Author, YIMBY Nolan Gray Headlining Urban Spaceship Conference

The Urban Spaceship conference is back for its third year, this time with a focus on growing Milwaukee’s population.

The theme for the one-day conference is “growing Milwaukee to a million person city.” It builds on Mayor Cavalier Johnson‘s campaign goal of growing the city’s population to one million residents.

The conference will take place Nov. 15 at Nō Studios, 1037 W. McKinley Ave., in The Brewery District. The event is hosted by NEWaukee and NAIOP Wisconsin, with Greenfire Management serving as the presenting sponsor.

Author M. Nolan Gray headlines the list of confirmed speakers. Gray, research director for California YIMBY (Yes in My Backyard) and former city planner, published “Arbitrary Lines” in June. The book explores how zoning damaged American cities and argues that it should be abolished.

But Gray might be best known to Milwaukee residents as the person behind the “Best City in the USA” Twitter bracket in fall 2021. Milwaukee residents obsessively voted the city to the top in the 64-city bracket, yielding an embarrassing number of local news articles and a good-humored “celebration” plan from VISIT Milwaukee.

Also confirmed to speak at the conference is Veta T. Jeffrey, president and CEO of the Omaha Chamber of Commerce, Doug Gordon, co-host of The War on Cars podcast and John Bela, co-founder of Park(ing) Day and founder of consulting firm Bela Urbanism + Design.

More speakers will be announced as the event draws closer.

The conference is a spiritual successor to the Empty Storefronts conference run by NAIOP and NEWaukee ran for five years. The conference sought to serve as a platform to exchange ideas and strategies for filling vacant storefronts and addressing blight. Urban Spaceship has a broader focus and is intended to identify actionable items and spark new ideas that can improve cities.

Urban Spaceship was originally launched as a podcast in 2020 by NEWaukee’s Jeremy Fojut alongside fellow urban advocates Montavius Jones and Michael Bradley.

Early bird tickets to the event are available for $30.