In March 2023, major banks collapsed, interest rates have been rising, and many people are greatly—and rightly—concerned about inflation. In this week’s episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn talks about the financial system, and provides insights on what’s currently happening in the banking industry.ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES Chuck Marohn (Twitter). 

In March 2023, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/17/business/global-banking-crisis-explained/index.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">major banks collapsed</a>, interest rates have been rising, and many people are greatly—and rightly—concerned about inflation. In this week’s episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn talks about the financial system, and provides insights on what’s currently happening in the banking industry.ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES <ul><li> <a href="https://twitter.com/clmarohn?lang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Chuck Marohn (Twitter)</a>. </li></ul>

What’s Going On With the Recent Bank Failures?

In 1906, a powerful earthquake in San Francisco, California, damaged a good portion of the city, causing havoc and distress as 28,188 buildings were destroyed, and over 3,000 people were killed. Curiously, after this tragic disaster, things began to grow again, but this time the built environment came back stronger. Seth Zeren, a founding member of Strong Towns, wrote about this phenomenon last month, and this week on the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn and Zeren chat about complexity, and if complex systems can grow stronger through destruction.ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Do Things Need to Burn for New Things to Grow?” by Seth Zeren, Strong Towns (Feb, 2023).   Subscribe to Seth Zeren’s Substack, Build the Next Right Thing.   Chuck Marohn (Twitter). 

In 1906, a powerful earthquake in San Francisco, California, damaged a good portion of the city, causing havoc and distress as 28,188 buildings were destroyed, and over 3,000 people were killed. Curiously, after this tragic disaster, things began to grow again, but this time the built environment came back stronger. Seth Zeren, a founding member of Strong Towns, <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/2/10/do-things-need-burn-new-growth" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">wrote about this phenomenon</a> last month, and this week on the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn and Zeren chat about complexity, and if complex systems can grow stronger through destruction.ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES <ul><li> <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/2/10/do-things-need-burn-new-growth" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">“Do Things Need to Burn for New Things to Grow?”</a> by Seth Zeren, Strong Towns (Feb, 2023). </li> <li> Subscribe to Seth Zeren’s Substack, <a href="https://buildthenextrightthing.substack.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Build the Next Right Thing</a>. </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/clmarohn?lang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Chuck Marohn (Twitter)</a>. </li></ul>

Growth Through Destruction

We believe everyone can build a Strong Town, but all too often, political differences divide communities, and instead of working together to build stronger neighborhoods from a bottom-up approach, we get caught up in contentious, top-down ideas and conversations.  One such political divide has developed around the concept of the 15-minute city: a term used to describe traditional neighborhoods. While to urbanists it describes a walkable place, to critics, it’s a potential infringement on personal freedoms. In this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn dives into the controversies surrounding the 15-minute city.ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES Charles Marohn (Twitter). 

We believe everyone can build a Strong Town, but all too often, <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/10/11/build-a-bridge" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">political differences divide communities</a>, and instead of working together to build stronger neighborhoods from a bottom-up approach, we get caught up in contentious, top-down ideas and conversations.  One such political divide has developed around the concept of the 15-minute city: a term used to describe <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/1/30/parking-pizza-apartments-mall" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">traditional neighborhoods</a>. While to urbanists it describes a walkable place, to critics, it’s a potential infringement on personal freedoms. In this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn dives into the controversies surrounding the 15-minute city.ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES <ul><li> <a href="https://twitter.com/clmarohn" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Charles Marohn (Twitter)</a>. </li></ul>

On the Conservative Reaction to 15-Minute Cities

The property tax system is broken all across the nation. In Detroit, residents face an issue of inconsistent assessments, where two homes that are similar in condition and sitting on similar-sized lots have widely different assessment scores.  Recently, the team at Regrid, an industry-leading property data and location intelligence company, put together an Assessment Gauge map that may prove to be a useful tool for homeowners, assessors, or nonprofits in bringing a much-needed balance to overassessments. Today on the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn welcomes back Alex Alsup, vice president of research and development at Regrid, to talk about assessments and property tax in Detroit, how the Strong Towns approach worked for Alsup and his team, and an overview of the assessment process.  Read more about the Assessment Gauge in the article “Check Your Temperature- You Might Have an Assessment Fever.” To learn more about Regrid or get access to their parcel data, click here. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES Regrid (website).   Charles Marohn (Twitter). 

The property tax system is broken all across the nation. In Detroit, residents face an issue of inconsistent assessments, where two homes that are similar in condition and sitting on similar-sized lots have widely different assessment scores.  Recently, the team at Regrid, an industry-leading property data and location intelligence company, put together an <a href="http://regrid.com/assessments" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Assessment Gauge map</a> that may prove to be a useful tool for homeowners, assessors, or nonprofits in bringing a much-needed balance to overassessments. Today on the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn welcomes back Alex Alsup, vice president of research and development at <a href="http://regrid.com/purpose" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Regrid</a>, to talk about assessments and property tax in Detroit, how the <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/11/11/the-strong-towns-approach" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Strong Towns approach</a> worked for Alsup and his team, and an overview of the assessment process.  Read more about the Assessment Gauge in the article “<a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/10/18/jafh-check-your-temperatureyou-might-have-an-assessment-fever" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Check Your Temperature- You Might Have an Assessment Fever.</a>” To learn more about Regrid or get access to their parcel data, <a href="http://regrip.com/purpose" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">click here</a>. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES <ul><li> <a href="https://regrid.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Regrid (website)</a>. </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/clmarohn" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Charles Marohn (Twitter)</a>. </li></ul>

The Property Tax System is Broken—Regrid Works on Tools to Help Fix It

Jeff Speck

Today on the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn welcomes back Jeff Speck, city planner and author, to talk about a brand-new version of his book, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time. It’s the 10th anniversary for the book, and a lot has changed in the U.S. since the original was published. While the content from the first edition is still relevant today, this updated version holds over 100 pages of new information useful to those actively working to make their cities stronger. Listen to Chuck and Speck talk in depth about some of those book additions, including (but not limited to) COVID’s impact on cities, the reckless driver narrative, and a simple truth about street trees.ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES Get the new edition of Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time.   Jeff Speck (Twitter).   Charles Marohn (Twitter). 

Today on the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn welcomes back Jeff Speck, city planner and author, to talk about a brand-new version of his book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Tenth-Anniversary-Downtown/dp/1250857988/ref=sr_1_2?crid=D96A9EP0LCWD&amp;keywords=WALKABLE+CITY%3A+How+Downtown+Can+Save+America%2C+One+Step+at+a+Time&amp;qid=1675887021&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=walkable+city+how+downtown+can+save+america%2C+one+step+at+a+time%2Cstripbooks%2C155&amp;sr=1-2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time</a>. It’s the 10th anniversary for the book, and a lot has changed in the U.S. since the original was published. While the content from the first edition is still relevant today, this updated version holds over 100 pages of new information useful to those actively working to make their cities stronger. Listen to Chuck and Speck talk in depth about some of those book additions, including (but not limited to) COVID’s impact on cities, the reckless driver narrative, and a simple truth about street trees.ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES <ul><li> Get the new edition of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Tenth-Anniversary-Downtown/dp/1250857988/ref=sr_1_2?crid=D96A9EP0LCWD&amp;keywords=WALKABLE+CITY%3A+How+Downtown+Can+Save+America%2C+One+Step+at+a+Time&amp;qid=1675887021&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=walkable+city+how+downtown+can+save+america%2C+one+step+at+a+time%2Cstripbooks%2C155&amp;sr=1-2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time</a>. </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffSpeckFAICP?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jeff Speck (Twitter)</a>. </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/clmarohn" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Charles Marohn (Twitter)</a>. </li></ul>

Jeff Speck on the 10th-Anniversary Edition of Walkable City

Anyone should be able to speak up and question whether current engineering practices truly benefit our communities. That’s especially true for licensed professionals who have a special duty to the public to be heard. And when they do speak up, their statements should not make them a target for licensing boards.  Members of the Minnesota board of engineering licensure are supposed to uphold the integrity of their institution, but instead they have abused their power, overstepping their authority in order to slander a leading reformer—someone who was not even practicing engineering—by issuing a state order against Strong Towns founder and president, Charles Marohn.  We’re fighting to have the board’s decision overturned. In this Strong Towns Podcast, listen to the latest update on the appeal for this case and the oral arguments made in front of the Minnesota Court of Appeals.  For more information on this case, visit www.strongtowns.org/supportreform.ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTESLearn more about our fight for engineering reform. Charles Marohn (Twitter).

Anyone should be able to speak up and question whether current engineering practices truly benefit our communities. That’s especially true for<a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/category/Engineering+Profession" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> licensed professionals who have a special duty to the public</a> to be heard. And when they do speak up, their statements should not make them a target for licensing boards.  Members of the Minnesota board of engineering licensure are supposed to uphold the integrity of their institution, but instead they have abused their power, overstepping their authority in order to slander a leading reformer—someone who was not even practicing engineering—by issuing a state order against Strong Towns founder and president, Charles Marohn.  <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/8/26/strong-towns-will-defend-engineers-right-to-free-speech-from-the-minnesota-licensing-board" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">We’re fighting to have the board’s decision overturned</a>. In this Strong Towns Podcast, listen to the latest update on the appeal for this case and the oral arguments made in front of the Minnesota Court of Appeals.  For more information on this case, visit <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/supportreform" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.strongtowns.org/supportreform</a>.ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES <ul><li>Learn more about<a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/supportreform" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> our fight for engineering reform</a>.</li> <li><a href="https://twitter.com/clmarohn" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Charles Marohn (Twitter)</a>.</li></ul>

Lawsuit Update: Making a Stand for Engineers in the Minnesota State Court of Appeals

How far up the chain of command does a problem need to go before someone can make a decision on it? According to the concept of subsidiarity, it matters less what decision is made and more who makes the decision—in other words, a decision should be made at the lowest level that it can competently be made. Mike Hathorne, principal of community planning and design at Commun1ty.one and Strong Towns member, works with cities to create decision-making processes that can impact how our places function. Today, he joins Chuck Marohn on the Strong Towns Podcast to discuss subsidiarity in a practical sense. For further listening on this topic, check out the episode “What Customer Service Should Mean for a City,” where Chuck talks about his personal experience with subsidiarity and how it forms in our places.ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “Subsidiarity,” by Mike Hathorne, Commun1ity.one (August 2018).   Commun1ty.one’s website.   Mike Hathorne (Twitter).   Charles Marohn (Twitter). 

How far up the chain of command does a problem need to go before someone can make a decision on it? According to the concept of subsidiarity, it matters less what decision is made and more who makes the decision—in other words, a decision<a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/6/28/local-decision-making" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> should be made at the lowest level that it can competently be made</a>. Mike Hathorne, principal of community planning and design at <a href="https://commun1ty.one/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Commun1ty.one</a> and <a href="../../membership" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Strong Towns member</a>, works with cities to create decision-making processes that can impact how our places function. Today, he joins Chuck Marohn on the Strong Towns Podcast to discuss subsidiarity in a practical sense. For further listening on this topic, check out the episode “<a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/10/10/what-customer-service-should-mean-for-a-city" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">What Customer Service Should Mean for a City</a>,” where Chuck talks about his personal experience with subsidiarity and how it forms in our places.ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES <ul><li> “<a href="https://commun1ty.one/vision/2018/8/21/subsidiarity" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Subsidiarity</a>,” by Mike Hathorne, Commun1ity.one (August 2018). </li> <li> <a href="https://commun1ty.one" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Commun1ty.one’s website</a>. </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/mhathorne" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mike Hathorne (Twitter)</a>. </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/clmarohn" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Charles Marohn (Twitter)</a>. </li></ul>

Mike Hathorne: Where Does Decision-Making Need to Occur in Our Communities?

Ben Hunt

Today’s Strong Towns Podcast guest, Ben Hunt, wrote on Epsilon Theory that “Bitcoin has been an authentic expression of identity, a positive identity of autonomy, entrepreneurialism, and resistance to the Nudging State and the Nudging Oligarchy.”  Today, join Chuck Marohn as he invites Hunt onto the podcast to discuss his insights on Bitcoin, the story of investing, and how it connects to all of us.ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “In Praise of Bitcoin,” by Ben Hunt, Epsilon Theory (April 2021).   Read more Epsilon Theory here.   Ben Hunt (Twitter).   Charles Marohn (Twitter). 

Today’s Strong Towns Podcast guest, Ben Hunt, <a href="https://www.epsilontheory.com/in-praise-of-bitcoin/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">wrote on Epsilon Theory</a> that “Bitcoin has been an authentic expression of identity, a positive identity of autonomy, entrepreneurialism, and resistance to the Nudging State and the Nudging Oligarchy.”  Today, join Chuck Marohn as he invites Hunt onto the podcast to discuss his insights on Bitcoin, the story of investing, and how it connects to all of us.ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES <ul><li> “<a href="https://www.epsilontheory.com/in-praise-of-bitcoin/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">In Praise of Bitcoin</a>,” by Ben Hunt, Epsilon Theory (April 2021). </li> <li> <a href="https://www.epsilontheory.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read more Epsilon Theory here</a>. </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/EpsilonTheory" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ben Hunt (Twitter)</a>. </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/clmarohn" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Charles Marohn (Twitter)</a>. </li></ul>

Ben Hunt: In Praise of Bitcoin

It's been a great year for the Strong Towns Podcast; thanks for listening. We wanted to close out 2022 with one last message, and to wish you Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

It's been a great year for the Strong Towns Podcast; thanks for listening. We wanted to close out 2022 with one last message, and to wish you Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

Thanks for a Great Year

Sam Quinones

This week on the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn chats with Sam Quinones, author and journalist, about his most recent book: The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth. Along with doing a deep dive on particular sections of the book, Quinones tells how we went from city hall reporter to writing books about addiction.ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES Sam Quinones’s website.   Order your copy of The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth.   Sam Quinones (Twitter).   Charles Marohn (Twitter). 

This week on the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn chats with Sam Quinones, author and journalist, about his most recent book: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Least-Us-Tales-America-Fentanyl/dp/1635574358/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the%20last%20of%20us%20sam%20quinones%20book&amp;qid=1646146607&amp;sprefix=the%20least%20of%20us%2Caps%2C224&amp;sr=8-1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth</a>. Along with doing a deep dive on particular sections of the book, Quinones tells how we went from city hall reporter to writing books about addiction.ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES <ul><li> <a href="https://samquinones.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sam Quinones’s website</a>. </li> <li> Order your copy of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Least-Us-Tales-America-Fentanyl/dp/1635574358/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the%20last%20of%20us%20sam%20quinones%20book&amp;qid=1646146607&amp;sprefix=the%20least%20of%20us%2Caps%2C224&amp;sr=8-1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth</a>. </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/samquinones7" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sam Quinones (Twitter)</a>. </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/clmarohn" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Charles Marohn (Twitter)</a>. </li></ul>

Sam Quinones: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth

We advocate for a model of development that allows our cities, towns and neighborhoods to grow financially strong and resilient.

Need more women on this podcast. But good topics thus far.

Lots of men

Great conversations about cities, finance and the future of life in America

Terrific, comprehensive discussions of current and future problems of localities.

The Strong Towns Podcast

In a bizarre round of the endless, massively multiplayer game of Telephone that is the internet, a recent Forbes headline pronounced, “Wealth Guru Plans Dutch-Style Car-Free Bicycle-Friendly City Near Boulder, Colorado.“ Other publications quickly jumped on the story about a supposed eco-friendly, urbanist, cycling utopia in the works at the base of the Rockies, which would have a population of 50,000 people in a single square mile and be the joint project of a Dutch urban design firm and a popular Colorado-based early retirement blogger. Unfortunately for those hoping to sell the car and move to Cyclocroft, there are no actual plans to build this experimental city. The whole thing was just a thought experiment, a series of tweets sharing the detailed (but fictional) 3D mockups of what a better and more fiscally resilient way to live in that corner of the world might look like. Fortunately for those who like good, thought-provoking content on how to detach from the mania of modern life and live more deliberately, the one part of the brief Cyclocroft craze that is real is the “wealth guru” who put the idea out on Twitter as food for thought. His name is Pete Adeney, but you probably know him as Mr. Money Mustache. He is a fan of Strong Towns, we’re fans of his, and he just so happens to have been our special guest on one of the most popular Strong Towns Podcast episodes ever, published back in April 2016. Here it is, #7 in our Greatest Hits series. “The Individual Digital to Our Community Analog” That’s the phrase that Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn uses to describe Mr. Money Mustache, and for good reason. The core insight of Strong Towns is that many communities are trapped in a cycle of unproductive, debt-fueled growth for growth’s sake—and that our cities and towns need to quit the rat race and focus on building great places that generate real, sustainable wealth from the bottom up. The core insight of Mr. Money Mustache’s writing is that many individuals are trapped in a cycle of unproductive, debt-fueled consumption for consumption’s sake—and could also stand to take a step back and live better—and wealthier—by avoiding debt and investing their resources in the things that actually, demonstrably improve their lives. Listen to this podcast to find out: • How Mr. Money Mustache manages to drive only 400 miles per year (aside from a couple out-of-town trips) while living in suburban Colorado. Hint: it has less to do with bicycling—though he does bike—and more to do with a local lifestyle, arranged so that he can get most of the things that he needs and that are rewarding to him within a few miles of home. • What it looks like to live debt-free on $24,000 a year. Hint: it doesn’t look like obsessive frugality, or like self-imposed poverty. It looks a lot like evaluating your mundane, daily choices to figure out which ones are actually high-returning in terms of happiness: something we at Strong Towns analogously encourage cities to do with their own investment decisions. MMM describes his philosophy as, "Getting the benefits of the modern lifestyle while slicing out the things that don’t benefit us." “The biggest thing is a local lifestyle. That doesn’t really happen by accident. I try to emphasize that as opposed to just saying ‘Ride a bike!’” • The benefits of living as though debt is an emergency—something to be resolved as quickly as possible—not a constant fact of life. • The benefits of blogging about all of this. (“I”m living a better life than I otherwise would, because people are watching, so I can’t screw it up.”) “It’s very natural for us as humans to live for today,” observed Marohn. “To say ‘these things [we want to spend money on] are prerequisites,’” even if that means we need to go into debt to acquire them. For an individual, getting out of that mindset can be challenging and scary, but it can be immensely rewarding. If you missed this podcast back in 2016 or you’re new to our audience since then (and we know most of you are!), check it out this time around and let Mr. Money Mustache show you how to achieve what he calls “financial freedom through badassity.” And then think about how your city could do much the same thing, if its leaders got disciplined and deliberate about where they’re spending citizens’ tax dollars—and made sure it was on the things that truly generate long-term prosperity and quality of life. That’s the Strong Towns approach. One might call us the Mustachians of urban growth and development. Just don’t look for us to announce a master-planned utopian bicycle city anytime soon.

In a bizarre round of the endless, massively multiplayer game of Telephone that is the internet, a recent Forbes headline pronounced, “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/02/21/wealth-guru-plans-dutch-style-car-free-bicycle-friendly-city-near-boulder-colorado/#4c585e3cd91d" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Wealth Guru Plans Dutch-Style Car-Free Bicycle-Friendly City Near Boulder, Colorado</a>.“ Other publications quickly jumped on the story about a supposed eco-friendly, urbanist, cycling utopia in the works at the base of the Rockies, which would have a population of 50,000 people in a single square mile and be the joint project of a Dutch urban design firm and a popular Colorado-based early retirement blogger. Unfortunately for those hoping to sell the car and move to Cyclocroft, there are no actual plans to build this experimental city. The whole thing was just a thought experiment, a series of tweets sharing the detailed (but fictional) 3D mockups of what a better and more fiscally resilient way to live in that corner of the world might look like. Fortunately for those who like good, thought-provoking content on how to detach from the mania of modern life and live more deliberately, the one part of the brief Cyclocroft craze that is real is the “wealth guru” who put the idea out on Twitter as food for thought. His name is Pete Adeney, but you probably know him as <a href="https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mr. Money Mustache</a>. He is a fan of Strong Towns, we’re fans of his, and he just so happens to have been our special guest on one of the most popular Strong Towns Podcast episodes ever, published back in April 2016. Here it is, #7 in our Greatest Hits series. “The Individual Digital to Our Community Analog” That’s the phrase that Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn uses to describe Mr. Money Mustache, and for good reason. The core insight of Strong Towns is that many communities are <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">trapped in a cycle of unproductive, debt-fueled growth for growth’s sake</a>—and that our cities and towns need to quit the rat race and focus on building great places that generate real, sustainable wealth from the bottom up. The core insight of Mr. Money Mustache’s writing is that many individuals are trapped in a cycle of unproductive, debt-fueled consumption for consumption’s sake—and could also stand to take a step back and live better—and wealthier—by avoiding debt and investing their resources in the things that actually, demonstrably improve their lives. Listen to this podcast to find out: • How Mr. Money Mustache manages to drive only 400 miles per year (aside from a couple out-of-town trips) while living in suburban Colorado. Hint: it has less to do with bicycling—though he does bike—and more to do with a local lifestyle, arranged so that he can get most of the things that he needs and that are rewarding to him within a few miles of home. • What it looks like to live debt-free on $24,000 a year. Hint: it doesn’t look like obsessive frugality, or like self-imposed poverty. It looks a lot like evaluating your mundane, daily choices to figure out which ones are actually high-returning in terms of happiness: something we at Strong Towns analogously encourage cities to do with their own investment decisions. MMM describes his philosophy as, "Getting the benefits of the modern lifestyle while slicing out the things that don’t benefit us." “The biggest thing is a local lifestyle. That doesn’t really happen by accident. I try to emphasize that as opposed to just saying ‘Ride a bike!’” • The benefits of living as though debt is an emergency—something to be resolved as quickly as possible—not a constant fact of life. • The benefits of blogging about all of this. (“I”m living a better life than I otherwise would, because people are watching, so I can’t screw it up.”) “It’s very natural for us as humans to live for today,” observed Marohn. “To say ‘these things [we want to spend money on] are prerequisites,’” even if that means we need to go into debt to acquire them. For an individual, getting out of that mindset can be challenging and scary, but it can be immensely rewarding. If you missed this podcast back in 2016 or you’re new to our audience since then (and we know most of you are!), check it out this time around and let Mr. Money Mustache show you how to achieve what he calls “financial freedom through badassity.” And then think about how your city could do much the same thing, if its leaders got disciplined and deliberate about where they’re spending citizens’ tax dollars—and made sure it was on the things that truly generate long-term prosperity and quality of life. That’s the Strong Towns approach. One might call us the Mustachians of urban growth and development. Just don’t look for us to announce a master-planned utopian bicycle city anytime soon.

Greatest Hits #7: Talking Debt and Self-Sufficiency With Mr. Money Mustache (2016)

From the Strong Towns Gathering in Santa Ana, California, is a discussion about whether the state of California should bring back local redevelopment agencies. Mike Madrid and Steven Greenhut join Chuck Marohn to debate the matter.

From the Strong Towns Gathering in Santa Ana, California, is a discussion about whether the state of California should bring back local redevelopment agencies. <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/socal-gathering-presenters/2019/11/20/mike-madrid" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mike Madrid</a> and <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/socal-gathering-presenters/2019/11/20/steven-greenhut" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Steven Greenhut</a> join Chuck Marohn to debate the matter.

Should California Bring Back Redevelopment Agencies?

The fourth entry in our Strong Towns Podcast Greatest Hits series is part 2 of a 2-parter from 2015 (Click here for Part 1). In this series, our founder and president Chuck Marohn breaks down, quote by quote, a talk by Nassim Nicholas Taleb called “Small is Beautiful, but Also Less Fragile.” We’ve called Taleb the Patron Saint of Strong Towns thinking, because his insights about risk, uncertainty, and fragility have profound implications for how we build our places. Traditional cities, Taleb observes, are the product of organic, evolutionary processes. This does not mean they are disorderly: on the contrary, ancient and medieval cities often possess a rich order that modern-day humans instinctively find beautiful. But it’s not a scripted order, but rather, an order more like that of a fractal: patterns that repeat themselves at different scales, as people both imitate what has worked before and improve upon what they have already built. A common mistake among contemporary urban-design thinkers is to treat good design as solely a matter of attention to detail. We can replicate the superficial form of a beloved place with intense attention to minute details: Chuck cites Disneyland as perhaps the classic example. And yet Disneyland—or even a real-world city like Carmel, Indiana designed with a similar mindset—is a world apart from a traditional village that has endured and evolved for hundreds of years. We should be humbled by the recognition that some of the best, most valued places we know today are many generations old, and that it will take many more generations before we know what of all we’ve built in the current era will stand the test of time. In the face of this observation, what should planners and economic developers and all other sorts of city-builders do? Act small, says Marohn. Act tactically. Make little bets, and iterate on them depending on what worked well. Don’t pretend you’re God.We Need Lots of Small EarthquakesThis episode also discusses the way cities respond to disruption. The fatal flaw of modern technocratic planning is to seek to eliminate uncomfortable feedback—to create systems (physical and economic) that are too predictable. It’s as if we devised a technology that could eliminate magnitude-6 earthquakes, Marohn suggests. But an earthquake is a necessary release of built-up pressure between the earth’s tectonic plates. Without that pressure release mechanism, would we only be hastening the arrival of the next catastrophic, magnitude 9 quake? What we really need is constant, small shocks to the systems we live within—the economy, the culture, the built environment. We need a steady stream of magnitude 2 and 3 earthquakes. We could even live in a world in which those occurred daily. It’s the severe ones that wreak havoc. For these and many more insights on how Taleb’s notion of antifragility can help us build stronger towns, have a listen.

The fourth entry in our Strong Towns Podcast Greatest Hits series is part 2 of a 2-parter from 2015 (<a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/1/28/is-a-city-more-like-a-washing-machine-or-a-cat" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Click here for Part 1</a>). In this series, our founder and president Chuck Marohn breaks down, quote by quote, a talk by Nassim Nicholas Taleb called “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0hMS4eUVV8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Small is Beautiful, but Also Less Fragile</a>.” We’ve called Taleb the Patron Saint of Strong Towns thinking, because his insights about risk, uncertainty, and fragility have profound implications for how we build our places. Traditional cities, Taleb observes, are the product of organic, evolutionary processes. This does not mean they are disorderly: on the contrary, ancient and medieval cities often possess a rich order that modern-day humans instinctively find beautiful. But it’s not a scripted order, but rather, an order more like that of a fractal: patterns that repeat themselves at different scales, as people both imitate what has worked before and improve upon what they have already built. A common mistake among contemporary urban-design thinkers is to treat good design as solely a matter of attention to detail. We can replicate the superficial form of a beloved place with intense attention to minute details: Chuck cites Disneyland as perhaps the classic example. And yet Disneyland—or even a real-world city like Carmel, Indiana designed with a similar mindset—is a world apart from a traditional village that has endured and evolved for hundreds of years. We should be humbled by the recognition that some of the best, most valued places we know today are many generations old, and that it will take many more generations before we know what of all we’ve built in the current era will stand the test of time. In the face of this observation, what should planners and economic developers and all other sorts of city-builders do? Act small, says Marohn. Act tactically. Make little bets, and iterate on them depending on what worked well. Don’t pretend you’re God.We Need Lots of Small Earthquakes This episode also discusses the way cities respond to disruption. The fatal flaw of modern technocratic planning is to seek to eliminate uncomfortable feedback—to create systems (physical and economic) that are too predictable. It’s as if we devised a technology that could eliminate magnitude-6 earthquakes, Marohn suggests. But an earthquake is a necessary release of built-up pressure between the earth’s tectonic plates. Without that pressure release mechanism, would we only be hastening the arrival of the next catastrophic, magnitude 9 quake? What we really need is constant, small shocks to the systems we live within—the economy, the culture, the built environment. We need a steady stream of magnitude 2 and 3 earthquakes. We could even live in a world in which those occurred daily. It’s the severe ones that wreak havoc. For these and many more insights on how Taleb’s notion of antifragility can help us build stronger towns, have a listen.

Greatest Hits #4: Lots of Small Earthquakes: How a Place Becomes Antifragile (2015)

Chris Gibbons

If you’re looking for an example of the Strong Towns mindset applied to local economic development, you couldn’t do much better than Economic Gardening. It’s an approach to growing a city’s job base and economic prosperity that doesn’t involve a dollar of subsidy to a large, outside corporation—and produces better results than those subsidy programs, too. Economic Gardening predates the Strong Towns movement by 20 years, but you can think of it as the economic-development analogue to our Neighborhoods First approach to public infrastructure: a program that seeks to make small, high-returning investments instead of big silver-bullet gambles, by capitalizing on a community’s existing assets and latent potential. The approach has its origins in the Denver suburb of Littleton, Colorado, in 1988. Martin Marietta, a predecessor of Lockheed Martin, was Littleton’s dominant employer in the 1980s. The company was in the war business—it’s a major military contractor. As the Cold War wound to an end, the U.S. found itself, as a country, divesting from the war business, and in 1988, Martin Marietta laid off thousands of its Colorado employees. Littleton’s City Council tasked economic developer Chris Gibbons with a challenge: find local businesses that already exist that want to grow. Figure out what these startups’ needs are and how we can help them. Provide them with technical support, access to databases and analytical tools that can help them find customers, resources to help them manage the challenges of rapid growth. We’re going to grow our own jobs locally, instead of trying to import them from outside. Gibbons’s efforts were phenomenally successful, and sparked a whole alternative movement in economic development: Economic Gardening. Numerous cities and states now have Economic Gardening programs, and Gibbons and the Edward Lowe Foundation continue to develop and promote the concept through the National Center for Economic Gardening. In 2013, we had Chris Gibbons on the Strong Towns Podcast as a guest to explain what economic gardening is, what kinds of companies it can benefit, and the many successes the approach has enjoyed. It’s one of our most popular podcast episodes of all time, and so we’re featuring it as the final entry in our Strong Towns Podcast Greatest Hits series. Yes, we said “final.” Next week—Monday, April 22nd—Charles Marohn will be back from hiatus with a brand new episode of the Strong Towns Podcast. And we’ll keep rolling out new episodes on Mondays after that, so keep us in your iTunes feed or wherever you get your podcasts, and keep doing what you can to build strong towns.

If you’re looking for an example of the Strong Towns mindset applied to local economic development, you couldn’t do much better than Economic Gardening. It’s an approach to growing a city’s job base and economic prosperity that doesn’t involve a dollar of subsidy to a large, outside corporation—and produces better results than those subsidy programs, too. Economic Gardening predates the Strong Towns movement by 20 years, but you can think of it as the economic-development analogue to our <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/neighborhoods-first-talk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Neighborhoods First</a> approach to public infrastructure: a program that seeks to make small, high-returning investments instead of big silver-bullet gambles, by capitalizing on a community’s existing assets and latent potential. The approach has its origins in the Denver suburb of Littleton, Colorado, in 1988. Martin Marietta, a predecessor of Lockheed Martin, was Littleton’s dominant employer in the 1980s. The company was in the war business—it’s a major military contractor. As the Cold War wound to an end, the U.S. found itself, as a country, divesting from the war business, and in 1988, Martin Marietta laid off thousands of its Colorado employees. Littleton’s City Council tasked economic developer Chris Gibbons with a challenge: find local businesses that already exist that want to grow. Figure out what these startups’ needs are and how we can help them. Provide them with technical support, access to databases and analytical tools that can help them find customers, resources to help them manage the challenges of rapid growth. We’re going to grow our own jobs locally, instead of trying to import them from outside. Gibbons’s efforts were phenomenally successful, and sparked a whole alternative movement in economic development: Economic Gardening. Numerous cities and states now have Economic Gardening programs, and Gibbons and the Edward Lowe Foundation continue to develop and promote the concept through the <a href="https://www.nationalcentereg.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">National Center for Economic Gardening</a>. In 2013, we had Chris Gibbons on the Strong Towns Podcast as a guest to explain what economic gardening is, what kinds of companies it can benefit, and the many successes the approach has enjoyed. It’s one of our most popular podcast episodes of all time, and so we’re featuring it as the final entry in our Strong Towns Podcast Greatest Hits series. Yes, we said “final.” Next week—Monday, April 22nd—Charles Marohn will be back from hiatus with a brand new episode of the Strong Towns Podcast. And we’ll keep rolling out new episodes on Mondays after that, so keep us in your iTunes feed or wherever you get your podcasts, and keep doing what you can to build strong towns.

Greatest Hits #11: Economic Gardening With Chris Gibbons (2013)

Steve Nygren

Steve Nygren is two decades into his post-career career as the "mad genius" master developer of a town-in-progress called Serenbe, Georgia. It's a community deliberately modeled after English country villages and other historic towns—the kinds of places built over 100 years ago that Nygren found he loved to take pictures of and revisit—but located in a very different context: the suburban fringe of Atlanta, Georgia. Because of that context, Serenbe has not arisen organically, the way an actual English village would have once upon a time arisen from the needs of farmers to access shared services and bring crops to market. Rather, it is being developed over time according to a meticulous vision that not only allows for but seeks to ensure the kind of eclectic, photogenic, deeply welcoming and comforting environment found in the best small villages. Serenbe is an ambitious effort to achieve a better way of living than the conventional suburban model, and to do it by working within a financial and regulatory environment that is normally pre-wired to produce conventional suburbia. Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn recently interviewed Nygren for an episode of the Strong Towns podcast, and you can listen to their conversation for insights into:  the obsessive attention to detail involved in planning Serenbe's urban design.  why Serenbe accommodates eclectic architecture rather than dictating a uniform style.  how Nygren won over his rural neighbors—both those who were pro- and anti-development—to a comprehensive plan that would both accommodate more homes and preserve more land (70%, versus the 15-20% that is preserved in typical suburbia)  the importance of beauty, awe, mystery, and discovery to a great place.  why the most important word in Serenbe's design review process is "restraint."   Nygren is adamant that the Serenbe experiment is not a Disneyland-style gimmick, an exclusive luxury, or an irreproducible experiment that requires a "mad genius" to create.  Serenbe's homes are expensive because the community fills an unmet and in-high-demand market niche—the kind of place that gives people a built-in sense of community and psychologically as well as physically healthy lifestyle—in a part of metro Atlanta that has few expensive homes. However, Nygren says, many of Serenbe's development principles are actually less expensive than the business-as-usual alternative. Edible landscaping is cheaper to maintain than ornamental landscaping or grass. Pedestrian-oriented streets are cheaper than automobile-oriented streets. Daylighting stormwater and creating natural corridors for it to flow through is cheaper than investing in huge networks of underground pipes. "Just because I have expensive houses here doesn't mean that these principles we're applying here can't apply anywhere," he says. And if we applied them more broadly, the potential benefits—not just to our communities' bottom lines, but to our health and psychological well-being— are tremendous.

Steve Nygren is two decades into his post-career career as the "mad genius" master developer of a town-in-progress called Serenbe, Georgia. It's a community deliberately modeled after English country villages and other historic towns—the kinds of places built over 100 years ago that Nygren found he loved to take pictures of and revisit—but located in a very different context: the suburban fringe of Atlanta, Georgia. Because of that context, Serenbe has not arisen organically, the way an actual English village would have once upon a time arisen from the needs of farmers to access shared services and bring crops to market. Rather, it is being developed over time according to a meticulous vision that not only allows for but seeks to ensure the kind of eclectic, photogenic, deeply welcoming and comforting environment found in the best small villages. Serenbe is an ambitious effort to achieve a better way of living than the conventional suburban model, and to do it by working within a financial and regulatory environment that is normally pre-wired to produce conventional suburbia. Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn recently interviewed Nygren for an episode of the Strong Towns podcast, and you can listen to their conversation for insights into:  <ul><li>the obsessive attention to detail involved in planning Serenbe's urban design. </li> <li>why Serenbe accommodates eclectic architecture rather than dictating a uniform style. </li> <li>how Nygren won over his rural neighbors—both those who were pro- and anti-development—to a comprehensive plan that would both accommodate more homes and preserve more land (70%, versus the 15-20% that is preserved in typical suburbia) </li> <li>the importance of beauty, awe, mystery, and discovery to a great place. </li> <li>why the most important word in Serenbe's design review process is "restraint." </li> </ul> Nygren is adamant that the Serenbe experiment is not a Disneyland-style gimmick, an exclusive luxury, or an irreproducible experiment that requires a "mad genius" to create. Serenbe's homes are expensive because the community fills an unmet and in-high-demand market niche—the kind of place that gives people a built-in sense of community and psychologically as well as physically healthy lifestyle—in a part of metro Atlanta that has few expensive homes. However, Nygren says, many of Serenbe's development principles are actually less expensive than the business-as-usual alternative. Edible landscaping is cheaper to maintain than ornamental landscaping or grass. Pedestrian-oriented streets are cheaper than automobile-oriented streets. Daylighting stormwater and creating natural corridors for it to flow through is cheaper than investing in huge networks of underground pipes. "Just because I have expensive houses here doesn't mean that these principles we're applying here can't apply anywhere," he says. And if we applied them more broadly, the potential benefits—not just to our communities' bottom lines, but to our health and psychological well-being— are tremendous.

Steve Nygren of Serenbe: "I Wanted to Build a Town, Not a Development"

For the fifth installment of our Strong Towns Podcast Greatest Hits series, we revisit a 2017 conversation between Strong Towns podcast host Chuck Marohn and acclaimed writer and photographer Chris Arnade. Arnade has a history that makes him unusually well-positioned to see things from multiple angles. His life has taken him from a small town in Florida, to a PhD in particle physics, to 20 years as a Wall Street bond trader, to producing a powerful series of photographic essays for The Guardian on the toll of addiction and social disintegration in America’s small towns and big cities alike. In 2011, disenchanted with the Wall Street life and looking for a change, Arnade began taking a lot of long walks around his adopted city of New York. But with a catch: he made a point of walking around all the neighborhoods they tell you not to go to—“because they’re too dangerous, or because I’m too white.” Arnade talked with whoever would talk with him, and listened to their life stories. He found something the media, even the liberal media, rarely discuss: “There was a lot of dignity, a lot of community. These neighborhoods weren’t wastelands, and they were filled with people doing their best to struggle against a system that was stacked against them.” As a non-journalist, Arnade was able to break a cardinal rule of journalism: don’t get involved. He made friends with addicts and homeless people, helped them out with cash when needed, went to court hearings with them, gave them rides, and learned a lot about an America that is invisible to many of us. Strong Towns’s Chuck Marohn was prompted to interview Arnade after reading a Medium piece on Cairo, Illinois. (Arnade’s original piece appears to have been deleted.) Cairo, located on a narrow peninsula of solid ground where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers converge, has endured decades of steep decline. Home to about 2,000 people, mostly African-American and mostly poor, very little industry remains in the city, and the historic downtown is so empty that, Arnade says, on his visit there he couldn’t find a place to use the restroom. As a planner and engineer, Marohn, upon viewing photos of Cairo’s desolation, was taken by the town’s legacy of failed experiments to bring back the prosperity it had lost—such as the striking visual of an ornate “Historic Downtown Cairo” arch framing a street of boarded up shops. Arnade, on the other hand, helps us understand the sociology of a place like Cairo, Illinois, or Portsmouth, Ohio, or Hunts Point in the Bronx. In this conversation, Marohn and Arnade discuss how the longer-term consequences of the loss of a locally self-sustaining economy are often more severe than the easily quantified short-term ones. They’re the human toll of overdoses and suicides. To an economist, economic consolidation can look like a thousand jobs lost here, a thousand jobs gained there, and a percentage point of GDP on a spreadsheet. But to a town that has lost its major employer, Arnade says, “They hadn’t just lost the factory. Once the factory was gone, they lost all forms of community and all forms of meaning. Then the churches started falling apart. Then the families started falling apart.” Marohn and Arnade discuss the alienation that results from economic dislocation, and how conventional prescriptions fall short as an answer:  How anomie—the feeling of not being a meaningful part of anything bigger than yourself fuels America’s epidemic of addiction and suicide   Why “education is the solution” doesn’t always work   Why people don’t leave struggling towns for opportunity elsewhere, and sometimes shouldn’t   How society’s “front-row kids” and “back-row kids” fail to understand each other   How small-town, provincial society can be exclusionary and judgmental—but so can elite, educated society 

For the fifth installment of our Strong Towns Podcast Greatest Hits series, we revisit a 2017 conversation between Strong Towns podcast host Chuck Marohn and acclaimed writer and photographer Chris Arnade. Arnade has a history that makes him unusually well-positioned to see things from multiple angles. His life has taken him from a small town in Florida, to a PhD in particle physics, to 20 years as a Wall Street bond trader, to producing a powerful <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/chris-arnade" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">series of photographic essays</a> for The Guardian on the toll of addiction and social disintegration in America’s small towns and big cities alike. In 2011, disenchanted with the Wall Street life and looking for a change, Arnade began taking a lot of long walks around his adopted city of New York. But with a catch: he made a point of walking around all the neighborhoods they tell you not to go to—“because they’re too dangerous, or because I’m too white.” Arnade talked with whoever would talk with him, and listened to their life stories. He found something the media, even the liberal media, rarely discuss: “There was a lot of dignity, a lot of community. These neighborhoods weren’t wastelands, and they were filled with people doing their best to struggle against a system that was stacked against them.” As a non-journalist, Arnade was able to break a cardinal rule of journalism: don’t get involved. He made friends with addicts and homeless people, helped them out with cash when needed, went to court hearings with them, gave them rides, and learned a lot about an America that is invisible to many of us. Strong Towns’s Chuck Marohn was prompted to interview Arnade after reading a Medium piece on Cairo, Illinois. (Arnade’s original piece appears to have been deleted.) Cairo, located on a narrow peninsula of solid ground where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers converge, has endured decades of steep decline. Home to about 2,000 people, mostly African-American and mostly poor, very little industry remains in the city, and the historic downtown is so empty that, Arnade says, on his visit there he couldn’t find a place to use the restroom. As a planner and engineer, Marohn, upon viewing photos of Cairo’s desolation, was taken by the town’s legacy of failed experiments to bring back the prosperity it had lost—such as the striking visual of an ornate “Historic Downtown Cairo” arch framing a street of boarded up shops. Arnade, on the other hand, helps us understand the sociology of a place like Cairo, Illinois, or Portsmouth, Ohio, or Hunts Point in the Bronx. In this conversation, Marohn and Arnade discuss how the longer-term consequences of the loss of a locally self-sustaining economy are often more severe than the easily quantified short-term ones. They’re the human toll of overdoses and suicides. To an economist, economic consolidation can look like a thousand jobs lost here, a thousand jobs gained there, and a percentage point of GDP on a spreadsheet. But to a town that has lost its major employer, Arnade says, “They hadn’t just lost the factory. Once the factory was gone, they lost all forms of community and all forms of meaning. Then the churches started falling apart. Then the families started falling apart.” Marohn and Arnade discuss the alienation that results from economic dislocation, and how conventional prescriptions fall short as an answer: <ul><li> How anomie—the feeling of not being a meaningful part of anything bigger than yourself fuels America’s epidemic of addiction and suicide </li> <li> Why “education is the solution” doesn’t always work </li> <li> Why people don’t leave struggling towns for opportunity elsewhere, and sometimes shouldn’t </li> <li> How society’s “front-row kids” and “back-row kids” fail to understand each other </li> <li> How small-town, provincial society can be exclusionary and judgmental—but so can elite, educated society </li></ul>

Greatest Hits #5: Approaching a Divided America With Open Eyes (2017)

King Williams

Gentrification. As we’ve written elsewhere, the term often sheds more heat than light. This is due not only to its negative connotations and lack of precise meaning, but also because gentrification plays out differently from one city, one neighborhood to the next. Gentrification is used to describe convey a force that feels at once mysterious, unavoidable, and unstoppable — not unlike The Nothing in The Neverending Story. It is a word marshaled into service by those advocating for threatened neighbors...and a word generally avoided by mayors and city planners. And yet that word, gentrification, freighted and imprecise though it may be, is important. It’s important because, as King Williams says, gentrification is a social concept with real-world implications. Behind gentrification — both the word and the phenomena — are real families, real stories, and real losses. King Williams is a writer, the director of the documentary film, The Atlanta Way, which is slated to be released in early 2020, and cohost of The Neighborhood Watch podcast. In today’s episode of our podcast, Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn talks with Williams about how Atlanta’s gentrification is both similar to and different than what’s happening in other American cities. Williams describes what people mean when they say “The Atlanta Way” — it's a particular way of making and presenting decisions can be traced back more than a century — and why the middle-class in Atlanta are now facing gentrification themselves. Also discussed: 1:45 - How gentrification gets confused with positive redevelopment and community reinvestment 11:30 - Why gentrification is almost always avoidable 22:00 - The “Olympification of Atlanta” and what Atlanta did and didn’t learn about redevelopment ahead of Super Bowl LIII 29:00 - The tragic paradox of gentrification: people advocating for the kind of changes to the neighborhood that will ultimately undermine their own ability to live there 34:00 - The role of housing assistance and public housing in addressing gentrification 37:30 - Who will finally put the “opportunity” in opportunity zones Williams ends by offering advice to the “gentry:” If you don’t curb gentrification, you yourself will be gentrified. This important and fascinating discussion is a must-listen for professionals and practitioners everywhere who care not just about growing but about growing well. For more about King Williams, watch his TEDx talk on “The Atlanta Way,” and make sure to follow him online:  King Williams (Twitter)   The Atlanta Way (Twitter)   The Neighborhood Watch (Twitter) 

Gentrification. As we’ve <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/17/5-must-read-perspectives-on-gentrification?rq=gentrification" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">written elsewhere</a>, the term often sheds more heat than light. This is due not only to its negative connotations and lack of precise meaning, but also because gentrification plays out differently from one city, one neighborhood to the next. Gentrification is used to describe convey a force that feels at once mysterious, unavoidable, and unstoppable — not unlike <a href="https://theneverendingstory.fandom.com/wiki/The_Nothing" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Nothing in The Neverending Story</a>. It is a word marshaled into service by those advocating for threatened neighbors...and a word generally avoided by mayors and city planners. And yet that word, gentrification, freighted and imprecise though it may be, is important. It’s important because, as King Williams says, gentrification is a social concept with real-world implications. Behind gentrification — both the word and the phenomena — are real families, real stories, and real losses. King Williams is a <a href="https://saportareport.com/author/king-williams/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">writer</a>, the director of the documentary film, <a href="https://twitter.com/theatlantaway" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Atlanta Way</a>, which is slated to be released in early 2020, and cohost of <a href="https://twitter.com/watchthehood" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Neighborhood Watch podcast</a>. In today’s episode of our podcast, Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn talks with Williams about how Atlanta’s gentrification is both similar to and different than what’s happening in other American cities. Williams describes what people mean when they say “The Atlanta Way” — it's a particular way of making and presenting decisions can be traced back more than a century — and why the middle-class in Atlanta are now facing gentrification themselves. Also discussed: 1:45 - How gentrification gets confused with positive redevelopment and community reinvestment 11:30 - Why gentrification is almost always avoidable 22:00 - The “Olympification of Atlanta” and what Atlanta did and didn’t learn about redevelopment ahead of Super Bowl LIII 29:00 - The tragic paradox of gentrification: people advocating for the kind of changes to the neighborhood that will ultimately undermine their own ability to live there 34:00 - The role of housing assistance and public housing in addressing gentrification 37:30 - Who will finally put the “opportunity” in opportunity zones Williams ends by offering advice to the “gentry:” If you don’t curb gentrification, you yourself will be gentrified. This important and fascinating discussion is a must-listen for professionals and practitioners everywhere who care not just about growing but about growing well. For more about King Williams, watch his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MOdH8iuet8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">TEDx talk on “The Atlanta Way,”</a> and make sure to follow him online: <ul><li> <a href="https://twitter.com/iamkingwilliams" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">King Williams (Twitter)</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/theatlantaway" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Atlanta Way (Twitter)</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/watchthehood" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Neighborhood Watch (Twitter)</a> </li></ul>

King Williams: The Gentrifiers Will Become the Gentrified

James Howard Kunstler

There is a prevailing fallacy, despite warning signs to the contrary (looming peak oil, fragile markets, and climate weirdness, among others), that we can continue in perpetuity the lifestyle to which we’ve become accustomed. All we need to do is to pump into The System more debt or more political insanity, or hope that alternative energies or some new techno-solution will bail us out. But, at best, all debt-fueled growth, shale oil “miracles” and green fuels can do by themselves is to make the Long Emergency just “a little bit longer.” “The Long Emergency” is a phrase coined by James Howard Kunstler to describe the economic, political and social upheavals that will dominate the first decades of the 21st-century as the honeymoon of affordable energy comes to a close. It is also the name of Kunstler’s seminal book on the topic. (The Long Emergency is one of fifteen books on our “Essential Reading List for the Strong Towns Thinker.”) James Howard Kunstler is our very special guest on today’s episode of the Strong Towns podcast. He is the author of more than 20 books, including The Geography of Nowhere, Too Much Magic, and the World Made By Hand novel series. In this episode, Strong Towns president Charles Marohn talks with Kunstler about what has changed—or perhaps what hasn’t changed—since The Long Emergency was first published in 2005. Kunstler explains why the “psychology of previous investment” (4:45) makes it so hard for most people to imagine living differently. Marohn and Kunstler also discuss (17:00) what’s wrong with the Green Revolution narrative that we can keep doing everything we’re doing now, if just “do it green”: “America is going to be very disappointed how that works out,” says Kunstler. “It ain’t gonna happen. We’re not going to run the interstate highway system, Walt Disney World, suburbia, all the stuff we’re running now, the U.S. military, on any combination of green alternative fuels. It just isn’t going to happen. So the whole thing’s a fantasy. Really what we have to do is downscale all the activities in American life—including the distances we travel, the scale of our living places, the scale of our cities, the scale of the corporate activity that we do—it’s all going to have to get smaller.” Other topics: 18:40 - Why people may be using “insane political behavior” as a substitute for the harder work of changing the way we live 24:00 - Why Seattle and other cities with absurdly high housing costs are signs of an irrational market and may not be fixable except by a “restart” 35:30 - Why modern monetary theory may end up being, in Chuck’s words, the “peak delusion of the Long Emergency” 36:40 - The fatal delusion that being able to measure something equates to being able to control it 41:10 - How to “change our living arrangements in a way that comports with the circumstances that are coming at us” (Kunstler) By turns provocative, prescient, prophetic, and personal, this episode is just what we’ve come to expect from James Howard Kunstler. 

There is a prevailing fallacy, despite warning signs to the contrary (looming peak oil, fragile markets, and climate weirdness, among others), that we can continue in perpetuity the lifestyle to which we’ve become accustomed. All we need to do is to pump into The System more debt or more political insanity, or hope that alternative energies or some new techno-solution will bail us out. But, at best, all debt-fueled growth, shale oil “miracles” and green fuels can do by themselves is to make the Long Emergency just “a little bit longer.” “The Long Emergency” is a phrase coined by <a href="https://kunstler.com/about/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">James Howard Kunstler </a>to describe the economic, political and social upheavals that will dominate the first decades of the 21st-century as the honeymoon of affordable energy comes to a close. It is also the name of Kunstler’s seminal book on the topic. (The Long Emergency is one of fifteen books on our <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/essential-reading" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">“Essential Reading List for the Strong Towns Thinker.”</a>) James Howard Kunstler is our very special guest on today’s episode of the Strong Towns podcast. He is the author of more than <a href="https://kunstler.com/writings/books/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">20 books</a>, including The Geography of Nowhere, Too Much Magic, and the World Made By Hand novel series. In this episode, Strong Towns president Charles Marohn talks with Kunstler about what has changed—or perhaps what hasn’t changed—since The Long Emergency was first published in 2005. Kunstler explains why the “psychology of previous investment” (4:45) makes it so hard for most people to imagine living differently. Marohn and Kunstler also discuss (17:00) what’s wrong with the Green Revolution narrative that we can keep doing everything we’re doing now, if just “do it green”: “America is going to be very disappointed how that works out,” says Kunstler. “It ain’t gonna happen. We’re not going to run the interstate highway system, Walt Disney World, suburbia, all the stuff we’re running now, the U.S. military, on any combination of green alternative fuels. It just isn’t going to happen. So the whole thing’s a fantasy. Really what we have to do is downscale all the activities in American life—including the distances we travel, the scale of our living places, the scale of our cities, the scale of the corporate activity that we do—it’s all going to have to get smaller.” Other topics: 18:40 - Why people may be using “insane political behavior” as a substitute for the harder work of changing the way we live 24:00 - Why Seattle and other cities with absurdly high housing costs are signs of an irrational market and may not be fixable except by a “restart” 35:30 - Why modern monetary theory may end up being, in Chuck’s words, the “peak delusion of the Long Emergency” 36:40 - The fatal delusion that being able to measure something equates to being able to control it 41:10 - How to “change our living arrangements in a way that comports with the circumstances that are coming at us” (Kunstler) By turns provocative, prescient, prophetic, and personal, this episode is just what we’ve come to expect from James Howard Kunstler.

James Howard Kunstler: It's All Going to Have to Get Smaller

By coincidence, on October 1, the very day Wiley released the new Strong Towns book, Wiley also published the new book by Quint Studer.  It was coincidental for two reasons:  Because Studer—in addition to being a businessman, entrepreneur, bestselling author, and leadership expert—is also a Strong Towns member, a past contributor to this site, and a passionate community leader working tirelessly to make his own city of Pensacola, Florida a more vibrant and economically resilient place. (Pensacola actually won this year’s Strongest Town Award).  Because if the Strong Towns book is the WHY, Studer’s new book is the HOW. In today’s episode of the Strong Towns podcast, Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn talks with Quint Studer about The Busy Leader’s Handbook: How to Lead People and Places That Thrive. Whether you are leading a movement or a business, a nonprofit or a government agency, a staff of employees or a team of volunteers—this book is an essential resource. Comprised of 41 short chapters, it’s also written in such a way that it can be read from start to finish, or referenced as-needed. In this episode, Marohn and Studer discuss the importance of leading with humility (“If you don’t deflate your ego, it gets deflated for you”), why good leaders and good communities are coachable, why Strong Towns need strong small businesses, and how to build teams that are not only satisfied but actively engaged in your organization’s mission. Don’t miss these other valuable insights from this interview: 14:15 - Why great organizations identify, share and are guided by their values 17:30 - Why local governments need to work extra hard to develop a positive workplace culture 26:00 - Why “transparency is trust” 34:15 - How to run meetings that you and your team don’t hate to attend 39:00 - The workplace challenges unique to local governments 43:10 - Why it’s time to move beyond the strategic plan 49:00 - How the Studer Community Institute is working to “raise the civic IQ” of cities and towns Quint Studer has been a mentor to us as we've built the Strong Towns movement. We know you'll find his experience and wisdom as indispensable as we do. Other Links: Quint Studer Homepage Other Books by Quint Studer Studer Community Institute  EntreCon CivicCon

By coincidence, on October 1, the very day Wiley released the new <a href="/strongtowns/episode/strongtowns.org/book" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Strong Towns</a><a href="/strongtowns/episode/strongtowns.org/book" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> book</a>, Wiley also published the new book by Quint Studer. It was coincidental for two reasons: <ol><li> Because <a href="http://development.smarterweb.net/qs/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Studer</a>—in addition to being a businessman, entrepreneur, bestselling author, and leadership expert—is also a <a href="/strongtowns/episode/strongtowns.org/membership" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Strong Towns member</a>, a <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal?author=59d29cfd197aea0e7cc42fe2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">past contributor to this site</a>, and a <a href="http://development.smarterweb.net/qs/sfc/#entity_studerfoundation" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">passionate community leader</a> working tirelessly to make his own city of Pensacola, Florida a more vibrant and economically resilient place. (Pensacola actually won this year’s <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/4/12/announcing-the-winner-of-our-2019-strongest-town-contest" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Strongest Town Award</a>).</li> <li> Because if the Strong Towns book is the WHY, Studer’s <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Busy+Leader%27s+Handbook%3A+How+To+Lead+People+and+Places+That+Thrive-p-9781119576648" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">new book</a> is the HOW.</li> </ol>In today’s episode of the Strong Towns podcast, Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn talks with Quint Studer about <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Busy+Leader%27s+Handbook%3A+How+To+Lead+People+and+Places+That+Thrive-p-9781119576648" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Busy Leader’s Handbook: How to Lead People and Places That Thrive</a><a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Busy+Leader%27s+Handbook%3A+How+To+Lead+People+and+Places+That+Thrive-p-9781119576648" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">.</a> Whether you are leading a movement or a business, a nonprofit or a government agency, a staff of employees or a team of volunteers—this book is an essential resource. Comprised of 41 short chapters, it’s also written in such a way that it can be read from start to finish, or referenced as-needed. In this episode, Marohn and Studer discuss the importance of leading with humility (“If you don’t deflate your ego, it gets deflated for you”), why good leaders and good communities are coachable, why Strong Towns need strong small businesses, and how to build teams that are not only satisfied but actively engaged in your organization’s mission. Don’t miss these other valuable insights from this interview: 14:15 - Why great organizations identify, share and are guided by their values 17:30 - Why local governments need to work extra hard to develop a positive workplace culture 26:00 - Why “transparency is trust” 34:15 - How to run meetings that you and your team don’t hate to attend 39:00 - The workplace challenges unique to local governments 43:10 - Why it’s time to move beyond the strategic plan 49:00 - How the <a href="https://www.studeri.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Studer Community Institute</a> is working to “raise the civic IQ” of cities and towns Quint Studer has been a mentor to us as we've built the Strong Towns movement. We know you'll find his experience and wisdom as indispensable as we do. Other Links: <ul><li><a href="http://development.smarterweb.net/qs/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Quint Studer Homepage</a></li> <li><a href="http://development.smarterweb.net/qs/shop/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Other Books by Quint Studer</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.studeri.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Studer Community Institute</a> </li> <li><a href="http://entreconpensacola.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">EntreCon</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.studeri.org/civiccon" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CivicCon</a></li></ul>

If the “Strong Towns” book is the WHY, this book is the HOW.

Ann Sussman

If the 19th century belonged to engineering, and the 20th century to chemistry and physics, then the 21st might belong to biology. (The OECD said as much in a 2012 forum.) Increasingly, we’re coming to understand the nature of humans as biological creatures, including the unconscious, “spooky” wiring that shapes our behavior more than we know or are perhaps comfortable with. We process 11 million bits of information every second, and 10 million of them are visual. We react to images much faster than we do text, and often we form emotional impressions before we consciously reverse-engineer a rational explanation for why it made us feel the way it did. Insights like from cognitive science have made their way into nearly every discipline—including, very prominently, advertising and product design. The stunning rise of Apple is all about psychology. Car companies get it, too. There’s one big “but” there, though: one design field in which we’ve been remarkably slow to absorb the lessons of modern psychology. And that field is architecture. The funny thing is, we used to incorporate those lessons into architecture and urban design. We just didn’t know we were doing it. But unconscious lessons, arrived at by trial-and-error, about what kinds of places make people comfortable and bring out the best in us are responsible for the pleasing harmony and coherence of the traditional urbanism you can find in pre-modern cities all over the world. It's the reason traditional buildings so often evoke human faces in their proportions and door/window placement. It’s the reason unfamiliar places can be navigable and familiar to us even when they’re foreign. It’s the reason Ann Sussman, on a visit to Copenhagen, thought: “I don’t speak Danish. There’s no signage. Yet I know exactly where to go, and I feel more at home here than back home in Boston.” Sussman is a co-author (with Katie Chen) of a controversial 2017 essay in Common Edge titled “The Mental Disorders That Gave Us Modern Architecture.” In it, Sussman and Chen examine the sharp contrast between post-World War I modernist architecture and traditional European architecture, through the lens of the psychology of two of Modernism’s pioneers: Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. Gropius, a World War I veteran, almost certainly suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a diagnosis that would not be available until after his death in 1969. Le Corbusier was probably autistic—again, something that was not understood during his lifetime, but that we can retroactively see the hallmarks of. In both cases, Sussman says, these men seem to have been deeply uncomfortable with the kinds of traditional urban environments that pervaded the Europe they grew up in. “Le Corbusier hated the Paris street,” for example, says Sussman; he found it overwhelming and overstimulating. Gropius actually designed some features of his Lincoln, Massachusetts house in ways that evoke a World War I bunker. The house has many of the hallmarks of modernist design: you can’t find the front door at a glance. The building stands aloof from the world around it instead of engaging passersby and drawing them in. It would be simplistic to blame all of modernism on the mental quirks of two of its visionaries. But Sussman’s observations provide a fascinating springboard for understanding how traditional architecture is so effortlessly pro-social, and how much of that legacy we’ve tragically left behind in the 20th and 21st centuries—an aesthetic movement turbocharged by the policy decisions that led us to radically redesign much of our world around the automobile. Listen to Chuck Marohn and Ann Sussman on the Strong Towns Podcast for a discussion of this shift and more, including: Why we're wired to perceive faces in building facades. What the ruins of Pompeii and 21st-century Disney World can each teach us about designing pro-social environments that inherently bring out the best in us. How the trauma of World War I gave way to the modernist movement in architecture. Why we should adopt a broader understanding of designing with human health in mind than just sidewalks and bike paths.

If the 19th century belonged to engineering, and the 20th century to chemistry and physics, then the 21st might belong to biology. (The OECD said as much in <a href="http://www.oecd.org/sti/emerging-tech/evolvingpromiseofthelifesciences.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">a 2012 forum</a>.) Increasingly, we’re coming to understand the nature of humans as biological creatures, including the unconscious, “spooky” wiring that shapes our behavior more than we know or are perhaps comfortable with. We process 11 million bits of information every second, and 10 million of them are visual. We react to images much faster than we do text, and often we form emotional impressions before we consciously reverse-engineer a rational explanation for why it made us feel the way it did. Insights like from cognitive science have made their way into nearly every discipline—including, very prominently, advertising and product design. The stunning rise of Apple is all about psychology. Car companies get it, too. There’s one big “but” there, though: one design field in which we’ve been remarkably slow to absorb the lessons of modern psychology. And that field is architecture. The funny thing is, we used to incorporate those lessons into architecture and urban design. We just didn’t know we were doing it. But unconscious lessons, arrived at by trial-and-error, about what kinds of places make people comfortable and bring out the best in us are responsible for the pleasing harmony and coherence of the traditional urbanism you can find in pre-modern cities all over the world. It's the reason traditional buildings so often evoke human faces in their proportions and door/window placement. It’s the reason unfamiliar places can be navigable and familiar to us even when they’re foreign. It’s the reason Ann Sussman, on a visit to Copenhagen, thought: “I don’t speak Danish. There’s no signage. Yet I know exactly where to go, and I feel more at home here than back home in Boston.” Sussman is a co-author (with Katie Chen) of a controversial 2017 essay in Common Edge titled “<a href="https://commonedge.org/the-mental-disorders-that-gave-us-modern-architecture/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Mental Disorders That Gave Us Modern Architecture</a>.” In it, Sussman and Chen examine the sharp contrast between post-World War I modernist architecture and traditional European architecture, through the lens of the psychology of two of Modernism’s pioneers: Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. Gropius, a World War I veteran, almost certainly suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a diagnosis that would not be available until after his death in 1969. Le Corbusier was probably autistic—again, something that was not understood during his lifetime, but that we can retroactively see the hallmarks of. In both cases, Sussman says, these men seem to have been deeply uncomfortable with the kinds of traditional urban environments that pervaded the Europe they grew up in. “Le Corbusier hated the Paris street,” for example, says Sussman; he found it overwhelming and overstimulating. Gropius actually designed some features of his Lincoln, Massachusetts house in ways that evoke a World War I bunker. The house has many of the hallmarks of modernist design: you can’t find the front door at a glance. The building stands aloof from the world around it instead of engaging passersby and drawing them in. It would be simplistic to blame all of modernism on the mental quirks of two of its visionaries. But Sussman’s observations provide a fascinating springboard for understanding how traditional architecture is so effortlessly pro-social, and how much of that legacy we’ve tragically left behind in the 20th and 21st centuries—an aesthetic movement turbocharged by the policy decisions that led us to radically redesign much of our world around the automobile. Listen to Chuck Marohn and Ann Sussman on the Strong Towns Podcast for a discussion of this shift and more, including: <ul><li>Why we're wired to perceive faces in building facades.</li> <li>What the ruins of Pompeii and 21st-century Disney World can each teach us about designing pro-social environments that inherently bring out the best in us.</li> <li>How the trauma of World War I gave way to the modernist movement in architecture.</li> <li>Why we should adopt a broader understanding of designing with human health in mind than just sidewalks and bike paths.</li></ul>

Building Cities For Our Unconscious Brains: Ann Sussman on the Failings of Modern Architecture

What does it really take to bring a depopulating city back from the brink? Scott Ford has some ideas. In early 2011, still near the bottom of the Great Recession, Newsweek published a listicle of America’s Top 10 “Dying Cities.” Near the top of the list was South Bend, Indiana—famous as the home of the University of Notre Dame, but also an infamously troubled place. When the Studebaker car company closed in 1963, the northern Indiana city’s economy fell off a cliff. 40% of the entire city’s payroll disappeared overnight, and the next few decades were a story of what Scott Ford calls “post-traumatic decline.” South Bend lost 30,000 residents, as many of those who stayed put in the region moved to the suburbs. This past decade, though, Ford—who was South Bend’s Director of Community Investment before accepting a position last year as Associate VP of Economic Development with the University of Notre Dame—has been one of the key players in a remarkable turnaround effort for South Bend. This effort is still very much a work in progress, but is bearing major fruit. Today, South Bend’s blighted neighborhoods are more stable, vacant homes have been rehabilitated, and its downtown is attracting new businesses, including startups seeded at Notre Dame whose founders, for a change, are opting to stay put. South Bend’s story has received some national press of late thanks to the presidential campaign of its young mayor, Pete Buttigieg. But one person, no matter how talented, doesn’t steer a firing-on-all-front revitalization effort alone. For the latest episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Strong Towns president and founder Charles Marohn sat down with Ford to talk about South Bend’s experience and lessons for other local governments. Among them:  Break down silos. Ford describes how South Bend merged its economic development and community development departments—in a lot of cities, those tasked with working mainly with businesses and those working with neighborhoods don’t communicate well or form a united front.   Recognize the importance of the public realm. South Bend’s downtown had been damaged in the post-WWII era by the conversion of streets to one-way couplets, a Cold War planning practice designed to move traffic quickly in the event of an evacuation. (Ford grimly jokes that “These have been evacuating cities ever since.”) To help reverse South Bend’s stroad mentality and restore two-way downtown streets that would be walkable, pleasant places to be, a team of planners and engineers executed a Complete Streets program that ended up transforming over 15 miles of street.   Cultivate allies early. The fire department is the bane of many a safe-streets advocate’s existence, but in South Bend, Ford says, “We got the firefighters on board” early. Time trials with ambulances on streets that would be converted to 2-way demonstrated the time savings and improved safety. The city also saved its fire department $3 million by reallocating vehicles after a study found that 96% of calls handled by a fire truck could have been handled by an SUV.   Get results early to demonstrate what’s possible. Redevelopment in a blighted, depopulated city faces a Catch-22: lenders are hesitant to finance construction without a successful, comparable project nearby to point to—but no such project exists if no developer can get financing. To clear this obstacle, the city brought in respected market research firm Zimmerman Volk to demonstrate the demand for downtown housing in South Bend. And outside downtown, Notre Dame itself guaranteed loans for new houses in a neighborhood near campus, at a time when private banks would not. Some of these houses are now worth as much as $700,000.   Do the math on every project. Ford stresses the importance of making the case for the fiscal return-on-investment of the city’s efforts, from addressing vacant homes to redesigning streets. It’s not about “leading by tabulation,” he says, but “being able to ground those projects in fiscal merits, not just aesthetic ones, was really important to being able to gain the trust of the elected officials and the population.”   Seek out opportunities to innovate. South Bend, equipped with a Code for America grant, brought in a team of 7 fellows to work as an in-house consulting service to organizations in the South Bend region. They helped find efficiencies in local government, such as writing a route optimization algorithm for solid waste collection. And they helped South Bend turn into a place where innovators feel welcome. Increasing, startups that emerge from Notre Dame stay put, instead of their founders moving to bigger cities.  Want to hear a lot more from Scott Ford about South Bend’s efforts to steer a better course? Check out his conversation with Chuck Marohn on this week’s Strong Towns Podcast. Mentioned in this episode:  Zimmerman Volk   Ian Lockwood   Code for America 

What does it really take to bring a depopulating city back from the brink? Scott Ford has some ideas. In early 2011, still near the bottom of the Great Recession, Newsweek published a listicle of America’s Top 10 “Dying Cities.” Near the top of the list was South Bend, Indiana—famous as the home of the University of Notre Dame, but also an infamously troubled place. When the Studebaker car company closed in 1963, the northern Indiana city’s economy fell off a cliff. 40% of the entire city’s payroll disappeared overnight, and the next few decades were a story of what Scott Ford calls “post-traumatic decline.” South Bend lost 30,000 residents, as many of those who stayed put in the region moved to the suburbs. This past decade, though, Ford—who was South Bend’s Director of Community Investment before accepting a position last year as Associate VP of Economic Development with the University of Notre Dame—has been one of the key players in a remarkable turnaround effort for South Bend. This effort is still very much a work in progress, but is bearing major fruit. Today, South Bend’s blighted neighborhoods are more stable, vacant homes have been rehabilitated, and its downtown is attracting new businesses, including startups seeded at Notre Dame whose founders, for a change, are opting to stay put. South Bend’s story has received some national press of late thanks to the presidential campaign of its young mayor, Pete Buttigieg. But one person, no matter how talented, doesn’t steer a firing-on-all-front revitalization effort alone. For the latest episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Strong Towns president and founder Charles Marohn sat down with Ford to talk about South Bend’s experience and lessons for other local governments. Among them: <ol><li> Break down silos. Ford describes how South Bend merged its economic development and community development departments—in a lot of cities, those tasked with working mainly with businesses and those working with neighborhoods don’t communicate well or form a united front. </li> <li> Recognize the importance of the public realm. South Bend’s downtown had been damaged in the post-WWII era by the conversion of streets to one-way couplets, a Cold War planning practice designed to move traffic quickly in the event of an evacuation. (Ford grimly jokes that “These have been evacuating cities ever since.”) To help reverse South Bend’s stroad mentality and restore two-way downtown streets that would be walkable, pleasant places to be, a team of planners and engineers executed a Complete Streets program that ended up transforming over 15 miles of street. </li> <li> Cultivate allies early. The fire department is the bane of many a safe-streets advocate’s existence, but in South Bend, Ford says, “We got the firefighters on board” early. Time trials with ambulances on streets that would be converted to 2-way demonstrated the time savings and improved safety. The city also saved its fire department $3 million by reallocating vehicles after a study found that 96% of calls handled by a fire truck could have been handled by an SUV. </li> <li> Get results early to demonstrate what’s possible. Redevelopment in a blighted, depopulated city faces a Catch-22: lenders are hesitant to finance construction without a successful, comparable project nearby to point to—but no such project exists if no developer can get financing. To clear this obstacle, the city<a href="https://www.bradleyco.com/blog/2017/8/18/the-apartment-boom-in-downtown-south-bend-dtsb-multi-housing-update" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> brought in respected market research firm Zimmerman Volk</a> to demonstrate the demand for downtown housing in South Bend. And outside downtown, Notre Dame itself guaranteed loans for new houses in a neighborhood near campus, at a time when private banks would not. Some of these houses are now worth as much as $700,000. </li> <li> Do the math on every project. Ford stresses the importance of making the case for the fiscal return-on-investment of the city’s efforts, from addressing vacant homes to redesigning streets. It’s not about “leading by tabulation,” he says, but “being able to ground those projects in fiscal merits, not just aesthetic ones, was really important to being able to gain the trust of the elected officials and the population.” </li> <li> Seek out opportunities to innovate. South Bend, equipped with a <a href="https://www.codeforamerica.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Code for America</a> grant, brought in a team of 7 fellows to work as an in-house consulting service to organizations in the South Bend region. They helped find efficiencies in local government, such as writing a route optimization algorithm for solid waste collection. And they helped South Bend turn into a place where innovators feel welcome. Increasing, startups that emerge from Notre Dame stay put, instead of their founders moving to bigger cities. </li> </ol>Want to hear a lot more from Scott Ford about South Bend’s efforts to steer a better course? Check out his conversation with Chuck Marohn on this week’s Strong Towns Podcast. Mentioned in this episode: <ul><li> <a href="https://www.zva.cc/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Zimmerman Volk</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://tooledesign.com/people/ian-lockwood/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ian Lockwood</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.codeforamerica.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Code for America</a> </li></ul>

What Does it Take to Bring a City Back from the Brink?

Paul Stewart

"No one's coming to save my city for me, so what is it that I can do?" -- Paul Stewart, Oswego Renaissance Association There is more than one kind of housing crisis. The crisis we hear the most about is the crisis of supply. This is the housing crunch being felt so acutely in places like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Boston, New York, Lexington, and Austin. But there is another kind of housing crisis too. It gets less attention though it is arguably more widespread. This is the crisis of demand. In towns and cities across the country, quality housing stock is available, often at affordable prices. Yet they struggle to attract new residents. At the same time, many current residents are considering leaving because they’re not sure if a declining community is worth the investment of their money, time and affection. According to today’s podcast guest, Paul Stewart — one of our heroes at Strong Towns — a city facing a demand crisis often resorts to what he calls “desperate bait syndrome.” In order to lure outsiders, a city is tempted to make big promises (and big compromises) that unintentionally devalue the community. But Stewart and his own town of Oswego, in upstate New York, are taking a very different approach. They are focusing on what’s there rather than on what isn’t, building on strengths rather than focusing on perceived weaknesses. And this brilliant, incremental, neighbor-led approach is paying huge returns. Stewart is the founder and executive director of the Oswego Renaissance Association (ORA). If you’ve read the new Strong Towns book or been a regular listener to the podcast, you know how enthusiastic we are about Stewart and the ORA. In fact, Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn frequently refers communities around North America to the ORA as a model they should adapt for their own place. Among other activities, the Oregon Renaissance Association makes small matching grants to clusters of homeowners who want to collaboratively improve the exterior of their neighborhood. This results in a huge return on investment, not to mention the value of neighbors working together...often for the first time. This is a simple but profound process that unlocks neighbors’ confidence in their neighborhood. In today’s episode of the Strong Towns podcast, Chuck and Paul Stewart talk about the origin of the Oswego Renaissance Association, why the ORA remains an all-volunteer organization that is accessible to people from all walks of life, and about the simple principles that underly the ORA’s approach. They discuss the subtle power of strengthening what’s working — rather than fixing what’s often dismissed as broken. Chuck and Paul dismantle the trope that declining neighborhoods must reflect the “deficiencies” of the people who live there (18:15). And they discuss the profound effect that one realization — “I’m not alone anymore” — can have on an entire block (30:30). More can’t-miss topics from this episode:  The disinvestment snowball that leads to declining conditions and a “bank run” on neighborhood confidence, and why it’s helpful to think of a neighborhood as a mutually held stock (22:00)   The currency more valuable than money (36:00)   The role of local government, including the limits and uses of code enforcement (40:00)   Listen to this episode and we think you’ll agree that the Oswego Renaissance Association has developed a model of community investment that could be applicable for towns and cities everywhere. What could it look like where you live?

"No one's coming to save my city for me, so what is it that I can do?" -- Paul Stewart, Oswego Renaissance Association There is more than one kind of housing crisis. The crisis we hear the most about is the crisis of supply. This is the housing crunch being felt so acutely in places like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Boston, New York, Lexington, and Austin. But there is another kind of housing crisis too. It gets less attention though it is arguably more widespread. This is the crisis of demand. In towns and cities across the country, quality housing stock is available, often at affordable prices. Yet they struggle to attract new residents. At the same time, many current residents are considering leaving because they’re not sure if a declining community is worth the investment of their money, time and affection. According to today’s podcast guest, Paul Stewart — one of our heroes at Strong Towns — a city facing a demand crisis often resorts to what he calls “desperate bait syndrome.” In order to lure outsiders, a city is tempted to make big promises (and big compromises) that unintentionally devalue the community. But Stewart and his own town of Oswego, in upstate New York, are taking a very different approach. They are focusing on what’s there rather than on what isn’t, building on strengths rather than focusing on perceived weaknesses. And this brilliant, incremental, neighbor-led approach is paying huge returns. Stewart is the founder and executive director of the <a href="https://www.oswegonyonline.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Oswego Renaissance Association (ORA)</a>. If you’ve read the <a href="https://strongtowns.org/book" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">new Strong Towns book</a> or been a <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/9/8/an-interview-with-paul-stewart" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">regular listener to the podcast</a>, you know how enthusiastic we are about Stewart and the ORA. In fact, Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn frequently refers communities around North America to the ORA as a model they should adapt for their own place. Among other activities, the Oregon Renaissance Association makes small matching grants to clusters of homeowners who want to collaboratively improve the exterior of their neighborhood. This results in a huge return on investment, not to mention the value of neighbors working together...often for the first time. This is a simple but profound process that unlocks neighbors’ confidence in their neighborhood. In today’s episode of the Strong Towns podcast, Chuck and Paul Stewart talk about the origin of the Oswego Renaissance Association, why the ORA remains an all-volunteer organization that is accessible to people from all walks of life, and about the simple principles that underly the ORA’s approach. They discuss the subtle power of strengthening what’s working — rather than fixing what’s often dismissed as broken. Chuck and Paul dismantle the trope that declining neighborhoods must reflect the “deficiencies” of the people who live there (18:15). And they discuss the profound effect that one realization — “I’m not alone anymore” — can have on an entire block (30:30). More can’t-miss topics from this episode: <ul><li> The disinvestment snowball that leads to declining conditions and a “bank run” on neighborhood confidence, and why it’s helpful to think of a neighborhood as a mutually held stock (22:00) </li> <li> The currency more valuable than money (36:00) </li> <li> The role of local government, including the limits and uses of code enforcement (40:00) </li> </ul> Listen to this episode and we think you’ll agree that the Oswego Renaissance Association has developed a model of community investment that could be applicable for towns and cities everywhere. What could it look like where you live?

Paul Stewart: You Are the Help You've Been Waiting For

Giorgio Angelini didn’t exactly pick the most fortuitous time to start architecture school. He enrolled in Rice University’s architecture program in 2008, just as the U.S. economy was plunging into recession and new construction screeching to a halt. But this led to its own sort of opportunity—a chance to engage with some serious questions about architecture’s role in bringing about the housing crisis, and, perhaps, in bringing about a positive response to it. For a research project, Angelini visited aborted suburban subdivisions in California’s Inland Empire—the kind where one home stands adrift in a sea of dirt, weeds, and crumbling streets to nowhere. His “What the heck is going on?” moment upon viewing these sites sent him down a path of discovery that culminated in making a documentary film, Owned: A Tale of Two Americas. Owned is an exploration of how homeownership has been commoditized and marketed to Americans—but not all Americans. Through powerful interviews and archival footage, Angelini chronicles the creation of two starkly divergent Americas. In one, homeownership became the American dream, the primary vehicle by which millions of families accumulated wealth and passed it on to the next generation—but mounting debt and economic instability now threaten to unravel this dream. In the other America, racist laws and practices shut a generation of mostly African-Americans out of the opportunity to buy into booming postwar suburbs—and many of their descendants still live in hyper-segregated, disinvested neighborhoods where generational wealth is only a pipe dream. A home may be deeply personal, and the most expensive purchase nearly all of us will ever make—so you’d think a lot of thought would go into its production, Angelini says. But a hallmark of the suburban era has been the transformation of housing into a commodity. Something about watching orange groves on the fringes of Southern California uprooted for subdivisions makes it as plain as can be: housing is the new cash crop in these places. Owned heavily features Strong Towns and our founder, Charles Marohn. We’ve been among the foremost critics of the “cash crop” approach to homes and homeownership, and we’re honored to have our perspective spotlighted in this powerful film. In today’s Strong Towns Podcast, Charles Marohn sits down with Giorgio Angelini to talk about Owned from its initial conception to final form, and where Angelini thinks homeownership in the U.S. needs to go if we’re to reckon with the monster we’ve created. (Hint: Three letters–CLT—are part of his answer.) We also have a big announcement to make. We’ll be showing Owned at our recently announced regional gathering in Southern California, which will be held in Santa Ana, CA on December 5th, 2019. Giorgio himself will be there. People profiled in the film might be there. But most importantly, Chuck is treating everybody to popcorn. You heard it here first. To sign up for more info on the Santa Ana gathering as it becomes available, click here. And to hear more from Giorgio Angelini and Chuck Marohn, check out this week’s episode of the Strong Towns Podcast.

Giorgio Angelini didn’t exactly pick the most fortuitous time to start architecture school. He enrolled in Rice University’s architecture program in 2008, just as the U.S. economy was plunging into recession and new construction screeching to a halt. But this led to its own sort of opportunity—a chance to engage with some serious questions about architecture’s role in bringing about the housing crisis, and, perhaps, in bringing about a positive response to it. For a research project, Angelini visited aborted suburban subdivisions in California’s Inland Empire—the kind where one home stands adrift in a sea of dirt, weeds, and crumbling streets to nowhere. His “What the heck is going on?” moment upon viewing these sites sent him down a path of discovery that culminated in making a documentary film, <a href="http://www.ownedfilm.com/aboutthefilm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Owned: A Tale of Two Americas</a>. Owned is an exploration of how homeownership has been commoditized and marketed to Americans—but not all Americans. Through powerful interviews and archival footage, Angelini chronicles the creation of two starkly divergent Americas. In one, homeownership became the American dream, the primary vehicle by which millions of families accumulated wealth and passed it on to the next generation—but mounting debt and economic instability now threaten to unravel this dream. In the other America, racist laws and practices shut a generation of mostly African-Americans out of the opportunity to buy into booming postwar suburbs—and many of their descendants still live in hyper-segregated, disinvested neighborhoods where generational wealth is only a pipe dream. A home may be deeply personal, and the most expensive purchase nearly all of us will ever make—so you’d think a lot of thought would go into its production, Angelini says. But a hallmark of the suburban era has been the transformation of housing into a commodity. Something about watching orange groves on the fringes of Southern California uprooted for subdivisions makes it as plain as can be: housing is the new cash crop in these places. Owned <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/21/strong-towns-featured-in-owned" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">heavily features</a> Strong Towns and our founder, Charles Marohn. We’ve <a href="https://time.com/3031079/suburbs-will-die-sprawl/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">been among the foremost critics</a> of the “cash crop” approach to homes and homeownership, and we’re honored to have our perspective spotlighted in this powerful film. In today’s Strong Towns Podcast, Charles Marohn sits down with Giorgio Angelini to talk about Owned from its initial conception to final form, and where Angelini thinks homeownership in the U.S. needs to go if we’re to reckon with the monster we’ve created. (Hint: Three letters–<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_land_trust" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CLT</a>—are part of his answer.) We also have a big announcement to make. We’ll be showing Owned at our recently announced <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/7/25/announcing-the-next-two-strong-towns-regional-gatherings-southern-california-and-the-capital-district-of-new-york" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">regional gathering in Southern California</a>, which will be held in Santa Ana, CA on December 5th, 2019. Giorgio himself will be there. People profiled in the film might be there. But most importantly, Chuck is treating everybody to popcorn. You heard it here first. To sign up for more info on the Santa Ana gathering as it becomes available, <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/socal" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">click here</a>. And to hear more from Giorgio Angelini and Chuck Marohn, check out this week’s episode of the Strong Towns Podcast.

What Happens When Housing Becomes a Cash Crop?

Gracy Olmstead

As writer Gracy Olmstead was commuting to work in Washington, D.C. from her home in the suburbs, she often thought back to her childhood, being raised in the same rural Idaho town in which her great-great-great grandparents had homesteaded a century earlier. “When I was growing up, there was a sense in which the cloth of your life was very interconnected,” she says. “There was a lot of life you lived in one place.” Her experience in the city had been very different. She felt as if her life had been fragmented into various places, each of which required that she wear a different hat, present a different persona. “I didn’t get to live my whole life in one spot. I had a really deep thirst for that. I wanted to live a life in which I worked, worshipped, shopped, was part of associations, etc., in one piece of ground.” Gracy Olmstead is one of our favorite writers. She has bylines in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Week, and The American Conservative, among many other publications. And we’re excited to welcome her as our guest on today’s episode of the Strong Towns podcast. In her conversation with Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn, Olmstead reflects on her family’s decision to return to small town life — this time in Northern Virginia — and how her rural background informs her work as a writer and journalist. She and Chuck also discuss what urban and rural people may be missing about each other’s experiences and perspectives, the power of “membership,” and the obligations and opportunities that arise from binding yourself for a lifetime to a place and its people. Also discussed: 11:15 - Jane Jacobs’s insight that we need to design cities a specific way because we’re interacting with strangers…and why this is increasingly true for changing rural communities too. 16:20 - Why small towns really are “stifling,” and why that’s not necessarily a bad thing. 19:40 - Olmstead’s powerful article on why parents need villages. 22:20 - The loss of multigenerational homes, and how all of us — young and old, single or not — have suffered the more “generationally siloed” we’ve become. 27:30 - The role of public policy in the absence of “the village” and how Olmstead responds (31:30) to the assertion that public policy programs undermine the reciprocal commitments that are foundational to the village. 36:00 - The often unacknowledged tradeoffs between convenience and connection. We hope this conversation is the first of many we get to have with Gracy Olmstead. Make sure to connect with her on social media and don’t miss her essential newsletter. We think she’ll quickly become one of your favorite writers too:  Twitter   Facebook   Newsletter 

As writer <a href="https://twitter.com/gracyolmstead" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gracy Olmstead</a> was commuting to work in Washington, D.C. from her home in the suburbs, she often thought back to her childhood, being raised in the same rural Idaho town in which her great-great-great grandparents had homesteaded a century earlier. “When I was growing up, there was a sense in which the cloth of your life was very interconnected,” she says. “There was a lot of life you lived in one place.” Her experience in the city had been very different. She felt as if her life had been fragmented into various places, each of which required that she wear a different hat, present a different persona. “I didn’t get to live my whole life in one spot. I had a really deep thirst for that. I wanted to live a life in which I worked, worshipped, shopped, was part of associations, etc., in one piece of ground.” Gracy Olmstead is one of our favorite writers. She has bylines in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>, <a href="https://washingtonpost.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Washington Post</a>, <a href="https://theweek.com/authors/gracy-olmstead" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Week</a>, and <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/author/gracy-howard/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The American Conservative</a>, among many other publications. And we’re excited to welcome her as our guest on today’s episode of the Strong Towns podcast. In her conversation with Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn, Olmstead reflects on her family’s decision to return to small town life — this time in Northern Virginia — and how her rural background informs her work as a writer and journalist. She and Chuck also discuss what urban and rural people may be missing about each other’s experiences and perspectives, the power of “membership,” and the obligations and opportunities that arise from binding yourself for a lifetime to a place and its people. Also discussed: 11:15 - Jane Jacobs’s insight that we need to design cities a specific way because we’re interacting with strangers…and why this is increasingly true for changing rural communities too. 16:20 - Why small towns really are “stifling,” and why that’s not necessarily a bad thing. 19:40 - Olmstead’s powerful article on why <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2019/may/family-leave-policy-motherhood-parents-need-villages.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">parents need villages</a>. 22:20 - The loss of multigenerational homes, and how all of us — young and old, single or not — have suffered the more “generationally siloed” we’ve become. 27:30 - The role of public policy in the absence of “the village” and how Olmstead responds (31:30) to the assertion that public policy programs undermine the reciprocal commitments that are foundational to the village. 36:00 - The often unacknowledged tradeoffs between convenience and connection. We hope this conversation is the first of many we get to have with Gracy Olmstead. Make sure to connect with her on social media and don’t miss her essential newsletter. We think she’ll quickly become one of your favorite writers too: <ul><li> <a href="https://twitter.com/gracyolmstead" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Twitter</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/gracyolm/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://mailchi.mp/41ee604d27e2/granola" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Newsletter</a> </li></ul>

Gracy Olmstead: It Still Takes a Village

In episode two of this weeklong podcast series, Charles Marohn, Jr. is interviewed by Strong Towns board member John Reuter. The two longtime friends go in-depth on Chuck’s book, Strong Towns, which releases today! Specifically, Chuck and John look at the “infrastructure cult” that has arisen since World War Two. American leaders on both sides of the political aisle look to big infrastructure projects to spur development and create jobs. But they do so while overlooking the longterm cost of these projects, not to mention the backlog of unfunded maintenance on existing projects. Chuck and John explore where this mindset comes from, the enormous toll it is taking on our local communities, and how to finally break free of the alluring but ultimately destructive infrastructure cult. Also discussed:Why poorer neighborhoods make the best investments How the mutual-validation loops of the modern development pattern resemble the Greek oracles The ways in which we sacrifice stability for the sake of efficiency and growth Why generations of consumption have likely made a generation of "corrective sacrifice" inevitable.We’re doing something unique this week. We're releasing one episode every day and inviting special guests to commandeer the Strong Towns podcast microphone to talk with Chuck about his first book, Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity. This is episode two of that series. Make sure you don’t miss a single episode. Subscribe to the Strong Towns podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about the book, visit strongtowns.org/book.

In episode two of this weeklong podcast series, Charles Marohn, Jr. is interviewed by Strong Towns board member John Reuter. The two longtime friends go in-depth on Chuck’s book, <a href="/strongtowns/episode/update/id/strongtowns.org/book" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Strong Towns</a>, which releases today!   Specifically, Chuck and John look at the “infrastructure cult” that has arisen since World War Two. American leaders on both sides of the political aisle look to big infrastructure projects to spur development and create jobs. But they do so while overlooking the longterm cost of these projects, not to mention the backlog of unfunded maintenance on existing projects. Chuck and John explore where this mindset comes from, the enormous toll it is taking on our local communities, and how to finally break free of the alluring but ultimately destructive infrastructure cult.   Also discussed: <ul><li>Why poorer neighborhoods make the best investments</li> <li> How the mutual-validation loops of the modern development pattern resemble the Greek oracles </li> <li> The ways in which we sacrifice stability for the sake of efficiency and growth </li> <li> Why generations of consumption have likely made a generation of "corrective sacrifice" inevitable. </li></ul>We’re doing something unique this week. We're releasing one episode every day and inviting special guests to commandeer the Strong Towns podcast microphone to talk with Chuck about his first book, <a href="/strongtowns/episode/update/id/strongtowns.org/book" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity</a>. This is episode two of that series.   Make sure you don’t miss a single episode. Subscribe to the Strong Towns podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about the book, visit <a href="http://strongtowns.org/book" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">strongtowns.org/book</a>.

Breaking Free of the Infrastructure Cult

Here's the audio from our April 2019 edition of Ask Strong Towns, a bimonthly webcast in which you can ask anything you want of our founder and president, Chuck Marohn, and our communications director, Kea Wilson. Questions answered: 2:05: Strong Towns regularly advocates for street trees. The arguments made make sense, but I have yet to see my biggest concern about street trees addressed. Trees roots can wreak havoc on water and wastewater lines, creating huge repair costs. Are there strategies to plant new street trees while protecting the underground utility infrastructure? 9:55: How does a land value tax work in predominantly rural areas? How would it affect the taxing of agricultural land?  19:45: In our city, we are dusting off a tool we had on paper but have not used much in practice: our Land Bank. What does a Strong Towns approach to a Land Bank look like? 28:00: What is the definition of a vibrant Downtown and why is it important to have one? 38:50: Does the higher density of the traditional development pattern require urban infrastructure (water/sewer lines, complete streets networks, etc.) to function? If so, how does a rural town/area incrementally grow in the traditional development pattern without building pricey infrastructure first?

Here's the audio from our April 2019 edition of Ask Strong Towns, a bimonthly webcast in which you can ask anything you want of our founder and president, Chuck Marohn, and our communications director, Kea Wilson. Questions answered: 2:05: Strong Towns regularly advocates for street trees. The arguments made make sense, but I have yet to see my biggest concern about street trees addressed. Trees roots can wreak havoc on water and wastewater lines, creating huge repair costs. Are there strategies to plant new street trees while protecting the underground utility infrastructure? 9:55: How does a land value tax work in predominantly rural areas? How would it affect the taxing of agricultural land? 19:45: In our city, we are dusting off a tool we had on paper but have not used much in practice: our Land Bank. What does a Strong Towns approach to a Land Bank look like? 28:00: What is the definition of a vibrant Downtown and why is it important to have one? 38:50: Does the higher density of the traditional development pattern require urban infrastructure (water/sewer lines, complete streets networks, etc.) to function? If so, how does a rural town/area incrementally grow in the traditional development pattern without building pricey infrastructure first?

Ask Strong Towns #8: April 2019

Here's the audio from the championship round of our Strongest Town Contest. We invited representatives of our final two contestants—Quint Studer of Pensacola, FL, and Nancy Pearson of Portsmouth, NH—to join us for a live Q&amp;A webcast and each make the case for why their city should be voted America's Strongest Town. Now it's your turn to vote—visit www.strongtowns.org/strongesttown before noon CDT on Thursday 4/11/19 to cast your vote for either Portsmouth or Pensacola!

Here's the audio from the championship round of our Strongest Town Contest. We invited representatives of our final two contestants—Quint Studer of Pensacola, FL, and Nancy Pearson of Portsmouth, NH—to join us for a live Q&amp;A webcast and each make the case for why their city should be voted America's Strongest Town. Now it's your turn to vote—visit <a href="http://www.strongtowns.org/strongesttown" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.strongtowns.org/strongesttown</a> before noon CDT on Thursday 4/11/19 to cast your vote for either Portsmouth or Pensacola!

Strongest Town Contest: Championship Round

James Fogarty discusses the current projects Safety Harbor is working on towards becoming more financially resilient, what steps the local leaders are taking to foster Safety Harbor's walkable downtown, and answers a question from a Strong Towns member about how Safety Harbor plans to expand its core areas. 

James Fogarty discusses the current projects Safety Harbor is working on towards becoming more financially resilient, what steps the local leaders are taking to foster Safety Harbor's walkable downtown, and answers a question from a Strong Towns member about how Safety Harbor plans to expand its core areas.

Strongest Town Semifinals: Safety Harbor, Florida

A lot of professions and organizations have an unspoken code, one that says, “We may air our disagreements internally, but to the rest of the world, we present a united front.” The police and the military, for example, tend to be this way. Families are often this way. This code can engender a really powerful sense of solidarity, which isn’t always a bad thing. But do civil engineers need a code like that? And what happens when speaking out for badly needed reform offends those who see it as an unjust provocation, attack on their livelihood, or even an act of betrayal? In our of our most important Strong Towns Podcast episodes of all time, and #9 in our Greatest Hits series, Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn discusses his own experience with these attitudes, in an incident which occurred in early 2015.Who Represents the Engineering Profession?Chuck Marohn is a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) in the state of Minnesota. He is also a vocal advocate who has been extremely critical of aspects of the engineering profession, including in particular the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Chuck has called ASCE the leader of the Infrastructure Cult for its relentless advocacy for more money for civil engineering projects, no matter the cost to society. In early 2015, a fellow licensed engineer in Minnesota filed a complaint against Marohn’s engineering license. This complaint did not allege that Marohn was not a competent engineer. Rather, it was filed over a policy disagreement. It alleged that Marohn had violated a state statute by writing and saying things, here at Strong Towns, that served to “diminish public confidence in the engineering profession.” Let’s get this straight: a Professional Engineer (PE) license is a big deal. The licensing test is extremely difficult and rigorous. Most civil engineers, Marohn included, take great pride in their PE title. And yet, criticizing ASCE does not, and should not in anyone’s minds, equate to criticizing the engineering profession.No Incentive to Do Things DifferentlyASCE is unlike many professional organizations, in that it engages in routine political advocacy. ASCE advocates in the public sphere for things that will produce more money for more projects for more engineers—getting more things built out of concrete and asphalt and steel. Marohn argues strongly that this mindset—more is better—is a deeply harmful dogma within the profession at a time when most American cities and towns suffer both a public-safety crisis (because our streets are too wide and induce unsafe driving) and a fiscal solvency crisis (because our streets are too wide, our development pattern is too spread out, and we have built far too much infrastructure). The ASCE actively promotes the overbuilding of unnecessary and even harmful infrastructure. As an example, Marohn cites the often-used term “functionally obsolete bridges,” heard in debates about how much state and federal money is needed for infrastructure repairs. Many of these, it turns out, are simply one-lane bridges in rural areas, which are not actually in danger of falling down—but the “standard” says they should be two-lane. Because of the way engineering contracts work—often as a percent of construction cost—there is little to no incentive to cut costs. There is little to no incentive to do things in a profoundly more frugal way. There is little to no incentive to question industry design standards for things like street widths, if doing so would also mean losing out on project funding. In our cities and towns, our wide streets are killing people. Design could save lives. When you get into that conversation, some engineers get very upset. And one of those people, in 2015, got upset enough to challenge Chuck Marohn’s license. Spoiler alert: The complaint went nowhere—the state licensing board found “no violation” and recommended no further action. And a lot of people spoke up in defense of Chuck and Strong Towns, including a number of lawyers and the Union of Concerned Scientists. The engineering profession, says Marohn, is full of good people who want to make the world better. And increasingly, those good people are questioning some of the old dogmas of their profession. This podcast episode, one of our Greatest Hits that you don’t want to miss, makes an eloquent case for the legitimacy and importance of such questioning.

A lot of professions and organizations have an unspoken code, one that says, “We may air our disagreements internally, but to the rest of the world, we present a united front.” The police and the military, for example, tend to be this way. Families are often this way. This code can engender a really powerful sense of solidarity, which isn’t always a bad thing. But do civil engineers need a code like that? And what happens when speaking out for badly needed reform offends those who see it as an unjust provocation, attack on their livelihood, or even an act of betrayal? In our of our most important Strong Towns Podcast episodes of all time, and #9 in our Greatest Hits series, Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn discusses his own experience with these attitudes, in an incident which occurred in early 2015.Who Represents the Engineering Profession? Chuck Marohn is a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) in the state of Minnesota. He is also a vocal advocate who has been extremely critical of aspects of the engineering profession, including in particular the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Chuck has called ASCE the leader of the <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/12/12/best-of-blog-asce-and-the-infrastructure-cult.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Infrastructure Cult</a> for its relentless advocacy for more money for civil engineering projects, no matter the cost to society. In early 2015, a fellow licensed engineer in Minnesota <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/2/3/can-you-be-an-engineer-and-speak-out-for-reform" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">filed a complaint against Marohn’s engineering license</a>. This complaint did not allege that Marohn was not a competent engineer. Rather, it was filed over a policy disagreement. It alleged that Marohn had violated a state statute by writing and saying things, here at Strong Towns, that served to “diminish public confidence in the engineering profession.” Let’s get this straight: a Professional Engineer (PE) license is a big deal. The licensing test is extremely difficult and rigorous. Most civil engineers, Marohn included, take great pride in their PE title. And yet, criticizing ASCE does not, and should not in anyone’s minds, equate to criticizing the engineering profession.No Incentive to Do Things Differently ASCE is unlike many professional organizations, in that it engages in routine political advocacy. ASCE advocates in the public sphere for things that will produce more money for more projects for more engineers—getting more things built out of concrete and asphalt and steel. Marohn argues strongly that this mindset—more is better—is a deeply harmful dogma within the profession at a time when most American cities and towns suffer both a public-safety crisis (because our streets are too wide and induce unsafe driving) and a fiscal solvency crisis (because our streets are too wide, our development pattern is too spread out, and we have built far too much infrastructure). The ASCE actively promotes the overbuilding of unnecessary and even harmful infrastructure. As an example, Marohn cites the often-used term “functionally obsolete bridges,” heard in debates about how much state and federal money is needed for infrastructure repairs. Many of these, it turns out, are simply one-lane bridges in rural areas, which are not actually in danger of falling down—but the “standard” says they should be two-lane. Because of the way engineering contracts work—often as a percent of construction cost—there is little to no incentive to cut costs. There is little to no incentive to do things in a profoundly more frugal way. There is little to no incentive to question industry design standards for things like street widths, if doing so would also mean losing out on project funding. In our cities and towns, our wide streets are killing people. Design could save lives. When you get into that conversation, some engineers get very upset. And one of those people, in 2015, got upset enough to challenge Chuck Marohn’s license. Spoiler alert: The complaint went nowhere—the state licensing board found “no violation” and recommended no further action. And a lot of people spoke up in defense of Chuck and Strong Towns, including a number of lawyers and the Union of Concerned Scientists. The engineering profession, says Marohn, is full of good people who want to make the world better. And increasingly, those good people are questioning some of the old dogmas of their profession. This podcast episode, one of our Greatest Hits that you don’t want to miss, makes an eloquent case for the legitimacy and importance of such questioning.

Greatest Hits #9: Can You Be an Engineer and Speak Out for Reform? (2015)

The hype about autonomous vehicles—”AV’s” for short—is often breathless. Advocates have touted the emerging technology as the key to everything that ails our cities—heck, they just might bring about Mideast peace and cure cancer! At Strong Towns, we’ve been, well, skeptical. At the core of our critique of the prevailing pattern of development in North American cities is the observation that, around the middle of the 20th century, we undertook a massive, uncontrolled experiment. We did it everywhere, all at once. In this Suburban Experiment, we totally redesigned everything about the places we live, and jettisoned tried-and-tested ways of designing and laying out human-scale places, in order to better accommodate a brand new means of transportation: the automobile. Look: AVs are coming. And they’re not going to be all bad, or all good. But there is a real risk that, as a society, we’ll engage in the same sort of hubris again: redesign everything around a brand-new technology before we really understand the complex ways it will affect our society and economy.Who Will Benefit Most From AVs? And Can We Do Anything About That?Recently, we were interested to learn of a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists called “Where Are Self-Driving Cars Taking Us? Pivotal Choices That Will Shape DC’s Transportation Future.” Although the study is focused on Washington, DC, its implications are relevant to every city, large and small. In this week’s episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, the study’s lead author, Dr. Richard Ezike (Twitter: @DrRCEzike), chats with Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn about the study’s key findings and, more importantly, the questions that continue to bedevil the best minds working on this subject. A crucial insight they both agree on: We’re not starting from a level playing field. We live in a car-dependent world, the result of a combination of past policy choices, individual responses to those policy choices, and institutional inertia in the decades since. We have inherited a world where the poor, in most places on the North American continent, must pay an expensive ante to even participate in society. You swallow the fixed costs of car ownership, or you endure an environment that, for non-drivers, is often, to use Chuck’s word, “despotic.” AVs might hold some potential to free people from this costly ante, by making it possible to just pay for the transportation you need, or to more easily access existing public transit via “last mile” connections. But Marohn and Ezike agree that we can’t just expect AVs to solve all the problems of our built form, by, say, allowing us to multi-task during long freeway commutes, or to no longer need as many parking spaces. And we need to be aware that AVs will shape that development pattern, especially if we don’t get the price right. AVs actually offer great potential for getting the price of driving right: if you’re paying for a ride, rather than the fixed cost of owning your own personal vehicle, it’s possible to bundle far more of the costs of driving itself into the price of that ride. But in the car-dependent world we’ve already inherited, that means potentially punishing those who can least afford it. Ezike sees this as a policy challenge: if we grapple with what our transportation system is really costing us (including in environmental impacts), are we willing to also grapple with helping those who can’t afford those costs, either by providing better public transportation or more options to live in complete communities? it’s important, urges Ezike, that people be in the room who are going to speak up for fairness, for equity, for environmental concerns, for public interest and transparency. AV technology is coming. Those who care about who will benefit from it should get in the room with the people who are already talking about these innovations, and be part of the crucial decisions that shape how we, as a society, are going to respond to them. Listen to the episode to hear more of Ezike’s insights on this topic, and let’s keep the conversation going in the comments!

The hype about autonomous vehicles—”AV’s” for short—is often breathless. Advocates have touted the emerging technology as the key to everything that ails our cities—heck, they just might bring about Mideast peace and cure cancer! At Strong Towns, <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/2/automated-vehicles-xwkj3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">we’ve been, well, skeptical</a>. At the core of our critique of the prevailing pattern of development in North American cities is the observation that, around the middle of the 20th century, we <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/curbside-chat-1/2015/12/14/americas-suburban-experiment" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">undertook a massive, uncontrolled experiment</a>. We did it everywhere, all at once. In this Suburban Experiment, we totally redesigned everything about the places we live, and jettisoned tried-and-tested ways of designing and laying out <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/5/7/how-did-we-get-used-to-out-of-scale-cities" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">human-scale places</a>, in order to better accommodate a brand new means of transportation: the automobile. Look: AVs are coming. And they’re not going to be all bad, or all good. But there is a real risk that, as a society, we’ll engage in the same sort of hubris again: redesign everything around a brand-new technology before we really understand the complex ways it will affect our society and economy.Who Will Benefit Most From AVs? And Can We Do Anything About That? Recently, we were interested to learn of a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists called “<a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/self-driving-cars/AV-equity" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Where Are Self-Driving Cars Taking Us? Pivotal Choices That Will Shape DC’s Transportation Future</a>.” Although the study is focused on Washington, DC, its implications are relevant to every city, large and small. In this week’s episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, the study’s lead author, Dr. Richard Ezike (Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/DrRCEzike" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@DrRCEzike</a>), chats with Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn about the study’s key findings and, more importantly, the questions that continue to bedevil the best minds working on this subject. A crucial insight they both agree on: We’re not starting from a level playing field. We live in a car-dependent world, the result of a combination of past policy choices, individual responses to those policy choices, and institutional inertia in the decades since. We have inherited a world where the poor, in most places on the North American continent, must pay an expensive ante to even participate in society. You swallow the fixed costs of car ownership, or you endure an environment that, for non-drivers, is often, to use Chuck’s word, “despotic.” AVs might hold some potential to free people from this costly ante, by making it possible to just pay for the transportation you need, or to more easily access existing public transit via “last mile” connections. But Marohn and Ezike agree that we can’t just expect AVs to solve all the problems of our built form, by, say, allowing us to multi-task during long freeway commutes, or to no longer need as many parking spaces. And we need to be aware that AVs will shape that development pattern, especially if we don’t get the price right. AVs actually offer great potential for getting the price of driving right: if you’re paying for a ride, rather than the fixed cost of owning your own personal vehicle, it’s possible to bundle far more of the costs of driving itself into the price of that ride. But in the car-dependent world we’ve already inherited, that means potentially punishing those who can least afford it. Ezike sees this as a policy challenge: if we grapple with what our transportation system is really costing us (including in environmental impacts), are we willing to also grapple with helping those who can’t afford those costs, either by providing better public transportation or more options to live in <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/2/6/complete-neighborhoods" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">complete communities</a>? it’s important, urges Ezike, that people be in the room who are going to speak up for fairness, for equity, for environmental concerns, for public interest and transparency. AV technology is coming. Those who care about who will benefit from it should get in the room with the people who are already talking about these innovations, and be part of the crucial decisions that shape how we, as a society, are going to respond to them. Listen to the episode to hear more of Ezike’s insights on this topic, and let’s keep the conversation going in the comments!

Autonomous Vehicles Are Coming. Do We Have a Say in Who Benefits?

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