An Obituary for Mississippi's Dan Camp, Developer of The Cotton District
BEHIND THE MIC SERIES #2 | Townbuilder's Podcast Reflections
In this series, I’ll be reflecting on some of my favorite conversations from Seasons 1 and 2 of The Townbuilder’s Podcast, which I had the pleasure of hosting. Throughout these seasons, I engaged in in-depth conversations with nearly two dozen new town developers and designers. With the podcast set to relaunch in 2025 under the new host Levi Wintz, I wanted to revisit these meaningful episodes, sharing my favorite discussions along with some fresh reflections.
My favorite aspect of this podcast was the “developer’s obituary” in the pre-roll—a tribute written to honor Dan Camp, the visionary behind Starkville, Mississippi’s Cotton District, a pioneering urban neighborhood developed well before new urbanism became widely recognized.
Dan Camp was a legend in new town development. He was perhaps one of the few who might belong on a Mount Rushmore of Townbuilding. At the end of the day, there are probably only around ten townbuilders in America who meet the following criteria:
started developing a new town
and successfully completed it.
Even more remarkably, Dan built this beautiful project as student housing. In 2024, The Cotton District presents as an outlier because, architecturally speaking, student housing developments are consistently some of the ugliest around.
The Cotton District shows an alternative path. It’s a rare case that honors the principle that students deserve nice walkable places, too. The only other development I can think of that follows the rule is Midtown Auburn.
Rob Steuteville penned a worthy obituary for Dan Camp in Public Square, outlining why the development is so unique—the local teams that executed the project, the unusual commitment to ornament and millwork, and the delta across price points. The essay links to this 2013 video, which shows the project under construction and allows the viewer to hear Dan Camp’s iconic Mississippian voice. It conveys Dan’s appreciation for the local people and his local trades.
Below is an obituary penned by one of those tradespeople who Dan adored. Michael Roy, aka “Birdcap,” was a local talent with no experience painting murals who Dan hired to paint murals.
Like many successful developers in new townbuilding, Dan enjoyed going against the grain. He found joy in doing things that people told him couldn’t be done. Below is the dictation of Birdcap’s tribute. The audio version of it leads the Townbuilder’s Podcast episode 108, linked below. I hope you enjoy.
(FROM PODCAST) Dan Camp was a loud-mouthed, hard-headed, persistent, and insistent Mississippian with a giant heart and a Southern drawl that immediately intoned he was from way back up in the woods.
I’m proud to say he was my friend. He was a self made man and took to the world with a similar ambition.
Dan invested to grow a community he wanted to see bloom locally. I grew up in Mississippi. I didn’t think there’d be a Dan in Mississippi. But Dan would be the first to tell me I don’t know “Shit from Shinola”.
By the time I’d met Dan he’d already created The Cotton District in Starkville and was determined to make his neighborhood have all the cultural comforts he’d seen in other cities, even if he had to install it one concrete casting at a time.
He hired me to paint a mural on his office about ten minutes after meeting me in early 2014. This was in spite of me having no paid experience, no knowledge of how to run a scissor lift, and no proper sketch.
He liked that the old folks across town hated my work. He stayed in touch and his family would invent jobs for me over the next couple of years to keep me fed as I fumbled through getting a career off of the ground. So I painted the floor around an exercise pool, the steps of a restaurant he was renting out, and an empty shed with no purpose at all, among others.
He’d also invite me down to stay there in the Cotton District from time to time and paint canvas work. He’d buy them afterward, even if he hated them.
Dan liked having artists in the neighborhood, and he liked supporting what he wanted more of. He invited me to dinners and introduced me as “the resident mauhralist.”
At any given time he might also be patron to a writer, a sculptor, a wild impressionist, a barefoot juggler, a lost intellectual or an ethically-sourced hippie apparel shop. Dan Camp wanted a carousel of creatives in the neighborhood, by design. A neighborhood that looked like Italy, New Orleans, and the Bulldawg Bash mortared together.
Dan was effortlessly southern and worldly, traditionally rooted and incredibly open-minded. He led by example that Mississippi isn’t something you run away from, it’s something you build in your own image. - Artist/Muralist Michael Roy aka Birdcap
Dan Camp was 77 years old.
For a link to the audio of the obituary, click below: