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Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity by Charles L. Marohn Jr.
martysdalton's review
challenging
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
4.0
So much to learn here, lots of practical action to take and an eye opening new way to look at your neighborhood, city and local travel. Recommend.
hey_its_kae's review
informative
slow-paced
4.0
Great information but the author can take his time getting to the point. Bit of an overuse of metaphors.
bittersweet_symphony's review
5.0
Michele Martinez, a former city council member of Santa Ana, California, introduces the book: "Chuck helped me understand the roots of today's public sector fiscal crisis, how we regulate real estate development in favor of auto-oriented sprawl instead of building communities that focus on mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods that emphasize social, economic, and environmental sustainability." She offers a strong testimonial for municipal staff and elected officials who wonder whether they'll be able to turn their towns around.
From there, Marohn offers a brief history into how we—civilized humans generally—used to build cities around walking, elaborating on the detriments we see downstream from being such a car-centric society. While he doesn't evoke the term, spontaneous order, he traces the history of how towns in Europe and pre-WWII US used to order spontaneously: "When we ponder the layout of ancient cities, we must acknowledge that they are the byproduct of thousands of years of human tinkering." We didn't structure very much top-down but through "trial-and-error experimentation for thousands of years" we refined "humanity's approach to building" habitats.
After thousands of years of experiencing more emergent growth patterns, we abruptly shifted to a growth-obsessed, infrastructure cult over just a couple decades. Cities (in the US) don't seem to be designed with human flourishing in mind anymore. Instead we have imposed orders.
While Marohn refers to it as "spooky wisdom," he makes some convincing points on how a lot of local or dispersed knowledge is lost, ignored, or not able to be accounted for in our post-WWII urban development mechanisms. Our cities used to be more malleable and adaptive rather than "built to completion." Our former inherent flexibility "meant that people didn't need to be able to project what would happen in the future to act today; they just built structures that could be adapted to harmonize changing priorities." A rejection of mixed-use zoning has completely crippled us, making this adaptive building mindset foreign to most cities in the Western US (and beyond).
Rather than allow for incremental change, or chances to "fail small, and fail often," we go big on infrastructure, residential subdivisions, and subsidies for businesses that often leave our towns broke and unable to maintain basic amenities. So, we get stuck in cycles of building something big and new, only to have it not maintained and fall apart. Thus once affluent or vibrant neighborhoods (and cities) decay as more citizens and economic producers move on to the next new place.
Reflecting on his parent's hometown, Marohn observes: "The key difference between historic development patterns and the way Americans began to build cities in the twentieth century is our capacity to skip the messy iterations and jump to what we perceive to be the perfect end. Today, we build in large leaps, and we build to a finished state. We envision the end condition—for a building, a block, or a neighborhood—and that is what we go forth and create....There is no anticipation of change, incremental or otherwise."
In essence, modern cities are destined to fail. "And because the neighborhood is built to a finished state, because no higher use is anticipated or even allowed on the property, the only available options are stagnation and decline." Instead of maintaining current buildings or infrastructure, allowing them to age into well-preserved reminders of local history, we let them decay and then we move on. Marohn notes, "The more likely scenario is that, as the signs of decline start to become apparent, the more affluent in the neighborhood will move. They will do the logical thing and sell their home in the declining neighborhood and purchase another in a neighborhood they perceive to be a better investment. That will leave people with lesser financial means to struggle to maintain homes with a deteriorating neighborhood."
He explores how each level of American government inadvertently conspired to endorse and enforce policies that "destroyed the underlying land values of core cities" and city cores. In contrast with how pre-WWII growth patterns where highways were meant for connecting places, they "became a mechanism for land development around our cities. Policies were established at the state and federal levels focusing auto-commuting patterns. Highways were [now] run, not around cities, but through the middle of established neighborhoods....With underlying land values in mature neighborhoods not just stagnant but falling, the natural renewal mechanism that gave cities stability collapsed."
By why? Traditionally, private investment in areas preceded that of public investment. Private individuals acted collectively to create a community. As it expanded, economies grew, as did the population. With the rising population came the need for public services and infrastructure. This was made possible by communities that had become prosperous through private economic activities. Now the reverse is true. Cities tend to operate off of the notion of "if you build it, they will come." Municipalities take on debt and invest loads into infrastructure (often to subsidize new development projects and businesses) expecting to use future money to maintain what is now being built. Instead, cities have way to much to maintain and not enough private investment (which later becomes public investment) to justify or pay for it.
Long-story-short, many American cities are going to see even more failing infrastructure and decay for a long time. Marohn offers some steps municipalities can take to prevent this. I won't leave those here. You'll have to read the book to get those.
While I shouldn't be so surprised that Strong Towns was so economics- and finance-heavy, I most enjoyed the final chapter wherein Marohn speaks more to the deeply human needs that aren't being met but could be by better-run, more spontaneously-designed cities.
Titled, "An Intentional Life," he makes some communitarian calls for building social capital and why argues Strong Towns are well-suited for fostering human flourishing. He shares some anecdotes regarding his family's recent move from decaying (or soon to be decaying) suburbia to a more urban setting that better reflects a Strong Town philosophy. He praises the simple joys of knowing his neighbors, being able to walk or bike most places, and becoming more civically active. He speaks briefly of the role faith communities have in nurturing social capital. He laments the polarization that has resulted from our self-sorting where we silo ourselves from people who think or live politically different lives. As Robert Talisse might say in Overdoing Democracy, we're lacking cross-cultural identities, something that local religious affiliation often helps with.
We need to be better at practicing community. And we need to do better at building more walkable, sustainable, affordable, and prosperous cities. Strong Towns provides some insights into how we might do that. So, waste a little less time on national-level electoral politics and find a way to ensure your municipality is working well for your neighborhood and your family. Look for more ways to talk to your neighbors. Join social associations. Get active in your community. If we can help our neighbors solve the problems facing our communities, then that positive change will extend outward in more effective and sustainable forms than we previously could have imagined.
From there, Marohn offers a brief history into how we—civilized humans generally—used to build cities around walking, elaborating on the detriments we see downstream from being such a car-centric society. While he doesn't evoke the term, spontaneous order, he traces the history of how towns in Europe and pre-WWII US used to order spontaneously: "When we ponder the layout of ancient cities, we must acknowledge that they are the byproduct of thousands of years of human tinkering." We didn't structure very much top-down but through "trial-and-error experimentation for thousands of years" we refined "humanity's approach to building" habitats.
After thousands of years of experiencing more emergent growth patterns, we abruptly shifted to a growth-obsessed, infrastructure cult over just a couple decades. Cities (in the US) don't seem to be designed with human flourishing in mind anymore. Instead we have imposed orders.
While Marohn refers to it as "spooky wisdom," he makes some convincing points on how a lot of local or dispersed knowledge is lost, ignored, or not able to be accounted for in our post-WWII urban development mechanisms. Our cities used to be more malleable and adaptive rather than "built to completion." Our former inherent flexibility "meant that people didn't need to be able to project what would happen in the future to act today; they just built structures that could be adapted to harmonize changing priorities." A rejection of mixed-use zoning has completely crippled us, making this adaptive building mindset foreign to most cities in the Western US (and beyond).
Rather than allow for incremental change, or chances to "fail small, and fail often," we go big on infrastructure, residential subdivisions, and subsidies for businesses that often leave our towns broke and unable to maintain basic amenities. So, we get stuck in cycles of building something big and new, only to have it not maintained and fall apart. Thus once affluent or vibrant neighborhoods (and cities) decay as more citizens and economic producers move on to the next new place.
Reflecting on his parent's hometown, Marohn observes: "The key difference between historic development patterns and the way Americans began to build cities in the twentieth century is our capacity to skip the messy iterations and jump to what we perceive to be the perfect end. Today, we build in large leaps, and we build to a finished state. We envision the end condition—for a building, a block, or a neighborhood—and that is what we go forth and create....There is no anticipation of change, incremental or otherwise."
In essence, modern cities are destined to fail. "And because the neighborhood is built to a finished state, because no higher use is anticipated or even allowed on the property, the only available options are stagnation and decline." Instead of maintaining current buildings or infrastructure, allowing them to age into well-preserved reminders of local history, we let them decay and then we move on. Marohn notes, "The more likely scenario is that, as the signs of decline start to become apparent, the more affluent in the neighborhood will move. They will do the logical thing and sell their home in the declining neighborhood and purchase another in a neighborhood they perceive to be a better investment. That will leave people with lesser financial means to struggle to maintain homes with a deteriorating neighborhood."
He explores how each level of American government inadvertently conspired to endorse and enforce policies that "destroyed the underlying land values of core cities" and city cores. In contrast with how pre-WWII growth patterns where highways were meant for connecting places, they "became a mechanism for land development around our cities. Policies were established at the state and federal levels focusing auto-commuting patterns. Highways were [now] run, not around cities, but through the middle of established neighborhoods....With underlying land values in mature neighborhoods not just stagnant but falling, the natural renewal mechanism that gave cities stability collapsed."
By why? Traditionally, private investment in areas preceded that of public investment. Private individuals acted collectively to create a community. As it expanded, economies grew, as did the population. With the rising population came the need for public services and infrastructure. This was made possible by communities that had become prosperous through private economic activities. Now the reverse is true. Cities tend to operate off of the notion of "if you build it, they will come." Municipalities take on debt and invest loads into infrastructure (often to subsidize new development projects and businesses) expecting to use future money to maintain what is now being built. Instead, cities have way to much to maintain and not enough private investment (which later becomes public investment) to justify or pay for it.
Long-story-short, many American cities are going to see even more failing infrastructure and decay for a long time. Marohn offers some steps municipalities can take to prevent this. I won't leave those here. You'll have to read the book to get those.
While I shouldn't be so surprised that Strong Towns was so economics- and finance-heavy, I most enjoyed the final chapter wherein Marohn speaks more to the deeply human needs that aren't being met but could be by better-run, more spontaneously-designed cities.
Titled, "An Intentional Life," he makes some communitarian calls for building social capital and why argues Strong Towns are well-suited for fostering human flourishing. He shares some anecdotes regarding his family's recent move from decaying (or soon to be decaying) suburbia to a more urban setting that better reflects a Strong Town philosophy. He praises the simple joys of knowing his neighbors, being able to walk or bike most places, and becoming more civically active. He speaks briefly of the role faith communities have in nurturing social capital. He laments the polarization that has resulted from our self-sorting where we silo ourselves from people who think or live politically different lives. As Robert Talisse might say in Overdoing Democracy, we're lacking cross-cultural identities, something that local religious affiliation often helps with.
We need to be better at practicing community. And we need to do better at building more walkable, sustainable, affordable, and prosperous cities. Strong Towns provides some insights into how we might do that. So, waste a little less time on national-level electoral politics and find a way to ensure your municipality is working well for your neighborhood and your family. Look for more ways to talk to your neighbors. Join social associations. Get active in your community. If we can help our neighbors solve the problems facing our communities, then that positive change will extend outward in more effective and sustainable forms than we previously could have imagined.
ecologicalbeing's review
Feel like I got the gist, got too complicated for me personally
cindyhenry's review
informative
fast-paced
2.0
Felt that it wasn't balanced and proposes swing of pendulum vs a middle approach-both local and state/ federal involvement. Some assumptions were broad and not substantiated.
To build prosperity, we also need to address taxes. As in fair and equitable tax codes. Not touched on here, which makes it a very conservative leaning approach.
To build prosperity, we also need to address taxes. As in fair and equitable tax codes. Not touched on here, which makes it a very conservative leaning approach.