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

by Charles L. Marohn Jr.

Simultaneous with the rise of suburban poverty is the gentrification of urban neighborhoods. As well-located urban land values rise once more, the value of the improvements on those properties also goes up. This is a mechanism that historically created new wealth, but it no longer works that way. Zoning codes established for the rapid replication of the auto-oriented development pattern were also applied to urban neighborhoods. These codes do not allow neighborhood evolution; their central feature is to “protect” existing property owners by locking the current development pattern in place. For example, a neighborhood of single-family homes must remain a neighborhood of single-family homes. The person living there is unable to turn higher property values into a redevelopment opportunity that expands the number of units. With demand driving land values up and the neighborhood pattern sealed in regulatory amber, the most likely outcome to bring the Improvement to Land Ratio back into balance is to demolish the existing home and build something equivalent, only at a high-end price point. This is commonly called a “scrape off” and the net effect is to dislocate the existing population.