Designing a Connected World with Peter Block

Peter Block is an author, organizational development consultant, and citizen of Cincinnati, Ohio. Among other books, he has written Flawless Consulting, Stewardship, The Answer to How Is Yes, Community, The Abundant Community, and An Other Kingdom. His work has centered around reclaiming our humanity in the relentless modern world. He has a deep belief in the central role that place and our relationship to it plays in our life—our happiness and our health.

Peter and show host Neal discuss Peter's career from one of his earliest and most formative sparks of inspiration, as a graduate student thinking about how groups work together. In the conversation, they explore how our spaces and dominate cultural narratives can divide us, and how they can be shifted to bring us together. Peter also shares his approach to designing effective community meetings that bring the public into the process of development in a way that is measured, inclusive, and productive. He also talks about some of the projects and developments that are giving him hope, such as dividend housing and pocket neighborhoods. To learn more about Peter Block's work, visit PeterBlock.com. 

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Transcript

Peter Block: The nice thing about places, everybody's got to have them.

Peter Block: And so our work is to tell people that their well being is dependent on their relationship to the place they are.

Peter Block: Forget about where they work.

Peter Block: And if you want to raise your kids, you need neighbors to do that.

Peter Block: If you volunteer 100 hours a year, you'll live two years longer.

Peter Block: There's something call social prescribing them, where doctors look at me and say, peter, for you to be healthy, you got to volunteer at 10 hours a week.

Peter Block: So all of these say that the place I'm in and the way we connect to each other can produce the life I want to lead.

Neal Collins: Welcome to the regenerative real estate podcast, a show about human environments and how they can be used as a force for good conversations that educate and inspire people looking for a different way to do real estate?

Neal Collins: I'm Neal Collins, and on this episode, I'm joined by Peter Block, a citizen of Cincinnati, author, and a renowned organizational development consultant whose work catalyzes cultural change and brings people together.

Neal Collins: To begin this podcast, I want to invoke the sentiments from the philosopher Charles Eisenstein, who wrote a book called the more beautiful way our hearts know is possible.

Neal Collins: Now, this title has gone on to become a phrase that's shared by many, and I found that the work of our guest today, Peter Block, really goes hand in hand towards the creation of this kind of world.

Neal Collins: You see, Peter has worked in the realm of organizational development for the past couple decades, working across companies, organizations, community groups, and municipalities to bring people together in order to unlock potential and to create change.

Neal Collins: I first connected with Peter's work when I came to understand that there is tremendous power embedded within well crafted generative questions, so much more so than trying to come with solutions.

Neal Collins: In our world, where division is more common than unity, it seems that we're creating identities along divisional lines, and we're gridlocked in making decisions on how we want to live as a society.

Neal Collins: For me, Peter's work stands out in contrast to this, where he advocates to invite people in and find the commonality in small groups of people by enrolling them in their agency as citizens.

Neal Collins: Peter's book called Community the structure of belonging has been extremely impactful upon me, and I've witnessed what happens whenever you invite possibility through a generative question.

Neal Collins: What I didn't know about Peter's work that came out through this podcast is what he thinks about architecture and how he thinks that these physical spaces create divisions within our society, and how he has this desire to see the way that we design and build change in order to bring people and communities together.

Neal Collins: It is a real treat to have Peter come on to the show and share his thoughts on how our physical structures and the processes that we take to create our world can be redone.

Neal Collins: And this is in a process that he calls combining architecture with social architecture.

Neal Collins: Now, before we get into this episode, I want to get into the segment of the show called the ecosystem Directory spotlight.

Neal Collins: This directory is our Rolodex of companies and organizations that are purpose aligned with the work that we do to bring regenerative projects into life here at latitude.

Neal Collins: The directory is how we help people like yourself easily find resources in order to create healthy, resilient and beautiful homes, habitats and communities.

Neal Collins: It can be found on our website at Dash Directory.

Neal Collins: The directory member I want to highlight today is Moretti design.

Neal Collins: Moretti is an internationally inspired design studio that creates interiors from the midwest all the way to France with a focus on promoting healthy interiors through sustainable and regenerative design principles.

Neal Collins: Moretti design harnesses a european sensibility in their work, assuring that every piece and material is carefully selected with intention.

Neal Collins: The results are timeless, practical and versatile spaces inspired by their client stories.

Neal Collins: So without further ado, let's get into the conversation with Peter Block.

Neal Collins: And of course, if you like what we're putting out here with the podcast, I would be grateful for your support by subscribing to the show and leaving a rating and review.

Neal Collins: Okay, here we go.

Speaker C: Peter Block this is an immense pleasure and certainly a conversation that I have been hoping to hold for a long time, mainly because we've used your book community as a resource for company building, culture, philosophy.

Speaker C: And so it's just a real treat to have you join on this podcast.

Speaker C: So welcome.

Peter Block: Thank you.

Peter Block: And I love the invitation from you because the word architecture means the world to me and affects everything we try to do.

Peter Block: It's powerful, and the community book doesn't do it justice.

Peter Block: Recent book I did has a whole section on architecture, and I love the notion that we create buildings and then buildings create us.

Peter Block: So if I want to imagine anything in the world to occur or be created, the space that ithabits is hugely powerful.

Peter Block: So to be with you in this conversation is awesome.

Speaker C: I love to start at the beginning.

Speaker C: You have a body of work that spans quite a couple of different facets, and I'd love to pick up and understand what the threads of those are and really get into maybe what catalyzed the work that you've been pursuing over the last couple of decades.

Peter Block: I wish it was just a couple of decades in graduate school.

Peter Block: I ran into something called a tea group, and it was a circle of twelve people that spent a few days together trying to understand who they were and how they connected to each other.

Peter Block: And I was mesmerized by that.

Peter Block: And that kind of launched me into consulting this thing called organizational development, worrying about culture and connection.

Peter Block: And that kind of evolved me into caring about the collective, about groups.

Peter Block: For a while it was business and organizational cultures.

Peter Block: And then in the gave a talk to a bunch of city managers, and I realized they were up to something.

Peter Block: They cared about my civic space.

Peter Block: I thought all they cared about was roads and electoral systems and governance, but they cared about my civility, my citizenship, who I was.

Peter Block: So I kind of switched into the community world halfway through, and I was going to write a book about it, because I'd gotten the habits of writing book.

Peter Block: You kind of write books to get things off your mind.

Peter Block: And then if other people find them interesting, that's a bonus.

Peter Block: And my wife suggested, perhaps before I wrote a book on community, I should try it.

Peter Block: And so I did.

Peter Block: I got involved.

Peter Block: And early in that process, I read Christopher Alexander timeless way of building.

Peter Block: And it changed my thinking totally.

Peter Block: He talked about a room can be defined by the quality of aliveness, and occurred to me, that's all I had been doing for 20 years, was trying to bring a quality of aliveness into a room.

Peter Block: And that's when kind of the world of architecture and the world of groups and relationships and dialogue merged for me.

Peter Block: And then I became a space cadet.

Peter Block: Everywhere I went, I wanted to rearrange the room.

Peter Block: Every building I walked into, I either felt welcome or I didn't.

Peter Block: Every public space I went into either encouraged us to be together or encouraged us to grandeur and being alone.

Peter Block: And so most of my work has been to create an alternative to individualism.

Peter Block: And I realized that the narrative is what defines us, the context in which we live.

Peter Block: And if we have a narrative of individualism and competition and scarcity, and an economics of scarcity, then the common good will be sacrificed.

Peter Block: And to me, the world of architecture is a direct line into the common good, because once we build something, it lasts a long time, and it either serves the common good or it separates us.

Peter Block: The move to the suburbs separated us.

Peter Block: And I feel there's a lot of energy now to bring us back together, both in the buildings, the space, the land, and how we occupy the buildings, because it doesn't matter what room I go into, I always have a choice as how to occupy it.

Peter Block: And I can remember when I was invited to churches to run community workshops.

Peter Block: I'd stand in the front at a podium.

Peter Block: The chairs were all bolted to the floor.

Peter Block: Everybody's facing forward.

Peter Block: And I thought, what am I doing here?

Peter Block: I can't break them into small groups.

Peter Block: And then I decided, yes, I can.

Peter Block: So it doesn't matter.

Peter Block: Even if your hand is at a very structured place, you can always inhabit it.

Peter Block: And the act of inhabiting it decides who you are in that space.

Peter Block: And our challenge is to get citizens to reinhabit spaces and stop waiting for someone else's transformation.

Speaker C: We have to pick it up with the transformation piece.

Speaker C: And this is really interesting that you're really honing in on the architectural side of things, especially given a context that a lot of our built environment does encourage isolation and separation.

Speaker C: We know, or it seems like there's this feeling of transformation that is in the air.

Speaker C: And I think a lot of people are attuning or wanting community, but we don't exactly know how to do that.

Speaker C: And we feel like there's these constraints, and then we're looking at hope, like technology.

Speaker C: We're just going to solve energy and agriculture and transportation and all this.

Speaker C: How do you think that we begin to find that common ground and recognize each other as citizens, as you talk about, rather than even consumers?

Peter Block: Well, it begins with what you just said.

Peter Block: It begins with some kind of instinct of longing.

Peter Block: The problem was, it's too simple.

Peter Block: We have such a habits.

Peter Block: And here's where the narrative comes in.

Peter Block: So to me, a building, a piece of land, a forest, is just an embodiment of the narrative that we're living into.

Peter Block: And if we believe in pharaoh, if we believe in privilege, I can remember working with J.

Peter Block: And J in the went to the top floor to meet with the senior executives.

Peter Block: That was a big deal for me.

Peter Block: I dressed up and wore tie and everything.

Peter Block: And I get to the top floor, and then on the side, there's a golden staircase.

Peter Block: Even that goes to the very top people.

Peter Block: So even above the top floor, there's a higher.

Peter Block: And so most of our churches, most of our buildings are designed with privilege in mind, with the corner office in mind.

Peter Block: And so that's what we're trying to create an alternative to.

Peter Block: And so the narrative is common good rather than privatization.

Peter Block: The narrative is connecting with each other is more important than individual excellence.

Peter Block: The narrative is we need to cooperate for the Sake of learning instead of competing.

Peter Block: And so we're trying to reshape the beliefs and story we have about who we are.

Peter Block: And what you RepreSeNT is that who we are ARE PeOPlE that basically connect with each other.

Peter Block: Who we are is.

Peter Block: There's enough for us all.

Peter Block: Who we are is easily shifted into connectedness and that we can't purchase what we need.

Peter Block: The consumer society is much deeper than shopping.

Peter Block: Consumer culture says that whatever I need, I can buy.

Peter Block: And the illusion of technology is it makes it more ConVenient to purchase.

Peter Block: And where I used to borrow sugar from a neighbor, now I go to a convenience store.

Peter Block: And so this is what you're inverting.

Peter Block: And I think that once the narrative, once we agree we're here to care for the Commons, we're basically looking to care for each other, then we say, so how do we design a world that aligns with that?

Peter Block: And how do we redesign a world that was designed for individualism and excellence and heroes and top management presidents and all the things that we think will let me off the hook?

Speaker C: Do you see any examples of maybe groups that are really leading in that participatory design process and what some of those methodologies that they're really taking?

Speaker C: And rather than we have the architect and a developer, and they know all, and here's the concept, and we're going to build it.

Peter Block: Well, you're one of them.

Peter Block: But Ross Chapin with pocket neighborhoods, I mean, that couldn't be more explicit.

Peter Block: It says you put houses together so they can care for each other as well as manage their own privacy.

Peter Block: We've had Quaker churches for years where the room is in circles.

Peter Block: You can kind of frame it as a room designed as a pyramid with an altar and a place for the professionals to interpret God for me, like a church or as a design in a circle where we came to see each other.

Peter Block: And so you're seeing all kinds of circular cultures.

Peter Block: You see circular buildings.

Peter Block: You see common spaces that are for habitation and not for just retreat.

Peter Block: You see community supported agriculture, urban farming.

Peter Block: You see community gardens.

Peter Block: There's 34 community gardens in Cincinnati, and they're the safest places in the city because whoever runs them watches out for them.

Peter Block: The library is a communal instinct where the classes are together.

Peter Block: If you want to see somebody from a different economic class than you go to library museums.

Peter Block: And so there are these structures.

Peter Block: We just have to treat them as if they matter.

Peter Block: Now, we thought they were exceptions, and now you're about making them the rule.

Peter Block: And it's not just collaborative design.

Peter Block: It's also having a kind of intention about how we want to relate to the land.

Speaker C: Can you talk more about that?

Peter Block: Well, John Locke, I don't know when he lived.

Peter Block: It's a while ago, he declared that God's will is to economically develop every piece of land to the maximum possible.

Peter Block: And if you didn't develop that land for economic well being, it was a sin against God.

Peter Block: And that was the business case for United States Westbrook expansion.

Peter Block: Davy Crockett was a lead explorer for development interests.

Peter Block: He wasn't just interested in the great country.

Peter Block: And so in the urban Land Institute, all of this, you look down, you say, well, here's two acres in my neighborhood.

Peter Block: What's the maximum economic value we can extract from that?

Peter Block: As soon as you say that, it's over.

Peter Block: Next to me, where I used to live, they wanted to build a house.

Peter Block: And his lawyer said something powerful to me.

Peter Block: He said, if you don't let us build a house here, you've rendered this land useless.

Peter Block: So the shift is to say, well, let's treat the land as it has value, and perhaps we even take it off the market.

Peter Block: So there's community land trusts all over the place.

Peter Block: We're starting one here in Cincinnati because the escalating price of housing has to do with the land, not the buildings.

Peter Block: So if you make the land, take it off the market, people can buy and sell buildings, but you don't have this unaffordable cities like we have all over the place.

Peter Block: It's a long answer.

Speaker C: I'm not sure it's everything to do with my question, because I think it starts with, what is our relationship with place?

Speaker C: And it's increasingly hard.

Speaker C: I find that we've had this exodus out of cities because of COVID and technology.

Speaker C: And we all think that we can maybe pick up our lives for six months in one place and then go to another place for six months.

Speaker C: And this is the new normal for many people, or this is the holy grail of we can live anywhere, we can work anywhere.

Speaker C: But what does that say about our relationship?

Speaker C: And how do we create community?

Speaker C: If that is the golden standard?

Peter Block: Well, you're going to have to live somewhere.

Peter Block: And so why don't we pay attention to wherever we are?

Peter Block: And I think people have left the office not just because it's convenient, but the office is not a pleasant place to be.

Peter Block: We designed offices, so you were easy to watch.

Peter Block: And then we realized we can do without the office.

Peter Block: But the nice thing about places, everybody's got to have them.

Peter Block: And so our work is to tell people that their well being is dependent on their relationship to the place they are.

Peter Block: Forget about where they work.

Peter Block: And if you want to raise your kids.

Peter Block: You need neighbors to do that.

Peter Block: You don't need a school if you want to be healthy.

Peter Block: If you volunteer 100 hours a year, you'll live two years longer.

Peter Block: There's something called social prescribing now where doctors look at me and say, peter, for you to be healthy, you got to volunteer 10 hours a week because that's good for my health.

Peter Block: So all of these say that the place I'm in and the way we connect to each other can produce the life I want to lead, regardless whether I work at home or work on things.

Peter Block: You as an architect, my wish is you and I will partner.

Peter Block: I'll be the social architect and you be the physical architect.

Peter Block: You could say regenerative architecture is bringing into contact the social architecture, the relational architecture, and the physical space.

Peter Block: And how do you make them fall in love with each other, harmonious instead of each fighting the other?

Peter Block: Because right now I have a hard time finding places to meet because they're all designed for teaching, lecturing.

Peter Block: We have town meetings now, and leaders talk.

Peter Block: I was in a church the other day on a panel, and they had people.

Peter Block: Instead of talking to each other, we wrote down questions on cards and passed them to the front.

Peter Block: That's to keep control.

Peter Block: You go to city council.

Peter Block: It's the most alienating room I've ever been in in my life.

Peter Block: So this is why I need you.

Peter Block: I need you to use your leverage, your world, Ross's world, Alexander's world, to say, we have to design these rooms to bring people.

Speaker C: Mean beyond the room.

Speaker C: Even the process is all designed in a way, maybe in somebody's mind, it was around efficiency.

Speaker C: But even designing a process to engage the citizenship of public comment is a very rough experience for both the citizen and the developer group.

Speaker C: It doesn't matter.

Speaker C: It's just a rough process all the way around.

Peter Block: Well, it's designed to centralize control, and it's designed for efficiency and cost and convenience.

Peter Block: In my neighborhood, the developer wanted to add a unit with 110 apartments.

Peter Block: And everybody's angry at you.

Peter Block: Can't do that.

Peter Block: What are you doing?

Peter Block: We're a residential.

Peter Block: And so I was part of convening a group with the developer and citizens early in the process, before they had plans or anything to show you.

Peter Block: Once you show somebody something and ask for feedback, it's over.

Peter Block: It's too late.

Peter Block: Okay.

Peter Block: And so we broke people in small groups and said, what do you want from this neighborhood?

Peter Block: If we're going to add 110 units, what matters to you?

Peter Block: And they talked about space and asian places.

Peter Block: And by the end of the conversation, the anger had dissipated and the developer said, thank you.

Peter Block: I can't give you all you want, but this gives me something to pay attention to as we start the process where right now in most places, developers, if you talk to them, they say it's a nightmare to get citizens involved.

Peter Block: And what they do is they get councils involved.

Peter Block: Those aren't citizens, people.

Peter Block: Elected officials do not represent citizens.

Peter Block: They act on what they think is best for citizens.

Peter Block: And so it's simple.

Peter Block: It took an hour and 20 minutes, 80 people came together, small groups, people you know the least, and given four questions, put them up.

Peter Block: Here's the end.

Peter Block: Thank you for coming.

Speaker C: Why do you think developers are maybe scared is the right word.

Speaker C: If I could identify.

Speaker C: Why do you think that is?

Peter Block: I don't know.

Peter Block: They're too powerful, the people.

Peter Block: The real estate industry, the largest in the country.

Peter Block: 70% of the donations to my city council comes from real estate industry.

Peter Block: Now they can only give so much, so they have to create 40 llcs.

Peter Block: Okay.

Peter Block: I don't know.

Peter Block: Some of the fears realistic citizens can be crazy.

Peter Block: Asking people what they want sometimes is very depressing.

Peter Block: Welcome to the election year.

Peter Block: That's a great question.

Peter Block: I really don't know, other than the speed in which they move, because it just takes time to engage people, unless you engage them first.

Peter Block: Why do you think the development real estate industry is so uneasy about citizen engagement?

Speaker C: The whole process is fraught with challenges because you have, let's say, a development property that a group has to come in and put up money and do homework and diligence on to figure out what can be built there.

Speaker C: And then I think there's a lot of trepidation opening up to citizens that they could have very different ideas.

Speaker C: It could come at the cost of what their profit margins are.

Speaker C: And I think there's a deep distrust, and I get it.

Speaker C: I've been in community meetings where there's a lot of infighting, there was no consensus, and I think that's just perpetuated.

Speaker C: There's a lot of capital involved, there's a lot of mistrust.

Speaker C: And I don't see a lot of people that are really trying to figure out how to work with this, of what does the community want?

Speaker C: Rather than we so blindly focus on the project is this parcel, and it's got boundary lines.

Speaker C: And this is mine.

Speaker C: I have a deed to it.

Speaker C: I find it very rare to say that a developer comes in saying the project is the community, but we have the ability to work with this parcel.

Speaker C: As part of it.

Peter Block: We need a way to build trust, to engage people, and we know how to do that.

Peter Block: It's just, you have to decide to do it, because right now, even those meetings, the structure is alienating.

Peter Block: You got to develop up front standing, some work has been done.

Peter Block: You have citizens lined up and you say, okay, we'd like your feedback.

Peter Block: Well, don't structure the room that way.

Peter Block: We're architects, we know how to structure things.

Peter Block: Put people in small groups and take the developers in small groups and say, here's some questions we have.

Peter Block: Here's the limits we're living with.

Peter Block: It's space, it's got to have 110 units, it's got to have four floors.

Peter Block: Let's talk together.

Peter Block: And I think the structure of how we gather has an impact.

Peter Block: And part of what we do in our work with communities is accelerate trust building.

Peter Block: And it's so simple, it's embarrassing that you get 100 people together and you break them into groups of three and you ask them when did you first start caring about this community?

Peter Block: Then you ask them, what's the crossroads we're at as a community?

Peter Block: What's the crossroads we're at with respect, what doubts do you have?

Peter Block: What are you willing to contribute or invest in to make this property work for both sides?

Peter Block: These are all ambiguous, open ended questions.

Peter Block: And if we talk about them together in small groups of three or four, I fall in love with these other three people.

Peter Block: I realize they're not strangers, they're human beings and it takes about 30 minutes.

Peter Block: That's what drives me crazy, just because we know how to do that.

Peter Block: And every time I've been in a setting where we've allowed that process to happen, people leave feeling more trust than when they walk.

Peter Block: And that's a consciousness as an architect.

Peter Block: Christopher Alexander tells me that a balcony has got to be 6ft or larger.

Peter Block: He tells me that the room has to have two entrances and windows on both sides.

Peter Block: He tells me so he has a pattern language for building something that he says creates quality of alive.

Peter Block: Why don't we do the same for how we gather for the social architecture and say, here are the patterns.

Peter Block: That's what I tried to do, is say, here are the protocols, that if you use these protocols, people will leave trusting each other more when they left than when they walked in the room.

Speaker C: Do you find that works best going back to the developer scenario, the developer as the facilitator or having a neutral third party?

Peter Block: You need a third party.

Peter Block: If the developer has the skills, they can do it.

Peter Block: But I'm more interested in the developer being in a small group and finding three strangers he can trust, she can trust.

Peter Block: And so it's a mixture.

Peter Block: The developer can host the meeting, but let a neutral party run it or not.

Peter Block: The developers just haven't paid attention to social architecture.

Peter Block: That's what you and I are going to do together.

Peter Block: We're going to say, look at the social architecture has as much to do with the building we create as the physical design work that we're used to.

Peter Block: That's what I mean.

Peter Block: It's about a narrative.

Peter Block: It's about a level of consciousness.

Peter Block: Now, that's not all there is, but we've got cohousing.

Peter Block: I mean, there's all kinds of movements, there's all kinds of, like I say, community trusts, all kinds of vehicles.

Peter Block: There's all kinds of ways to raise capital with local.

Peter Block: Right now you have to be an accredited investor.

Peter Block: And so what about citizens?

Peter Block: Can't they?

Peter Block: And so we're creating.

Peter Block: Those vehicles are out there.

Peter Block: If we ever decided to use them.

Speaker C: Together, they're slowly coming about.

Speaker C: We now have over 300 community land trusts in the country.

Speaker C: But it is a very tedious and challenging process to bring people together for the benefit of the community, to decide that we want to have a diversity of people represented within this community so that it can function and be vibrant.

Speaker C: There is just so much pushback that I find from people that we don't want those kinds of people in this community, and we don't want to contribute our resources or our time to do that.

Speaker C: And it's this narrative that's playing out even within a small community like ours, where we have been really adamant trying to bring about more attainable, dignified, quality homes for people that need it the most.

Speaker C: But the market just says you can't afford to live here.

Speaker C: And so they leave, and the community suffers because of that.

Speaker C: And I think that there's a lot of work to continue to figure out how we can make these processes easier.

Peter Block: We have a 90 acre park in my neighborhood.

Peter Block: Okay.

Peter Block: Burnett Woods, 35.

Peter Block: People like to hang out there day and night, and they're non white and they're a little scruffy.

Peter Block: And so how do we get rid of these people?

Peter Block: And so here I'm on a local neighborhood council, or was, and I've had an awful time saying, look at, they don't need servicing.

Peter Block: We need to find out who they are.

Peter Block: And people say, nah.

Peter Block: So you're right.

Peter Block: It's hard.

Peter Block: And so what?

Peter Block: And it's doable.

Peter Block: I just have to get smarter about it.

Peter Block: And what you do is you want to find exceptions on both sides who will work with you, who are some people from the low income or whatever you want to call them, uncredential people.

Peter Block: And how do we get them together and get some developers or citizens who care and say, how do we invite people in so we get to know each other first and decide what to do second.

Peter Block: Get them in a room in small groups of three and give them the right kind of questions so they get connected fast.

Peter Block: And it's amazing to me, the community people have no consciousness about connecting people.

Peter Block: I love the Schumacher center.

Peter Block: They're heroes to me.

Peter Block: They started half the stuff I believe in.

Peter Block: They started with land, trust and local currency.

Peter Block: And yet when they hold a webinar, they had somebody talking to me for 35 minutes and asking me to put my questions in the chat.

Peter Block: I think, stop that.

Peter Block: Why don't you break us into groups of four and find out who else is in the room?

Peter Block: And why don't you join some of those groups?

Peter Block: It's really a valuing how we come together as is important as to what we come together for.

Peter Block: I really wrote the last book saying, why do we make how we come together the number one priority?

Peter Block: Why do we make the common good narrative the dominant narrative and stop paying attention to people in the corner office?

Speaker C: Let's talk about that new book, Peter, what's the name of it?

Peter Block: Activating the common good.

Peter Block: The subtitle is the point, which is citizens reclaiming control over our collective well being.

Peter Block: And architecture, churches, journalism is all parts of it.

Peter Block: But I'm just trying to say how we come together is as important as why we come together.

Peter Block: And I've been yelling that writing that pathetically for a long time.

Peter Block: That's why I'm excited when you invite me on a conversation about architects if they just thought that way.

Peter Block: Because people, values, people want the common good.

Peter Block: It's just we're out of the habit, I think.

Peter Block: I don't know.

Peter Block: I need you to tell me what I think.

Speaker C: A lot of people do that, want that.

Speaker C: And we're having to iterate and we're learning and we're overcoming this culture.

Speaker C: And I think that's what it's all about.

Speaker C: I mean, the name of the show is about regenerative real estate, but it's more about what does a regenerative culture look like and how does that come together from the hardware and the software.

Speaker C: However we want to frame this conversation.

Peter Block: Beautiful and regenerative means we're not going to argue against the dominant culture.

Peter Block: See, most people who have a vision of something different are mad at what exists now.

Peter Block: And so we protest, we walk.

Peter Block: That doesn't work.

Peter Block: I'm tired of waiting for current people in the corner office to change their mind.

Peter Block: Why don't we just create the alternative?

Peter Block: The regenerative means just to give life to an alternative culture, regenerative environment.

Peter Block: It's to bring life into.

Peter Block: It's not to stop what's going on now.

Peter Block: And once we decide to bring life into by what we create in a building, a place, a room, a way of being together, a language, then if we can each do that, that creates something big.

Peter Block: But the whole idea is to stop protesting like we do.

Peter Block: I go to protests about poverty or architecture, whatever, and there's a panel.

Peter Block: I'm on the panel half the time.

Peter Block: And we sit and listen.

Peter Block: They inspire us, motivate us, and say, thank you for coming.

Peter Block: I need to meet the other people in the audience.

Peter Block: And that's why I framed the book as I'm not arguing against a business perspective, cost, efficiency, speed, convenience.

Peter Block: I'm arguing for a common good perspective.

Peter Block: And let's create that together.

Peter Block: And it's going to be small and it's going to be slow.

Peter Block: So what?

Peter Block: And if I can create that within reach, within walking distance, then we're creating it together in the world.

Peter Block: And we'd stop having summits, stop calling our meetings as if it's people at the top, the people at the top.

Peter Block: I want you to join us, but I don't want you to run us.

Peter Block: And partly just because they're trapped, the president, the head of real estate, they're imprisoned by other people's expectations.

Peter Block: So you're a community organizer in the name of regenerative communities, regenerative culture.

Peter Block: And it's a lot of alignment.

Peter Block: It's just, I need you to pull together and make the call, because the call is best if it comes from an unexpected place.

Peter Block: And if you say, okay, regenerative architecture, we're going to call people together in ways they aren't used to being together.

Peter Block: Something will happen.

Peter Block: At the end of the first meeting, you say, would you come back to one more meeting?

Peter Block: That's all I want.

Peter Block: And we've taken that all kinds of places.

Peter Block: We've done it with strategic planning for cities, and we got 200 people together and broke them into small groups and said, why do you care about Covington?

Peter Block: What concerns you about Covington?

Peter Block: Who do you care the most?

Peter Block: Or the housing?

Peter Block: The school?

Peter Block: Fine, break into those groups and then we say, well, what's your contribution to what you don't like?

Peter Block: Nobody asked that question.

Peter Block: So citizens come to protest.

Peter Block: We went to a safety meeting.

Peter Block: Somebody got shot.

Peter Block: I said, thank you for coming.

Peter Block: Would you break into small groups?

Peter Block: I happened to be running the meeting.

Peter Block: Would you break into small groups and with people you know the least and talk about, when did you first start caring about Clifton Heights?

Peter Block: What's your contribution to the fact you're not as safe as you want to be?

Peter Block: That's a h*** of a question.

Peter Block: But in asking you, what's your contribution to the very thing you came to change, I'm treating you as if you're an agent accountable for the future.

Peter Block: So to be regenerative means that each of us is accountable and an agent in creating a future we want to inhabit.

Peter Block: And that's both with the physical space and the relational space.

Peter Block: So I'm calling this relational activism.

Speaker C: Peter, how do you come up with the frames of these questions?

Speaker C: I mean, there's so much latent potential that can come out of bringing a question like that to a small group of people.

Peter Block: Thank you.

Peter Block: It's a statement you made over time.

Peter Block: You look for questions that people can't escape from.

Peter Block: No matter how you answer, you're guilty.

Peter Block: And I don't ask you about your opinions.

Peter Block: I don't ask you what the needs are, what the deficiencies are.

Peter Block: I want to know, what role are you existing and playing in the place that you care about?

Peter Block: If you came in the room, it means you care about something.

Peter Block: Don't tell me your wife forced you to come.

Peter Block: You know how to say no to her.

Peter Block: That's the mindset.

Peter Block: So you're looking for those questions that have accountability built into the question.

Peter Block: And you never talk about deficiencies or needs, because what you pay attention to is what you get.

Peter Block: And if I focus on needs, focus on danger, focus on violence, focus on non, then that's what I'll get.

Peter Block: There's some architecture to the questions.

Peter Block: You know how to design a room and a porch and a second floor and a sight line.

Peter Block: Well, the same thing with questions.

Peter Block: And you find when it works and you stick with it for life, I'd.

Speaker C: Love to hear an example.

Speaker C: And it certainly doesn't have to come from the built environment of how that can work to maybe harmonize a lot of conflict within a group.

Speaker C: I'm sure you've got plenty of stories of going into communities and groups like this.

Peter Block: Exactly.

Peter Block: You go in not doing anything about the conflict.

Peter Block: You say, we came here to decide what we want to create together.

Peter Block: We didn't come here to talk about what's wrong with the place.

Peter Block: And so there's a Finneytown school system.

Peter Block: So schools are same thing, the architecture of the school, mostly for social control lines of students, teachers standing up.

Peter Block: I know you do a grading system.

Peter Block: As soon as I went to school, I realized I had to compete with my friends, and the more they failed, the easier my b was to achieve.

Peter Block: And so we get people in the school to get and say, what's the crossroads?

Peter Block: Read at school, what is it about the school that you care about?

Peter Block: What's the gift you have that you haven't fully brought?

Peter Block: And we do this with kids that aren't making it in school.

Peter Block: So we get the parents and the kids together, and if kids are having a fight, we sit them down and we say, what's your contribution to the difficulty you're having?

Peter Block: We have them reverse all kinds of stuff once you get them in the room.

Peter Block: Now, some people don't want that.

Peter Block: And you say, thank you, but don't leave the room.

Peter Block: So you get citizens together arguing about this development in my neighborhood.

Peter Block: Say, if you think this is baloney, this is a bunch of touchy feely crap.

Peter Block: Small groups, I agree with you, but would you stay here and join a small group?

Peter Block: Just don't say anything.

Peter Block: And so my context is, I'm not going to treat you as the other, and I'm not going to talk about what we want to argue about.

Peter Block: And I don't ask your opinions.

Peter Block: I ask you what you want.

Peter Block: What do you want to create?

Peter Block: I'm asking you, what doubts do you have?

Peter Block: I ask you, what's the crossroads, rush?

Peter Block: I ask you, what are the gifts?

Peter Block: What's the promise?

Peter Block: You're willing to make very specific questions and stay away from all the arguments.

Peter Block: I don't care about how you see the world when I'm alone.

Peter Block: It may drive you crazy, but that's not what I came for.

Peter Block: And so you can design these rooms, buildings.

Peter Block: So in the school, they have a restorative practice room with chairs.

Peter Block: And so a kid gets in trouble in a classroom, they don't kick them out.

Peter Block: They say, would you come to a conversation?

Peter Block: They have a teacher and kids and parents, let's talk about what's going on.

Peter Block: And they get personal.

Peter Block: What's it feel like for you when you walk in that room and people realize connection is the point.

Peter Block: So we did it.

Peter Block: We've done it with strategic planning.

Peter Block: We do it with budgeting.

Peter Block: We do it with design a school.

Peter Block: The most important people in the school are the janitors and the bus drivers.

Peter Block: They have as much to do with raising the kids as teachers do parents.

Peter Block: All these little structures we can redesign so that everybody feels connected, seen and accountable.

Peter Block: That's the goal.

Peter Block: I get excited about the real thought that the building, the room, the shape I was on the company and I walked in their office and this big desk there, somebody's peeking over the top which says to me, what the h*** are you doing here?

Peter Block: And I said to Rob, I said, why don't you get rid of that desk and put them on a.

Peter Block: And they did.

Peter Block: And it changed your whole experience.

Peter Block: Now you walk in and the first room in the offices are the kitchen, which is a place of welcome in a kitchen table instead of a lobby that says, you don't belong here.

Peter Block: So to me, the space carries 1000 powerful messages about who we are together.

Speaker C: And this is the work.

Speaker C: This is the powerful work.

Peter Block: How is this sounding to you, Neil?

Speaker C: How is this striking, deeply resonant of just the ways in which we even practice?

Speaker C: It makes me think about the questions that we like to ask with our clients.

Speaker C: How we've oriented our own office space, how we facilitate even digital meetings.

Speaker C: One of the things that we've really picked up on of your work over the last several years is the power of inviting and enrolling and what that really means and how to work with that.

Speaker C: Of who are you inviting by way?

Speaker C: Of who are you not inviting as part of that.

Speaker C: And one part of me is very overwhelmed by this level of intention needs to be multiplied and cast out into every facet of our society.

Speaker C: But at the same time, it seems like our cultures, at least the culture that I spend a lot of time in, is already going in this direction and we're seeking, but sometimes we certainly don't have the answers.

Peter Block: Thank you.

Peter Block: If it's not overwhelming, you're not paying attention.

Peter Block: It is.

Peter Block: And that's why you want to operate everything you can, every place within reach.

Peter Block: All I can do is say that whatever room I'm in, metaphorically, or this is a room I can show up in a way that invites something other than what God is here.

Peter Block: And the invitation is important because in the invitation it says if you come, something will be asked of you.

Peter Block: Okay, we're going to talk about this space, this room, this park, this school, this hospital.

Peter Block: But we're going to be asking you to participate in deciding what we're creating.

Peter Block: And then you structure it so the angry people don't get a voice.

Peter Block: They can speak up, but not speak to the room.

Peter Block: Sometimes you get people that are just over, that have gone too far.

Peter Block: And I'll ask him, I said, they'll give a speech.

Peter Block: And I say, have you said that before?

Peter Block: He says, yeah, I say it everywhere I go.

Peter Block: Thank you.

Peter Block: And the other sentence that changed my life after Christopher Alexander told me that my life's only purpose was to create a quality of aliveness.

Peter Block: You just see what you can do with where you are.

Peter Block: But your practices, you're right.

Peter Block: How you shape the office, how you shape your calls, how you shape each thing can carry with it.

Peter Block: Aliveness means people have choice, means people can be responsible for things that don't work.

Peter Block: It means people have gifts, and people can make covenants with each other.

Peter Block: And so why don't we just focus on that and make what we came to create secondary, make the primary one everything you're talking about, and you take it where you go.

Peter Block: Kids in school take it there.

Peter Block: Parent teacher night.

Peter Block: It's ridiculous.

Peter Block: They sit me down in a chair in a classroom that I have nothing but bad memories about.

Peter Block: They treat me like a child where what I really need is to meet the other parents because the kids are well connected to each other.

Peter Block: We're not.

Peter Block: And so it doesn't matter where you're going out, half the places you go, you have no chance to shift it, and you just hold your breath.

Speaker C: That was one thing that we found moving to this community, is that we went through a long walk through the woods and came across this clearing with this beautiful, immediately recognizable school wood or just very organic shapes.

Speaker C: And we came back and Ross had asked us, where did you go today?

Speaker C: I said, we found this beautiful school in the woods.

Speaker C: Do you know?

Speaker C: Said, of course, I designed it.

Speaker C: And we drove home to Portland a day later.

Speaker C: And there's a school right around the corner from our house, and we have a young child, and so that's the neighborhood school that he'd be going to.

Speaker C: But it really dawned on us, it could be a school, it could be a hospital, or it could be a jail.

Speaker C: And everything signals this is institutional.

Speaker C: And it was that kind of illuminating factor of wow.

Speaker C: Design certainly matters in how we want to design our life for our child.

Speaker C: And that's where I think we really owe it to ourselves to examine how we're designing these conversations, how we're designing the meetings, how we're going and doing this.

Speaker C: And I appreciate the fact that if we're not overwhelmed, then we're not paying attention, because that is the grief that I think a lot of us are holding.

Speaker C: It feels like there's a lot of trauma behind it, and that's where I settle in.

Peter Block: That's wonderful.

Peter Block: Thank you.

Peter Block: That's why I have to be careful who I pay attention to.

Peter Block: And if I pay attention to people in the corner office, it gets depressing.

Peter Block: And if I say, well, I wish somebody else ran this, superintendent, president, whatever.

Peter Block: So I have to stop doing that and say, well, we're going to decide what kind of world we want to create for our child.

Peter Block: Otherwise, the dominant culture becomes overwhelming.

Peter Block: It's very complicated.

Peter Block: That's why the room matters.

Peter Block: That's why what you're doing with the architecture work matters, because you're trying to find ways of bringing people together that will lead them to create invitational spaces, spaces for the inhabitants, not for the creator and designer spaces where every step of the way is welcoming, where the circle is invited.

Peter Block: Get rid of conference tables.

Speaker C: I love this.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker C: This quality of aliveness that you're talking about.

Speaker C: I think the biggest challenge that we're finding, especially using these words of regeneration, that within the design world, people are taking it to mean circularity and energy and plants and all amazing things.

Speaker C: Don't get me wrong.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker C: We can design and engineer beautiful circular buildings and neighborhoods, but it is very short on the social fabric of which you're really touching on, of what is the aliveness within a community or a group, and that I don't feel like we've been able to fully translate yet.

Peter Block: Well, partly your industry thinks they're done when the place is built.

Peter Block: So I'll give you another example.

Peter Block: It's called dividend housing.

Peter Block: So there's a group in Cincinnati that takes low income people and gets a place with ten or 15 units in it.

Peter Block: And they say, if you help us manage this place, you save us enough money that we'll give you a bonus.

Peter Block: And so at the end of five years, and they come to a meeting once every ten days or two weeks, they talk about who will care for this part of the property, who will decide who's welcome, who will watch out for our safety and cleanliness.

Peter Block: At the end of five years, they've saved the landlord $5,000 apiece, and so we'll give you $5,000 of equity, and it's called wealth creation for low income people.

Peter Block: And so we have all these people building low income housing, affordable housing, okay?

Peter Block: But then they build it, and it doesn't change the social structure of who inhabits it.

Peter Block: And so when we hear what you will do as you gather the world around this regeneration, you'll say that we want to not only build the place, but we want to help people inhabit it in a communal and collective way.

Peter Block: And that's why all the low income housing is such a nightmare.

Peter Block: They're prisons done cheaply.

Peter Block: This is where hip hop came from, right?

Peter Block: It came from the New York City in the housing was so deadly and so that's exciting.

Peter Block: The social architecture and the physical architecture become one and the same thing.

Peter Block: We know how to do that.

Peter Block: We just haven't decided to or we haven't found each other.

Peter Block: I go doing my little small group stuff and you do your architecture stuff.

Peter Block: It's one of the same thing.

Peter Block: That's what excites me about talking to you and Ross.

Peter Block: The co housing people and the land trust people, but we know as much about inhabiting a room as we know about designing it.

Peter Block: Why don't we make that one thing?

Speaker C: Peter, this has been an absolute pleasure to spend this time with you.

Speaker C: I'm going to plug your books and I don't think it really matters which one, because for people that can't see us in person, here I've got community, the structure of belonging.

Speaker C: And I kid you not, Peter, I think every page has got so many highlights on it, I should look at that.

Peter Block: I have no idea what works and what does.

Speaker C: A lot of it works.

Speaker C: It is beautifully written.

Speaker C: I look forward.

Peter Block: Thank you.

Speaker C: Getting into your latest book that you just wrote.

Peter Block: No, thank you.

Peter Block: The books changed my life.

Peter Block: I didn't write a book till I was 40 and somebody harassed me.

Peter Block: I was given talks.

Peter Block: Write a book.

Peter Block: No.

Peter Block: Write a book.

Peter Block: No.

Peter Block: Finally I gave it and then the book did well.

Peter Block: And I thought, what's going on here?

Peter Block: And then I wrote another one.

Peter Block: It did well.

Peter Block: And I thought, well, maybe my ideas are worth something and maybe I can write.

Peter Block: So it took me 45, 50 years, and now the blessing of it is that I don't have to be there for you to engage the ideas.

Peter Block: Thank you very much.

Peter Block: Sweet wish.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Peter Block: Means a lot.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker D: If you want to follow our work at latitude, you can follow us on Instagram at latitude regenerative re and mine is at IAM.

Speaker D: Neil Collins.

Speaker D: We inherently believe in the potential that comes from connecting value aligned and purpose driven people together in community.

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Speaker D: This show was produced by myself and edited by Anthony Wallace and offered as a part of our work with latitude regenerative real estate.