Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity

Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity by Charles L. Marohn Jr.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The story is that the post WWII development pattern (car centric suburbia) is a deeply unsustainable and unnatural way for cities to grow. Why? Basic math: the money the city collects (mainly property taxes) is not enough to pay for the city’s obligations (for example, maintaining roads and signs). Indeed, the property taxes collected from single family houses in suburbia are nowhere near enough for maintaining infrastructure. In such neighbourhoods, each property requires more roads, pipes, and power lines than in a denser neighbourhood. Marohn advocates for a return to incrementally developed human habitats. These grow by a large number of small bets that, if successful, pay for themselves instead of big, “build-it-and-they-will-come” gambles. Cities should consist of small, incremental changes that are stable, from the bottom up. Hence in the name of the book: “a bottom-up revolution”.

As someone relatively young and naive, I appreciate the introduction to basic concepts interspersed throughout the book. Property taxes, land and property value, infrastructure as a liability, government debt, public vs private investments, and so on. The book really hammered the money dimension into my half-developed monkey brain when it comes to cities and infrastructure. There are still many undigested bits of the book, but I am sure I will return to it many times in the future.