Building A Better Block with Andrew Howard

How can a one-day event spark lasting change? How can community design be open sourced? What should we be measuring if we want to gauge positive change?

I talk with transportation and placemaking expert, Andrew Howard about his experiences doing just this with Team Better Block. Andrew is the director of placemaking at WGI, a national design and professional services firm leading in technology-based solutions for the construction of public infrastructure and real estate development. Andrew and co-founded Better Block in 2010 as a transportation and placemaking focused public outreach firm that temporarily re-engineers auto-dominated, blighted, and underused urban areas into vibrant centers.

In this episode, Andrew and I discuss:

• How his abuelita first kindled his passion for the lives of city centers.

• His journey from Mineral Wells, Texas to being a Harvard Loeb Fellow.

• How he and Jason Roberts first founded Better Block in 2010, and the problem they wanted to solve.

• Why we need to get out in the community more, and spend more time making and less time behind computers.

• What we should be measuring if we want to impact positive change (hint, it is not the number of cars)

• Andrew’s hopes for the future of food and beverage as intrinsically linked to city and community planning.

Alongside his neighbors he and Jason Roberts built the first two Better Blocks in Dallas, Texas and pioneered the idea of using pop up demonstrations as an urban planning method. Now having been used in over 200 communities from Sydney, Australia to Bethel, Vermont Better Block is seen as an alternative to the typical design and defend urban planning method of the past. They have some amazing resources on their website so make sure to check out Team Better Block.Com.