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

by Charles L. Marohn Jr.

It is critical that every neighborhood in America be allowed, by right, to evolve to the next level of development intensity. That means empty spaces need to be allowed starter homes, even small houses, on footprints that can be expanded over time. It also means that single-family homes must be allowed to add accessory apartments, or convert to a duplex, without any special permitting, approval of neighbors, or added conditions. To become more financially productive, we need our neighborhoods to thicken up. Allowing all neighborhoods to evolve to the next increment of intensity is essential to creating positive feedback loops. No neighborhood can be kept under glass, prevented from changing over time, without doing damage to the entire community. Stagnant, frozen neighborhoods are the deepest dysfunction the post-war development experiment has created. Even so, the next increment of development must be allowed by right, but no more. Neighborhoods need to evolve, but I’m now going to make the case for some prudent constraints on that growth.