Challenger Cities EP23: Fixing Cities Through Momentum, Not Just Masterplans with Rik Adamski

Rik Adamski doesn’t believe in big, dusty plans. He believes in action.

In this episode, we sit down with the unorthodox but deeply practical urban planner and designer Rik Adamski, who’s made a career out of helping cities do rather than just plan. His approach? Start small. Start now. Test it. Prove it. Then go big.

Rik shares stories from his journey—from growing up in walkable Midwest neighbourhoods, to working with the Congress for the New Urbanism, to transforming a dollar store in DeSoto, Texas into a thriving micro-business hub. He champions tactical urbanism and sees policy inertia as something to be poked with pizza and pilot projects.

Along the way, Rik explains why:

• Most planning documents are "300 pages of nothing"
• The simplest act—cleaning a street and feeding people—can kickstart transformation
• Cities must treat downtowns like complex systems, not complicated ones
• Pedestrianisation needs testing, not top-down mandates
• Progress comes from “What’s the smallest thing we can do today?”

This one’s a must-listen for anyone tired of endless consultation loops and looking for momentum, not just vision.

KEY QUOTES:

“We’ve become too clever by half. We write 300-page reports that say nothing.”

“The most transformative thing we did was buy pizza and clean up the street.”

“A street is complex. You don’t know what will happen when you change something—so start simply.”

“I gave a mayor a plan once and he said, ‘Well, we could do that,’ as if it was a bad thing.”

MENTIONS:

• Grow DeSoto Marketplace
• Congress for the New Urbanism
• Center for Neighborhood Technology
• Chuck Marohn and Strong Towns
• Tactical Urbanism movement
• Interview with Mary Rowe (CUI)

LISTEN IF YOU’RE INTERESTED IN: ✨ Tactical urbanism 🛠️ Doing before planning 🏙️ How to spark momentum in cities 🌭 Urban design with a side of pizza