But the developer wouldn’t budge, insisting that tall buildings weren’t economically viable – not, at least, in Lafayette circa 1995. That’s where people can walk to transit and live without a car.

Who in the world would build single-family homes next to a BART station? That’s where dense housing should be. But it was abundantly clear, even to naïve me, that this wasn’t a good idea. Twenty years earlier, soon after I was appointed as Lafayette’s city manager, a local developer called to say he’d acquired four vacant acres next to the BART station and wanted to build single-family homes on the site. I want to hear your version of what happened.” But Conor persisted, saying he wanted the staff member’s view – the professional’s view – from city hall. Queasy at the prospect of presenting a higher profile than my elected-official bosses, I suggested he speak with the mayor instead. He said he felt bad about how Lafayette had been cut from the newspaper article and wanted to revisit the story.

I figured I’d never hear from him again, but here he was on the other end of the line now, telling me he was taking a year off to expand the earlier piece into a book. But when that piece was published, the Lafayette content was buried so deep that it hardly registered. Conor and I had spoken a year earlier when he interviewed me about a project in Lafayette that had become a focal point for the rising Yes-In-My-Backyard (YIMBY) movement. I answered the phone and it was Conor Dougherty, a New York Times reporter who had written articles about California’s housing crunch.

Candlelight square apartments