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

Our modern development pattern – a continental-scale social experiment – was established during a period of unprecedented abundance after World War II. We were not only the sole economic superpower that wasn’t devastated by war; the biggest players in the world were indebted to us. We held the global reserve currency, we had the greatest amount of

If the city spends $1 million repairing a street, it’s not sufficient for the tax base served by that street to only produce $1 million of revenue over the life of that street. If that’s all that results, then why bother? The public doesn’t build infrastructure just to have infrastructure.

by the end of World War II, it was very clear to a victorious nation what needed to happen if we wanted to keep from sliding back into economic depression: We all needed to copy the success of Detroit. That is what we did.

something viscerally satisfying in blaming the morally compromised politician who can bring home the pork-barrel project. Yet, this answer also felt incomplete. I worked with a lot of politicians, and a lot of other professionals, and while few would pass up an opportunity for self-congratulation, I never got the sense that was the motivation. Ther

This is in stark contrast to everything we experience today regarding growth and development. Instead of private wealth leading, in today’s cities it is the collective public investment that leads. Governments frequently invest millions of dollars, or make long-term maintenance commitments worth millions, before any taxable private investment has b

an abundance of resources destroys the need for adaptation.

private landowners would reject most major projects if they were asked to pay for them. They would reject them because they would lose money. If we’re going to believe in the power of infrastructure spending, if we’re going to have faith in the improved efficiency of the market that results from taxpayer investments like these, we should use the fe

If we’re going to break out of the Infrastructure Cult mentality, we would need to design our systems to respond to feedback. There is no clearer feedback on value than someone’s willingness to pay for something, yet our infrastructure funding mechanisms have a large degree of separation from the user’s willingness to pay for what they want. We all

The underlying assumption of the American development pattern is an abundance of resources.