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

by Charles L. Marohn Jr.

Consider a dinner party where each invited guest brings more food and beverage than they themselves consume. With each person that shows up, there is a wider selection of food and drink, the conversation grows, and the party simply gets better. The logical thing to do as host of this good party is to open the doors as wide as possible and invite more people in. The more the merrier! What about a party where each invited guest consumes more food and beverage than they themselves bring to the party? With each person that shows up, the supplies are dwindling. This is rapidly turning into a bad party. As host, the logical thing to do is to bar the door and not let anyone else in. Traditional development patterns were a good party. While each neighborhood began modestly as a collection of small investments, each new arrival simply made things better. Not only did new construction improve underlying land values in a virtuous cycle of growth, stagnation, and renewal, but it improved the capacity of the neighborhood to take collective action. Get enough people and you could start a bucket brigade. Add some more and you can afford to put in a water line. Even more and those gravel roads could be paved. Keep growing and you could staff a police department or a library. In a good party, private growth provides collective benefits. Modern development, where the public sector leads and everything is built to a finished state, is a bad party. When someone buys that new house on the cul-...