In the Fall of 2011 a number of folks active in the Congress for the New Urbanism gathered in Montgomery, Alabama to talk about how we might climb out of the smoking crater of the Financial Crisis and the worst Real Estate Recession in our lifetimes.  Victor Dover and Andres Duany were quite vocal on the issue of scale, that it would be very important for urbanists to learn how to deliver good places with smaller pieces.  I think this is still true.  The Great Recession showed us just how vulnerable our enterprises were when big stuff suddenly stopped getting built and fee for service work dried up overnight.

A 4 minute clip by Ben Brown of Victor Dover on the importance of using a smaller increment of development.  (I don't think anyone else has made a better case since).

Ben's clip of me pitching why understanding development math would be a good thing for design and policy folks: https://www.youtube.com/embed/Cv0BcmaecGc">2011 Understanding the numbers .