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

by Charles L. Marohn Jr.

Part of the unique experience of being in Italy was, of course, the food. The team I was with all ate like royalty. Our various Italian hosts brought us out for what felt like a Thanksgiving-scale meal, twice a day, every day. Later in the trip when I was on my own, I ate an entire pizza every day for dinner and, when I learned the word for “French fries,” added an order of them – fried in exquisite olive oil – to my regular diet. I’ve never eaten so much in a six-week period. The other unique experience for me was walking. I came from a city, in a culture, where a trip longer than a block meant getting into a car. In Italy, we walked everywhere. They all did. It was the easiest way to get around and, since everyone walked most places, the cities were very delightful to walk in. I’m six feet tall. When I arrived in Italy, I weighed 185 pounds, a weight slightly above where I should have been at that age but by no means overweight. When I left Italy six weeks later, despite eating a bizarre amount of food, I weighed a very heathy 165. I could talk about the value of the Mediterranean diet, but that wasn’t it for me. It was all the walking. All of us on the trip recognized the same effect. In fact, at one point we were sitting outside at a café watching people walk by when we decided to count the number of them who were obviously overweight. It was a busy street with at least a couple people walking by each minute. We were there about 30 minutes. Total count: zero. This is n...