Pocket Neighborhoods: Creating Small-Scale Community in a Large-Scale World offers an alternative to single-family subdivision development — small clusters of homes where residents can easily know one another, share daily life, and still enjoy privacy.

The second part of the book showcases contemporary pocket neighborhoods, asking how their essential patterns translate into real projects today. These examples show how small clusters of homes — often built as infill or modest-scale developments — can succeed socially and financially when design decisions are made with care. In this session, we’ll explore how factors such as site layout, parking placement, shared outdoor space, and thresholds between private and common life shape daily interactions. Join us to discuss the practical lessons, tradeoffs, and decisions that matter most for developers, designers, and planners working within contemporary constraints.

In Conversation with Ross Chapin

Sometimes finding viable development sites requires thinking back to traditional people-centric methods that AI cannot perform. This interactive session explores creative approaches to site identification that go beyond listings, broker packages, and AI services. Learn how to utilize people, technology, and curiosity to discover hidden opportunities before they hit the market.

Presented by Chris Allcorn

This Workshop on small scale real estate development is all about project formation. We take a big picture view of neighborhood-based development to help attendees analyze what makes a good project, how a building makes money, and how small developers interact with the broader ecosystem of professionals in the built environment.

Pocket Neighborhoods: Creating Small-Scale Community in a Large-Scale World offers an alternative to single-family subdivision development — small clusters of homes where residents can easily know one another, share daily life, and still enjoy privacy.

The book begins by defining what Pocket Neighborhoods are, then addresses the fundamental question: why do so many people feel isolated in so-called “neighborhoods”? We’ll look back historic pocket neighborhood precedents as a source of instruction rather than nostalgia. Drawing from examples such as Dutch hofjes, bungalow courts, and early Garden City neighborhoods, we’ll explore what these places reveal about scale, shared space, and daily interaction — and what still applies today. Join us as we consider how these long-standing patterns help explain the renewed relevance of pocket neighborhoods, especially for practitioners working within real-world constraints.

In Conversation with Ross Chapin

Join us to learn how to scale affordable urban homeownership with Frolic Community's innovative co-op model. Proven in Seattle and now expanding to California, this approach leverages cooperative ownership structures to make homeownership accessible through reduced down payments and developer-homeowner partnerships from day one.

Presented by Josh Morrison, COO and Co-Founder of Frolic Community, this virtual session will cover co-op economics in action, the collaborative development approach, and pathways to launch your first community-centered infill project.

Presented by Josh Morrison

Developers can build the kind of housing Americans actually want— walkable, connected neighborhoods that improve quality of life and strengthen local economies. Yet decades of U.S. policy and zoning have made these places nearly impossible to deliver, leaving enormous unmet demand on the table.

Culdesac has spent the last seven years proving that building mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods in the United States is a scalable model that delivers what residents and cities actually want. This Small Bites session will offer a practical, actionable look at how Culdesac did it, and how your city or development project can, too.

Presented by Ryan Johnson

Join us for an in-depth look at AARP's comprehensive national housing agenda and the innovative policy approaches gaining traction across the country. We'll explore how accessory dwelling units, missing middle housing, transit-oriented development, and universal design principles are converging to expand housing choices for older adults—and creating more inclusive communities for everyone.

Presented by Samar Jha

Don't miss this exclusive opportunity to enhance your financial acumen and drive success in real estate development. Jenifer Acosta will guide you through practical exercises, highlighting key concepts such as income estimation, expense optimization, and deciphering the financial story a pro forma tells. This session is designed to equip you with the skills and knowledge needed to translate your project's financial goals to investors effectively.

Presented by Jenifer Acosta

Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) are powerful tools for addressing disinvestment and building stronger, more equitable communities. Whether you’re a new or experienced developer, understanding how to work with a CDFI can unlock critical financing for your affordable housing, mixed-income, or mixed-use project. In this session, ANDP, a U.S. Treasury-certified CDFI based in Atlanta, and Incremental Development Alliance (IDA) Faculty will walk you through what it takes to prepare your organization and your project to access CDFI funding.

Presented by Sara Haas and Eric Kronberg

This session is about exploring unconventional development opportunities through the Faith-Based Housing Initiative, a groundbreaking program that connects developers with faith leaders to transform underutilized church properties into much-needed housing.

Presented by Aaron Lubeck

Do you want to learn more about how you can become a small real estate developer for a project in your neighborhood?  Are you an advocate or local leader looking to encourage better buildings in your community? This free public forum is designed for potential developers, small-scale builders, and community leaders committed to producing real, near-term solutions. It’s an opportune time for this discussion, as the city is underway with both their General Plan and Zoning Code Updates.

Featuring: Strong Towns Founder, Charles Marohn, Jr. and IncDev Board Chair, Ryan Terry

This Workshop on small scale real estate development is all about project formation. We take a big picture view of neighborhood-based development to help attendees analyze what makes a good project, how a building makes money, and how small developers interact with the broader ecosystem of professionals in the built environment.

This Seminar on small scale real estate development is all about project formation. We take a big picture view of neighborhood-based development to help attendees analyze what makes a good project, how a building makes money, and how small developers interact with the broader ecosystem of professionals in the built environment.

This session walks through the practical steps to explain how simple code repairs interact with your existing built environment. Spoiler: just because you change the code to allow a thing doesn't mean that thing is going to spring up everywhere!

Presented by Ivy Vann

Our most beloved cities were built incrementally—house by house, block by block. Today, regulatory barriers too often block the small-scale development our communities need. For over 30 years, the Institute for Justice (IJ) has fought at the intersection of litigation, legislation, and grassroots organizing to restore the freedom to build and grow organically.

Presented by Bob Belden, Trisha Dey, and Zoe Tishaev

This Workshop on small scale real estate development is all about project formation. We take a big picture view of neighborhood-based development to help attendees analyze what makes a good project, how a building makes money, and how small developers interact with the broader ecosystem of professionals in the built environment.

Rich Rogers explores how investment crowdfunding fills critical gaps in real estate capital stacks. Through practical examples, learn how both for-profit and nonprofit developers structure offerings to fund challenging project phases—from predevelopment to tax credit monetization—while reducing costs compared to traditional financing.

Presented by Rich Rogers

Krista Nightengale will share how Better Block transforms neighborhoods through tactical urbanism, not massive budgets. She will demonstrate how temporary interventions—paint, planters, pop-up installations—help communities and officials envision vibrant public spaces, building momentum for lasting change through grassroots collaboration.

Presented by Krista Nightengale

What makes a block, a street, or a plaza feel timeless, vibrant, and enduring? Great places share universal building blocks that have shaped successful communities for centuries. This session introduces incremental developers to essential elements of urbanism, helping translate conceptual design ideas into actionable strategies that enhance both community and financial value.

Presented by Will McCollum

Why do some neighborhood projects flourish while others fail before they even break ground? The answer isn't in your business plan or financing—it's right outside your front door.

Join us for a free bar talk with Jon Jon the Happy Urbanist.

Do you want to learn more about how you can become a small real estate developer for a project in your neighborhood?  Are you an advocate or local leader looking to encourage better buildings in your community?

Join us for a lecture by Elizabeth Ward Williams, IncDev Faculty Member and Director of Urban Design at Kronberg Urbanists + Architects.

Jim Heid will discuss his award-winning Cottage Court project, achieved through thought partnership, not rezoning.  He will explain how community context helped him enlist elected officials, planning and public works staff as collaborators in creating what the community wanted, not what code dictated. 

Presented by Jim Heid

Do you want to learn more about how you can become a small real estate developer for a project in your neighborhood?  Are you an advocate or local leader looking to encourage better buildings in your community?

Join us for a morning seminar by Neil Heller, Faculty Member at IncDev Alliance and Principal of Neighborhood Workshop. In the afternoon expect case studies and additional focus-tracks grounded in the types of development envisioned for Fairbanks’ future.

Created for real-world use and rooted in patterns that already exist in Maine towns, the Maine’s PlaceCode Library offers a calibrated approach to zoning reform. Ivy will share how communities are applying this tool, what challenges it helps solve, and how practitioners can get trained to use it effectively.

Presented by Ivy Vann

Do you want to learn more about how you can become a small real estate developer for a project in your neighborhood?  Are you an advocate or local leader looking to encourage better buildings in your community?

Join us for a lecture by Tiffany Elder, Faculty Member at IncDev Alliance and owner of Paradigm Properties, a real estate brokerage firm, and Paradigm Construction, a design-build construction firm.

Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) are powerful tools for addressing disinvestment and building stronger, more equitable communities. Whether you’re a new or experienced developer, understanding how to work with a CDFI can unlock critical financing for your affordable housing, mixed-income, or mixed-use project. In this session, ANDP, a U.S. Treasury-certified CDFI based in Atlanta, and Incremental Development Alliance (IDA) Faculty will walk you through what it takes to prepare your organization and your project to access CDFI funding.

Presented by Sara Haas and Eric Kronberg

Do you want to learn more about how you can become a small real estate developer for a project in your neighborhood?  Are you an advocate or local leader looking to encourage better buildings in your community?

Join us for a lecture, discussion and Q&A by Eric Kronberg, Faculty Member at IncDev Alliance and Principal of Kronberg U+A.

Your project looks finanicially promising. So how will it repay investors, and when? How long before you can liberate your equity to take on a new project? This session will help you make sense of the Multi-Year Cash Flow, a common tool for forecasting how your project will perform over time.

Presented by Jennifer Krouse

Exploring the ideas that shape community development. Join fellow community builders for an engaging exploration of how geography, culture, and economics intersect in place-based development.

Facilitated by Ryan Terry