I sit down with the founder of Strong Towns to talk about why suburbs are money-losers, the right way to think about NIMBYs and local control, and the intense resistance to change in the city planning and traffic engineering professions.
I found this frustrating to listen to. It seems like the guest has done a great deal of work investigating and correctly diagnosing the problem with suburbs, but has no sense of urgency in fixing them. We can't really sit around waiting for suburban areas to collapse and then swoop in and reorganize some of them that do.
I found one exchange here telling. David asked Chuck if NIMBYism will still absolutely break Strong Towns' approach towards building new projects by getting local input where applicable, and Chuck responds with an anecdote about how a church prevented a bike path that would have cut into their parking. Ok, cool story, but at the end of the day *a bike path still didn't get built*.
Also, the part about building bike infrastructure where bikers already are is backwards. I have a rail trail near my house that gets tons of use. Before it was a trail, it was a railroad with zero bike traffic. By this philosophy, the trail never would have been built.
I'm on my towns Tree Council. Pretty much everyone does love trees- but no one loves tree policy. From your neighbors trees to conserve canopy and silt fencing in new developments. Other departments, like public works, which requires to silt fencing to be dug in for water quality issues aren't tasked with a larger picture of ecology. Those fences cut into roots of the edge trees on the property lowering any chance of survial through the build- if an arborist could walk the site before the fence is installed to guide best practices the likely hood of trees surviving the build is tenfold. I'm finding lots in the building code like this and spend lots of hours trying to untie the knot, hopefully to weave it back into whole cloth. Long way to go. We do get good attendance on our tree id walks.....and parking lot trees yikes- shade with solar group trees together more dirt for trees, also on edges of property to create contiguous canopy. Street or (ROW right of way ) trees are a great place to find agency for your community- but beware DOT and Utilities can encroach on the plantings and pruning which can decimate hard won plantings. Our monopoly utility has it in the rules that you can only plant back certain size and species of trees that will be within a certain distance to overhead wires- I'm not sure why that is an us problem-seems like a them problem Sorry I don't get to talk about this much obviously...
Was an interesting listen and he clearly knows his stuff and has some reasonable views. However, sorry David but you can't just agree with everything your guests say all the time. Bottom up is never going to get climate change solved fast enough, this is why we have Paris and COPs and R&D that is getting solar cheap. How many towns are going to build an offshore wind farm? Ludicrous and you just let Charles get away with that? In fact I can't recall you ever having a reasonable debate with anyone on the podcast you kinda are a conduit for whatever their views are.
If that's what you want to do on this podcast, fine, but to be honest anyone smart and agreeable can do that. You have a lot of knowledge and experience so if you used that to challenge ludicrous points of view, you would have much more interesting content.
I’ve been following Strong Towns for a while. Highly recommend the collab he did with the YouTube channel Not Just Bikes. It really opened my eyes to exactly what felt so empty and ugly about American suburbs.
What a great episode! Marohn’s bottom-up thinking inspires me to have faith in my neighbors, regardless of their political beliefs - sorely needed these days.
I just read a Washington Post editorial, and I was also thinking the same, that the Supreme Court ruling (my comment, June 30th) will not affect Biden's Build Back Better bill. Yeah
A very interesting interview. I agree with a lot of this in principle. People do want walkable cities with public transportation and dynamic neighborhoods connected by greenspaces, public parks, and shady trees. But you know who doesn't want that? Octogenarian billionaires living 800 miles away from your city of 700,000 people. And from my experience, those billionaires will happily spend 1/100,000th of their wealth to make sure that none of that happens, regardless of what happens once that city's boom has busted. And they will be successful.
Marohn thinks that the Process of Federal laws is bad. He even mentioned that the Clean Air Act (1972?) and the Clean Water Act is bad, implying that the 1965 Civil Rights Act is a bad thing. Just today the Supreme Court chipped away at these environmental Acts, partially thwarting Biden's Climate Change bill. I think that Marohn is very close minded.
I found this frustrating to listen to. It seems like the guest has done a great deal of work investigating and correctly diagnosing the problem with suburbs, but has no sense of urgency in fixing them. We can't really sit around waiting for suburban areas to collapse and then swoop in and reorganize some of them that do.
I found one exchange here telling. David asked Chuck if NIMBYism will still absolutely break Strong Towns' approach towards building new projects by getting local input where applicable, and Chuck responds with an anecdote about how a church prevented a bike path that would have cut into their parking. Ok, cool story, but at the end of the day *a bike path still didn't get built*.
Also, the part about building bike infrastructure where bikers already are is backwards. I have a rail trail near my house that gets tons of use. Before it was a trail, it was a railroad with zero bike traffic. By this philosophy, the trail never would have been built.
I'm on my towns Tree Council. Pretty much everyone does love trees- but no one loves tree policy. From your neighbors trees to conserve canopy and silt fencing in new developments. Other departments, like public works, which requires to silt fencing to be dug in for water quality issues aren't tasked with a larger picture of ecology. Those fences cut into roots of the edge trees on the property lowering any chance of survial through the build- if an arborist could walk the site before the fence is installed to guide best practices the likely hood of trees surviving the build is tenfold. I'm finding lots in the building code like this and spend lots of hours trying to untie the knot, hopefully to weave it back into whole cloth. Long way to go. We do get good attendance on our tree id walks.....and parking lot trees yikes- shade with solar group trees together more dirt for trees, also on edges of property to create contiguous canopy. Street or (ROW right of way ) trees are a great place to find agency for your community- but beware DOT and Utilities can encroach on the plantings and pruning which can decimate hard won plantings. Our monopoly utility has it in the rules that you can only plant back certain size and species of trees that will be within a certain distance to overhead wires- I'm not sure why that is an us problem-seems like a them problem Sorry I don't get to talk about this much obviously...
Was an interesting listen and he clearly knows his stuff and has some reasonable views. However, sorry David but you can't just agree with everything your guests say all the time. Bottom up is never going to get climate change solved fast enough, this is why we have Paris and COPs and R&D that is getting solar cheap. How many towns are going to build an offshore wind farm? Ludicrous and you just let Charles get away with that? In fact I can't recall you ever having a reasonable debate with anyone on the podcast you kinda are a conduit for whatever their views are.
If that's what you want to do on this podcast, fine, but to be honest anyone smart and agreeable can do that. You have a lot of knowledge and experience so if you used that to challenge ludicrous points of view, you would have much more interesting content.
Happy to discuss.
I’ve been following Strong Towns for a while. Highly recommend the collab he did with the YouTube channel Not Just Bikes. It really opened my eyes to exactly what felt so empty and ugly about American suburbs.
What a great episode! Marohn’s bottom-up thinking inspires me to have faith in my neighbors, regardless of their political beliefs - sorely needed these days.
I just read a Washington Post editorial, and I was also thinking the same, that the Supreme Court ruling (my comment, June 30th) will not affect Biden's Build Back Better bill. Yeah
A very interesting interview. I agree with a lot of this in principle. People do want walkable cities with public transportation and dynamic neighborhoods connected by greenspaces, public parks, and shady trees. But you know who doesn't want that? Octogenarian billionaires living 800 miles away from your city of 700,000 people. And from my experience, those billionaires will happily spend 1/100,000th of their wealth to make sure that none of that happens, regardless of what happens once that city's boom has busted. And they will be successful.
Marohn thinks that the Process of Federal laws is bad. He even mentioned that the Clean Air Act (1972?) and the Clean Water Act is bad, implying that the 1965 Civil Rights Act is a bad thing. Just today the Supreme Court chipped away at these environmental Acts, partially thwarting Biden's Climate Change bill. I think that Marohn is very close minded.
This was a really wonderful episode. Thanks!