Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town

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From the Publisher JOIN THE STRONG TOWNS MOVEMENT TODAY. Thousands of people across North America are working to make their cities safe, livable, and financially resilient. Strong Towns seeks to replace America’s post-war pattern of development, the Suburban Experiment, with a pattern of development that is financially strong and resilient. We advocate for cities of all sizes to be safe, livable, and inviting. We work to elevate local government to be the highest level of collaboration for people working together in a place, not merely the lowest level in a hierarchy of governments. THE BOOKS STRONG TOWNS: A BOTTOM-UP REVOLUTION TO REBUILD AMERICAN PROSPERITY Uncovers the underlying reasons why your city is going brokeProvides the knowledge and insight needed to stop bad development practicesPuts forth a plan to make your neighborhood stronger and more prosperousHighlights the Strong Towns approach to taking control of your community's future CONFESSIONS OF A RECOVERING ENGINEER: TRANSPORTATION FOR A STRONG TOWN Explains how our transportation system got so bad in the first placeShows why the conventional approach to solving chronic transportation problems is actually making things worseDelves into the real costs Americans are paying for a broken transportation system, not just in dollars, but in time, safety, and quality of lifeHighlights the Strong Towns approach to building the transportation plan we deserve ESCAPING THE HOUSING TRAP: THE STRONG TOWN RESPONSE TO THE HOUSING CRISIS Discusses housing as an investment and how the country's neighborhoods are being transformed by large-scale investing strategiesExplores housing as shelter, including the impact of zoning policy and NIMBYismHighlights the Strong Towns approach to solving the American housing crisis Q and A with STRONG TOWNS FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT CHARLES MAROHN What inspired you to write Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Build American Prosperity? I wrote Strong Towns to start a real conversation about the state of America's cities and towns. Local governments are going broke, and cities are facing a long, slow, grinding decline. It may not look like it in places that are growing like crazy, but what looks like wealth on the surface is an illusion. We've grown ourselves into a decline, and more growth in this model, more infrastructure investment, will just make it all worse. I didn't write a book that has all the answers―I don't pretend to know those―but to get people asking the right questions and taking steps in a better direction. What are cities doing wrong? Cities have traded near-term growth for long-term liabilities. They launch huge projects like new sports arenas, big box stores, and shiny new subdivisions aimed at attracting new residents and their money. Problem is, they don't have the funds to take care of what they've already got, much less pay for the maintenance that will be needed for all those new buildings, pipelines, and roads in the future. Now the bill is coming due, and it turns out the growth didn't create the tax base needed to pay for maintenance, the public servants, the street lights, etc. But is growth inherently bad? No. Growth is not the problem, per se; the problem is how cities approach that growth. Before World War II, cities were built based on thousands of years of messy, chaotic, human struggle, without the big-picture comprehensive planning that's common today. They used to evolve incrementally with trial and error built in. This made them complex and adaptive and stable. But now cities build all at once to a finished state, which makes them fragile. What is built all at once fails all at once (and we're too broke to fix it). That makes sense. So, what's the solution? We need to get some humility and listen to the wisdom of our ancestors. We need to stop betting our futures on huge, irreversible projects and start taking small, incremental steps to improve declining neighborhoods that are actually our best wealth generators. We must place small bets where they are most needed. What do you mean by small bets? The Strong Towns approach is simple. We start with humbly observing where people struggle. We then ask: What is the next smallest thing we can do right now to address this struggle? Then do it. Then repeat the process. It's really about iterating our way to success. A small bet might mean adding a pedestrian crosswalk at unmarked intersections or planting trees in a park with no shade. Can small bets really make a difference? Yes! They can stop the long slide into decline and can increase the value of a neighborhood exponentially. This is a form of showering love on the people who live there, and it restores their confidence. They're then more likely to take their own energy and resources off the sidelines and make an investment in their own homes. And, if a small bet, doesn't work―well, it's low risk and inexpensive. The city hasn't lost much, and it can see right away that it didn't work and twea

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