Podcasts Government The Strong Towns Podcast Here's How Cities Undermine Their Own Competitiveness

Here's How Cities Undermine Their Own Competitiveness

Published: July 6, 2021, 10 a.m.

The traditional development pattern of towns and cities evolved with humans, the same way ant hills evolved with the ant and bee hives evolved with the bee. Yet around the time of the Great Depression, North Americans began jettisoning millennia of accumulated wisdom about city-building in favor of a suburban development pattern that was scaled for cars rather than people, built to a finished state and all at once, resistant to feedback and adaptation, and ultimately unable to pay for itself. At Strong Towns we call this massive and relatively sudden shift the \u201cSuburban Experiment\u201d\u2014and we\u2019re all the guinea pigs.\nSeveral generations into this experiment, the data is in: the suburban development pattern doesn\u2019t work: North American cities exchanged long-term stability for near-term growth, but now the bills are coming due. An entire continent of cities are slipping toward insolvency.\nLast month, Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn was the guest on Saving Elephants, a podcast geared toward conservative Millennials. Chuck and host Josh Lewis had a great conversation on a range of topics, and we received permission to re-run the episode here.\nIn this episode, Chuck and Josh talk about the ways in which cities undermine their own competitiveness, why the big box store model is competitive at the national level but extractive at the local level, and how cities pursue megaprojects backwards. They also discuss the role of local conservatives and why the Strong Towns message is \u201ctrans-partisan.\u201d You\u2019ll also want to hear Chuck\u2019s answer to this question from Josh: \u201cHow screwed are we, as younger Americans?\u201d\nAdditional Show Notes\n\nSaving Elephants Podcast\n\n\nSaving Elephants (Twitter)\n\n\nCharles Marohn (Twitter)\n\n\nStrong Towns content related to this episode:\n\n\u201cThis is the End of the Suburban Experiment,\u201d by Charles Marohn\n\n\n\u201cBuilding Strong Local Economies (without Cheesecake Factory),\u201d by Charles Marohn\n\n\nBig Box Stores: America\u2019s Rigged Game for Retail (free e-book)\n\n\nBig Box Stores (Action Lab)\n\n\n\u201cThe California High-Speed Train that Wasn\u2019t: The Opportunity Cost of Megaprojects,\u201d by Daniel Herriges\n\n\n\u201cOn the American Jobs Plan: A 5-Part Response from Strong Towns\u201d\n\n\n\u201cNobody wants to \u2018destroy the suburbs.\u2019 But everyone should want to end the Suburban Experiment.\u201d by John Pattison