Parafin co-founders on WGN’s Technori
Parafin co-founders Adam Hengels and Brian Ahmes were interviewed by Scott Kitun on WGN’s Technori technology show. Take a listen.
What happens when real estate developers build software with architects?
Co-founders Adam Hengels and Brian Ahmes built a company that thinks like a developer and designs like an architect. Say hello to Parafin. The Parafin tools help real estate developers automate design. This saves massive amounts of time and money. The founders match an expertise in finance and architecture. How do these co-founders share leadership?
Adam in NYC Jan 15th With Zaha Hadid’s Patrik Schumacher
New Parafin Product Video
Parafin Featured in Built-In Chicago
Do androids dream of AI-designed hotels?
“In a matter of minutes, we’ll generate a design, a construction cost budget and a financial model for a building,” said co-founder Adam Hengels. “In doing that, we go through thousands of iterations and design configurations, optimizing each for value creation to tell you which design is best.”
Adam Hengels Quoted in The Dallas Morning News on Gentrification
Can gentrification in West Dallas turn into a fairy tale?
“Too often, the knee-jerk response is to fight development in these gentrifying neighborhoods,” Adam Hengels, a pioneer in the fledgling market urbanism movement, wrote two years ago. “The consequences of this are two-fold. First, economics 101 tells us that capping supply will only cause prices to rise. Instead of newcomers filling newly constructed units, they will quickly flood the existing stock of housing, quickening gentrification.
“Second, thwarting development shuts the release valve that alleviates housing price pressures that caused gentrification in the first place. Since not building is not an option, politicians would prefer to funnel new construction into disadvantaged neighborhoods instead of letting it happen where there is market demand. Development suppressed, gentrification swiftly captures the neighborhood and moves on to the next neighborhood in its path.”
One point Hengels is making is that strict zoning policies that limit development in established neighborhoods prompt developers and homebuyers to keep searching for new and cheaper territories.
“If housing desires cannot be met in upscale neighborhoods,” he wrote, “the wealthy can and will outbid less affluent people elsewhere.”
The only way to “stem the tide of gentrification,” he said, is to “liberalize,” or loosen, zoning laws.
“This is particularly needed in already desirable locations where incumbent residents have effectively depopulated their neighborhoods over several decades,” he wrote.
Adam’s Critique of Y-Combinator “New Cities” Featured in Cleantechnica
Is Y Combinator’s Project To Build “New, Better Cities” Shortsighted?
From the article:
But it might also be a misguided, shortsighted attempt to use technology to solve issues without acknowledging that the phenomenon of a city is an emergent one, as pointed out by Adam Hengels of Market Urbanism, and the effort by Y Combinator begins with “one fatally flawed premise, that wise technocrats can master-build entirely new cities catering to the infinitely diverse set of needs and desires of yet-to-be-identified citizens.”
On Market Urbanism, Hengels points out how reliance on a previous “new” technology, the car, led cities down the path to where we are now, which is a decidedly car-centric and pedestrian-unfriendly situation, and one that we’re now starting to “fix” with walkable urban places and bike networks and such:
“Because of flawed philosophical underpinnings that emphasized top-down design (urban planning) and failure to acknowledge the emergent nature of cities, American cities nearly destroyed themselves in reaction to the 20th Century’s greatest technological disruption, the automobile. Cities’ master builders, armed with the best intentions progressive philosophy had to offer at the time, devastated vibrant communities and urbanity through the use of urban renewal projects, overbuilt a system of highways catering to the automobile, abandoned rail lines, and utilized zoning to separate homes from commercial activity and push growth further from where it was desired.”
Obviously, developing and deploying effective technology is one of the core strengths of the human race, so there’s no argument that the technology sector will be at the center of any “better cities” initiatives, but along with effective and efficient technology, we also have a tendency to develop technologies just because we can, not because we should, or because it makes lives easier or healthier or more fulfilling. And we also have a tendency to want to mold our creations as we think they should appear when seen from the “20,000 foot view” and the lens of our own experience — which may not be anything like the experience of those who actually live and work at ground level (the “top-down, build-from-scratch mindset,” as Hengels puts it).
4 US Micro-Apartment Projects to Watch in 2015
Forbes Discusses Adam Hengels’ Role in the Market Urbanism Movement
From Forbes, Can Market Urbanism Revive U.S. Cities?
This term was invented by Chicago developer Adam Hengels. Before moving to Chicago, Hengels worked as a development consultant in New York City, and experienced firsthand how the city’s byzantine construction approval process made housing there expensive. This inspired him to launch a blog in 2007 that explored how economic liberalization could make New York and other cities more livable and affordable. He called the blog Market Urbanism, using the slogan “Urbanism for Capitalists/Capitalism for Urbanists.”
Daniel Hertz on Adam Hengels’ “Crucial” Point on Gentrification
Power and Interests
This is why Adam Hengels’ point that gentrifiers move where they do because those represent the “best” neighborhoods they can afford is so crucial: it suggests that you can’t get them to stop moving in without seriously diminishing their quality of life. And people rarely, if ever, voluntarily diminish their own quality of life.