Strong Towns

Strong towns principles:

• Relies on small, incremental investments (little bets) instead of large, transformative projects,
• Emphasizes resiliency of result over efficiency of execution,
• Is designed to adapt to feedback,
• Is inspired by bottom-up action (chaotic but smart) and not top-down systems (orderly but dumb),
• Seeks to conduct as much of life as possible at a personal scale, and
• Is obsessive about accounting for its revenues, expenses, assets and long term liabilities (do the math).

Incrementally small changes, and an economic viewpoint (Poor Neighbourhoods make the Best Investments):

“In these poor neighborhoods, we’re not talking about taking $50,000 homes and making them into $250,000 homes. Those kind of projects are hit-and-miss risky and not really scalable anyway. What we’re really talking about is taking a neighborhood of $50,000 homes and making them $55,000 homes. That’s a solid 10% increase in the tax base. It’s wealth that is shared throughout the neighborhood. It’s a real gain — not an illusion — that is more likely to persist than some kind of one-off project. And it’s repeatable. We can nurture 3-5% annual returns out of these depressed neighborhoods for a long, long time. (And, by the way, one quick diversion from dollars and cents….this is also how you avoid displacement and ensure that the gains in wealth actually go to the poor who are responsible for it.)”

“Finally, the type of investments that these neighborhoods need in order to experience consistent 3-5% returns over time are very small and low risk.We’re talking about things like putting in street trees, painting crosswalks, patching sidewalks, and making changes to zoning regulations to provide more flexibility for neighborhood businesses, accessory apartments and parking. If we try some things and they don’t work, we don’t lose much because they don’t cost much. We learn from our small failures and try something else.”

Definitions of city development from Sprawl is Not the Problem:

THE SUBURBAN EXPERIMENT

The approach to growth and development that has become dominant in North America during the 20th Century. There are two distinguishing characteristics of this approach that differentiate it from the Traditional Development Pattern. They are: (1) New growth happens at a large scale; and (2) Construction is done to a finished state; there is no further growth anticipated after the initial construction.

TRADITIONAL DEVELOPMENT PATTERN

The approach to growth and development that humans used for thousands of years across different cultures, continents and latitudes. There are two distinguishing characteristics of this pattern that differentiate it from the Suburban Experiment. They are: (1) Growth happens incrementally over time; and (2) All neighborhoods are on a continuum of improvement.

“And to circle back to my prior post on smart growth: we won’t fix the dysfunctional byproduct of centralized, collective action with more centralized, collective action. Our cities need organic, incremental, citizen-led responses to our current set of problems.“