The tangible & the intangible
A neighbor leaves a note in your mailbox because the lemons on your tree are ripening, and they wanted to thank you for the ones you left on their porch last week.
There is a phrase that comes up in our work, in the long meetings and the longer master plans, that has stayed with me for years. The tangible and the intangible. The things you can count, and the things that count.
The tangible is the part of land development the world tends to see. The acreage, the square footage, the number of units, the cost per door. The roads and the curbs and the parks on the site plan. The schools, the houses, the trees, the trails. The things a builder can quantify and a buyer can tour. The things that show up on a pro forma.
The intangible is everything else.
The way a street feels when you walk it on a summer evening. The way the light falls through heritage pines in a park that was thoughtfully preserved.
