Built S8E0: Powering What’s Next

David: The biggest obstacle with a project like this is the lack of precedent. People like to see it done before. And if you have none of that, and all you have is an idea, and a projection, it's a high hill to climb.

BRIAN: On season 8 of Built: Powering What’s Next. We'll meet the people who looked at a hill… and started climbing. In Kansas City, it started on the river.

MICHAEL: 20 years ago a friend brought a boat to town, and I said, "Let's go up the Kansas River." As we came out into the open, we all kinda got quiet, looking at this relic, really, is what it was. A big, heavy, solid-looking railroad bridge. And I said, "God, look at that thing. Somebody really ought to do something with that."

BRIAN: That 1905 railroad bridge is now a restaurant, an event hall, and a public space. It’s also part of the High Line Network, which grew out of New York City’s High Line and helps more than 40 projects across North America. 

KIRA: There was so much industrial use that has shifted now with the way that we are shipping goods and products, that they became spaces where, of course, you weren't going. They weren't beautiful. They weren't meant for you. And so that shift with those uses leaving created a void and created, I think, a real opportunity.

BRIAN: In Jacksonville, Florida, on the site of an old shipyard, a new development is rising.

JAX TOUR: Y'all, y'all wanna throw on your hard hats- Yeah ...

WILLIAM: When the development project came up on this amazing, piece of land in Jacksonville in the Kahn family's mind, it was gonna be a Four Seasons.

And a lot of people didn't believe it. A lot of people still don't believe it, frankly. But it's happening.

BRIAN: But part of building what’s next is repairing what came before. In Jacksonville, that means the Emerald Trail, a 30-mile trail that’s taking shape now…

KAI: In the '60s, the highways decimated a lot of those neighborhoods, disconnected them. So the trail is really reconnecting all of those neighborhoods.

BRIAN: And sometimes, what’s next starts with listening. In Thornton, Colorado, the team behind a new library sat down with Indigenous advisors to rethink what a library building could be.

SID: We met in the [00:03:00] evening, and suddenly, all the lights went out. They were like, "Oh, it's the security. It automatically turns off the light." Well, as we were sitting there, we had mentioned that, our people used the darkness to teach the youth how to listen better and be more receptive to our storytelling, by the light of the tipi in the cold winter evenings. The team thought that we were giving them advice, and they took it, and they ran with it, and they literally built a room like that for storytelling.

BRIAN: This is Built, from Fidelity National Financial, where commercial real estate’s leading voices share their struggles, successes, and the lessons in between.

KIRA: We just had some visitors on the High Line, and they said, " This is wonderful. Are there other spaces like this in the country?"

And it's like, "Why, yes, there are. We have a whole network of fabulous spaces like this."

BRIAN: Season 8 of Built starts November 4 in your favorite podcast app