’ll use the money we won to print and place wayfinding signs on trails in the West Central and Riverside neighborhoods. Big thanks to everyone who voted for us!
1
1
61
I’m spending lots of time meeting with folks around the community who manage trails, greenways, and outdoor advocacy groups. If that sounds like you, I’d love to chat with you, so please reach out: [email protected]
17
For decades, NYC has run one of the largest, most unacknowledged welfare programs in its history, for suburban car owners. By giving away 3 million street parking spaces of expensive public real estate for free, it’s a multi-billion dollar annual wealth transfer
219
200
45
3,308
202,271
lpangborn retweeted
One year ago today, my City eliminated minimum parking requirements for multifamily housing. One year later: the sky didn’t fall. Most projects still include parking. But some infill housing is finally moving forward where parking mandates once made it infeasible. 📍Salem, MA
10
51
6
408
23,366
There's something deeply unsafe about safetyism. We wish people a safe flight—yet flying commercially is almost perfectly safe. We don't wish people a safe drive—yet US roads are the equivalent of a 737 crashing every 48h, killing everyone aboard. But we scare people when they get in an airplane but not when they get in a car. The biggest opportunity we have to improve road safety is self-driving, yet there's lots of anti-self-driving safety talk, and self-driving is held to a *dramatically* superhuman safety bar. The din about AI safety has reached extreme tenor—yet there have been zero material safety incidents. And the positive benefits of AI could improve and save many lives. But the safetyists say we must slow down. We destroyed the nuclear power industry in this country nominally out of safety concerns, yet joule for joule nuclear power is *by far* the safest form of energy, even accounting for Chernobyl (a genuine disaster) and Three Mile Island (generally a non-event). Building and fire codes are supposedly there to protect us from unsafe buildings. But actually the red tape makes development slow and sometimes impossible. So the safetyism protects us from jobs, innovation, and reindustrialization. TSA was there nominally to protect us from terrorist threats—yet to the extent it pushes passengers at the margins from safe airplanes to dangerous roads, it actually kills not just time and money but actual humans. Safetyism is deeply unsafe.
91
114
26
957
45,787
This is the realist video of the shit goin down. Keep leaning on each other Spokane, we'll get through it.
5
24
140
16,423
Riverside State Park appears to be destroyed
View of Spokane this morning
1
3
9
334
lpangborn retweeted
*Warning graphic language* I just got this video showing some of the damage in the Indian Trail area near the elementary school on West Weile. Still no official word on how many homes have been lost in the fires. I’m very sorry for the families who’ve lost their homes.
120
295
38
1,680
194,198
RT @davidpwu: Volleyball friends on the way out of the evacuation zone in Spokane on W Strong, after evacuating from Spike and Dig but then…
6
1
🇺🇸⚡️ — Several homes ablaze in Spokane, Washington.
2
4
559
The Dwight Merkel Sports Complex in Spokane, Washington, is on fire as the Old Trails Wildfire continues spreading. The blaze has burned about 2,300 acres, with tens of thousands homes in the line of fire, mandatory evacuations issued in parts of Spokane
3
7
2,190
The state tells me the fire has jumped the fire and is now 500 acres Aerial photo :
You’re unable to view this Post because this account owner limits who can view their Posts. Learn more
1
5
1
8
8,746
Every Democrat since Carter has decreased the federal deficit. Every Republican since Eisenhower has increased the federal deficit.
If there is ever a social phenomenon that needs to be studied, it is how the GOP has been able to hoodwink people for decades into thinking that they the party of “fiscal responsibility” when there is absolutely ZERO evidence to support that claim. And I mean ZERO.
784
7,636
236
26,395
1,181,936
Oslo had 41 road deaths in 1975. By 2019, that number was one: a single driver who hit a fence. Oslo effectively ended road deaths by redesigning its downtown for people instead of cars. They removed 700 street parking spaces and replaced them with 37 miles of protected bike lanes and pocket parks. They lowered speed limits inside and outside the city. Many streets to car traffic entirely. They created "heart zones" around every elementary school where cars can't pick up or drop off kids. Did it kill the city? Nope. Retail sales at shops went up. Kids started walking and biking to school unsupervised. Air quality improved measurably and traffic congestion got better because fewer people wanted to drive through a pedestrianized downtown. Every piece of Oslo's strategy is available to any American city that wants it. The problem is solved, now we just need to implement it.
60
490
55
1,664
78,821
"We build our American cities around fire trucks… …We should design our cities, then make the fire trucks fit." In America, we have the largest fire trucks in the world— and they’re quietly shaping how our cities look, feel, and function. In this clip with @AustinTunnell , we break down how one overlooked policy is leading to worse urban design.
67
148
22
1,411
172,255
lpangborn retweeted
60% of market demand is for homes with occupants who sleep in ONE bedroom. That's 60,000,000 households. But zoning prevents small, beautiful, affordable homes from becoming abundant because of lot-size minimums, density maximums, single-family-only zoning, parking requirements, discretionary reviews, etc, etc, etc.
Strange how so much of housing still talks about good school districts When households with kids are in the minority Housing in the future should look very different but of course it wont be if the big builders don’t change
5
3
1
23
3,108
But remember, OpenAI and Sam Altman have deprioritized safety left and right newyorker.com/magazine/2026/…
Introducing Project Glasswing: an urgent initiative to help secure the world’s most critical software. It’s powered by our newest frontier model, Claude Mythos Preview, which can find software vulnerabilities better than all but the most skilled humans. anthropic.com/glasswing
3
55